Newsletters

George Spicer newsletter - 10th February 2022


T: 020 8363 1406 
E: office@georgespicer.enfield.sch.uk 
W: www.georgespicer.enfield.sch.uk 
Twitter @GeorgeSpicerSch


George Spicer newsletter - Thursday 10th February 2022

Wishing you all a peaceful and safe 1/2 term break. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday 21st February 2022.

After ½ term, we will be focusing on punctuality and late arrivals, which are causing a disruption to teaching

Registers are taken electronically twice a day; in the morning at 9am and again directly after lunch. Any pupil arriving after the close of the register must report to the school office and be signed in on the electronic system giving clear reasons for lateness. Any pupil arriving after the close of the register at 9.20am will be marked as an unauthorised absence.

Attendance Fast Track - please read the letter that was emailed to all parents/carers today.  If your child is sick/has an appointment, please inform the school by 9am daily.  

Donations - Please could we have donations of wipes for welfare for both sites.  

We're hiring at George Spicer! - Please click on the links below and/or share if you know of anyone who may be interested:

School Business Manager

Site Manager

Welfare Administrative Assistant


Quote of the week

“Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught. Material wears out but knowledge stays.“ —  Bruce Lee 

Attendance week ending 10/02/2022

Overall school = 94.31% Lates = 50

Best attendance: 1st Ash 99.68% 2nd Sioux 99.15% 3rd Achilles 98.59%

Punctuality: Well done Achilles, Ra, Hurricanes & Bluebell for achieving 100% for punctuality


Mental Health & Wellbeing Week ‘Growing Together’

Another fantastic mental health week at George Spicer. The children’s knowledge, empathy, coping strategies, personal development and teamwork skills continue to grow and impress us all.  Please take some time to ask your children about their achievements this week and enjoy reading the updates below.

     Mental Health & Wellbeing Support at George Spicer

In addition to our 3 amazing Learning Mentors who make a huge difference to the wellbeing of our school community day in day out, our Wellbeing Practitioners, Clare & Vic, also continue to support our pupils and families. Alongside MYME they have now supported over 140 pupils since they joined us.  If your child is showing anxiety or challenging behaviours and you feel that you would benefit from working with one of them on a guided self-help programme, please contact the Learning Mentors or Miss Southgate via the office. 

                       

MYME are also keen to run free sessions for George Spicer parents who would like to learn ways to support their child with topics including supporting your child’s worries, supporting children’s sleep, the importance of play and special time, supporting children around friendships.  If you would be interested in attending please express your interest via this form https://forms.office.com/r/55RrzYCTLZ

Please also take a look at these wellbeing resources which you may find useful to use with your children at home:

  1. Unworry Pack – some lovely calming activities, including breathing techniques, yoga poses and mindfulness colouring Unworry Pack
  2. Parent ‘Helping your child with Anxiety’ pack - click here

Reception

Reception have been working so hard this term. We are steaming ahead with learning our new number this week...9! Here we are looking at finding, making and exploring with 9. Harrison said, "We had 8 and then 1 went in the middle and we had 9!"

The children are loving meeting the new numberblocks characters each week. We know how to use part wholes, tens frames and counting beads. We can't wait to meet 10 after half term. Keep up the good work Reception!

We loved discussing the theme, "Growing Together" this week. Fayizah said, "Our brains can grow and our bodies can grow." 

We used this week to talk about where we started back in September and how proud we are of how much we've grown - this doesn't mean just getting taller! Elif said, "I couldn't write my name when I was little Reception, now I'm big Reception, I can!". Kayon was feeling proud this week too, "I'm proud I got to Gold." To show our growth and journey so far, we drew around our feet to create footprints (it's very tickly). We then drew a picture of something we are proud of. Then, we put our footprints together to create flowers that have bloomed and grown into wonderful young people.

In conclusion, it's been a wonderful week of talking about our achievements, working on our mindset and looking after our minds and friends. 


Year 1

For Mental Health Week, Year 1 have been busy practising their meditation skills daily. This has helped the children improve their concentration and manage their emotions.

Children had an opportunity to learn what to do when faced with a difficult decision. Children were asked a big question which was ‘Have you ever had to make a hard decision?’

Mindfulness can help us with making decisions. When we have a decision to make, our bodies give us clues about making the right or wrong choice. This is sometimes called our gut feeling.

When we have a tricky decision to make, we might feel sick, hot, and sweaty. Our breathing might change to shorter breaths.

These are signs that you are feeling worried or uncertain about your choice. We really enjoyed doing meditation daily. Joy stated “The breathing exercises were helpful.” Nathaniel stated “If I have a difficult decision, I will close my eyes and think about each option.” The children thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the daily mindfulness activities.

 


Year 2

As part of our Mental Health week “Growing together” this week, Year 2 have been designing and creating origami birds for their garden of dreams. Our focus was working collaboratively as a team to create or dream birds. We loved decorating them and creating our birds and thought about our roles within the team and what makes a good team.

      

In our writing this week, we have been writing instructions for our Roman clay pots we made last week. We focussed on using imperative (bossy) verbs and time adverbials to make sure our instructions were clear and easy to follow.

Year 2 have finally been able to put on our Reading workshops this week! We hope they have been helpful in showing off the brilliant work going on in our reading lessons and some ways to support our children when reading at home!

We looked at the classic story of “Charlotte’s web” and made a link to Global Goal 10 – Reduced Inequalities.

What lesson could we learn from chapter 1, when Fern stops the small, weak pig from being ‘done away with’?

Joshua G – “We should give everyone a chance, even if they might be smaller than everyone else.”

Elizabeth C – “We shouldn’t judge people by how small they are, everyone can do anything.”


Year 3 

Mental Health Week

As part of Mental Health Week, we have been working as a team to create a Viking longboat. As part of the process, we have been faced with obstacles and have had to think about how to overcome these. We have also thought about our own individual strengths and what we can bring to the team. 

We have also been enjoying some Smiling Minds lessons - as part of these we have thought about a big question, experienced a meditative activity and then discussed how we felt afterwards.

History/English - Aethelflaed

In history and writing, we looked at a female leader in the Anglo-Saxon times, Aethelflaed. We discussed how her power fluctuated during her reign and plotted this on a line graph. We discussed how this linked to Global Goal 5 - Gender Equality.

Melissa - Aethelflaed's rise to power links to Global Goal 5 because before, women in Anglo-Saxon times were only believed to be useful as peaceweavers, but Aethelflaed proved that women can be just as great leaders as men.

Computing 

We continued our learning about emailing in computing. This week, we learnt about the importance of sending emails that are positive and kind. We discussed times that we have seen of heard hurtful words online and what we should do in these situations. Finally, we looked at fake emails and how to spot fake emails. We also learnt about how to keep ourselves safe online in Miss Eberle's Safer Internet assembly.

 


Year 4 

This week in year 4, we took part in Children’s Mental Health Week ‘Growing Together’ by working collaborative to complete our Dreams & Goals end of topic enterprise project. The children were set the challenge of designing and making a Potato Person, including creating a funny personality.

The purpose of this was to focus on the key skills of working collaboratively and overcoming challenges when working together to achieve a shared goal. The children discussed the qualities that made a successful team.

“You should listen to other people’s ideas so everyone feels valued,” Aaron

“Working as a team should be fun and every should feel included,” Jessica

Please see below, pictures of the children working in their groups to design and create their Potato Person.  Towards the end of the week, each class will vote for the funniest creation and will take time to reflect on the experience.  Working as a team can be challenging and puts us out of our comfort zone, so they will take some time to reflect on the strategies they used to help them overcome setbacks they may have encountered along the way.

We will include the winning Potato People in our next newsletter!

We also supported this project by using Smiling Mind focus lessons to develop the pupil’s mind-set and the skills required for completing this project. Mindfulness teaches children to focus on the present. Our mindfulness sessions focused on:

Why is it important to think before you speak?

Why is it important to listen to others?


Year 5

Henry VIII Portraits!

This week in Year 5, we experimented with colour pigmentation and created a range of skin tones to use in our Henry VIII portraits next week. We built on our previous learning of colour mixing from Year 4. We experimented using watercolour, adding more red for warmer tones and more blue for cooler tones.
We also used a range of sketching pencils to practise producing accurate proportions for key aspects of Henry VIIIs face. Considering proportion and scale, we focused on the nose, eyes and mouth. Check back in a couple of weeks time to see our final pieces! 

   

Mary, Queen of Scots!

In History, Mr Combe taught an immersive and engaging lesson on Mary, Queen of Scots! Building on Ra class's assembly, did you know that Mary and Elizabeth I never ever met, despite many historical sources claiming the women to be sworn enemies? After the assembly, we discussed t he Global Goals this linked to (16 - Peace, Justice and Institutions). We also discussed how this linked to Article 9 - Keeping Families Together, as Mary Queen of Scots were married to the King of France to form an allegiance between their two countries. In Tudor society, women of noble birth did not necessarily marry for love, but to form political allies that would support them in their social standing. We also discussed which articles were prohibited during Mary's life, for example: Article 14 - Freedom of Thought - Henry VIII was forcing everyone to be Protestant. Mary wasn't able to practise Catholicism as England was Protestant and had to do so in secret. This also links to Global Goal 5, Gender Equality - As Mary, like many women within Tudor society, did not have much control over their own lives and life decisions. 

Mental Health Week: Growing Together

This half term, we celebrated Growing Together! In our PSHE lessons, we discussed our Dreams and Goals and how we could achieve this! We discussed our goals and worked out the small steps we needed to achieve our dream! We spoke to one another about how our goals and dreams may have changed and how this is normal, as ourselves are growing and evolving our likes and dislikes! As a class, we spoke about how we could devise an event or activity to raise money for charity and considered the different charities we would want to support. 


Year 6 

In our Science lesson last Friday, we learnt about Darwin's theory of evolution. 

During Darwin's expedition around South America and Australia, he studied different species of animals. He focused particularly on birds and found that finches living in different habitats, adapted differently to suit their environments (slim and sharp beaked finches ate insects whereas finches with short beaks crushed seeds). When we looked at his drawings and found that the finches had different beaks in different environments, we found out that this process was called Natural Selection. 

Then, we wrote as Darwin, who had misplaced a page of his notebook, outlining his theory of natural selection linking this to his findings of the finches he observed in the Galapagos Islands. 

Below you can see some examples of our work!

Geography Field Work

Over the last two weeks, Year Six have undertaken a special Geography fieldwork activity for Mr Combe, which was based in Enfield Town. Each class was given a different task to complete and then they had to feed back to the other classes. 

Hurricanes looked at the restaurants already available in Enfield Town to determine where the gap in the market was. They fed their ideas back to Lancasters, explaining that there was a gap in the market for a fine dining establishment.

Lancasters then went in search of vacant properties in Enfield Town and scored each property out of 20 under set criteria. They fed back their ideas to Spitfires, explaining that they felt the old Pizza Express building would be the best place for a find dining restaurant as it is already set up to be a restaurant, is a god size, has no competition surrounding it and has lots of people/cars travelling past. 

Spitfires looked at the travel links in Enfield Town, with a specific focus on bus routes. They marked the different routes and what parts of Enfield link to the Town. They found that the Town was a good location as all the differing parts of this borough link to this area. 

Defiants created a survey, where they thought about the questions they might ask potential customers. Mustering all their courage, they then asked a variety of adults in town (with teacher supervision) and received feedback from the public. This then helped them feedback their findings to Mr Combe.

This week, for Mental Health Week, as Year 6, we have been looking at charities and charity causes. We looked at some well-known charities discussing their causes. We then thought about setting up our own charities and used the Global Goals to help us come up with ideas for causes that help and support people and created a mind map. 

For example:

Global Goal 4 is Quality Education. This was could be used as a charity cause that would focus on raising money for all young girls and boys to have access to education around the world.

Once we had all our ideas on our mind maps, we circled two of our final ideas that we would like to discuss in our groups. When looking at our mind maps, we had to compromise and decide on one agreed charity cause between the four of us. 

      

During the week, we participated in the smiling minds meditation sessions. This helped us feel calm and balanced as we focused our minds on working positively and efficiently when in our groups.                                                                                

                                                                                                                                               After our mindfulness session, we thought about an event for our charity. We decided to set up our own charity event (UNCRC Article 15 - setting up and joining groups to support human rights). 

In groups of four, each person had to do a different role/job that would help set up a fundraiser event. We thought about the jobs and decided in our groups, this took a lot of discussion and compromising as some of us wanted to do the same jobs as others. However, after a group discussion we all agreed on taking on different roles.

Gabriella - 'I think the person who is good at Art should create the logo and the rest of us can decide on the other jobs we would like to do'

Ryan - 'I enjoy writing so I wouldn't mind writing the paragraph'                            

Once we had completed our individual jobs, we then put together all our work on a poster. Every group then presented their charity and fundraiser event in front of the class. We discussed the event and answered questions about our cause. Below are some images of us presenting to our classes.           

Later on, this week, the children will be faced with a challenge that they need to overcome in their groups!


GSPS Ambassadors

Our Year 6 GSPS Ambassadors welcomed the newly appointed Year 2 Ambassadors by explaining the expectations, roles and responsibilities, as well as what they have changed about George Spicer since becoming part of the team (Article 12 - Respect for children's views). 

We look forward to our first meeting after the half term holiday. 

This half term the GSPS Ambassadors have been involved with making decisions at George Spicer and representing children’s views on many important issues that affect our school and the wider community. (UNCRC Article 12: You have the right to an opinion and for it to be listened to and taken seriously). 

They have renamed PSHE to a more meaningful name which represents our learning at George Spicer - all will be revealed in the Summer term. 

In addition to this, they have also been working extremely hard to produced new behaviour charters which include the responsibility of the children and adults at George Spicer Primary School.

Well done to each and every one of them. 


Enfield Music Services 

Parents are now able to book music lessons and activities for the Summer term 2022 from the Music Store: https://traded.enfield.gov.uk/musicstore

Summer term music lessons will start from week commencing 25th April and will include 10 lessons throughout the term.  Saturday Centre sessions start on 23rd April.

The deadline for booking lessons is Friday 11th March 2022. 


Netball

After another excellent week of training, player of the match goes to Abbie Webster. What an improvement you have made with your defensive strategies and interceptions. 


Year 6 fundraiser 

❤️🍩Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, and what better way to spread the love, than by buying some end of term donuts to help year 6 fundraise for their leavers books!!

Donut sale at both sites on FRIDAY 11th FEBRUARY, to start 1/2 term! 🍩❤️

#showyear6somelove


FoGs News   

Do you need any additional uniform? Need to replace those lost jumpers or get some length on the trousers that have risen up to the ankles?

FoGS are able to offer preloved uniform. Our aim is to reduce landfill while making savings for you and raising money for the school. All uniform is clean and checked, if we wouldn’t buy it we won’t sell it. FoGS can offer trousers, skirts, pinafores, dresses and jumpers at a fraction of the cost of the shops. We also have some PE kit including plimsols.

If you would like to purchase items please email the item and size you need along with your child’s name and class to fogspreloveduniform@gmail.com hopefully more after school sales coming soon, dates tbc. 

FoGS Events

Friday 11th March, 6pm-7.15pm - Year 3 Amazing Glow Disco with ACE Discos

Friday 11th March, 7.45pm-9pm - Year 5 Amazing Glow Disco with ACE Discos

Saturday 30th April, 10am-11.30am - Reception Captain Fantastic Disco Party

Saturday 30th April, 12pm-1.30pm - Year 1 and 2 Captain Fantastic Disco Party

You can book tickets for all events above, using this link.  

Cost for each events is £5 plus 18p booking fee per ticket. 

These events can't take place without your support!  

For parents, carers, grandparents

If you have specific skills and interests, or would like to try something new, bring a friend, and come make some new friends all welcome to our next meeting at 8pm on Wednesday 9th March, at Kimberley Gardens.  There will be wine, soft drinks and maybe some snacks.

There are loads of ways you can get involved, including some we may not have even thought of!

Do you have ICT skills?

Are you a graphic designer, or would you like to be?

Do you have loads of ideas for events?

Are you sociable?

Could you run a bar or a barbecue?

Is social media your thing?

Do you have lots of contacts?

Could you write the FoGS text for the newsletter?

Look forward to meeting you at 8pm Wednesday 9th March, adults only! 


Term Dates

Children's Mental Health Week
All Day
From 07 Feb until 11 Feb
07
February
Ms Guy George Spicer Reads Workshop
9:10am – 10:10am
10
February
Ms Guy George Spicer Reads Workshop
9:10am – 10:10am
11
February
Half Term
All Day
From 14 Feb until 18 Feb
14
February
LA Football cluster
3:30pm – 5:00pm
22
February
World Book day
All Day
03
March