Headmaster's Welcome

Headmaster's News - 12th June 2015

Jun 12, 2015

12 June 2015       

Dear Parents 

Music Assembly
Thank you to all our musicians and singers this morning and what a wonderful way to end a very busy and successful week. Over 50 children performed in our largest musical assembly to date, this is still just a fraction of all the musicians in school. It was the first performance by our School Band and Little Voices who were brilliant! (see our facebbok page) Their enjoyment of these clubs was clearly demonstrated in their enthusiastic performance. I now look forward to their performance for parents at the Summer Fayre. We also had a very impressive array of individual performances, from pianists through to our brass players. For a few of these children, who have just started, to perform in the musical assembly was their target for the year and they certainly achieved that, not only with confidence but also with a very accomplished performance. Ali, Year 6 and Suzanna, Year 4, wrote their own compositions for this morning’s assembly. A very impressive achievement for children of primary school age.
This final Music Assembly of the year really showed how music continues to develop within the school under the direction of Miss Macklam with the support of her strong team of Mr Murray, Mrs Street, Mrs Hill and our peripatetic teachers. 

Junior Sports Day
What a wonderful day we had on Wednesday! There was so much enthusiasm, beaming faces and laughter with everyone giving 110% (including the parents in their race which, as always, was highly contested!). It was lovely to see the children really supporting and encouraging each other. The sack race and tug-of-war were once again two highlights of the day with Bowland’s mighty team defeating anyone in their path. Congratulations to Pendle who were our overall winners. A big thank you from us all to Mrs Parsons whose hard work in the lead up to the day made it run so smoothly.

ISA at Robin Park, Wigan
Twenty four schools from all over the North of the country descended on Wigan under clear blue skies in the bid to become champions of the North and represent the North at the National Championships in Birmingham. All our 29 competitors did incredibly well against some very big schools with many of the competitors also having regular club experience as well as school experience. Our biggest success came in the relays where 4 out of our 5  teams qualified for the final, our best achievement in recent years, with the Year 4 girls achieving an amazing second place. Our best individual performances also came in the sprint events with James, Matthew, Charlotte, Thomas and Olivia D all reaching the final. In the sprint final, Olivia D came 2^nd and Charlotte and James came 3^rd. We will wait to see if any of our top three finishers will be selected to represent the North in the relay at the Nationals. Thank you to all the parents and grandparents for their support on the day.
We now look forward to Beech House Inter-Schools Athletics on 24 June. Mrs Parsons 

ICT
Over half-term all the children’s computers in the ICT room were updated. This is just the initial stage of the planned development for ICT across the school which will take place next year. We will bring you up-to-date on all new developments in ICT once the final details have been confirmed. 

Good Luck Mr Turner!
Mr Turner will be having a knee operation next Wednesday and will be absent from school for two weeks. Mrs Pritchard will be covering many of his lessons and will continue the normal ICT curriculum where possible. We look forward to Mr Turner’s return for the last few weeks of term and we wish him a successful operation and a speedy recovery. 

News From Our Nursery
The Nursery children have shown a great interest in dinosaurs over the past few weeks from Small World play to discussing the bones they saw at the museum.  This week the children have enjoyed following the theme of dinosaurs within their learning environment. We have enjoyed digging for bones in the sand area, playing with ice, studying dinosaur eggs and singing dinosaur number rhymes. Mrs Elstone
 
Pictures From Our Week
If you are not on social media but you would like to see some of the fantastic pictures from our week in School and Nursery, remember you can simply go on our website and click on the facebook icon. This will take you straight through to the news and images from our week.  Please note, we have three facebook pages: Highfield Priory Nursery, Highfield Priory School and Highfield Priory School Alumni.

HPPTA Fathers' Day Shop

Please bring £5 per gift (in a named and sealed envelope) and give to your child's class teacher by Wednesday 17 June. The shop will run during the school day on Friday 19 June and there will be suitable gifts to buy for dads and grandads. 

Summer Fayre, Sunday 5 July 1-4pm
The summer fayre is fast approaching! The questionnaires completed by the children earlier in the year confirmed that it is the most anticipated and enjoyed PTA event of the school year so please support the event as much as you can. It is also our main fundraiser of the year and we are still working very hard to reach the target of £5000 to help the school buy extra sports equipment for the exciting AstroTurf project.
If you would like to help on the day, or in preparation for the day, please contact Claire Jones 07807 065260 as soon as possible. This year, each year group, including Pre-School, has been assigned a stall or activity with a lead organiser from the year group. Most year groups are currently struggling for help during the day so if you are able to spare an hour to help please let them know. Your class teacher can tell you who the lead is if you are unsure. Many thanks in advance for your support. 

As always, it is going to be a very busy end of term, so it might be helpful to have a reminder of what is on next week: 
Monday               Cycling Proficiency for Year 6. Please could all bikes be brought in for 8.30am and taken                                 home at the end of the day. Thank you.
Wednesday         ISA Cricket and Cricket against St Pius X -Year 6.
Thursday             Year 3 trip to Bring Yer Wellies
                            Pre-School Curriculum Evening
Friday                  2M Class Assembly
                            HPPTA Fathers’ Day shop
                            Year 1 trip to Bring Yer Wellies.
                            Year 4 Cricket v Rossall 

Merit Awards
RB: Abdullah  RF: Oliver  1D: Arjun  2M: Sasha  2W:  Aamina
3H: Zaynab  3M: Ivan  4D: Katie  4M: Fatimah  5H: Matthew  6H: Myles

Thought for the week

Henry Ford  

Yours sincerely    
J M Duke
Headmaster