Last week at Gainsborough…

Whole School Sunflower Planting 

We planted sunflowers in our whole school assembly this week! We came together as a school, Years 1 -6, to plant our sunflowers. We wrote our names on pots, scooped in some soil, added a seed, watered it and now we wait and see… We are going to measure our sunflowers throughout the Summer term and wee who can grow the tallest sunflowers! The children have been asked to write a set of instructions for planting sunflowers as their homework. We know real life experiences inspire children’s writing and make the process so much easier.

Warm Weather Reminders…

The weather this week has enabled us to use the outdoor learning spaces more than usual. Please be reminded of the following to ensure we keep children safe in the sun, hydrated and happy!

• children must wear uniform every day at Gainsborough, the the summer this can be a white polo shirt, grey shorts or grey skirts, white and blue checked dresses. Children can wear sandals in warmer weather but these must have straps across the front and back to ensure they are safe.
• we provide school water bottles for all children, in the Preschool, Early Years and main school, so that everyone has a water bottle. These are lighter and safer to carry around school than some heavier metal, or plastic waster bottles. If your children brings a water bottle to school for their journey to and from school that is fine, however they will be asked to keep it in their bag.
• please send your child to school wearing sun cream and with a hat in warmer weather. We have sun cream for children to apply to their own bodies when temperatures are hotter. If your child has fairer skin please ensure you dress them in clothes that cover their arms and legs in warmer weather.
• PE kits are worn to school on the day your child has PE. Please ensure your child wears a white Gainsborough PE t shirt, or plain white t shirt, and blue shorts or jogging bottoms.

Keeping Green

Each half term we focus on a different Gainsborough Keep: kind, connected, safe, healthy, green or giving. This half term we are looking at Keep Green. We will raise awareness of the following events and ways of being more sustainable at school and at home:

GOLDS!

Each week we celebrate an amazing achievement from each class. Children are celebrated in assembly, receive a gold certificate and their name in the newsletter. Please celebrate their learning at home too!

Nursery – Ducks

River was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for taking part in Forest School.  Well done River!

Nursery – Geese

Samuel was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for settling in really well to Nursery. Well done Samuel!

Nursery – Swans

Lucas nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for showing great enthusiasm for our new topic and drawing some lovely, detailed pictures of flowers. Well done Lucas.

Reception – Wrens

Bridget was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for amazing effort in writing and phonics this week, she has learnt her set 2 sounds. Well done Bridget.

Kruize was also nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for amazing effort in writing and completing all of his tasks.

Year 1 – Owls

Michael-Pius was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for excellent work in writing. He has included adjectives, conjunctions, neat writing and used phonics to spell independently. Well done Michael-Pius!

Year 2- Hummingbirds

Amiya was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for displaying great enthusiasm in writing and producing an excellent ‘time travel’ adventure! Well done!

Year 3 – Herons

Aaliyah was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold for making a huge effort to improve her spellings! Well done!

Year 4- Skylarks

Romario was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for settling into Year 4 incredibly well. Romario has show great focus and confidence in adapting to a new class! Well done Romario!

Year 5 – Magpies

Karima was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for a great effort in all lessons and an excellent attitude to learning! Well done Karima!

Year 6 – Doves

Ishaq was nominated to receive a Gainsborough Gold Award for writing a narrative about the discovery of Ocumtun. You worked to make distinct links to your history learning; making your writing more intriguing and realistic. You also worked to included embedded clauses, rhetorical questions and dialogue. Well done!

Next week at Gainsborough…

WAMH’s at Gainsborough – Monday 13th May 2024 

We have access to a WAMH’s clinicin at Gainsborough. This service supports both school and home and identifying and supporting pupil’s well being and mental health. Alice Zacharia is our dedicated WAMH’s worker, she is in Gainsborough every second Monday, and she is able to meet parents to discuss any aspect of pupil well being. Please email admin@gainsborough.hackney.sch.uk if you would like to meet with Alice.

The objectives of the WAMH’s programme are listed here:

• The school environment supports well-being (supporting schools to be mentally healthy settings)
• Supporting the personal, social, and emotional development of all children in schools
• Supporting schools to be inclusive places/ increase inclusive practices
• Promote cohesive and cooperative linked working between schools and mental health services
• Increase capacity within schools to identify early and meet the wellbeing and mental health needs of all pupils
• Engagement with parents and the external world

More information about WAMH’s can be found here: https://www.hackneylocaloffer.co.uk/kb5/hackney/localoffer/advice.page?id=DUgwy6CmZ6k

Year 6 SAT’s 2024

Next week our year 6 children will take on one of the biggest challenges in their education. We all have opinions on the testing processes, content of the tests and the appropriateness of testing 10 and 11 year olds for 4 consectuive days. However, all year 6 pupils in local authority schools and academies will take part in this process next week. Every child, regardless of ability, will count in the SAT’s testing results. The results measure the progress the school has made with pupils in the subjects tested. At Gainsborough we have thought carefully about supporting all pupils to access the tests, practice the tests, learn the content and do the best they can. We recognise next week will be hard for many pupils and we will support them as best we can to make them feel safe, achieve their best and be proud of how far they have come. Our practice tests at school have shown great results and we hope next week they will flourish and thrive and show off all that they have learnt.

We also know they all have very different skills, personalities and strengths and we also want to celebrate these this term. We will enable all of the children to flourish through sharing their wide range of skills in the following ways:

• the actors will act in their end of year play
• the singers will sing in the Hackney Music concert
• the activists will protest in their up and coming campaigns
• the carers will support the younger children in sports day, transition tasks and peer mediation over the summer term
• the swimmers will swim in the year 6 2 week swimming
• the athletes will shine in their sports day and summer term competitions
• the artists will exhibit in our PA summer art exhibtion
• all of them will experience our school residential which allows the children to grow in many different ways

We will support all of our children to share all of their talents, and completing SAT’s tests to the best of their abilities next week is just one of the experiences that will help them grow and prepare for the next stage of their school lives.

National Bee Day

We are inviting everyone to wear stripes on Friday 16th May to raise awareness of the importance of Bees in our eco system. The United Nations have launched National Bee Day to raise the awareness of the impact of human activity on bees, here is some information from the UN:

Bees and other pollinators, such as butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, are increasingly under threat from human activities.

Pollination is, however, a fundamental process for the survival of our ecosystems. Nearly 90% of the world’s wild flowering plant species depend, entirely, or at least in part, on animal pollination, along with more than 75% of the world’s food crops and 35% of global agricultural land. Not only do pollinators contribute directly to food security, but they are key to conserving biodiversity.

To raise awareness of the importance of pollinators, the threats they face and their contribution to sustainable development, the UN designated 20 May as World Bee Day.

The goal is to strengthen measures aimed at protecting bees and other pollinators, which would significantly contribute to solving problems related to the global food supply and eliminate hunger in developing countries.

We all depend on pollinators and it is, therefore, crucial to monitor their decline and halt the loss of biodiversity.

For more information see https://www.un.org/en/observances/bee-day

Revel Pucks Circus Tickets

We have been offered £2 tickets for families to attend the Revel Pucks Circus on the Olympic Park this summer. Please see https://www.revelpuckcircus.com/ for dates, times and more information. Staff from Gainsborough highly recommend taking children from aged 3 -11 to the show. It is a really unique and child friendly, acrobatic extravaganza that the children will love. The show times are all outside the school opening hours so it is over to families to take children as and when they can! To access the £2 ticket offer please check your emails, instructions have been emailed to all families.

Attendance at Gainsborough

We are working hard to ensure good attendance at Gainsborough. To help you understand the importance in having good school attendance, we will be informing you about how we teach cycles of learning at Gainsborough in each week’s newsletter. We want families to understand the impact of absence on well being, the progress in subjects, friendships and the work load absence has on the school work force. We are doing this to help families be more mindful about taking days off.

This week’s ‘absence impact snapshot’:

One of your children is off school with a temperature. Your other child wants to stay at home and starts to say they are not feeling very well. It is easier to keep both children off school as doing the school run with one sick child is very difficult. If one child is unwell you should do everything you can do bring your other children to school. Some ideas of ways to ensure you bring your child to school are: to ask a school friend to complete the school run for you, take your unwell child with you to complete the school run if they are well enough, call school and ask if school can help with collection or drop off of your child.