Throughout the year, we have erred on the side of caution and kept visitors and visits to a minimum. However, when we could, we have planned in some exciting experiences that have brought learning to life.

One of these was the visiting aquarium. Children from across school had the opportunity to see sea creatures up close. They could hold them, observe how they move and learn about their life in the ocean. Being able to do this when so many visitor centres are closed was a real joy. Thank you to the team at Aqualease for offering a great in-house experience.

PGL Residential

This was a long-awaited trip for our Y6 Wolves that almost didn't happen... but we are so glad it did.

Time spent away from home in the beautiful Shropshire countryside, with friends, is so good for developing independence and resilience and is also really good fun!  Our Wolves spent four days climbing, zip-wiring, orienteering, rafting, walking, singing and playing and our staff loved watching them enjoy the experience all the more for almost losing out due to restrictions. We can never express enough how much benefit our children get from a residential experience and how much we are looking forward to taking our Unicorns in September. 

It is also exciting to be taking our Dragons to Colomendy, North Wales for the day in October. 

Photography Projects

We love to encourage our children to be creative with photography, especially since they carry an iPad camera around with them each day!

Y6 recently spent two days with a professional photographer, completing a project to showcase the problem of plastics in the ocean. They used green screen technology and layering to create some amaing posters.

Y3 also studied the artist Mandy Barker and used her photography to inspire their work. They used all of the lids collected to create some fabulous ocean images.

We have been lucky in many ways not to suffer from too many bubbles closures across the year but obviously, attendance has suffered unavoidably. 

In September, the biggest change to attendance procedures will be our return to our usual start time. Our 'Early doors' routine will start again, with the gates opening at 8.30am and closing at 8.50am. This is to allow us to return to our usual finishing times of 3.10pm for KS1 and 3.15pm for KS2.

Children must be in school before 8.50am or incur a late mark. Being on time is crucial for your child to access the start of their first lesson.

For safeguarding reasons, please do not arrive before 8.30am as staff are arriving and the car park may be busy.

There are some reminders that we feel are important:

• Please contact school by email or phone as soon as you know that your child is unwell and will not be attending school. This will reduce the calls our 'first response' team make each morning.
• Please avoid picking up your child early, unless for unavoidable medical appointments. We have seen an increase in occurrence of this, and it does, again, impact negatively on your child's day. 

We thought it would be interesting for you to see what we have learned about our children's reading habits. We can monitor every pupil in KS2 closely and in turn the children own their own reading and the progress they make.

Here's what we know...

This year, our children have read 15,995 books, which is 68,961,744 words!  Of these books, 79% were fiction, and 21% non-fiction.

16 of them have become Word Millionaires, and another 4 have achieved Double Word Millionaire status.

Our children quiz with an average accuracy of 82%, and read on average 25 minutes per day.  

Our children spent 3794 hours reading on myON.  They read 25, 232 books on their iPads.  32% of this reading was done outside of school. Our children show a strong preference for longer books when reading on their iPads: 47% of their digital reading is on longer books. 

 75% of their myON reading material is done either at or above their ZPD, so our children are not choosing to read short or simple texts.  23,000 minutes were spent reading projects set by teachers, which is 16% of their digital reading time.

All of this would be impressive during an ordinary year. To have these successes this year is amazing!

It is with heavy hearts that we are saying goodbye to two much-loved teachers.

Mrs Collins from Y5 will leave us to join her new school from September. Thank you for looking after our Unicorns so well during this difficult year. We wish you every happiness in your new school.

Mrs Watts, our Y4 teacher and energetic PE Lead will leave us after 20 years in the PCP family.  She will begin her retirement with a September family holiday, a rarity in a teacher's life! Mrs Watts has played a huge part in many school events over the years and is a dedicated cheer-leader for our children, our school and our community. We are grateful that she will continue to be part of the team in her role as governor. 

And to our Y6 Wolves ... we can't believe it is your turn to leave us. From being very small, you have been a complete joy. We have watched you grow into wonderful people. You look out for each other, take pride in what you do and share smiles every day. We all wish you all the luck in the world as you continue your learning journeys elsewhere.

You will always be PCP Wolves.