Monday 17th September

Home safe and sound!
Our group of 35 Year 6 children who spent last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at Hawkshead in the Lake District, arrived home safe and sound on Friday afternoon. As expected the staff accompanying them said that they had been well behaved and great fun to be with - a credit to both their parents and to Copthorne. I am looking forward to hearing all about their adventures when they are all back in class today. I expect that many of them were very tired and have had a good rest this weekend. The Hawkshead residential is a wonderful opportunity for our children to stay away from home for a short time and to experience learning outside of the classroom. I hope that even more of our children will be able to enjoy this experience next year.

Events this week.

Meetings for parents/carers of pupils in Key Stages 1 and 2
This week we will be holding meetings for parents/carer of children in KS1 (Y1 and 2), Lower Key Stage 2 (Years 3 and 4) and Upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5 and 6). Each meeting will be n opportunity for parents to find out about routines and procedures for their child's new and to hear about expectations as regards behaviour and homework. The meetings will also include discussions about how you can support your child's learning at home. You will also be able to ask any questions and raise any general concerns at these meetings.

The dates and times of the meetings are as follows:
Lower Key Stage 2 (Years 3 and 4)
Monday 17th Septmber 9am and 2.30pm

Upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5 and 6)
Wednesday 19th Sepember 9am and 2.30pm

Key Stage 1
Thursday 20th September 9am and 2.30pm

Reading workshops
We are holding 2 workshops for parents of children in Reception classes. These workshops will explain how we teach the children to read and give parents ideas of how they can support their child's reading at home. These will take place at 9am and 2.15pm on Wednesday 25th September.

On Ilkley Moor Baa Tat!
Year 3 will be visiting Ilkley this week: 3 Alder's visit takes place on Thursday 20th September and 3 Larch's on Friday 21st. Once there each class will explore the locality and the natural environment, collecting lots of information ready to compare Ilkey with Bradford as part of their Creative Curriculum theme. They will experience walking on part of the Yorkshire Moors which will prepare them to write stories about a strange visitor who arrives there!

Developing others
Copthorne will be hosting a number of events. The first of these is a training event for 21 teachers from schools in our LAP (Exceed). This will be held on Monday 17th in our wonderful new group room and will involve training about Building Learning Power which is a strategy we have already introduced in our schools to help develop pupils' independent learning skills. The training course will introduce the scheme to many of our new teachers so that they can champion the scheme in our schools.

Parent volunteers
Thank you to those of you who have volunteered to help in our school by supporting children in the classroom in a variety of ways. We are so grateful for your held as it enables us to provide even greater opportunities for our children. However, we do have a very large waiting list of volunteers so please don't be disappointed if we are unable to say yeas straight away to your kind offers of help. Mrs Whalley will contact you as soon as new vacancies for volunteers become available.


Wishing you all a great week.
Mrs Shepherd