Mon 2nd Feb | 3.30pm Open Classrooms Tues 3rd Feb Pupil Progress Meetings Fri 6th Feb FOPHS bag to school day Mon 16th Feb - Fri 20th Feb Half Term Tues 24th Feb 6pm E-Safety Workshop Fri 27th Feb New School Council Elections today Lots of fun exploring creativity Value of the month This month, Creativity has been on our minds. The children enjoyed watching Linsey Pollack make a working clarinet (well worth viewing) using a carrot, a drill and a knife! This really fuelled their imagination as we dug deeper to consider how a ‘thunk’, (a creative thought) can help fuel our own creativity. The children listened to a story about how a snow angel became excluded from the rest of the angels for making unusual snow flakes but using his creativity helped to sort other people’s problems. I leave you with a thunk to discuss with your children…“where does the sky start, can you draw it?” Martin Smith, Headteacher Upcoming events With sadness, Fraser Ewing will be leaving his role as sports apprentice at the school following the conclusion of his sports apprenticeship course. Fear not, the lunchtime clubs which Fraser instigated will continue to run and the Dacorum Sports Network will be sending in their students each week until September when we hope to have a new sports apprentice in place. ISSUE 26 | January 2015 Sports Partnership Eco Award You may well have noticed a new logo appearing at the footer of recent letters. We are pleased to announce that we have now received the Eco- schools Bronze Award. A big congratulations and thank you must go to Miss Woollatt and her team who have been working on this area of school life for us. To achieve the award, the relatively new environmental club had to form a committee and keep records of their discussions. They have also produced an action plan to help the school improve in environmental stewardship and our curriculum has clear links to eco-issues. We are now working towards the silver level award and we believe we can achieve this by next Christmas! Watch this space! E-Safety Workshop Please reserve 6pm on Tuesday 24th February in your diary for a workshop on E-Safety. It will hopefully heighten awareness of this ever growing issue and we hope to have a good level of attendee participation using the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOPs) materials. We will also be able to signpost you towards materials and resources which will help keep your children safe at home in addition to the usual steps you take as parents. World Vision As part of our December value of the month activities, we agreed that compassion involves action. Meet Thierno Hamidou, a 6 year old boy we are sponsoring who lives in Senegal. Life expectancy is only 59 in Sengal and only 69% of the population has access to safe drinking water. World Vision are a charity who work in an area to build an economy so it can become self-sufficient. Thierno will have a schooling and we are looking forward to writing our first letters to him to develop our links and learn what life is like in another country. Lots of learning to come from this venture! In the meantime, we hope to have news on the PE mark in the summer term. We love awards because they are a quality assurance that the children are receiving the best we can offer!

Week of 09/01/15 Reception: Ethan Smith Year 1: Arjun Stewart Year 2: Emma Lewis Year 3: Jacob C Smith Year 4: Honey Laird Year 5: Matthew Morgan Year 6: Sam Beale Week of 16/01/15 Reception: Lilah Lee Year 1: Grace Maddison Year 2: Alfie Welham Year 3: Anna Lilley Year 4: Katie Williams Year 5: Isobelle Hook Year 6: Ben Smith Week of 23/01/15 Reception: Daniel Barnes Year 1: Bella Bruce Year 2: Malachi Hardy Year 3: Whole Class Year 4: Ryan Pearce Year 5: Chloe Christie Year 6: Jack Clark Week of 30/01/15 Reception: William Deane Year 1: Owen Campbell Year 2: Leon Jackson Year 3: Harry Wright Year 4: Diya Liyanwela Year 5: Alexis McFarlane-Barnes Year 6: Thomas Shaw Stars of the week to everyone! Well done Congratulations to our raffle winner You may remember that Ben Smith and family kindly donated a new Watford football club shirt with the signatures of current players. We recently raffled the shirt and a winner (standing delighted on the right) was the lucky recipient of the prize. We are really proud of Ben and all our children who play football (and other sports) for clubs and societies in the region. Often, we receive reports from their respective club leaders which we share with all the children in our Friday assemblies. Keep up the good work and we hope to see you playing for Watford (or a better Championship club – right Ben?!) in the senior team one day. Free School Meals (FSM) The government promise of a free school meal for all children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage One has been a big success and I’m sure many of you will be benefitting from lower food bills. However, one of the issues as a result of this policy is that the school budget has taken quite a hit. The school receives up to £1,900 additional allowance for each child on the free school meal register, though we now have a diminished register lower down the school as FSMs are provided for all children. You are able to formally request your child goes on the official FSM register if you receive: —Income Support —Income-based Jobseekers Allowance —Income-related Employment Support Allowance —Child Tax Credit, (providing you're not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190) —Pension Credit (Guarantee Credit) —Support under part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 —Working Tax Credit run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit Please consider making an application if you meet the criteria above and in return, we will provide your child with a free school uniform. Gade Family Support Gade have asked us to advertise the following course. They run many other great courses throughout the year so do get in touch for a leaflet! TEEN BRAIN Deadline to book: 26th February 2015 Dates: 5th March th March 2015 (4 weeks) Time: 7-9pm Venue: Gade Community Room, Chaulden Infants School, School Row, HP1 2NX What’s it about? Being a parent of a teenager, understanding your teenager, communicating with your teenager and managing conflict School Website Our website continues to grow and is more informative than it has ever been. I think it is fair to say it is fast becoming a key source of information. We hope you liked our redesigned curriculum plans for the Spring term. These are all available in the new ‘curriculum’ area of our school website. We will also shortly be adding an overview of the year to this page and further policies on the relevant page. In addition to this, we have a new SEND information report which details out what we provide for children with special educational needs. The diary has recently been updated to include future FOPHS events and don’t forget, you can sync the school diary to your mobile phone or tablet. We have managed to resolve some key issues with our website which relate to our server more than the website itself. You should expect to see a more updated ‘letters’ page in the future now we have resolved this issue.