Weekly Bulletin: Friday 27th May 2022
Headteacher’s message to parents/carers
Dear Parents/Carers,
At Tunbury, we pride ourselves on being a strong community school and you may have noticed the community theme through our most recent weekly bulletins. Following on from our MP visit and our plans for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, this week we are thinking about our in-school community.
We know that Together Everyone Achieves More, but in a school of 600 pupils it’s a challenge to get everyone together at the same time. Our breaktimes and lunchtimes are usually staggered for KS1 and KS2, but we’re trialling a new initiative of a summer term: Friday whole-school breaktime on the field. We held our first ever whole-school breaktime today and it was wonderful to see Team Tunbury all together! During breaktime, our Year 6 children cared for their buddies from the Reception classes and we saw children of all ages playing together. We’ll continue this on Fridays for the next few weeks to see if this continues to work for everyone.
Also this week, we have been celebrating children’s fabulous learning with a new Golden Board in our hall. Teachers have picked one fabulous piece of learning from each class to go onto our Golden Board – congratulations to everyone who has work on display.
Have a lovely half term everyone. Remember that Monday 6th June is an INSET day, so we look forward to seeing children back in school on Tuesday 7th June.
Best wishes
Ruth Austin
Headteacher
Governor Update
It’s that time of the year again to say A Big Thank you to all our volunteers. Volunteers' week gives us the opportunity to appreciate all those wonderful people who have freely given their time to make other people's lives better within our schools and communities. It goes without saying that volunteers have played a key role in the pandemic response, during an exceptionally difficult couple of years.
Whether you are volunteering as a school governor or part of Tunbury School Association, we appreciate all that you do for the school, the children and the community. Anyone who wants to give something back to the community can be a volunteer. If you are interested, please get in touch with the school governing body.
Lola Oyewusi, Vice Chair of Governors
Our Learning: Year 6
Our text this term is There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, which all children enjoyed reading. It is a humorous book that engaged the Year 6 children and inspired them to write some outstanding pieces of work. They have described the main character (Bradley Chalkers), written a diary entry as Bradley, produced a recount of a key event within the story and created a balanced argument of whether Bradley should attend a party or not.
Our topic for this and next term is Shakespeare. We have begun to research his life and will continue this in further detail next term. Within our art lessons, we have drawn a portrait of Shakespeare in the style of Andy Warhol. 
In science, we have begun our topic of Electricity. We have recapped over what electricity is and what a circuit is. We discussed the items we had within the classroom and at home that use electricity and how we know. We have investigated the scientific symbols used when drawing a circuit and began to draw our own. After half term, we will consolidate our learning and experiment using electrical circuits.
Notices
Platinum Jubilee Celebrations: As detailed in last week’s bulletin our main Platinum Jubilee Celebrations will be on Wednesday 8th June. On this day, children can wear red, white and blue to school instead of school uniform and we’re planning a family celebration on the field at the end of the day, from 2.45-3.45. Please see the flier on our website in the letters and forms section for further details.
There will also be a special Jubilee lunch on Wednesday 8th June. Please see the flier in the school meals section for the menu details. As usual, this will be free for KS1 children and parents of KS2 children will need to pay in the usual way i.e. cash sent in a named envelope or online via parentmail.
We’ll be decorating the school with flags and bunting for our Jubilee day on Wednesday 8th June. If you are attending/organising any Jubilee events over half term and have any flags/bunting that we could borrow to re-use on Wednesday, we would very much appreciate this. Please send any bunting into school on Tuesday with children – thank you.
Team Points: At the end of Term 5, we have a dramatic end to the Team Points race, with Attenborough making a strong finish….. to win! Well done Green Team. Attenborough’s reward was extra breaktime at the end of our whole-school break today.
|
Rowling |
Attenborough |
Holmes |
Hawking |
|
5475 |
5507 |
5404 |
5470 |
Attendance: Below are our termly attendance figures to date, a big well done to Yellow, Pink, Lavender and Turquoise for having over 96% the benchmark of “good” attendance. Keep this up! Also, a well done to the 14 classes who have seen their attendance figures rise this term as we emerge from the pandemic.
Additionally, it is brilliant to see that we have 319 children who have been in school every day this term, up from 234 children who achieved this in Term 4 – so to those children a huge well done.
On a more disappointing note, there has been an increase in children being out of school for holidays. Term 5 saw 247 sessions of absence for unauthorised holidays, up from 184 in Term 4, this adds into the nearly 487 sessions for the calendar year to date.
We all know that being in school is so important for your child’s education, wellbeing and to develop strong friendships. Please remember that a 1 week holiday in term time every year adds up and by the end of your child’s primary education, this would be the equivalent to over a whole term of education lost.
For these reasons, we do not authorise holidays in term time and we do refer to the Local Authority to fine those that take them.
Looking forward to Term 6 with the sunny, warmer weather, let’s see if we can increase the number of children who are in every day next term past the 400 mark and see how many classes can join the “good” attendance club!
|
Class |
Term 4 Attendance |
Term 5 Attendance |
|
Owls |
93.39% |
93.33% |
|
Hedgehogs |
93.98% |
93.92% |
|
Bears |
94.13% |
94.14% |
|
Red |
93.1% |
93.77% |
|
Blue |
93.84% |
94.00% |
|
Yellow |
96.38% |
96.12% |
|
Pink |
96.23% |
96.28% |
|
Lavender |
96.01% |
96.24% |
|
Orange |
94.35% |
94.56% |
|
Amber |
95.68% |
95.55% |
|
Azure |
95.35% |
95.43% |
|
Sapphire |
95.79% |
95.82% |
|
Ruby |
94.36% |
94.08% |
|
Lilac |
95.89% |
95.82% |
|
Scarlet |
94.28% |
94.57% |
|
Turquoise |
95.48% |
96.01% |
|
Magenta |
94.41% |
94.50% |
|
Indigo |
95.86% |
95.83% |
|
Crimson |
93.37% |
93.51% |
|
Emerald |
94.48% |
94.88% |
|
Violet |
94.73% |
94.81% |
School Ties: We now have stock of school ties available in the school office to buy - £3.50 each. If you would like to purchase a tie, please pay via School Money. Following payment, please collect your tie from the school office.
Covid-19: We continue to ask you to check the current guidance if you experience symptoms or a case of Covid. Further details are at: Coronavirus (COVID-19) - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
Dates for your Diary
Term dates for 2021/22: https://www.tunbury.kent.sch.uk/Parents/Term-Dates-21-22/
Term dates for 2022/23: https://www.tunbury.kent.sch.uk/Term-Dates-22-23/
Please note: although we have planned events for the full academic year, it is possible that future Covid disruption or other factors may result in changes.
Friday 27th May – Last day of term 5
Monday 6th June - INSET day (School closed for pupils)
Tuesday 7th June – First day of term 6 for pupils
Wednesday 8th June – Platinum Jubilee Celebrations – wear red, white and blue
Tuesday 14th / Wednesday 15th June – TSA Father’s Day present room
Wednesday 15th June – School Health Questionnaire – Year 6
Monday 20th June – New Entrants meeting in school – 3.30 – 4.30 pm
or online 5 - 5.30 pm
Tuesday 21st June – Class Group Photos (Tempest photographers)
Thursday 23rd June – National Writing Day
Monday 27th – Friday 1st July – STEAM Week
Saturday 2nd July – TSA Summer Fair
Monday 4th July – Sports Day (with Reserve Day Friday 8th July)
Friday 15th July – TSA ‘Dare to be different’ day
Friday 15th July – TSA Family Picnic
Monday 18th July 3.30-4.30pm - SEND Forum with Kent SEND parental support kentiask
Thursday 21st July – Last day of term 6
Class assemblies
We have now resumed our program of class assemblies.
Class assemblies are scheduled to take place in-person, in the school hall, on Friday afternoons. Please come to the front of the school and wait outside the hall entrance doors. You will be invited in at approximately 2.45/2.50 pm. The assembly will begin at around 2.50 pm and last for about 10 minutes, finishing in time for you to collect your children at the end of the school day, as normal.
Please note: the assembly for Orange class is on a Monday.
Friday 27th May – Pink Class Assembly
Friday 10th June – Bears Class Assembly
Friday 17th June – Red Class Assembly
Monday 20th June – Orange Class Assembly
Friday 24th June – Hedgehogs Class Assembly
Friday 1st July – Owls Class Assembly
Friday 8th July – Azure Class Assembly
Friday 15th July – Ruby Class Assembly
