Energy Garden art competition

An Energy Garden is an area on a London Overground Station which is made brighter and greener by growing plants to help clean the air we breathe and using sunshine to make electricity to power lights and watering systems.

Energy Gardens will start popping up all over London’s Overground network during the coming months and to celebrate we have been invited to take part in an art competition. 

The winning school will receive £100 and there will be individual prizes awarded to top pupils! Chosen artworks will also be displayed at Energy Gardens across London. The competition closes on Friday 17th June 2016 and the winners will be announced shortly after.

Download and print the entry form here

Year 6 Celebratory Chicken Town Lunch

SATs have finished!

Well done to all the children in Year 6 for getting through a very long, and at times stressful week of testing. All of our children have worked so hard this academic year in order to prepare and be ready for their SATs tests. This year has been particularly difficult with many changes to testing and assessments in our schools.

As an acknowledgement of all their hard work and efforts we took them to have lunch at the Chicken Town restaurant.

The food was delicious and all the Chicken Town staff made sure that our whole dining experience was FANTASTIC!

Chicken Town Partnership

We are delighted to announce the start of our partnership with the restaurant Chicken Town which is situated in the Old Fire Station on Town Hall Approach. For more information about Chicken Town please visit their website at chicken-town.co.uk.

We are very lucky in that they are going to work with our school on various projects that promote healthy eating. One of their projects is to grow food at our school which the children can then cook and eat.

With the help of some of our School Council and Eco Monitors we started to clear the planting areas ready to grow fruit, herbs and vegetables. Well done to all those children who helped Dunya, Chicken Town’s Community Director and Simon, their gardening expert to kick start our growing project. It was particularly great to have more willing helpers at the end of the school day. Lots of our younger children were keen to join in and help.

Year 6 SATs Testing Information 2016

In the next couple of weeks, children in Year 2 and Year 6 will be the first to take the new SATs papers. These tests in English and maths will reflect the new national curriculum, and are intended to be more rigorous. There will also be a completely new marking scheme to replace the existing national curriculum levels.

At the end of Year 6, children will sit tests in:

  • Reading
  • Maths
  • Spelling, punctuation and grammar

These tests will be both set and marked externally, and the results will be used to measure the school’s performance (for example, through reporting to Ofsted and published league tables). Your child’s marks will be used in conjunction with teacher assessment to give a broader picture of their attainment.

Key Stage 2 Reading

The reading test will be a single paper with questions based on three passages of text. Your child will have one hour, including reading time, to complete the test.

There will be a selection of question types, including:

  • Ranking/ordering, e.g. ‘Number the events below to show the order in which they happen in the story’
  • Labelling, e.g. ‘Label the text to show the title of the story’
  • Find and copy, e.g. ‘Find and copy one word that suggests what the weather is like in the story’
  • Short constructed response, e.g. ‘What does the bear eat?’
  • Open-ended response, e.g. ‘Look at the sentence that begins Once upon a time. How does the writer increase the tension throughout this paragraph? Explain fully, referring to the text in your answer.

Key Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Test

The grammar, punctuation and spelling test will consist of two parts: a grammar and punctuation paper requiring short answers, lasting 45 minutes, and an aural spelling test of 20 words, lasting around 15 minutes.

The grammar and punctuation test will include two sub-types of questions:

  • Selected response, e.g. ‘Identify the adjectives in the sentence below’
  • Constructed response, e.g. ‘Correct/complete/rewrite the sentence below,’ or, ‘The sentence below has an apostrophe missing. Explain why it needs an apostrophe.’

Key Stage 2 Maths

Children will sit three papers in maths:

  • Paper 1: arithmetic, 30 minutes
  • Papers 2 and 3: reasoning, 40 minutes per paper

Paper 1 will consist of fixed response questions, where children have to give the correct answer to calculations, including long multiplication and division. Papers 2 and 3 will involve a number of question types, including:

  • Multiple choice
  • True or false
  • Constrained questions, e.g. giving the answer to a calculation, drawing a shape or completing a table or chart
  • Less constrained questions, where children will have to explain their approach for solving a problem

Key Stage 2 Science

Not all children in Year 6 will take science SATs. Our children will not, we haven’t been chosen as a sample school. However, a number of schools will be required to take part in science sampling: a test administered to a selected sample of children thought to be representative of the population as a whole. For those who are selected, there will be three papers. At Earlsmead we will continue to collect evidence from taught science sessions and results from science knowledge tests, in order to make our final assessments.

How will Key Stage 2 SATs be marked?

The previous national curriculum levels have been scrapped, and instead children will be given scaled scores. You will be given your child’s raw score (the actual number of marks they get), alongside their scaled score and whether they have reached the national average. The score needed to reach the national average has yet to be announced. Results and scores should be available to pupils sometime at the beginning of July, no dates have been confirmed yet.

Earlsmead Easter Egg-straveganza!

Well done to all the children who decorated eggs for the egg decorating competition. There were so many beautiful and creative entries this year which made it egg-stremely hard to choose winners but well done to Tia-Louise who took 1st place for her Ant and Dec entry. All children who entered their eggs were rewarded with a well deserved chocolate egg from the Earlsmead Easter Bunny!

Well done to all children and their families and thanks again for your egg-cellent support!

Happy Easter!

Sports Relief at Earlsmead

A fantastic effort from everybody during our Sports Relief Run a Mile event on Friday.  Well done to everyone who ran!

So far we have raised £710 and the money is still coming in!  Don't forget to collect your sponsorship money!  

Remember, £3 could pay for life-saving malaria medication for 15 children in Africa and £10 could provide a young carer in the UK with a fun activity day, giving them a much-needed break from their responsibilities at home.

Dogs Trust Visits

Kelly Craig, the Dogs trust’s Education and Community Officer came to our school with her dog Tigger to talk to our children. It was an opportunity for our children to meet a very friendly dog and its responsible owner.

Lots of our children were able to stroke Tigger safely and give Tigger well earnt treats.

Kelly and Tigger will return to our school in the summer term to run a workshop for our parents, so look out for further information! 

Autism Awareness Week

Next week, 14th -19th March is Schools' Autism Awareness week sponsored by the National Autistic Society.

Earlsmead Primary School is an inclusive school and we want to join in this campaign; increasing understanding and creating a more autism-friendly UK.  The aim is to raise awareness and educate all the children in our school about the behaviours and characteristics of autism, and let them know what they can do to help. Autism affects how a person thinks, feels and learns, and we believe it is crucial that teachers and schoolmates know and understand as much as possible about autism. We want children who are on the spectrum to get the best start possible and have the chance to enjoy their time at school as much as everyone else.

During the week, as part of their PHSE lessons, children will have time to learn more about autism.  There will also be assemblies supporting this work.

Right in the middle of Schools’ Autism Awareness Week is The National Autistic Society’s very own Onesie Wednesday™ on Wednesday 16 March.  If the children have a onesie they can wear it to school on this day.  We would like to raise money for the National Autistic Society and suggest that children who dress in their onesies donate £1 each. 

Last day of the nursery - Tuesday 22nd March

As part of our commitment to creating a stimulating, safe and attractive Nursery environment, we will be redecorating the nursery over the Easter holidays and hopefully improving the Nursery playground.

In order to prepare the Nursery for the decorators, there will be no Nursery on Wednesday 23rd or Thursday 24th March. In these two days, staff will be packing away Nursery resources and then storing them in another space so that the decorators are able to carry out their work.

When the work is complete staff will need to reorganise the Nursery and put everything back in place. In order to do this we will have to keep it closed for the first two days of the summer term. Nursery children will come back to school on Wednesday 13th April.

The last day of this term for Nursery children will be Tuesday 22nd March. Nursery will reopen on Wednesday 13th April.

World Book Day 2016

Earlsmead Primary was a showcase of famous characters on World book Day this year. Everyone from the Paperback Princess to Peter Pan was there to celebrate all things readable. The children at Earlsmead Primary took part in numerous book challenges and competitions. Children who entered the book challenge received a merit and 2 children from each class were awarded a book prize for excellent book reviews. Children also had fun visiting other classes during The Big Read. At 3 o’clock, an alarm sounded in the school and we all had to stop whatever we were doing and READ! 

Thank you to all the volunteer readers and to Linda George for running our book stall in the afternoon. We also managed to raise money for Book Aid International. Well done Earlsmead! Thank you for all the encouragement you give your children with their reading- it is paying off! Why not visit the library and spot the winning book reviews? 

 

Our Children's Centre is closing

Dear Parents,

As you will know, Haringey Council recently restructured Children’s Centre services in the borough. As a result of this restructuring, Earlsmead Children’s Centre will close as a Sure Start Children’s Centre on Thursday 24th March, 2016.

What does this mean for you?

  • If you’re a parent of a child in the FreeFor2s Nursery Programme, there will be no change. The nursery is unaffected by this restructure, and Earlsmead School will continue to offer high-quality nursery care for eligible children.
  • If you’re a parent of a child who attends Stay & Play, there will be very little change in the short term. Earlsmead School will continue to offer three supported playgroup sessions per week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons.
  • We hope that the conversational ESOL class, and the craft club will continue, at least until the end of this school year, depending on the availability of the volunteers. We will re-evaluate this for next year.
  • We will continue to look for adult-learning opportunities for our families, such as ESOL and Family Literacy, and hope to offer these in the future from the centre.

Sadly,  Dara and Rosanne will be leaving on the 24th March, but Michele will be staying on and Sayera, Sheila, Tania, Bibi, Marina and Christine will still be employed in the centre nursery.

The nearest Children’s Centre to Earlsmead will be Triangle, on St Ann’s Road N15, and Welbourne on Stainby Road, N15. Timetables and contact information are available from the office.

On a personal note, we would like to thank all of our children and parents/carers for the friendship and support you have shown us over the last eight years. It has been a joy and privilege to work here with you and your families.

With love,

Dara O’Reilly, Centre Manager. 

Earlsmead Children’s Centre will close on 24th March, 2016. The nursery will re-open on Tuesday 12th April, 2016. The last Stay & Play of the term will be on Wednesday 16th March, 2016 at 1:15pm and the next Stay & Play after that will be on Wednesday13th April, 2016, also at 1:15pm.