Newsletters

October 2021

STAFFING UPDATE

We were extremely sad to lose Mr Brown our Site Manager last month. He took up a Site Manager position closer to where he lives. We are currently interviewing for this position, so hope to have a new Site Manager before too long. In the meantime, our cleaning team of Miss Emery, Miss Faithfull and Miss Gregory have all stepped up to cover the role and are doing a fantastic job, particularly

Miss Emery and the never ending task of clearing the leaves!

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN

Each year, we produce a summary of our School Improvement Plan for parents, providing a review of the previous year’s plan and the planned areas for focus in the coming year. To see a summary of this year’s plan, please go to the section at the end of this newsletter.

YEAR 3 NEWS

Year 3 have been enjoying lots of opportunities to explore books over the last couple of weeks.  We have been keen to develop a love of reading among our Year 3 children and it has been wonderful to see them all so enthusiastic and inspired.  Each class has had an opportunity to visit Bosmere’s library, with an introduction from Mrs Library Dunn.  Each child was able to select a book to bring back and add to our year 3 library; these are now being enjoyed across the year group during our regular, timetabled quiet reading slots. 

A big thank you to our parent volunteers who have started coming in and listening to the children read – your support is invaluable and we know the children are enjoying sharing their books with you. 

Last Thursday, we enjoyed a year group visit to Havant Library.  The visit was a huge success, with the children finding out what the library has to offer, enjoying a story and having the opportunity to explore the shelves and share a book with a friend. 

The children did us proud, walking from school to the library sensibly and considerately – they did a great job representing Bosmere.

Many of the children were keen to borrow books; it costs nothing, but they do need you to sign them up.  We would love to encourage as many of our Year 3 children as possible to join the library – please do not underestimate the power of books. For many of the children, the library truly was a magical place. 

YEAR 5 NEWS

What a fantastic first half term we have had in Year 5!  All Year 5 children have had a swimming assessment at Horizon Leisure Centre.  The children have really embraced this opportunity and have now been split into ability groups.  Each group will receive lessons over a term.  The first group has already started.

This term Year 5 has been learning all about Space.  We were lucky enough to visit the Chichester Planetarium.  While there, we experienced what it is like to be under a night sky with no light pollution. We even spotted planets and constellations.  It was amazing!  Year 5 also had great fun measuring the distance between planets using toilet rolls! (See photo below)

The Year 5 team has been very impressed with all the wonderful homework coming in. We have some truly amazing Mayan Temples!  Keep up the great work! 

ECO-COMMITTEE

We were very excited to use Havant’s involvement in Big Green Week to launch Eco-schools through 4F’s class assembly. Following the assembly, we received mentions in a couple of articles of The News and every child in the school wrote a postcard to Alan Mak persuading him to take action about the current climate chaos we are in. Watch this space!

Thank you so much to the parents who have offered advice and offers of support for our quest to become an Eco-school. It makes such a big difference to have all the various contacts, experience and offers of time and help and we are very grateful for this.

Mrs Fisk was inundated with applications to be on the new Eco committee, which will be the driving force behind us achieving Eco-Schools status. The committee have now met and will undertake a review of our school grounds to see how much we are already doing and, what more can be done to make our school an even better place to be working in. We will then be in touch with all the parents and wider school community to see how we can all work together on this exciting new venture.

(Eco News ctd)   INSTALLING OUR NEW SOLAR PANELS

Just before the summer holidays, Hampshire made an enquiry to Bosmere about using the school as a trial for solar panels. Mrs Reilly and Mrs Robinson jumped at the chance to be involved in such a scheme. The installation took place over the summer holidays. The panels can produce up to 10KW per hour (weather permitting), which is enough to run our entire school lighting for one day. This means that not only will we be helping our world by reducing the need to generate electricity, we will be saving the school a considerable amount of money over a longer period of time, which can be better spent elsewhere in the school. The Eco-committee will be monitoring this and producing statistics to see how much money we can save the school. This is a very exciting venture for us to be involved with and one which other schools are now investigating.

(Eco News ctd)       LITTER PICK

Mrs Simpson has taken on board the responsibility of organising a group of lunchtime litter pickers who have been doing a sterling job of collecting any stray rubbish before it gets blown around the school grounds and potentially harming our wildlife. You are all amazing!

Mrs Fisk has been working with Grainne Raison at Warblington School, who is also looking ahead to Eco-Schools status and we hope to be collaborating our efforts and working together closely on this venture.

So all in all, we have hit the ground running with this scheme and we are all very excited about where it will lead us!

E-SAFETY TIP

New Year, new beginnings, new apps and new language!
The way our children interact with the internet has never been so fast-moving and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up with the changes and trends.

www.net-aware.org.uk

Linked above is the NSPCC website that is updated almost daily. Here you can search for any apps, games or social media sites and it will give you a detailed description of what it's about, who it's made by and most importantly who it's made for so you can see if it's appropriate. Therre is also a lot of other additional information throughout the site so definitely one worth adding to the bookmark bar! 

Along with this, published in the most recent Digital Parenting Guide is 5 terms every should know - some of which I had heardof but didn't fully understand the meaning!

Deepfakes: AI-generated fake videos or images that allow people's faces or bodies to be swapped or digitally altered - commonly seen in celebrity videos, fake news and on face-swapping apps.

Cancel Culture: On social media, this often refers to the withdrawal of support for public figures - e.g. Instagrammers - or companies we disagree with.

Misinformation: False information that hasn't necessarily been created to intentionally mislead people - e.g. sharing COVID-19 'miracle cure' without knowing if it's genuinely effective or not.

Disinformation: False information that is intended to deliberately mislead people - e.g. writing a blog post that intentionally contains inaccurate news.

Digital Activism: Using digital platforms - like social media - to encourage social or political change, as seen during the US election and Black Lives Matter movement.

If you would like to pick up your own copy of the Digital Parenting Guide, I will leave some in the foyer - it's surprisingly easy reading with lots of useful information!

Stay safe!