Update 4th January 2021

Dear Parents/Carers,

The Newdale team have all been working very hard today, making sure we are ready to welcome your children back to school tomorrow.

We are aware that there is a Government announcement at 8pm tonight that may change things, but we wanted to share as much information as we can now, with things as they currently stand.

We have further reviewed our risk assessment and consulted staff on measures we feel would limit risk to a greater degree.

Procedures that stay the same –

• Parents are required to continue using the one way system, maintaining safe distances to other people and must wear face coverings at all times on our site.
• Parents must air on the side of caution and not send children into school if they are displaying any symptoms of the virus, or any other illness.
• Lunches will be delivered to class bases so that children can remain in their allocated seats to avoid additional close contact with others.
• PE will continue as normal but adults leading PE will ensure that children are moving around for the whole session, again to avoid close contact.
• Very regular hand washing and sanitising will continue to take place throughout the day.
• Children in KS 1 and 2 will continue to have allocated seats so that we have seating plans to access should a positive case arise. (This is more difficult for our youngest children, but rest assured safety measures are in place to minimise risk).
• Staff are to continue to wear face coverings in communal areas.

Additional measures –

• Staff are now invited to take more regular rapid tests to ensure they are not carrying the virus into school.
• Staff will continue to whole class teach throughout the day, but will not be running intervention groups and focus group teaching sessions.
• Staff will not be hearing individual children read. We therefore ask you to read as often as you can with your children at home.
• Parents need to keep on the move when dropping off and picking up children. We therefore ask you to not stop to deliver messages to teachers or teaching assistants and to do this via telephoning school or via year group email addresses which are posted below.
• Reading diaries will be collected in tomorrow and not handed out again until Monday. From then on reading diaries will be collected in every Friday and handed out again every Monday until further notice. This is to reduce risk of transmitting the virus.

If you require any further information about your child’s class, please use the year group email. This will be monitored daily and staff will get back to you as quickly as they can. Also don’t forget to refer to the class pages on our website which will be updated regularly.

Reception: newdale.yearrteam@taw.org.uk

Year 1:  newdale.year1team@taw.org.uk

Year 2:  newdale.year2team@taw.org.uk

Year 3:  newdale.year3team@taw.org.uk

Year 4:  newdale.year4team@taw.org.uk

Year 5:  newdale.year5team@taw.org.uk

Year 6:  newdale.year6team@taw.org.uk

Obviously this is an ever changing picture and we are only able to work with the information we have at this time. We appreciate it is a very difficult situation and rest assured we always have your children at the centre when decision making. We will send further information should anything change overnight.

Thank you for ongoing support.

Miss Cook

Headteacher