Newsletters

Wildlife Connections 2019

The children's enthusiasm for this project has surprised us all!

After 'singing for songbirds' last year, we thought that we would stay local this year and explore ways that we could protect UK native species. We have found that the children jumped straight back into their conservationist roles and were ready, once again, to 'act for wildlife'!

Visits from the Chester Zoo Safari Rangers and fieldwork in and around our locality really brought the project to life and children across the whole school were able to investigate habitats of and threats to species that live here. From butterflies in Nursery to wildflowers in Y6, the project has left some long-lasting learning memories.

The culmination of our project was our Wildlife Festival - we couldn't think of a better way of sharing what the children have been working on. Apart from a little drizzle, it was a huge success and we thank everyone who came to visit.

Our Zooples (Pupil Conservationists) have been invited to further share our work at the Chester Zoo Wildlife Connections Festival in September. Find out more about the event here:

https://www.chesterzoo.org/events/wildlife-connections-festival/

Wildlife Competition Winners

The enthusiasm surrounding our two competitions was brilliant! 

Our photography competition was extremely popular and was so difficult to judge. Our school photographers judged the competition and were looking for those little details that caught an eye. Our worthy winners: Jude, Harry, Milly and Monique won a framed print and a chance to have a photography lesson in the autumn term.

Some of the costumes that we saw at our festival were amazing! Winners included an oak tree and a Japenese Knotweed plant!

We appreciate the time and effort that goes in to making a costume by hand - well done to everyone who won or dressed up to make our school a very colourful and exciting place to be!

Y6 Art Project

Our year six children have been working with Mrs Lawton from The Prescot School over the past few weeks on a ‘Wildflower’ art project. This involved many skills: photography, sketching, observational drawings, colour mixing and much more.

Working alongside our colleagues from secondary schools is essential on many levels, not only does it form important links but it enables our teachers to develop new skills to use with future year groups.

We are sure you will agree that the end results were stunning.

Prescot Pilots 2019

Last week, celebration events were held for our extremely active Prescot Pilots. This is a wonderful occasion were families can get together to look back over the year and be amazed at just how many extra hours have been spent learning outside of dedicated classroom time.

Children have been part of many different types of clubs, from football and dancing to science, riding, golf and trampolining. We have eager learners in our Pilots scheme, who love to grab every opportunity.

The scheme will continue from September for children in Reception to Y6. Pilots' Logs will be issued at the start of the new year and parents and children should count the hours across the term and hand in just before Christmas. Spring and Summer logs will then follow.

If you are a Pilot but couldn't attend the event, don't forget to buy your Pilot badges to sew on to next year's jumpers and cardigans. You can also move up this year's badges and wear them again, with pride.

Badges are £1 from the Main Office.

Nursery Graduation

It was the end of an era for many of our Nursery children this week, with their wonderful graduation ceremony in the hall. This event marks the passing of many of our children into 'Blue School', as they call it! We also get to say goodbye to those children who are moving on to other primary settings.

It was a very happy occasion for all concerned.

Reading Superstars!

For some children in Y2, and for all in Y3 to Y6, Accelerated Reader is revolutionising how our children read.

We have found that attitudes towards reading are changing: self-motivation is increasing, ownership of book choices is growing and the pleasure taken in reading is obvious.

We feel that comprehension skills are improving as a result of regular 'quizzing' and the ability to recommend books to each other is developing. Our children love using the library, and love analysing their own reading data.

Here are some amazing PCP reading stats:

The children have read 80,009,041 words.

15000 books have been read since September

New word millionaires: Ruby Taylor, Alfie Singleton, Jack Chao, Ethan Vine, Rachel Naylor, Milly Campion and James Pugh.  That’s 18 all together this year!

Thanks everyone for all of the book donations over the year. Our library is book-rich and is a wonderfully calm place for our children to relax into a book.

Please keep your children reading over the summer break. 

RocketFund Success!

We can't thank all of our supporters enough for a super-successful RocketFund appeal.

This crowd-funding project aimed to raise enough to buy four DASH programmable robots for our EYFS. However, in the end, we were able to purchase four DASH & DOT kits, a Sphero and some Sphero 'Drum-rings' - that we can trial to support our digital music-making activities.

Our Digi-Leaders, Alfie & Pranav, were overwhelmed by the support that we received. If you didn't get a chance to read about the project, click here:

https://spsr.me/cLdZ

Thank you all so much. Look out for another project next year.

Visits and Visitors!

With every project that we do, we plan ways of helping the learning to 'stick' and with so many concepts taught across a year, this isn't always easy.

Visits out of the classroom or out of school create vivid memories that will stay with children forever. Equally, visitors into school make a huge difference.

Our wildlife project saw us welcome the Chester Zoo safari rangers back into school who took our children through a series of workshops on minibeasts and other creatures.

Also, Y3 and Y5 explored 'woodlands' and 'invasive species' whilst out in the beautiful surroundings of Formby pine woods & beach.

Thank you for supporting us in getting the children out and about!

GarageBand Performers

As an Apple Distinguished School, we were invited by MCC Digital to enter a competition in which the children had to perform a song using instruments in the GarageBand app on their iPads.

This was an exciting project as we were supported by David Kirtlan, an Apple Professional Trainer; he offered his expertise for a couple of days and we all learned so much from him.

Our iPad Band was made up with musicians and tech-lovers from Y5 and Y6. They performed their version of Avicii's 'Wake me up' at The Capstone Theatre to a full house. Unfortunately, we didn't win but thoroughly enjoyed the experience - and we know that there will be more digital music sessions to come.

Farewell!

We are sad to be saying goodbye to some much-loved staff-members this week.

Miss Dove will leave Y5D to begin the next step of her teaching career in a Warrington primary school and Mr Stinchcomb will leave Y1 for his new Liverpool school. Both of these teachers trained with us here at Prescot Primary and are very much part of our close team.

We would like to thank them on behalf of their pupils and families for all their hard work this year and we wish them good luck on their new adventures - your new classes are very lucky!

After saying goodbye to Mr Grainger, we now have to say goodbye to Mr Houghton. Mrs Watts has worked alongside them both for about 5 years and has seen how much the children value their expertise. We are proud of Mr Houghton's professionalism - especially as an ex-pupil of PCP. Mr Houghton will be starting his new job shortly but we know he will miss working with our children.

Miss Cashman, in reception, will also be leaving us this week. This year has seen her become a huge part of the EYFS team and we are proud of how much she has grown in her role.

And to all of our wonderful Y6 children, who will be moving on to a number of different secondaries, we say this: you will always be Prescot Primary children; be proud of it and remember us fondly. The experiences you have shared here will stand you in good stead for the next steps of your journey. Look after each other and enjoy the times to come. We will miss you.

Sponsorship

We have to say a huge thank you to SWL Northwest Ltd for sponsoring next year's Y6 hoodies. We have been able to order and organise them ready for the start of next term - much earlier than we would normally do.

We can't thank the company enough for covering the cost of all hoodies and would love to work in partnership with others who may like to sponsor other areas of school life. Please share with others who may like to give a little back, or get in touch on 0151 432 7100.