ST LOUIS NEWSLETTER · and all commercial labelling removed! ... tism and is a lovely conclusion to our R.E. theme. ... experience at tomorrow’s Advent Fair.

Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Multi Academy Trust is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (registered number 8444133). Registered office : Fordham Road, Newmarket, Suffolk, CB8 7AA

St. Louis Catholic Academy Fordham Road

Newmarket Suffolk

CB8 7AA

Head of School: Mr Nick Kerin Executive Headteacher/CEO: Mrs Teresa B Selvey

01638 662719

ST LOUIS NEWSLETTER

Friday 1st December 2017—Issue 06

Attendance at School

Good attendance at school is so vital as it makes a huge difference to the children’s learning, social and physi-cal development from early years on. Good attendance is considered to be attendance of 96% or more. Any-thing below that is not satisfactory. I am not proud to report that attendance at St Louis is currently the 6th lowest out of the seven local primary schools. Clearly, there is some work to do here! As a rule, term-time absence requests will not be authorised, except in the most exceptional circumstances. When the school is open, children should attend, unless ill. We are aware of parents requesting Fridays and/or Mondays ‘off’ for their children, especially around half-term holidays. We all know what is going on there! Here are three attendance ‘myths’ which we often hear:

MYTH: ‘My child has a 10 day entitlement to days off.’ This is not the case; all children however DO have

approximately 173 days a year of time-off already booked each year;

MYTH: ‘It doesn’t matter if my child misses the odd day.’ It DOES; children who develop poor attendance

habits at primary school are notably less likely to gain good GCSEs at 16;

MYTH: ‘It’s up to me as their parent when they attend school or not!’ It IS and ISN’T - parents have a le-

gal duty to ensure good school attendance for their children. As a school, we are strongly focused on promoting good attendance, so that the children can reap the benefits of St Louis Catholic Academy. You may notice some changes after Christmas, including for example the weekly Attendance Cup and individual 100% attendance awards as we continue to encourage good attendance and lift our school from 6th place in the local area to 1st! This will not be achieved without your continued support and we are thankful to parents who show they share this view by ensuring good attendance at school.

PE and Sport We attended the Quick Sticks hockey competition taking two teams. Both teams played well. Team 2 came 9th out of 25 teams. In a nail biting final, team1 played Exning and at full time the score was 3 all. This went to Golden Goal and Eleni scored the winning goal taking us to County Final in March. We took 22 children to Sportshall Athletics last week and for the 6th year running St Louis won by a magnificent 76 points. Congratulations to all the children and we look forward to

Making Roman ink

Key Stage 1 (Years 1 & 2)

We have been busy in preparation for the Key Stage 1 performance of Lights, Camel, Action! The initial time of the dress rehearsal has now changed on Monday 4th December to 1:45pm. On Wednesday 6th December, the per-formance will be at 6:00pm and a cre-che will be available. At the end of this term Key Stage 1 will be doing their Design Technology Unit; for this they are going to create a Victo-rian decoupage and will need to bring in a glass jar each. We will also be making windsocks in Science, so it would be helpful if you can provide your child with an empty small water bottle. It would be appreciated if both items could be labelled with the child’s name and all commercial labelling removed!

PE and Sport The boys U11s Football team went to the final fours and came fourth. This is a good result as in total there were 21 teams who took part in the boys 7-a-side soccer league. The girls team won the final fours and we are very excited to be going to the County Final on December 1st. This is the first time St Louis has ever been to a Football County Final! Well done to all the girls. Hockey Club and Sportshall Athletics Club are underway and we look forward to these last two competitions for this term.

Upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5 and 6) We continue to be extremely busy in UKS2; firmly gripped in the middle of this half-term, but looking forward to Advent and Christmas. This year, Year 5 will be representing St Louis Academy at the Pyramid Advent Service on Friday 1st Decem-ber at St Benedict’s in Bury St Edmunds. They are currently practicing hymns and preparing for their performance, repre-senting Mary and Joseph in the Nativity Story! Just a gentle reminder please: as the weather turns colder and some girls are wearing tights, please ensure they have a spare pair of socks in school. Thank you.

Mrs Feehan

Absence requests

If your child needs to be absent from school for a medi-cal or dental appointment, please request this in ad-vance with confirmation of appointment by completing a form from the School Office. Thank you to all parents who already do this. Wherever possible, doctor and dentist appointments should be made for outside school hours i.e. after 3.20pm, or in the case of dentists, scheduled for the school holidays.

Children In Need 2017

A huge thank you from School Council,

Mini-Vinnies, Mrs Cox and all the staff to

parents for supporting our Children In

Need 2017 fundraising activities!

Together, we raised an amazing

£617.00

Making Roman mosaics

Crafty Romans!

Dates for your diary

Lower Key Stage 2 (Years 3 & 4)

Lots of exciting work has been going on in LKS2. We have been experimenting with forces and magnetism in Science and have started looking at autobiographies in Literacy in preparation to write our own over the next few weeks. We have also designed Roman mosaics and have start-ed to bring our designs to life using coloured tiles. Soon they will be ready to grout and are already looking fabu-lous. Our Roman Day promises to be a great success in school and we look forward to sharing some photographs with you!

Alternative arrangements for pick-up If a family member or friend is picking up your child(ren), please telephone the School Office yourself IN ADVANCE to confirm this before 3pm at the latest. In line with our Safeguarding duties as a School, we cannot accept ad hoc arrangements on the playground. Once your message has been re-ceived, the School Office will inform the relevant teachers before dismissal. If this information has not been received, it will cause a delay in dismissing your child(ren). Thank you for your co-operation.

School Office: 01638 662 719

Mon—Fri, 8.30am—3.45pm

Early Years Foundation Stage (FS1 & FS2)

FS2 recently enjoyed a visit to Church to ‘baptise’ our baby doll, Daisy. This activity really helps the children to consolidate their understanding of the sacrament of bap-tism and is a lovely conclusion to our R.E. theme. A big thank you to the parents who kindly gave their time to accompany us. It would not be possible for us to offer this experience for the children without your help and we ap-

Headteacher for the Day

I am lucky that very soon I will have an assistant Headteacher for the Day to help me run the school!

Miss Quinn will be ably assisting me on Monday 11th Decem-

ber in all manner of tasks, including Celebration Assembly.

I am sure Miss Quinn will do a fantastic job! If your child would like to be Headteacher for the day, you can bid for this fantastic

experience at tomorrow’s Advent Fair.

Making Roman oil lamps

DECEMBER 2017

Friday 1st Advent Fair at 3.30pm

Monday 4th EYFS Christmas Production Dress Rehearsal at 9.30am

**KS1 Christmas Production Dress Rehearsal at 1.45pm**

Tuesday 5th EYFS Christmas Production - first performance at 9.30am

KS1 Christmas Production - first performance at 2pm

Wednesday 6th **Decorate the classrooms morning from 9am to 12 noon —parents welcome**

EYFS Christmas Production - second performance at 2pm

KS1 Christmas Production - second performance at 6pm

Monday 11th Penitential Service (all) & Reconciliation (Y4, Y5 and Y6) at 1.30pm in school

Thursday 14th School Christmas Lunch for children, staff and Governors at 11.45am

Children's Discos: EYFS, KS1 and LKS2 in the afternoon; UKS2 at 6pm

Friday 15th Service of Readings and Carols at 1.30pm in church

Autumn Term ends at 2.30pm - please collect your children from church

18th December to 2nd January inclusive Christmas Holiday

JANUARY 2018

Wednesday 3rd Spring Term begins – all children return to school

Friday 5th Beginning of Term Mass at 9.15am in church

Thursday 11th Spring Term Swimming starts for Year 3 and Year 4