Dear Parents/Carers,

In January, our ECO Committee took part in a tree planting event organised by Stevenage Borough Council at Fairlands. I am incredibly proud to tell parents that Almond Hill (along with the other schools involved) were praised by the Council and were even included in The Comet newspaper. Well done!

There have been reports over the last couple of weeks of parents bringing dogs onto the school grounds. Please can I remind parents this is not allowed. ‘No dogs on school grounds’ policies are designed for the safety of children and those children with allergies. Miya, our school dog, comes into school only after extensive risk assessments and the relevant insurance in place.

I understand that Pokémon and the trading of cards is a popular activity amongst our children, particularly in year 4 and 5. However, there are also an increasing number of complaints where children feel they have been ‘scammed’ out of their cards. I do not want to ban the cards completely but school are unable to take any responsibility for the cards if they are lost, damaged or traded. Last week, this took up a considerable amount of teacher’s time. I will be discussing this in more detail with teachers at the end of the week in our regular staff meeting  and will update parents accordingly.

Miss Simmons hosted the first parent forum recently. A big thank you to all the parents who attended. Miss Simmons told me how valuable the meeting was. We are working together to review some of the suggestions and will feed back to parents of actions over the coming weeks, including how we move forward with our newsletter.

In conversation with parents, it was highlighted that some parents in Year 4 were still disappointed that, due to circumstances out of our control, their trip was cancelled last year and there is concern that they have missed the opportunity to go on a trip. We aim for each year group to have at least one trip per year and Year 6 had their residential trip at the start of the Autumn term and Year 3 have their trip to the British Museum planned for next month. I would like to assure parents that we are working on trips for both Years 4 and 5 but are waiting for external companies to get back to us to confirm dates. The Year 4 teachers are working on arranging a trip to The Woodhall Estate for an outdoor learning trip as they have done in previous years, and Year 5 are looking at a trip that is new to us at Almond Hill called Hazard Alley (think Crucial Crew). Once we have had the dates confirmed (which are in the summer term) we will be in touch with parents with the details.  

Tomorrow night, 8 children will attend the writing project awards at The Broadway Theatre. I would like to wish the children luck and congratulate them on their wonderful pieces of writing, some of which we will share with you after the awards evening. All children across the school work extremely hard on the writing projects each year and Mrs Cleaves and myself are always immensely proud of the work produced.

In our assembly last week, we discussed the below quote and what it means to the children. We created definitions of the more challenging vocabulary to make sure we had a shared understanding of what the quote meant. Then the children made suggestions about what this might mean for a child at Almond Hill. I was particularly impressed to hear that children in the lower school understand the importance of regular practice and someone in year 6 talked about developing self-discipline which is an excellent trait for secondary school

Emma Fordham,
Headteacher