Long Meadow Matters

Tel No. 01908 508678

Email address: office@longmeadow.milton-keynes.sch.uk Issue: 8

www.longmeadow.milton-keynes.sch.uk Date: 25/10/18

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome to our extended newsletter to close this half term. Hopefully it gives you a flavour

of some of the exciting things we have been up to in the last 8 weeks.

Tomorrow is an INSET day for teachers, an opportunity to do some training as a whole staff.

This half term, Miss Kidd and I have had the pleasure of spending some time in classes seeing

what we do well and where we can make improvements. Our training will be focused on

teaching and learning. We will be working as a staff team to look at some key areas for our

school. This will include using our new flip charts in every class (thank you again PALs for

buying these for us!), looking at how we can utilise our ‘Working Walls’ and thinking about

how we can improve the feedback we give the children, etc.. It’s a really positive time for us

at LMS and we want to give your children an even better experience every single day.

This week has also seen our new House Captains and the new roles of Head Girl and Head

Boy being decided. The children have applied for these positions and the successful

candidates will be announced on the first day back ! Good luck everyone.

Thank you to all those parents and carers who were able to attend the parent consultations

this week. These are a really important part of the home school relationship. Thank you also

to those parents who were able to contribute to our aims, vision and values work in the hall.

This will allow us, on top of the staff and children's work, to then work with our Governors

to finally create a set of values we can work on everyday at LMS, so we can know what we

actually mean by #proud.

I hope you enjoy this bumper edition and please enjoy the break. Enjoy your family time

together, rest well. I can’t wait to see you all fully recharged for the next half term.

Yours

Mr Gray

SLT spotlight – Mrs Evans Upper KS2 Leader

I have only been at LMS for a year but I already feel like part of the furniture; it's such a

friendly and positive school, you can't help but feel at home quickly.

I studied English at university and then completed a PGCE, qualifying as a teacher in 2007. I

began my teaching career at Abbeys Primary in Bletchley and worked there for 10 years

before joining the team here. During my career, I have taught in EYFS, KS1 and KS2 and

taken on a variety of roles including Science leader, English leader, Team Leader, Mentor and

UKS2 Leader. I have always been passionate about teaching and feel lucky that, 11 years later,

I still love it as much as I did when I first qualified. I honestly can't imagine doing anything else.

I am married with two daughters (Poppy 5 and Tilly 3) and so

spend my weekends making cakes (badly), going to the park and

singing Baby Shark. I also enjoy reading, eating out (because my

baking isn't brilliant) and going to the theatre.

As soon as I visited LMS, I knew that I wanted to work here. The

staff and the children were so friendly and enthusiastic and I was

blown away by all of those extra enrichment opportunities that add

an extra sprinkle of magic to the learning. I enjoy coming to work

here every day and feel #proud to be part of such a great team.

Congratulations to

Tadpoles

who achieved 98.9%

attendance this week.

Well done everybody!

Shoeboxes need to be in by

Tuesday 6th November. We are also collecting

separate items so further boxes can be made by

children in school. If a family doesn't wish to make a whole

box but has new or nearly new items to contribute,

please put them in the box on the table in Reception.

Ideas can be found at: https://www.samaritans-

purse.org.uk/what-we-do/operation-christmas-child/

what-goes-in-my-shoebox/.

Empty shoeboxes are available in Reception.

YEAR 6 REMINDER

Applications to start secondary

school in September 2019 must

be submitted online by 31

October 2018. Please visit

https://www.milton-

keynes.gov.uk/schools-and-

lifelong-learning/school-

admissions/starting-secondary-

upper-school-in-september-

2019 for more information.

Long Meadow Junior Park Rangers Update

This week the new group of JPRs met with Amanda Bailey from the Milton

Keynes Parks Trust. We had a very positive discussion about what the

children’s role would be as a JPR and what they wanted to do this year.

The main things will include events in Shenley Wood with the residents from

Shenley Retirement Village. The children would also like to raise awareness of

how we can encourage hedgehogs and bees to flourish in our area. They

would also like to run another competition based on the country code.

More details of these things will be released soon.

Max Roe

JPR organiser

Year 2 DT Day

This half term we had a DT day, where we made our very own pirate hats.

We had to design them first and think carefully about where we needed to

sew. We are very proud of our pirate hats and we had lots of fun doing them.

We learnt how to sew using a running stitch. Some of us found this tricky, but

we persevered and showed great determination.

A huge thank you to all the parents and grandparents who were able to give

up their time and help us. We could not have done it without you.

We took all of your donations

for Harvest Festival to the

local food bank! It’s great to

see our school making a

difference to the local

community and those less

fortunate than ourselves.

Thank you once again to

everyone that was able to

contribute.

Long Meadow Junior Neighbourhood Action Group

This year’s Junior Neighbourhood Action Group have already had one

meeting and they are very enthusiastic about keeping their neighbourhood

clean, tidy and safe. They cleared a lot of rubbish from the redway which

runs between the school and Fossey Close. They also removed a lot of

rubbish which has made its way over or through the fence and into The

Secret Garden.

The group will be doing monthly checks on the neighbourhood around the

school. If you have any concerns about litter and damage to your local area

please contact either the school or the Parish Council and we would be

happy to help.

At the last school fete I got a very good response to the idea of parents

and children coming together to look after where they live. The Parish

Council have taken this idea on board and come up with a scheme called

‘Parish Guardians’. There will be more news about this soon.

Max Roe

JNAGs organiser

Sports Updates

Cross Country - Well done to all of our children from Years 4, 5

and 6 who took part in the MK Primary Schools’ Cross Country

championships last Saturday. The children had spent several weeks

training alongside Mr Steel and were more than ready for the

event. All of our runners made us incredibly proud and overall, we

finished in 3rd place in our school category!

Hockey League - This term the hockey team have spent every

Wednesday afternoon battling other teams from MK in the school

hockey league. Last night was the finale and I am very proud to say

that LMS finished 3rd in their group. A great achievement! Well

done to all of the players.

EYFS Police Visit

A huge thank you to PC Hayle who

came to our EYFS and helped us learn

the ‘job’ of policeman! We loved

hearing the siren and sitting in the

police car.

EYFS

Early Years have had some great fun learning this

half term.

They loved learning in Shenley Woods as well as

being a hairdresser. Whist being hairdressers

they thought about questions they might ask,

things like, “would you like it washed?” and “what

style would you like today?”

Year 6 visited the Harry Potter Studios and we had a

truly magical day. There was so much to see and do

and some of our highlights were the Great Hall, the

Forbidden Forest, Platform 9 3/4 and, of course, the

gift shop! The children were impeccably behaved and

we couldn’t have been prouder of how they

represented themselves and our school.

Year 3 Roald Dahl Day

Year 3 enjoyed a Roald Dahl themed Maths Day on 29th September.

We received a letter from the Oompa-Loompas asking for our help to find

out which chocolate bars are the most popular. Once we had all chosen

our favourite chocolate, we made a bar chart to illustrate our results.

It was a bit scary practising our times tables with Miss Trunchbull!

Year 3 Trip to Tring Natural History

Museum

Bracken and Hogweed have been learning about

skeletons and fossils. On Wednesday 17th

October, we had a fantastic trip to Tring Natural

History Museum. It was fun trying to guess which

skeleton belonged to which animal.

T H E L O N G M E A D O W N E W S L E T T E R

DATES FOR THE DIARY Autumn

SCHOOL TERM AND BANK HOLIDAY DATES 2018/19

Training days agreed to date: (on these days children do not come to school but staff do)

Friday 26th October 2018 / Friday 4th January 2019 / Monday 25th February 2019 / Monday 22nd July 2019

Good Friday: Friday 19th April 2019

Easter Monday: Monday 22nd April 2019

May Day: Monday 6th May 2019 (School will be closed)

Autumn Term 2018

27 October – 4 November HALF TERM

Monday 5 November School begins

Wednesday 7 November Individual school photographs

Tuesday 13 November PALS Doughnut Day

Friday 16 November Pantomime Peter Pan - whole school dress up

Tuesday 20 November Cinema trip Y4, Y5 & Y6

Friday 23 November 5LP Thistles Class Assembly

Tuesday 27 November Y6 SATs Evening – 6:00 pm

Friday 30 November 5LS Ferns Class Assembly

Wednesday 5 December Early Years Christmas Nativity 9:15 am

Year 1 Nativity 1.45 pm

Family Carol Singing 5:30-6:30 pm

Thursday 6 December Year 1 Nativity 6:00 pm

Friday 7 December PALS Christmas Fayre 3.15 - 5.00 pm

Tuesday 11 December Y5 / 6 Carol Concerts 9:00 am and 6:30 pm

Wednesday 12 December PALS Movies and Munchies 3.15 - 5.00 pm

Thursday 13 December Y3 / 4 Carol Concert Shenley Wood

PALS MK Pantomime trip

Friday 14 December 6KE Teasels Class Assembly

Monday 17 December Santa Run – whole school

Tuesday 18 December Early Years / KS1 Awards Assembly pm

Wednesday 19 December Years 3 & 4 Awards Assembly am

Years 5 & 6 Awards Assembly pm

Thursday 20 December School party day – no hot meals

Friday 21 December Last day of term

Term Open morning of: Close at the end of afternoon session of:

Autumn Term 2018 Tuesday 4 September 2018 Thursday 25 October 2018

Monday 5 November 2018 Friday 21 December 2018

Spring Term 2019 Monday 7 January 2019 Friday 15 February 2019

Tuesday 26 February 2019 Friday 5 April 2019

Summer Term 2019 Tuesday 23 April 2019 Friday 24 May 2019

Monday 3 June 2019 Friday 19 July 2019