Offham Primary School
Nurturing, Enquiring, Inspiring, Achieving
Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
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Six Nations Event
Sun 28 Jan 2024Very excitingly we will be launching a Six Nations event during the week commencing 5th February to promote children’s interest in a variety of sports and competition.
Each class will be split into groups to represent the 6 countries and playing a ‘round robin’ tournament of tag rugby. EYFS will also be involved playing fun tag rugby related activities and games. On Friday 9th February the children are invited to wear a flag, shirt or coloured top to represent their chosen ‘six nation’s team’. The overall winning team will be announced in celebration assembly. This will certainly be an exciting week to look forward to !
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Author Workshops and Reading Cafe
Fri 26 Jan 2024This week we welcomed Karen Greaves to the school who is a local author. Karen carried out author workshops across the school and we also held our first reading cafe with parents and carers on Thursday afternoon. Thank you to all the parents that came along and thank you to the PTFA for also selling refreshments at the event. It was inspiring to listen to Karen and hear about becoming an author. Children also enjoyed the time spent reading with each other and talking about their books. Year 1 also enjoyed a trip out to Maidstone library to develop their love of reading even further!
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Careers Assembly with Dr Prince
Fri 19 Jan 2024Dr Prince led a careers assembly about being a Doctor in the NHS and what inspired her to be a doctor growing up. Children really enjoyed listening and asked lots of relevant and interesting questions. Thank you to Dr Prince for coming into school to do this, there was excellent feedback from everyone.
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Year 3 Trip to Young Voices
Fri 19 Jan 2024This week Year 3 had a fabulous trip to the O2 on Thursday evening to take part in the Young Voices choir. Young Voices is the largest children's choir in the world and listening to all the children singing together was an amazing experience.
During the afternoon the children took part in a full rehearsal before performing to parents and carers in the evening. It was very exciting to be right at the very top of the Arena ! Although it was very late by the time we returned back to a very cold Offham, the children managed the event superbly and were a real credit to the school. Well done Year 3 !
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Moments Matter, Attendance Counts
Fri 12 Jan 2024Attendance at Offham is good and generally above national averages. Our current attendance from September is 95.4%. However I would like to draw your attention to a new National campaign to improve attendance in schools. The campaign is called 'Moments Matter, Attendance Counts.'
Following Covid, schools in general have struggled to achieve good attendance. However it is important that excellent attendance is a shared priority for families and schools. If children have avoidable absences, they miss out on the full education, curriculum entitlement and opportunities and experiences that are on offer to them. It is also statistically proven that low attendance affects achievement.
At Offham, we are committed to working with our families to secure excellent attendance for our children.
There is useful guidance from the NHS if you are unsure about whether your child is too ill for school or not.
Is my child too ill for school? - NHS
Please remember if your child is off school, you need to let the school office know by 8.45am.
If you would like any further support with attendance, then place contact Wendy Heeley our FLO on WHeeley@offham.kent.sch.uk
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Locality Model - KCC SEND Consultation
Fri 12 Jan 2024Kent County Council have made lots of changes to their provision for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities following their Ofsted report of September 2022.
One of the proposed changes is moving to a Locality Model. The proposed Model would call for KCC, Schools, the NHS, and other SEN service providers to work together, locally, to secure the improvements recommended. They hope this proposal will help all pupils to thrive at school, to feel that they are included in their local communities, and are better prepared for a happy, healthy and productive adulthood.
To read more about the locality model, please look here.
We would warmly invite all parents (whether or not your child has SEND needs) to review the documents and then have your say in one of KCC's 4 TEAMs conferences (Monday 15th to Thursday 18th January, 4pm to 5pm). You only need to attend once.
Please see here for the link to all 4 TEAMs calls.
Hopefully this will help to drive real positive changes within the KCC system that will mean positive impacts on our pupils.
Kindest regards,
Mr Cook.
SENCo.
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Personal Development at Offham
Wed 10 Jan 2024We are really proud of our 'Personal Development' offer at Offham Primary School and how we enrich children's opportunities beyond the academic to ensure that they flourish as individuals, develop their skills and talents and moral integrity. We are committed to ensuring children develop spiritually, socially, morally and culturally with a strong social conscious for others, with respect for equality and diversity and the ability to develop leadership and important life skills.
We also ensure that children are fully nurtured and cared for so they become confident and happy to achieve their best personal growth.
Our personal development offer is based on five strands and all of which are underpinned by the Offham core values of compassion, resilience, respect, responsibility and collaboration.
The five strands are as follows:-
1) Wellbeing and Nurture
2) Cultural Literacy (The best that has been thought and said)
3) Life Skills and Social Awareness
4) Citizenship and Responsibility
5)Enrichment
You can see what comes under the five strands in the picture below. If you would like to find out more please look at our personal development page which also shows you in more detail what this looks like in each year group.
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Forest Schools in EYFS
Wed 10 Jan 2024Forest Schools is an extremely unique part of Offham Primary School and we are very lucky to have our own dedicated Forest School provision and fully trained Forest School Leaders.
EYFS have weekly sessions and today they had a fabulous time learning how to make a fire and having warm hot chocolate to keep them warm in the brisk weather.
I was fortunate enough to visit their session today and I was really impressed with the learning attributes that they are demonstrating. Children showed excellent resilience and curiosity in their learning. They asked really good questions and supported each other in their learning. Their listening skills were fantastic.
Well done Rainbows !
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Welcome to Term 3
Fri 05 Jan 2024Welcome Back to the new year !
Children have had a great start to the term and settled back into their learning with positive and enthusiastic attitudes. Our Play Leaders have already been at work supporting children on the playground with interactive and fun games.
Hopefully you will have had a chance to read the welcome back letter sent out earlier this week and see all the exciting events planned this term including the Year 3 trip to Young Voices. We are particularly looking forward to seeing Year 3 and 4 parents at the Reading Cafe on the 25th January and EYFS/Year 1 parents at the phonics workshop on the 17th January. There will be further details to follow. Please note the phonics workshop will be for Year 1 parents too. Thank you for your support.
In addition we will be holding a short briefing on Thursday 11th January at 3.30 p.m. in the Year 3 classroom for Year 3 parents regarding the Young Voices trip. Information will also be sent out for any parents that cannot attend. Thank you.
As children are now returning to their every day school routines, do please encourage children to read at home as much as possible. Children should aim to read for 15/20 minutes in EYFS/KS1 and 20-30 minutes in KS2.
You will find in the newsletter full details of the curriculum that your child will be studying this term. We hope this information will be useful to you.
We have welcomed Mrs Shirley Barrett into our office this week who is providing excellent support whilst we continue to recruit a permanent Office Manager.
As a reminder, safeguarding training for volunteers is being held on Monday 15th January at 12 p.m. and Wednesday 17th January at 9.00 a.m. online. Mrs Parsons will send out information about this next week. This will be a very valuable session for all of our regular volunteers.
Please also be reminded that drop off on Monday will start at 8.25 - 8.40 a.m. where children can walk straight into school.
Have a great weekend,
Mrs Early