Mr Conway's Blog 2023-2024

Friday 29th September 2023

As the weeks are ticking, and our learners are highly engaged in their new year group expectations and learning, there is a lot happening throughout the school!

This week saw learners in KS1 and KS2 engage in an NSPCC assembly, and next week our KS2 learners a workshop, on their theme of ‘Speak Out, Stay Safe’. As always, our learners were proactive in offering thoughts and ideas that will keep them safe at home and in school, and they will have identified and discussed trusted adults and safe spaces.

Along with our work through these workshops and assemblies, we have many strategies in school which support learners in all year groups to develop an understanding of how to keep themselves, their peers and their relationships with others safe and well, and what they can do if there are any issues. Our PSHE and RSE curriculum, regular assemblies and our pastoral team all work together in a wide variety of ways.

If you would like some more support to discuss this at home with your child please follow the link below. You will also find lots of useful information in our monthly Inclusion newsletters.

Our intrepid Year 5 & 6 Cross Country competitors headed over to Fairlands Valley this week to compete in the annual Stevenage Championships. For most of our competitors this was their first taste of competitive long distance running, and all of them represented Team Shephalbury really well. Their determination, perseverance and sportspersonship shone through to complete the course.

There were some exceptional individual performances, with Phoebe and Ben both finishing 6^th in their respective races. Everyone completed the course and made it to the end, with our Year 5 team winning the Stanley Stevenson award for determination. A great day all round!

Next week our UKS2 football team will be participating in their first competitive fixtures of the year, as we host a mini pre-season tournament here on Wednesday afternoon. We will report on their progress next week.

As October is upon us next week, there are a couple of things to let you know about. The first is that we will be celebrating Black History Month this year by embracing its theme of ‘Celebrating our Sisters’. We will be focusing all of our school reading texts, assemblies and music on black females throughout the month.

If you would like some more information please follow the link below:

I also shared last week that we have been successful in applying to be included in the Tesco blue token scheme. We were grateful to be nominated by one of our families and are trying to raise funds to facilitate us to build a sensory garden by the entrance to the school office. I would be really grateful if you could share this with any family and friends that shop at any of the following stores, as we will be up against other projects in the 6 local stores below:

Broadwater Stevenage                   SG2 8DT
Stevenage Extra                            SG1 1ES
Woolmer Green Express                 SG3 6FP
Old Stevenage Hi St Express           SG1 3EF
Stevenage Che Ph Express             SG2 0LU
Hitchin St Lyon C Express             SG4 9SP

Voting will commence in store from next week until Mid-January 2024, so there is plenty of time to get lots of tokens in!

Now onto our celebrations for the week.

This week’s Bucket Fillers will be having a delayed Tea Party on Monday morning where they will be treated to something special! A huge well done to the following children for being nominated by their teachers this week:

As well as Bucket Fillers, we have handed our Shephalbury LEARNER certificates and had a look at the house point totals.

As always our staff have seen pupils from around the school working hard to demonstrate the 7 attributes that make up a Shephalbury LEARNER, reflect, solve, create, grow, risk, think and stretch through the lessons and activities that they have participated in. The children listed below have been nominated by their teachers for being Shephalbury LEARNERS this week, a huge well done to each and every one of them:

There haven’t been any Headteacher’s Awards handed out this week, so fingers crossed for a bumper crop next week.

I hope that you all have a great weekend!

Ben Conway

Friday 22^nd September 2023

Gladly, the end of this week sees some rather drier and calmer weather than we saw earlier in the week. The correlation between the amount of wind and the excitement of children is a well known ‘fact’ amongst education professionals, and this week proved no different. I was also reliably informed by a colleague from a different school that windy weather also creates behavioural changes in sheep, I will be looking out for this next time I am stuck outside in a gale!

Despite the disruption that the weather this week has caused to our timetables, and I am sure our lives outside school (I too spent an evening getting soaked through and avoiding flooded roads), I do believe that it provides a good metaphor for learning and life. Being resilient, continuing when things seem tough and seeing glimpses of light as we emerge out the other side of difficulty.

This week a group of Year 5 learners represented our school, and Stevenage, at the Hertfordshire School Games Finals in the small schools Rapid Fire Cricket Competition. The finals were postponed at the end of last academic year and we were really fortunate to be attending the event at University of Hertfordshire. Over the last couple of weeks we have been honing our skills during lunchtimes as a bit of a refresher and arrived intent on having a good time.

We played a in round robin league competition against 6 other schools from around the county. We performed strongly in all matches, winning 4 and losing 2 (the two we lost were by 2 runs each), this put us in a strong position as we listened to the final results. After hearing the table in reverse order we found out that we were tied on points at the top of the league with two other schools. The winners were determined on runs scored throughout the tournament…leaving us to find out that we were victorious!

A fantastic achievement for Team Shephalbury Park and one which will live long in the memory of those in our team. Next week we have teams of Year 5 & 6 runners competing in the Stevenage Cross Country Championships at Fairlands Valley.

Our Nursery class have begun their 30 hour provision this week, with a good number of our youngest Shephalbury learners staying all day. We all know that a school day can be tiring for even our oldest learners, and our Nursery class are acclimatising well. Their environment is full of fun and learning throughout the day and we look forward to sharing their progress with everyone throughout the year.

We welcomed many of our EYFS parents into school this week to share a fantastic resource for parents and carers of young learners. The Hertfordshire 50 Things to do Before You’re 5 is packed full of ideas and activities to enrich the learning experiences of our developing learners. The activities are great, and the app is easy to download. For more information follow the link below:

The home school agreement was sent home last week with all learners, it outlines the shared responsibilities of school, parents/carers and the learner. Please take time to go through this with your child at home. Once you have, please click the link below to confirm that you agree to uphold the expectations:

Many of you will already know that we have recently entered the world on Instagram, with a school account. The account will be used to celebrate many of the positives from around the school on a daily basis, give everyone an insight into the day to day goings on around school and communicate reminders to our community. If you would like to withdraw permission for your child to appear on our Instagram page, you are able to do so when confirming your agreement to the home school agreement.

If you aren’t already, we would love to get you following us, click the link in the icon or search for us @shephalburyparkprimaryschool.

Our governors met last week to start their year of support, challenge and strategic direction for the school. Being a school governor is a critical role in ensuring the effectiveness of schools and also in planning for the future. Our governing body volunteer their time to visit school to meet with learners, visit lessons and meet with staff to get a full understanding of how our school runs and what impact we have on our learners. They also meet regularly throughout the year to discuss everything from curriculum and health & safety to finance and safeguarding. Our team are always on the look out for new recruits. If you would like to find out more about the role, or would like to discuss it further, please contact me through the office or speak to me on the playground.

As we approach October there are a couple of things to let you know about. The first is that we will be celebrating Black History Month this year by embracing its theme of ‘Celebrating our Sisters’. I will be sharing more as we enter October, but if you would like some more information in advance of this please follow the link below:

My second piece of news is that we have been successful in applying to be included in the Tesco blue token scheme. We were grateful to be nominated by one of our families and are trying to raise funds to facilitate us to build a sensory garden by the entrance to the school office. I would be really grateful if you could share this with any family and friends that shop at any of the following stores, as we will be up against other projects in the 6 local stores below:

Broadwater Stevenage                       SG2 8DT
Stevenage Extra                                 SG1 1ES
Woolmer Green Express                   SG3 6FP
Old Stevenage Hi St Express            SG1 3EF
Stevenage Che Ph Express               SG2 0LU
Hitchin St Lyon C Express                 SG4 9SP

Voting will commence in store from the first week of October 2023 until Mid-January 2024, so there is plenty of time to get lots of tokens in!

Year 6 Bloggers:

This week we have talked to the school's caretaker Mr Haslett. He has said the school are going to be changing its lights to LED lights to save energy throughout the school.

Mr Haslett likes his job because he can see children and keep them safe. He likes teaching clubs like gardening and football.

There is three questions we would like to ask everyone: 1. What is your favourite season and why? 2. What is your favourite movie? 3. What is your favourite sport?

Mr Haslett says his favourite season is summer because it is hot and he doesn’t have to shovel snow, his favourite movie is The Godfather and his favourite sport is football, West ham).

Next week we will be interviewing children at year 5 and 6 for cross country. By Riley, Olivia and Kingsley.

Now onto our celebrations for the week.

This week’s Tea Party guests were treated to delicious jam donut muffin courtesy of Mrs McKenzie…thank you very much! A huge well done to the following children for being nominated by their teachers this week:

As well as Bucket Fillers, we have handed our Shephalbury LEARNER certificates and had a look at the house point totals.

As always our staff have seen pupils from around the school working hard to demonstrate the 7 attributes that make up a Shephalbury LEARNER, reflect, solve, create, grow, risk, think and stretch through the lessons and activities that they have participated in. The children listed below have been nominated by their teachers for being Shephalbury LEARNERS this week, a huge well done to each and every one of them:

This week saw an interesting question set by Phil, which promoted a lot of innovative answers: ‘How could you keep yourself feeling safe if you had to wash an elephant?’

Rae Y3- ‘You can get someone from the zoo and they will sure that you are ok.’

Jaiden Y2- ‘I would stay away and spray water and soap.’

Louie YR- ‘Use some music to help the elephant, so it is calm.’

I have handed out 2 Headteacher’s awards this week.

The first went to Dominica (Y1) for her fabulous innovation of sentences from the Katie Morag story that has been the class text so far this ter. Dominica worked independently to create a good range of sentences…great work!

My second award went to Darcey (Y3) who has hit the ground running in her WRE learning so far this year. She has been inspired by learning about Sikhism and recorded her information well, relaying all that she had learnt to me. Great work Darcey…keep it up!

I hope that you all have a great weekend, and fingers crossed for another good performance by England in the rugby world cup on Saturday!

Ben Conway

Friday 15th September 2023

The end of another week already, and lots more fantastic things to reports from around school this week.

On Monday this week, we welcomed the very inspiring Andrew Moffat, who delivered a ‘No Outsiders’ lesson to everyone in Years 1 – 6. He has worked hard at creating learning opportunities which promote the acceptance and understanding of many issues relating to equality, diversity and inclusion. Each lesson was highly engaging and provided lots of rich discussion around the issues within the books that were used.

Following on from the class sessions our staff team had a training session after school, prompting much thought and discussion as to how we can further embed some of the ideas into our daily practice. Equality, diversity and inclusion features really highly in our school development for this academic year, and we will be inviting parents and carers to play a part in our journey in the future. Please look out for opportunities to join us to support.

I am delighted to be able to share some fantastic news with you all. Mr Klein, and his wife, welcomed baby Finn to the world on Wednesday evening this week, weighing 8lbs. The Klein family are all now back at home, settling into family life as a family of four. I am sure that you will all join me in sending them lots of happiness and best wishes.

As a school we really value the relationships that we have with our families, there is lots of research which shows a clear correlation between active parental engagement and success in school for children. With this in mind, I want to thank those parents and carers who were able to attend the curriculum meetings this week. We hope that you found them useful in understanding what to expect from the year ahead for your child/ren. At these meetings a paper copy of the curriculum letter and home school agreement were handed out (if you were unable to attend, they will be sent home today). The home school agreement outlines the shared responsibilities of school, parents/carers and the learner. Please take time to go through this with your child at home. Once you have, please click the link below to confirm that you agree to uphold the expectations:

Many of you will already know that we have recently entered the world on Instagram, with a school account. The account will be used to celebrate many of the positives from around the school on a daily basis, give everyone an insight into the day to day goings on around school and communicate reminders to our community. If you would like to withdraw permission for your child to appear on our Instagram page, you are able to do so when confirming your agreement to the home school agreement.

If you aren’t already, we would love to get you following us, click the link below or search for us @shephalburyparkprimaryschool.

As a school we buy in to a brilliant platform called The National College- that provides training and advice for adults across our community- teachers, support staff and parents/carers. Over the past year many of you have signed up and accessed some of the resources, Mrs McKenzie also regularly shares resources from this platform with parents. If you are new to our community, or haven’t yet signed up, I would urge you to do so. It only takes a minute and you will have a wealth of information, support, advice and training at your fingertips. Click the link below to sign up:

You will be aware that we have reinvigorated our house teams this year with the re-organisation of people into equal teams with new names and colours. To mark this ex Shephalbury Park learner Imogen Spiller has designed new emblems for each of the teams. They are all brilliant, and are now displayed on our house team display as well as being turned into badges for staff and house captains. A huge thank you to Imogen for her fantastic designs!

Year 6 Bloggers:

Hello, we are Riley, Olivia and Kingsley and we are the Year 6 bloggers. We will be talking about events and things going on around school once a week. For example talking about new staff, interviewing teachers and learners. We will be writing a short paragraph each week with information about the school.

Now onto our celebrations for the week.

This week’s Tea Party guests were treated to delicious cupcake courtesy of Mrs Cargill…thank you very much! A huge well done to the following children for being nominated by their teachers this week:

As always our staff have seen pupils from around the school working hard to demonstrate the 7 attributes that make up a Shephalbury LEARNER, reflect, solve, create, grow, risk, think and stretch through the lessons and activities that they have participated in. The children listed below have been nominated by their teachers for being Shephalbury LEARNERS this week, a huge well done to each and every one of them:

Our anti-bullying ambassadors have been working on an ‘online anti-bullying campaign’ and have met with Mr Klein to see how they can help to highlight the issue in school. With this in mind, they set and chose the winning answers for Phil’s question this week, which was: ‘What would you do if you, or your friend, were being bullied online?’

Ryver Y2- ‘Tell a teacher, mummy or daddy.’

T-J Y2- ‘Stick up for them.’

Lenny B Y4- ‘Block them, report them and leave the game.’

I have handed out 2 Headteacher’s awards this week.

The first went to Maison (Y1) for his excellent creation of a summer holiday poster. He described it all to me and it sounded like he had a fantastic time over the course of the six weeks with his family and friends. Well done for being creative and thank you for sharing it with me Maison!

My second award was a really pleasing one to be able to give out…Ronnie (Y3) has been really developing his learning behaviours since returning this academic year. In every lesson he is applying the Shephalbury Learner attributes to his work and approach, which is really supporting him in moving his learning on. This was especially evident in Ronnie’s maths work this week, where he worked his way through the challenges and progressing to the independent completion of the 3 star task. Super work Ronnie…keep it up!

This weekend sees Jews around the world celebrate Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), I would like to wish those members of our community who are celebrating Shana Tova.

I hope that you all have a great weekend.

Ben Conway

Friday 8^th September 2023

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Shephalbury Park for the 2023-24 academic year and what a fantastic, sunny start we have had!

Having seen and spoken to learners all over the school, it is clear that they have all enjoyed their break, and many have had some wonderful summer experiences that they have shared with me. The start of the year brings a lot of excitement and eagerness in many, as well as a little nervousness about what lies ahead. Having visited all of our classes throughout the week, it is already clear how well focused and engaged our learners are…living up to our expectations as Shephalbury Learners.

I would like to extend a warm welcome to our Shephalbury community to our new starters. We have been joined in Reception by 12 new Shephalbury Learners who have settled in really well this week. We have also begun transitioning in our new Nursery cohort, who have been exploring their surroundings and getting to know our staff.

We have also welcomed 3 new members of staff; Miss Maggs who is teaching Year 3, Miss Bawdon who is our new administrator, and Miss Howard who is our new after school cleaner. We hope that our learners and wider community make you all feel very welcome.

Unfortunately Mrs Gregory has not returned to continue in her role this September, due to an impending house move. We thank Mrs Gregory for her contribution to our school over the past few years and wish her the best of luck in her future.

I would like to invite parents and carers of learners in Years 1 – 6 to join us next week on both Tuesday 12^th and Thursday 14^th for curriculum meetings for their new year groups. These will take place in the classroom with their new teacher between 2.45-3pm. If you are unable to attend, all of the information will be shared on the class pages of the website and sent home on paper as well. We look forward to seeing you there!

Our new year has heralded a new beginning for the 4 new house teams in school; Blue Buzzards, Green Kestrels, Red Kites and Purple Sparrowhawks. Our teams look fantastic in their new PE shirts and we are looking forward to participating in House events throughout the year.

At the outset of every year, there is a lot of information to process for everyone, learners, teachers and parents. With this in mind you will have been sent a list of the dates of events for the term ahead. There may be others communicated with you, however at the moment these ones are all booked and in the diary.

For learners in Y3, 4 & 6, if you would like them to attend the upcoming residential trips this year please make a deposit payment via School Gateway.

As we return I would just like to pass on a couple of reminders to all. All learners should now have a school water bottle with a new lid (representing their new house team colour). Please ensure that they have this with them, cleaned and with fresh water on a daily basis. Our brains are made up of 75% water, a slight dip in hydration can lead to impairments with our cognition, memory and general brain function.

When collecting at the end of the day, we request that those collecting line up and allow the class teacher to dismiss the children as you get to the front of the line. This is really important to us from a safeguarding perspective as we need to ensure that we can clearly see who each learner is leaving with.

Please be reminded that whilst we encourage the use of bikes and scooters for the journey into school, no one should be riding them on school grounds (this includes younger siblings). I would urge you to be pro-active in ensuring that your child/ren are following these expectations and that we do not rely on school staff asking them stop riding. We also require anyone riding a bike to school to wear a helmet, the wearing of a helmet has been found to reduce the risk of serious head injuries by 69%. If you need some support in sourcing one please speak to myself or Mrs Dean.

My final reminder is that there should be no children using the climbing equipment and trim trail on the KS2 playground before or after school, whether they are our learners, younger or older siblings. This is for health and safety reasons due to the lack of supervision from school staff at these times, once again I request that parents and carers are pro-active in ensuring that children follow these expectations so that school staff are not having to ask them.

During our assembly today we celebrated our Shephalbury learners who completed the Summer Reading Challenge at the library during the school holidays. We all recognise the importance of reading as a gateway skill in life, enabling us to access a wealth of information around us. By completing the challenge our learners have shown that ongoing commitment to grow and stretch themselves whilst enjoying being exposed to a wide range of books and stories. A huge well done to everyone for your achievement!

As a school we buy in to a brilliant platform called The National College- that provides training and advice for adults across our community- teachers, support staff and parents/carers. Over the past year many of you have signed up and accessed some of the resources, Mrs McKenzie also regularly shares resources from this platform with parents. If you are new to our community, or haven’t yet signed up, I would urge you to do so. It only takes a minute and you will have a wealth of information, support, advice and training at your fingertips. Click the link below to sign up:

One final bit of news for you all before I move into this week’s celebrations, we have recently entered the world on Instagram, with a school account. The account will be used to celebrate many of the positives from around the school on a daily basis, give everyone an insight into the day to day goings on around school and communicate reminders to our community. Next week, when we circulate the home school agreement, you will be offered the opportunity to withdraw permission for your child to appear on our page. Until that point we will check with you individually if we are going to include your child on there.

We would love to get you all following, click the link below or search for us @shephalburyparkprimaryschool

Now onto our celebrations for the week.

This week’s Tea Party guests were treated to my special rocky road creation, which was a bit of a gamble in this heat! A huge well done to the following children for being the first learners nominated by their teachers this week:

As well as Bucket Fillers, we have handed our Shephalbury LEARNER certificates and had a first look at the house point totals.

As always our staff have seen pupils from around the school working hard to demonstrate the 7 attributes that make up a Shephalbury LEARNER, reflect, solve, create, grow, risk, think and stretch through the lessons and activities that they have participated in. The children listed below have been nominated by their teachers for being Shephalbury LEARNERS this week, a huge well done to each and every one of them:

I have handed out 3 Headteacher’s awards this week.

The first was to Seth Y6, who had the trip of a lifetime over the summer to Australia. Whist he was there, Seth documented his entire trip in his diary. We had a long chat about what he did and it all sounded amazing, especially getting to watch the Lionesses in the Women’s World Cup! Great work Seth…spreading the Shephalbury Learner all the way down under!

Next was Greyson Y1 for his fantastic start to Year 1. He has really impressed Mrs Cargill with his independent writing during exploring time, penning letters to post in the post office, inspired by the current class text of Katie Morag. Greyson read me his letter, before promptly heading off to post some other letters around school. A great start to Year 1 Greyson…keep it up!

My final award was for Amelia Y6, who was so inspired by the start of Year 6’s theme of World War 2, that she went home and conducted her own research to supplement her learning in class. Really demonstrating many of our Shephalbury LEARNER attributes and a brilliant start to Year 6! We’re proud of you Amelia.

Well I hope that we get to keep some of the warm weather over the weekend, and will be cheering on England as they start their endeavours at the rugby world cup in France!

Have a great weekend.

Ben Conway