Issue Three - 30th August 2015

Welcome to the third issue of our new e-newsletter Talking Trees. 

As ever, we’d appreciate you taking the time to give us some feedback about the newsletter. If you like what you read, please do feel free to pass it on and share it with friends and contacts.

Being holiday time, things are a little quiet in terms of school life, but behind the scenes all is very busy. 

For a start, we are having new sewers laid under the playground even as we speak. The 150-year old Victorian sewers were starting to give us problems in the latter part of the summer term and a camera survey at the beginning of the summer holidays revealed that bits of debris were being dropped from the old clay pipe joins, slowing down the flow of sewage with fairly inevitable results!

Teachers are clearing classrooms, hunting through the science cupboards searching for the equipment they need to teach electricity and magnetism; an old piano has made it’s way down and out of the building ready to be taken away to it’s final destination….fire doors are being re-painted, which parents and some of our older pupils have kindly been giving up some of their holiday time to help with.

If you have a son or daughter who is unhappy at school or struggling with the mainstream academic environment, have a look at some of our videos of upper school pupils speaking about this school, show them to your son/daughter and come and have a look at the school. This video is where three pupils in our oldest class (the pupils in the video are age 16/17) talk about what it is like in the school and their class, and how it might be for new pupils.

Please also find attached an abridged version of an article written by a member of kindergarten staff from the end of term, entitled ‘Everyday Maths in Kindergarten’. These articles can be read in full by clicking on the link below or visiting our website, where other articles from this series about kindergarten life can also be found.  These articles are written in an easy-to-read style and bring to the reader a real sense of the children. 

‘Mine is twice as big as yours.’ ‘I have cut mine in half.’
Mathematical language and thinking are allowed to emerge in an organic, fluid and social way as the children explore, interact with and make sense of their world, developing language and testing theories and concepts, without adult intervention. ‘My sandpaper is rougher. Look, the sand is bigger.’ ‘Mine has more sand.’ ‘Look, the numbers on the back tell you which has bigger sand.’

This is the fourth in a series of seven abridged articles by Jacqui Armour about kindergarten life, which we will be posting over the coming weeks. To read the full article click here.