This week at Pathway Primary 16.10.23

Message from the Executive Headteacher

This week has flown by as we reach new heights of learning in our school this half term. I’m really enjoy talking to children about what they have been learning in class and I’ve learned so much about Ernest Shackleton, The Great Fire of London, The Stone Age, The Romans and more.

We have such exciting and deep curriculums in our schools and I hope that you’re able to find some time at home this week to quiz the children on their learning.

We hosted another round of Open Day sessions in both schools this week and, again, it was a pleasure to show families around schools. I was overwhelmed with wonderful feedback about the conduct of our children and the learning environment that we provide. Last weekend’s ‘Oswestry 10k’ was a huge success and I’ve enjoyed seeing the photos that have been shared of our children cheering on the runners. We’ll look forward to being involved in other wonderful community events in the future.

On Thursday I had a rare morning in PE kit as I supported our teams at the Tag-Rugby tournament at Oswestry Rugby Club. I was delighted with the children’s sporting conduct and I was thankful that the teams avoided each other and I didn’t have to cheer for a draw!

Finally, it was Whittington’s turn this week to host a Local Governing Body meeting, in the form of the Teaching and Learning committee. These local groups, led by Heads of School, support individual school matters with a perfect balance of challenge and support. One more week to go! Have a great weekend.

Mr Carl Rogers Executive Headteacher.

This week at Morda

We have been pleased that so many parents have taken up the opportunity to speak to their child's class teacher at Parents’ Evenings and prospective parents enjoyed a lovely Open Day on Tuesday, including a visit to our Forest School, where a hedgehog hunt and wildlife lesson was taking place with the Daffodils group.

On the subject of hedgehogs, the local Wildlife Trust group (for whom Mrs Kavanah volunteers) have donated a wonderful willow hedgehog for our garden school. Look out for a lovely picture on the Daffodils blog.

As part of our push on reading, Mrs Helen Jones (our Reading Champion) has organised a library scavenger hunt. The Roses class enjoyed taking, looking for books from different genres, a range of authors and topics as well as newspapers and comics. They were introduced to the Dewey Decimal Classification system and were able to locate non-fiction books using alphabetical order to find the relevant number for the topic. Pupils were excited to find books that interested them, and have gained greater confidence in independently choosing books from the library. Daffodils and Shamrocks are looking forward to taking part in the library scavenger hunt soon!

Throughout the school, everyone is busy completing this half term's topics and that includes a review of what the children have learned and remembered. We call this our 'Post Topic Mind Map' This is a chance for children to recap what they have learned over the past seven weeks and make a note of the key knowledge. We use our topic 'Knowledge Organisers' to quiz the children on what they have learned. We call this type of revision 'Retrieval Practice'. It is amazing to see how much information the children have absorbed. The 'Knowledge Organisers' for history, science, RE and art are on the website - so you can quiz your child at home. I am sure you will be impressed with what they can tell you.

We are busy preparing for our Harvest Festival next week as part of our Eatwell week and we hope lots of parents will join us for the service in the village hall on Wednesday 25th October at 2.30pm.

Mrs Helen Chapman Head of School