Topic News

From time to time, usually once each half term, you will receive some news and ideas to help you keep in touch and join in with learning at Homerton. We try to make suggestions for things you might like to do with your child that are related to the work we are doing in school but which offer different experiences.

The garden is blossoming and so are the children. This is the time of year when we particularly notice how much your children have grown, both physically and in confidence, and learnt so much. We continue to observe and respond to children’s interests when planning for learning so please “tune into” your child and let us know of any exciting developments; you can do this by talking to class staff and/or writing, in your child’s Special Book, comments about their learning at home. Like most other children, mine always said they had done “nufink” at school when asked but I found out a lot by watching and listening to their play at home.

Here are some ideas for supporting learning (by playing, exploring, experimenting):-

Be prepared for learning outside; ensure your child has everything necessary for a British Summer’s day (from boots and raincoat to hat and sunblock!). You can encourage independence by discussing and choosing clothes appropriate to the weather and support your child in learning to get into and out of them unaided.

Hunting “beasties” The Reptile Experience (visiting school soon) may well capture your child’s interest in small animals, insects and they will be just as enthusiastic about woodlice, ants and worms in the garden! You could go on a mini beast hunt; carefully moving any large stone, piece of wood or flower pot should reveal a small creature or two. Talk about characteristics, such as insects have six legs, spiders have eight legs, snails have no legs and make a silvery trail and worms live mostly underground. We are watching too the tadpoles developing in our pond.

Digging: The children have opportunities to dig in our sand pit and digging area; this is good exercise and in particular develops some of the muscles needed for writing. Digging may appeal to children who do not show an interest in other forms of physical activity and can be made even more fun by seeing “how deep” you can dig or “how much” treasure you can find. A patch of earth to dig in at home may be popular. Just remember to explain where it is OK to dig to make sure your newly planted seeds and plants are not dug up by mistake!

Imaginative Play: This term the variety and complexity of this kind of play is amazing, especially outside. Children learn so much about conversations, descriptive language, how to negotiate with others and how to work things out and make sense of the world through their role. Some children may choose to play alone or with small figures or cars, for example. Children do not need expensive outfits, dolls houses or toys; in fact finding props or “pretend” items can be far more creative and fun. You could provide some empty boxes (huge washing machine type ones are especially good fun), some fabric (an old sheet would be great for a tent, or sail, or a cape) and some time and space.

Holbrook Park: You may have noticed the small park next to our garden. Holbrook Park is accessible by a narrow path a few houses along from us. In past years parents have made good use of the park, before or after school, for playing, picnicing and meeting friends.

Maths on the Back: This term every child will have at least one turn to bring a bag home. The aim is to show that maths is in everything. There are instructions in each bag but please ask if you need more ideas.

Staying Safe: Although we expect the children to challenge their physical ability and knowledge, there are high expectations for considerate and sensible behaviour at Homerton. Even very short walks (like the one we make to the allotment) can be used to reinforce the importance of, for example, holding hands and accepting adult help and instruction, whilst developing the beginnings of traffic awareness. You could combine an interesting walk (children will love spotting landmarks, counting vehicles etc) with getting fit pushchair pushing. There are some routes at www.pushchair.walks.co.uk but you could also share with friends.

Have Fun!

Governors’ Annual Report to Parents

9 Latham Road

Cambridge

CB2 2EG

July 2007

Dear Parents

Governors’ Annual Report to Parents

We hope that you have enjoyed your year at Homerton. Communicating with our parents is a very important part of what we do. This rather formal report is just a small part of that communication with you, starting from your first visit to the nursery school and the staff visit to talk to your child at home, through a year of frequent reports and newsletters to the final profile of your child which will go onto his or her next school. The government requires that this report covers specific items so please contact me or a fellow governor if you have questions or other areas where you would like more detail.

The governing body’s main link with parents is through our parent governors who report to the governors on parent issues and are the sounding board for the head teacher and their fellow governors. I would like to take the opportunity of this report to thank them for all that they do on your behalf. In a nursery school where children are with us for such a short time, parent governors find they are called on to organising events and fund raise as well as contributing to the governing body, activities which would be done by a separate PTA in a primary school.

Another big thank you must to go to the staff. Governors know from the monitoring visits of our inspector and the national recognition that the school receives that our staff do a fantastic job for your children. During the past year, Homerton has progressed from one of only two Early Excellence Centres in Cambridgeshire to achieve designation as a Children’s Centre and to come out of an Ofsted inspection as outstanding.

My final thank you is to my fellow governors for their support, wisdom and willingness to get stuck in. Apart from the parent governors, we probably remain a shadowy group but I hope you have enjoyed what we have helped to support. If there are issues you think we should have addressed, comments you would like to make for improvement or change, please do let me know before you move on to another school via the school or email me on anne.kent@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Yours

Anne Kent

Chair of Governors

HOMERTON NURSERY SCHOOL GOVERNORs’ annual report

The Homerton Nursery School Governing Body is made up of Parent, Staff, Community and LEA-appointed governors. Parent governors are elected by the parents of the school and Staff Governors are elected by the school staff. Community Governors are chosen by the governors and the Head teacher can choose whether to be a governor. Most governors serve for a four year term.

A Governing Body has a duty to do three things:

To give a strategic view of where the school should be heading,

To act as a critical friend to the school

To hold the school to account for the educational standards and the quality of education it provides.

The members of our governing body are:

Anne Kent LEA Governor (Chair of Governors)

Hilary Stokes LEA Governor (Vice Chair of Governors)

David Whitebread LEA Governor

Karen Laverick Parent Governor

Mairi Huntly Parent Governor

Ian Hutchinson Parent Governor

Helen Thurley Parent Governor

Sonia Trickey Parent Governor

Jane Morris Parent Governor

Cathy Bennett Community Governor

Susannah Oberholzer Community Governor

Heather Lowe Staff Governor

Carol Ketteridge Staff Governor

Alex Pearson Staff Governor

Ruth Pimentel Associate Governor

The Clerk to the Governors was Sally Stuart until Sept 06 and Sue Smith from Sept onwards.

Report on the School Year

Curriculum

We have planned the curriculum slightly differently this year which has resulted in a more child focused approach. In the past we have produced fairly detailed plans for half a term’s work around a chosen topic. We felt that the plans were dominating our work rather than the children! So we have observed the play much more and let the children’s interests and individual needs guide us. Consequently the Once Upon a Time theme ran for nearly a whole term as the children were really interested and involved in this. At the end of this topic the staff performed an excellent play based loosely on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

On a recent visit from our Assigned Inspector who looked at Early Reading, our teaching and learning was judged to be outstanding.

Working with our artist over the course of 4 days was also very inspiring. The children made some fantastic abstract shapes in wire, they worked on fabric, they explored modelling magic (a soft brightly coloured malleable substance), made transparent sculptures and clay heads. As well as initiating the children’s creative ideas this was valuable training for staff who will develop these ideas further in their classes.

The maths project, encouraging children’s mark making in numerals is also progressing well. We are providing more relevant and real life opportunities in maths throughout the school and children love taking resources from the maths tool boxes so that they can measure how tall their sunflower has grown or using the counting beads in the box.

The Homerton Nursery pond has provided some really good specimens of wild life for the children to observe closely in their growing topic. As well as the usual tadpoles and snails, some lucky pond dippers found newts. The children’s interest in the natural world was really engaged when we had a visit from Reptile Experience. Even the most timid child was able to stroke the enormous snake that visited, and the other minibeasts provoked much conversation.

The nutritionist again visited this year and talked to the children about the importance of eating healthily, promoting the 5 fruit and veg theme. She also gave a talk to the parents.

Alan Brigham, the well known road sweeper in Cambridge talked to the children about rubbish, recycling, effects on the environment etc and demonstrated this in a really practical fun way for the children to understand.

Provision for children with special educational needs

The admission arrangements for SEN children has been in line with other years except for the fact that we began the year with five classes so the children were divided between these five classes instead of the usual six. This has meant that in one of the classes there were two high need children. We have three children with statements of special educational need, a further child has been referred for statutory assessment and nine other children are on the special needs register at differentiation, school action and school action plus. This year there have been a significant number of children whose needs have only just been identified after starting their nursery placement here.

Our SENCO, TA’s and Nursery Nurses have attended a number of courses over the year. Many of the staff attended a series of evening courses by Terry Gilligan, a speech and language therapist based in Huntingdon. The courses covered topics such as, ADHD, Phonological Disorders, Problems with Auditory Comprehension and Verbal Reasoning Skills. One of the TA’s is currently attending a ten week Elklan Course – Speech and language support in the classroom. Another TA has attended a Social Stories Course recently and we are already using some social stories with some of the children diagnosed on the Autistic Spectrum, to help them adapt to change. The SENCO is due to attend a National Children’s Bureau Conference entitled ‘Including Me’ - Managing complex health needs in schools and early years settings.

The Senco is continuing to extend the specialist resources we have to help support the children’s development.

Professional development of staff and governors

All staff have had a 6 hour intensive training in First Aid. This means that we are qualified first aiders and will hold that qualification for the next 3 years.

We also attended a Fire Safety course and are very proficient in the use of fire extinguishers and understanding what causes fires and the different sources of fire.

The head teacher, staff and governors have had training on Performance Management and intend to develop our existing structures next year. The governors and head teacher have also had training on the new Ofsted Self Evaluation Framework. We should be therefore well prepared for the next inspection.

The head teacher and governors have had online training for Safer Recruitment, where we had to pass a test with a minimum of 80% marks. (Very nerve wracking, but we passed!) This is to ensure that we have all the correct procedures in place in order to protect the safety of the children when we recruit staff or take on volunteers.

All the staff attended maths training where we looked at the stages in children’s mathematical mark making, and the role of adults extending children’s ideas. Sue Ray, who is our lead practitioner in this works with the other 5 nurseries to develop our mathematical practice.

Some staff also went to a very interesting Early Years literacy conference.

As you have read there has been much SEN training.

Governors have had a training session on their role in achieving the outcomes of Every Child Matters and have attended training courses run by the LEA governor training service. They have also devoted several sessions of their meetings to learning about and preparing for the Homerton’s new role as a children’s centre.

Security of the school and of the children

The Safer Recruitment training means that we have a high level of safety when recruiting new members of staff or using volunteers. An audit of our practice in this field noted one point of minor concern which we have taken steps to remedy.

A recent security audit highlighted the need to security mark all ICT equipment and to padlock the dustbin to a post. (No, they were not worried about rubbish being stolen, but the possibility of setting light to the rubbish and pushing the bin near to the school). We have taken action on both points.

Parent Governors’ Activities:

This year the Parent Governors have been busy helping raise funds and organising activities for parent and the children. It was lovely to start off the Autumn Term with a welcome picnic in Homerton park. The picnic in the summer term was lots of fun. The sale of Barefoot and Usbourne books helped provide new books for the library. The Christmas play acted by parents to the children was great fun and we would like to thank the parents who volunteered to help. The Christmas raffle was a great success and raised £257. The children loved the Easter Chick Hunt and we donated £83.96 for the Snow Fair Appeal. The Bake sale raised an amazing £199.50 and we would like to thank everyone for their donations and help. The sale of Phoenix Trading cards help donate £68.91. The cheese and wine evening proved to be a successful social event. Finally the Really Wheelie Trail has raised over £500. A big thank you to everyone for the support and help.

Finance Report

The School Budget for the financial year 2006/7 was made up as follows:

Total Budget £584,568

of which the main elements were: Staff costs 416,645

Premises costs 32,077

Supplies and services 24,345

Curriculum expenses 12,030

School Defined Activity 26,395

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