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March 2023

Welcome!

The weeks since January have flown by, with great achievements seen by individuals and classes every day. Our children have been productive, creative and adventurous and make us proud with their positive outlook and enthusiasm for school life.

Our school is happy to be part of the Challenge Partners network and has an annual review with teaching colleagues from all over the country spending three days with our children and staff. A report is published as a result, you can read the full version here:

https://www.prescotprimary.org.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=455&type=pdf

Here are some of the wonderful comments. We are so very proud of our staff team and amazing children.

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Thanks from Mr Jones!

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank all the children, parents and staff for all your support as I prepare to run the London Marathon.

The past few months have been hard and I have stuck to a very rigid training plan (suffering the odd injury along the way!). The charity I am running for has been at the forefront of my mind at all times and that has kept me going through the long runs. Young lives Vs Cancer was an amazing support to Maddy and her family and I know that all the money raised is going to a great cause.

In total, school has currently raised a massive £1100 for Young Lives Vs Cancer. What an achievement for the team!

I can’t thank you all enough! Now I just need to complete the 26.2 miles!! Only 3 weeks to go - wish me luck!!

Mr Jones

https://www.justgiving.com/team/marathon-for-maddy?utm_source=whatsapp

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^{Breakfast Club and After School Club}

Could we remind parents that the responsibility for booking either of our clubs via Arbor is essential to the efficient management of the clubs. Please ensure you book within the designated window to secure your child a place. We have recently found that we are spending more time revising registers to accommodate late requests. It is becoming unmanageable.

Unfortunately, we will not be able to accommodate late bookings, unless it is an emergency and pre-arranged with us. We must plan ratios carefully and would not want to compromise the safety of our children.

We would also ask that our members of staff are treated with respect at all times. We always try to do our best for the families who use BC/ASC.

Early Years Update

We still have some spaces available in our PM nursery for the summer term. Please get in touch via admissons@prescotprimary.org.uk ASAP if you need one. We are also looking at places for September 2023 and January 2024, if you have not registered your child, please send their name, date of birth, address, your contact number and email to admissons@prescotprimary.org.uk The are already a large number of children on the nursery waiting list and we would not want you to miss out!

We also recently shared a survey to see if there was a need for wrap around provision in our nursery. This could be either through the governments extended childcare offer or paid for. If you have not filled in this survey and would be interested in wrap around, please do complete before 17th April 2023:

https://forms.gle/WP67az749xUATJuc7

Primary school reception class allocation results will be available on the Primary National Offer Date of Monday 17 April 2023. If you are a Knowsley resident who applied via the online application portal, will receive their allocation result by accessing the portal and/or by email on the respective National Offer Date.

Other applicants will be issued with their allocation result by letter posted on National Offer Day (this could take up to three working days to arrive).

We look forward to seeing who will be joining PCP for Reception in September.

Have a lovely break.

Mrs George

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Rights Respecting School Update

As you may be aware, we are a silver accredited UNICEF Rights Respecting School and we have been working extremely hard within school to take the next steps towards a gold award. However, we understand that some parents are still unsure on what this entails. We would like to share our journey with you!

Our RRS leaders have recently been busy in their second meeting to discuss and plan the idea of a parent and carers' coffee morning! We have decided that this will be taking place on Friday 5th May 8.45-10am. The purpose of this event is to spread our wonderful ethos within our wider community. Please feel free to come along, our RRS leaders are excited to share all of their brilliant ideas and explain how we have moved forward so far.

In addition to this, Whiston Willis Primary School and ourselves at Prescot Primary have recently come together to collaborate as we realised that we are both UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools at the same stage. We want to continue to promote and celebrate children’s rights across both settings and spread this important message even wider. We have sent out invitations to other local schools for a PSHE Conference that will bring KS2 pupils together to spend a full day exploring, promoting and celebrating the rights of the child.

Miss Grensinger

Rights Respecting Leader

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SEND Update

ADDvanced Solutions is a community network that offers support and education for families pre, during and post-diagnosis of neurodevelopmental conditions, learning difficulties and associated mental health needs. The website has a page specific for Knowsley and contains information on where to access support and gain relevant training. There are open access community network groups that offer support to help parents and carers to learn, understand and meet the needs of your children and family. Please click on the link for more information.

https://www.addvancedsolutions.co.uk/our-offers/our-offer-in-knowsley.html

The useful resources link also provides a number of information leaflets on issues that may be relevant to children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

https://www.addvancedsolutions.co.uk/resources/parents-carers-and-professionals.html

It is World Autism Awareness Day on Sunday 2nd April. To celebrate and raise awareness people are encouraged to wear blue. We also celebrated World Down Syndrome Day on 21st March. This was celebrated wonderfully throughout school and lots of children came in wearing colourful and odd socks to raise awareness and show support. Thank you!

Prescot Primary is extremely proud to be recognised as a school with an 'Area of Excellence' for Inclusion, with a strong SEND provision, highly trained staff and a culture of putting every learner first.

See above to read our Challenge Partners report, with a significant review on our current SEND provision.

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Tree planting!

Life skills were in action as one of our young learners helped to plant four fruit trees on the school field. We can't wait to watch them start to grow!

Thank you to 'The Conservation project' for donating the trees as part of 'From the Ground Up' project.'

Parent Governor shout-out!

After Easter, we will be reviewing our governor vacancies and will be asking parents to express an interest in the position of Parent Governor.

Please take some time over the break to consider whether this post would be something you would enjoy. Think about what you could offer the school and how you would contribute to the governing board.

More information and date for elections will follow after the break.

Click here for more information on the role of the governing body.

National Governance Association

Prescot Pilots

We have 120 Spring Prescot Pilots who have completed so many hours of learning outside of the school walls and hours. Thank you to those who have already updated their Pilot Logs, we will be recording activity hours over the break and will award certificates in a special assembly in the new term. You will also be able to buy new sew-on badges to add to their jumpers.

Our KS2 children are able to upload videos and photos to Google Classsroom and everyone can share achievements on Twitter ... we love it when we can see how successful you all are!

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Attendance

Knowsley have produced a new attendance strategy. For more information click here:

Knowsley Attendance Strategy 2021-2024

For Prescot Primary's attendance policy, click here:

PCP Attendance Information

Can we remind all families that children must be in school for 8.50am. Gates will be closed and your child will be marked later if they arrive at this time. Children who regularly arrive late can have an unsettled start to the day and feel unprepared for their first lesson. We would urge you to think about the impact that lateness has on learning and minutes lost as a result.

Our 100% Attendance Raffle is a weekly treat that all 100% attenders that week are entered into. Each week Mr Jones and Mrs Collis plan a fun food event that helps to celebrate those children who have made it in every day. We try to keep this as fair as possible by refreshing the raffle each week so that all children get a fresh chance.

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The Great PCP Bake-Off

The return of this special event brought lots of sugar-filled fun to school this week. The rainbow-theme brought lots of positivity to the school and we thank you all for all the cakes baked and bought. You now need to work them off with some Easter exercise!

Congratulations to Vivian Li, Sophie Martin, Grace McDowall and Maisie Carville-Ambrose - our Key Stage BAKE-OFF winners.

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Reading Success

Spring is here: the birds are singing, the daffodils are dancing and Prescot Primary is reading.

There has been a buzz around school as our KS2 children read frantically to reach their own personal reading targets. The enjoyment and pleasure that goes alongside this is so easy to see and to hear in the conversations the children share with us about their reading.

There’s some very special news from Y4W as they become the first class ever in which every reader has reached their targets. They have been so excited to follow their own progress towards this and the smiles on their faces and their absolute pride is a joy to see. They look forward to enjoying the treats which the Easter Bunny will drop off at the end of term. There are many other bookworms who will also be enjoying a tasty chocolatey treat and we congratulate and celebrate them all.

There has been a stampede of new Word Millionaires this half term: Sam G, Elijah M, Cian S, Daniel W and Michael V from our Y5 Kangaroos have all read a million words this year, alongside Kavien S from the Y4 Tigers and Kalli-Jo S, Fin L, Abiram S and George D from our Y6 Dragons. Teju, another Dragon, has incredibly now read over three million words this year alone, whilst Kanishka from Year 4 Tigers has read an unbelievable two million words. When we consider that one million words is over 20 medium-sized books we can understand the enormity of this! Hats off to Teju and Kanishka.

We love having the technology of Accelerated Reader and the individual iPads; they allow us to collect, share and celebrate these incredible journeys. They also allow us to know that our children have read over 73 million words this year and have borrowed more than 6000 books from our ever-expanding library. We would like to again thank our wonderful families for their generous donations to our library. Our children are so fortunate to have such a wide range of reading material.

Next half term we will launch another reading target challenge… let’s see if any classes can pip Y4W to the reading post.

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History Update

All of our KS1 and KS2 children have now completed two History driven projects, as well as two Monarch Mondays. History is a subject that teachers really try to bring to life with plenty of artefacts, stories, film and real-life experiences.

Y4 Tigers wanted to celebrate their recent 1066 project by creating their own version of the Bayeux Tapestry. They depicted the period between the departure of the Romans and the invasion of the Normans. The all-new Bayeux (Prescot) tapestry was then shared with the Bayeau Museum, who sent us a reply on Twitter, saying how impressed they were.

All of this activity resulted in Y4 applying for the Cornerstones History Award. We produced a video and are awaiting the results...watch this space.

Here is the video: https://youtu.be/ESzluIZrAuI

Y3 have also been busy historians. Within their Tribal Tales project, they have explored life in prehistoric Britain, become archaeologists, discovered the site at Skara Brae and completed some fantastic cave art. A high point of this project was their interactive day spent immersing themselves in Stone Age life.

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Red Nose Day 2023

Once again, our children all joined together to support others in need. It was wonderful to hear lots of funny jokes and see the children connecting all over school for a common cause. We all managed to raise £159.30 - thank you!

We were especially proud of our House Captains who planned and delivered their first assembly together. They spoke about 'charity' and illustrated the meaning of the word with examples. They allowed the children to explore different charities and explained what charities may do with donations. We watched a video where a boy called George attends horse-riding sessions as a form of therapy, thanks to Comic Relief.

Learning about the work of charities certainly does support our role as a Rights Respecting School.

Well done Isla, Jessica, Abiram and Fin.

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PCP Top 50!

To build cultural capital across school we have evaluated the experiences we offer to our children throughout our PCP journey. We have created a list which we have called our 'Top 50'. These activities include such events as Kingswood and PGL in addition to the simpler experiences such as visiting the magic postbox at Christmas and entering a competition.

We will be sharing this more regularly th the children so that they can see what they have already achieved and what wonderful additional events lie ahead. More details will follow.

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Apple Showcase Event

As an Apple Distinguished School, we regularly connect with other Apple-friendly schools across the country. This helps us to reflect on new developments and keep at the forefront of learning with technology.

This week, we held a showcase event, in partnership with MCC Digital, where other teaching professionals came to hear about our Apple journey. The stars of the show, of course, were our Y5/6 DIGI Leaders who welcomed everyone with a smile and proceeded to wow our guests with their expertise and confidence. Pupil leadership at its best!

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The Scholastic Book fair is coming!

Tues 18th April to Thurs 20th April, in the main corridor from 3.15 to 4pm.

The Book fair will be open during our Parents' Evenings.

Card machine available.

Book sales will result in free books for school! Support us if you can.

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Y6 Update

Year 6 have been working hard and also preparing for their tests in May. During Review Day in October we explained how useful SATS companion is. We will be setting some tasks over the next few weeks but there is always something that the children could be doing to support their revision. Please encourage your children to complete regular independent English and maths tasks and watch any videos if they are unsure!

National Y6 SATs begin on Tues 9th May.

Mrs Scott

Tigers go to Kingswood Colomendy

This annual is a firm favourite with us at Prescot Primary. It helps our Y4s to develop their independence as, for some, it is the first time away from home alone. There are challenges - climbing and caving are two of the exciting activities, but there are smaller challenges such as making your own bed... this can be equally stressful!

Our Y4Tigers threw themselves into their two-day stay with positivity, even though it was tricky at times. They problem-solved, communicated, motivated, played, walked (lots) and relaxed in the company of their friends. It really was memorable experience for them all.

Well done Tigers, next stop PGL!

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