Newsletter Issue 15
ferncumbe friday
Friday 28th May 2021
reintroducing our enthusiastic shakespeare ambassadors!
This year, we also welcome Grace and Charles from Shrewley Class, who were elected to join the team in the Autumn.
After half term, our Ambassadors will be launching our Shakespeare topic linking to literacy learning across the whole school. We know from previous years, Ferncumbe pupils really love learning about the different plays, the themes and the characters. We promise not to disappoint this year as we introduce our pupils to another famous play, The Tempest.
Rowington Class have already been involved with some filming with the RSC for our Associate Schools Playmakers Festival and all other classes have plenty of exciting learning opportunities to come. Watch this space!
TIME TO LISTEN, TIME TO BE HEARD!
Ferncumbe Shakespeare Ambassadors (Joe, Annabelle, Matilda, Ben, Grace and Charles) and Mrs Foss
the tempest - royal shakespeare company
Rowington Class were fortunate enough to be invited to take part in recording a short clip of a scene from The Tempest to be combined with clips from other schools as part of the RSC Playmaking festival. The character we focussed on was the magical wizard Prospero. We had a virtual meeting with a director mentor from the RSC, rehearsed and planned our section to then be professionally recorded by a videographer from the RSC. The children loved taking part and it was a great introduction to The Tempest which we will be focussing on after half term.
What did the children think?
"I really enjoyed the drama and acting!" - Lily
"I loved being Prospero, it was a great experience!”- Amelie
“I enjoyed working with the director mentor, he gave us some great ideas.” - Etienne
virtual class assemblies followed by tea and cake!
Congratulations to the children in Shrewley and Rowington Classes for performing their fantastic virtual class assemblies over the last two Fridays - their enthusiasm for learning was clear to see! The tea and cake which followed was much enjoyed by everyone and was a well-earned treat.
discovering our inner chimp
This week, Year One and Year Four had the opportunity to become detectives and neuro scientists. They got to (virtually) meet Tim Buckle who is part of the Chimp Management programme. They had fun learning how their brain works and that humans have two different thinking areas: our blue area that deals with facts and our red area that gives us our emotions and feelings. The children discovered the hidden chimp in our red zone and developed strategies on how to manage him or her when they got out of control.
Bowls Competition
Warwickshire County Council have joined forces with Bowls England and the Commonwealth Games for this exciting Bowls challenge. Our well-being ambassadors have organised for every child in school to take part in the competition and hopefully with the help of adults at home everyone can work towards winning their class a prize.
There are 3 activities to complete over half term: a wordsearch, designing a bowls kit and a physical target activity. All record sheets will be sent home with the children and need to be returned after half term.
It would be great to see as many children taking part as possible. Hopefully this will inspire some children to watch the Bowls during the Commonwealth Games too.
Many thanks for your support,
Mrs Eaves
getting ferncumbe’s garden back in working order
This half term, Tamson gathered a group of parent volunteers to clear almost two year’s worth of waste from the school garden after the recent building works made it inaccessible. The volunteers came armed with garden tools, a lot of elbow grease and great amounts of determination and they have made a real impact on the state of the garden. There is still work to be done and materials to be sourced, but we hope to get the garden (and chicken coop) back in action in the new academic year. If you are able to help with clearing bags of garden waste, please reach out to the school office.
app and online safety reminder
Well-being and safeguarding is at the heart of everything we do at Ferncumbe. However, the adults in school are finding that more and more children are having problems with the technology and content they are accessing at home, whilst online. We are hearing stories and dealing with issues in school regarding apps and social media that primary school aged children should not have access to, or should only be accessing them when being supervised. This is the root of many issues we are dealing with in the classroom, from children in Reception class all the way through to Year 6.
Gaming apps, such as Roblox have a suggested lower age limit of 10. The FAQ page on the official Roblox website (https://corp.roblox.com/faq/) encourages parents to play alongside their children so they can be involved in their explorations online. It also suggests that parents remain vigilant and switched on to what their children are accessing on the app to support any issues that may arise. Children should not be accessing this app without supervision, nor should they be contacting other users without strict observation and monitoring. In short, Roblox is a safe gaming platform for children when parents take the recommendations from the gaming platform’s experts and implement them. Making it a rule that your child plays Roblox in a shared family space where you can supervise their activity is the best way to ensure their safety.
Social networking apps such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Houseparty have minimum age requirements of 13. This means that no child at Ferncumbe should be using or accessing these services unsupervised and unmonitored as they are not of the appropriate age. The content that children can access on these apps is not controlled or screened or is often very easy to find. This means your child could be seeing a wide range of glorified, yet extremely concerning behaviours, from bad language to overtly racist/homophobic and overly sexualised themes.
With lockdown, we have all made accommodations with the technology we have and how we have been using it. We also have been making allowances with what our children have been accessing - being allowed to text and video call family members and friends that have been missed, reaching out to them in more ways than we normally would, for example. We have all been relying on our technology more and have become more relaxed. This stance is mirrored in the Net-Aware article that you can find below. Please have a read to find 8 ‘top tips’ to help keep your kids safe online during lockdown and beyond.
The Internet Matters website is filled to the brim with advice and support for keeping your children safe on the internet, especially when it comes to the use of gaming apps and social networks such as those discussed above. I have picked some of the most helpful pages and linked them below for you.
If you would like to talk to someone about anything above, please reach out to Miss Forbes through the School Office.
families warwickshire magazine
Please follow the link to the latest digital issue of Families Warwickshire magazine… https://issuu.com/familiesonline/docs/families_warwickshire_may-june_2021?fr=sZjNjMTM2MzY3NTg
A reminder that school is holding an INSET day on Monday 7th June, so staff look forward to welcoming children back to school on Tuesday 8th.
With very best wishes to you all for a happy, peaceful and sunny half-term break - it looks like the long-awaited summer weather may have finally arrived!
Tracey Webb, Deputy Headteacher