JLT, School Council and Year 6 Leaders

2021-2022

The School Council is an ideal opportunity for pupils to get more involved in the way the school is run. The School Council benefits the whole school, pupils and teachers, because it provides opportunities for pupils to communicate their feelings as well as influence decisions that are made.

Councillors develop skills such as confidence, communication and negotiation. It is the responsibility of each councillor to ensure that they express both their own views and the views of all the other pupils they represent. Members of the Council take part in discussions and votes and also feedback any relevant information to their class. At times they are requested to ask their class for ideas or take class votes relating to discussions by the Council.

Alongside our School Council we also have our Earlsdon Junior Leadership Team. The JLT is an ideal opportunity for more children to have a voice and play an integral role of the running and organisation of the school. The children have the opportunity to apply for the role that they feel best suits them, and the school. It is aimed for Year 5 and 6 children.

As well as our JLT and our School Council, Earlsdon Primary is happy to announce that this year we are also part of the Coventry Young Ambassador Programme, which means a handful of our specially trained pupils are able to represent our city and school at a range of cultural and sporting events. 

This year due to Covid restrictions and working within our guidelines we have established a new team of Leaders at Earlsdon Primary. Our Year 6 leaders have just been appointed their positions within the school and have already taken on the role of supporting the making of the Rising 5's video. They will be supporting with Anti-bullying Week and also Pudsey Bear day. 

Please note, due to Covid risk assessments, in the first instance, this year we will only be having our Year 6 children taking part in the JLT and School Council will be temporarily paused, this may change as guidance changes. 

Thank you so much for all the generous donations of plants, seeds, bulbs, pots and other amazing creations towards our sensory garden. We were overwhelmed by all the fantastic things made over the Easter holidays and can't wait to continue to enhance our front garden and sensory garden over the next few weeks, using our funding from GB Partnerships. The aim of sensory garden is to create an area of the playground that children can access to stimulate their senses and allow them to connect with nature. The area will also be used to grow lots of fruits and vegetables and hopefully our bee friendly plants will attract lots of bugs and bees to our garden, thank you to Joanne at Bee Friendly Kenilworth for talking to children in Y2 about the importance of pollinators and helping them plant wildflowers. Also, thank you to Bay 1tyres in Kenilworth for their kind donation and Mr Gascoyne for making the fantastic sensory frame.

We are thrilled to be hosting our very first 'Green Day' on April 29th. We will be welcoming children to wear green, donate a gift to our developing sustainable, sensory garden. Introduce the 'bottle top' competition that we will be taking part in and have been busy collecting bottle tops for, as well as our ECO team introducing a 'Design a bird house' competition and our ECO song. You will see attached some holiday homework for anyone who would like to participate. 

Thank you to everyone who supported Comic Relief this year, we were able to complete our target of £500, by raising a whopping £514.43! The children enjoyed entering our 'design a nose competition', as well as dressing in red all day, donating £1 towards Comic Relief and purchasing noses from the Junior Leadership Team. The school has a wonderful buzz in the air and through the Red Nose Day resources provided the children gained and understanding as to where and how the money would be used that we have raised. 

Window Wanderland 2022

This year Earlsdon Primary School are pleased to announce that they will be taking part in the City of Culture Window Wanderland project. This year our theme will be Peter Pan. Our parents have been kindly donating, wood and offcuts to Sue Francis; our parent helper who has been busy crafting something exciting to go on the top of the balcony. In addition to this our school staff have been working hard on the window displays. We just hope the scaffolding is down in time for February 19th! We are really excited to see all the windows in our community and know that lots of our children have been busy, making, designing and planning their windows too. Happy window spotting,. 

ECO UPDATE

Our ECO Team have been very busy over the last term, they have been writing, making and designing their first assembly for the children and staff within our school. Here they will be introducing themselves and showcasing some of the wonderful things that they have been up to, they have also organised their very own bird house competition - watch this space for more information, and in addition will be helping to organise a Green Day later this Spring to raise funds for our outdoor, sustainable sensory garden. They have been very busy bees! 

Pre-Loved book sale for World Book Day 2022

We will be holding a bring and buy book sale during the week of World Book
Day. To prepare for this exciting event we would love you to search through
your unwanted children’s books and donate them to school by 18th February.
We would like to be able to offer books to all age groups so please hunt out
any books suitable for ages 4-11 years. Obviously, we can’t hold a book sale
without books, so we will be relying on your generosity to make this work.
We will be offering each class an opportunity to visit the pre-loved book sale,
please look at the timetable below to see when your child’s class will visit.
Each book bought will be 50p; a great way to encourage your child to read for
pleasure and enjoyment without spending too many pennies!
 

Christmas Jumper Day 

Wednesday 15th December 2021 was our Christmas jumper day, with all donations going to Save the Children. The children enjoyed class parties, school Christmas dinners and watching the Singing Hands pantomine, A very festive day! 

Children In Need 

A huge thank you to all of the children and parents that supported us this year. The design a Pudsey competition and non-uniform day raised a total of £380. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this total. We would also like to congratulate our two winners, one in KS1 and one in KS2, the JLT embraced the process when deciding and selecting the winners! 

ECO Squad

Over the last month the Junior Leadership Team has started recruiting its new members and some of the Year 6 children have already started their new roles. In addition, this year Earlsdon Primary School will be aiming to earn their ECO award. For the first time, the JLT has appointed their first ECO squad. Over recent weeks the ECO squad have been completing their baseline assessment for our school and have now formulated their action plan. During the course of the year we will be aiming to meet our actions; improve our schools bio-diversity, waste and litter within the school. The children would also like to organise a community litter pick in the New Year! We are very excited. In the short term, if anyone has any bug houses, bat boxes, bird houses or bird feeders that they would no longer like or would like to donate, they would be well received by our ECO team. Thank you.

Poppy Appeal 

From November 1st the JLT will be supporting the Poppy Appeal in school. The children across all year groups will be invited to donate 20p for a poppy as well as a range of other items for sale. The Poppy Appeal have suggested a price list for some of their items ranging from 50p to £1.50.

Harvest and Carriers of Hope 

This year for Harvest we will be going orange and raising money for the Carriers of Hope project. We hope to buy children's scooters for the newly arrived families in Coventry. This week the JLT will be selling orange stickers for the children to buy, children can wear non - uniform on Thursday 21st October and some of our Year 5 pupils will be making items to sell during break and lunchtimes. 

Earlsdon Primary School is excited to be taking part in the community project 'Summer of Sunflowers'. The idea of the project is to fill our local community with bright flowers and ensure that no-one person feels isolated, lonely or alone during this challenging time. Working alongside the library and other local charities the school has been gifted 1000 sunflower seeds. Each child will be planting a seed in school and will also be taking some seeds home, they can either plant these or gift them to members of their community. If you want to find out more information, pop along to Earlsdon Library for seeds and information, or search Summer of Sunflowers on Facebook. Letters will be sent out to parents via parent mail. 

The last 12 months have been incredibly tough for everyone, but we are so proud of how our school community have managed. As parents and carers, you have also had your lives turned upside down, and we are so grateful for all of your efforts at home.

We recognise and appreciate that things are a bit different this year, but we can’t wait to raise a smile and some life-changing money by celebrating Red Nose Day in school on Friday 19^th March.

We would like to invite the children to come to school dressed in red, or wearing spots or as a Superhero! (Please don’t spend any money by buying an outfit- homemade costumes are great.)

If you wish to make a donation to Comic Relief, please visit their website and donate using the button at the bottom- you can add as much or as little as you like: http://donation.comicrelief.com/

As well as taking the opportunity to be part of something positive, we’ll be using Red Nose Day as a learning opportunity. We’ll explore the issues facing young people across the world, and how the money we raise can help.

This year with lockdown and the impact it is having on many, we wanted to ensure that we are still reaching out to our community. With a little bit of help from all of the children in school and all of the children at home we have decided to join the Earlsdon Window Wanderland. 

This year the Earlsdon residents registered to be part of the Window Wanderland linked to the city of culture. During the month of February windows will be decorated with beautiful pictures and light sot brighten the streets. 

With the support of our children we have selected the story book The Hungry Caterpillar. Firstly, it is such a famous story book but mainly because butterflies are a symbol of hope and we feel more than ever that we all need a little bit of hope. 

Each class has a giant butterfly carefully crafted from old crisp packets and made by our PTA and children have sent in messages of hope for teachers to write on the class butterflies. 

The display will be ready at the end of February half term for everyone to enjoy. 

Children In Need

Children In Need is Friday 13th November, this year we are encouraging the children to dress up as Pudsey, with spots or wear bright colours. Due to risk assessment procedures  we will not be having a cake sale or raffle. Instead we are asking parents and guardians to donate using the Pudsey donate button on the just giving website

https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/BBCCiNPrimary

Anti-bullying week Monday 16th November 

Monday 16th November is Anti-bullying week. This year the Year 6 Leaders have presented in assembly and during the week of the 16th, classes will be focusing on differences and being unique. The children are also encouraged to wear odd socks on Monday 16th November. 

Rising Fives

Our Year 6 children would often meet and greet our new parents and give them a guided tour around the school. This year the children and parents have not been able to do that. Instead our fabulous Year 6 Leaders have helped to create the Rising Fives video that can be found in the: Key Information, Admissions, Rising Fives part of the school website.  

Remembrance 

This year for Remembrance our staff and wonderful PTA have supported the class bubbles by providing craft material to collaborate and produce the most beautiful poppy waterfall outside of the school. Each child had the opportunity to make a poppy and build the waterfall, with the help of our parent volunteer Sue Francis organising the whole process. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the local lockdown the children really wanted to create something that would help the community during their daily walks and in addition, support with remembering all of the veterans past and present.

Our Year 6 Leaders have also been selling and collecting donations for the Royal British Legion by selling the poppies within school.  

JLT and School Council 2019-2020

The School Council have worked very hard over the last few weeks collecting in entries for their Pudsey competition, selling items outside of school to their peers, learning songs and getting their assembly ready to share to both KS1 and KS2. They were pleased to choose a winner for the giant Pudsey and raise lots of money for Children In Need. A huge thank you to all of the children at Earlsdon School who entered the competition, dressed up for the day, donated some money and embraced our Pudsey day - we couldn’t do it without you! As a school we raised a whopping £643.18! 

This year the School Council have presented their Anti-Bullying campaign to both KS1 and KS2. They spoke about the importance of change and how making a change to your own behaviour can impact and change how others feel. In addition, the children at Earlsdon School have been taking part in lots of circle times and discussions around being unique and different. Mr Hook has also been teaching a variety of songs about change to both KS1 and KS2. On Tuesday 12th of November we would like to encourage the children at school to wear odd socks, which is part of the Anti-Bullying campaign. 

Well done to Howes Primary and Earlsdon Primary Young Ambassadors for braving the heavy rain on Saturday 1st  November to support the runners at Coventry Memorial Park, you were amazing!