Dear Parents and Carers,

Another week has flown by  - quite literally with the help of Storm Jocelyn who left her mark on our playground! Luckily we are fortunate to have all of our beautiful (albeit muddy) grounds at the front of school to use as an alternative while Mr Gidman works on the playground. We are hoping to be able to use it again next week but having wellies in school would be useful to avoid the inside of school becoming a mud trail!

 

Big Garden Watch Weekend

Today is the start of the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. It is the world's largest garden wildlife survey. Every year lots of people take part and it helps the RSPB to build a picture of how garden birds are faring.

If you would like to take part below is a short video. There are also bags of birdseed and a guide to the top 10 garden birds at reception.

Happy Birdwatching!

https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch

 

Forest Schools

Congratulations to Mrs Williams who has completed her Forest Schools training meaning that we are now an accredited Forest School provider. Research shows that the benefits of this type of outdoor learning are numerous and far reaching - benefiting mental health, resilience, problem solving and academic performance. We are very excited to start incorporating this into our curriculum after half term. We will start a rolling programme where each class has half a term of Forest Schools as part of their PE curriculum.

 

Young Musician of the Year A message from Mrs Elkin, our music lead:

Just before Christmas we entered 4 of our Year 6 Musicians into the new Co-op Musician of the Year Competition: Millie - flute, Florence - guitar, Imogen and Gini - clarinet.  They were recorded playing a chosen piece. These pieces were then submitted to be judged. Well done to all 4 musicians. It's quite nerve racking being filmed playing a solo!

There were 186 entries and only 41 musicians have been chosen to go through to the semi-finals. Gini is one of these semi-finalists!  Our region's semi-final will take place at the Mitchell Arts Centre in Hanley during March. We are delighted to have someone representing Co-op Academy Friarswood.

We are so proud of all of our musicians who have lessons at school on clarinet, flute, guitar, violin, guitar or piano. If you have private lessons outside of school, please let me know so we can celebrate your success too!

Next year, we're hoping to open the competition up to all players. Watch this space.

Good luck Gini! 

 

 

On Tuesday 39 members of our school choir went to Birmingham to take part in the Young Voices Concert at The Resort Arena. It was a long day (the coach left school at 10AM and didn’t return until just before 11PM!) but an amazing time was had by all and the children represented our school beautifully. Thank you to Mrs Elkin, Mrs Dickens, Miss Smith, Mrs Master and Mrs Bebbington for volunteering their time to allow the children to be part of such a fabulous opportunity to perform.

You can see photographs of the day on our website 

Year 6 Choir Members Anna-Frieda, Gini, Florence and Amelia have written this report of their exciting day.

 

"39 of our choir members went to the Young Voices Concert on Tuesday. As we entered Birmingham Resorts World Arena, full of excitement and bursting to sing, we realised it was a much bigger venue than we had imagined! 

We rehearsed from 2 - 5pm. The rehearsal started with  'The Moment' Young Voices 2024 official song. From the moment we opened our mouths the connection between not only us a Co-op Academy Friarswood Choir,  but the other 5,832 pupils was more than clear. A huge amount of children and their accompanying staff, singing together was beautiful and such fun!

We sang with an amazing live band and  3 backing singers Otto, Maddy and Jane. We also had 3 stars: Natalaie Williams a talented singer, Nandi Bushell an amazing drummer who is only 13 and MC Grammar who is actually a teacher! We also loved dancing along with Urban Strides, the dance group. 

There were lots of surprises during the actual concert. At 7pm the arena sky filled with stars and we all went mad! We sang and danced and the parents even joined in too. We created the biggest Mexican wave and had buckets of fun!

Thank you to Mrs Elkin for organising everything, to Mrs Dickens and Miss Smith who are also part of Co-op Academy Friarswood Choir and Mrs Bebbington and Mrs Master who enjoyed fabulous singing and dancing with us too."

 

PTA

Our wonderful PTA have been busy organising our first events of the year. Here are some dates for your diary:

If you haven’t done so already please could you fill in the PTA Feedback questionnaire. This gives the PTA an overall idea of what events you would like to see and events that are going well. 

 

Attendance
Our attendance this week has been 97.1% putting us in the top 2% of schools nationwide - congratulations everyone for working hard to keep our children learning!

 

Upcoming Dates

Valentine's Disco	7.2.24	See attached poster
Inset Day	9.2.24	School and Small & Tall Closed
February Half Term	12.2.24 -16.2.24
Mother's Day Lunch	6.3.24
World Book Day	8.3.24
Non-uniform for chocolate bingo	15.3.24
Celebration of Learning	18.3.24	2.15pm
Chocolate Bingo	20.3.24
Easter Holidays	25.3.24 - 5.4.24

 

Ms Hartley