Click on the link to view our SIAMS Inspection Report.
FREE Healthy Snacks
FREE healthy snacks for kids on the go this summer
During the school holidays free healthy snacks will be available to all kids visiting any Durham County council swimming pool, library or community library every day they are open.
Snacks on offer include bananas, satsumas, apples, popcorn and raisins etc. The snacks will help to ensure that kids have access to something quick and healthy to eat during holidays rather than chocolate and sugary snacks.
Details of local swimming pools and libraries can be found at: https://www.durham.gov.uk/leisure
Online safety update – Fortnite
Fortnite is a really popular game with many primary and secondary children. The guide in the link below may be useful when discussing gaming with your child.
Performance at the Sage in Gateshead
On Saturday 17th March, one of our Year 6 children, Elle Hayes, performed at the Sage in Gateshead! Elle joined nearly 70 other children to play her cornet in Durham District Showcase Wind Band, led by our fantastic peripatetic Music teacher Miss Fiona Casewell. As part of our Year 5 & 6 school music lessons for the past two years, all children have learned to play a brass instrument – either baritone or cornet. Elle chose the cornet and is now quite proficiently confident to join the band who practise weekly. They performed in front of an audience of almost 1000 at the Sage Concert Hall! Their repertoire included: Surfin’ Safari, Project Mars, Jus Plain Blues and Liturgical Fanfare. Along with her family, we are very proud of Elle’s musical achievement.
World Book Day 2018
World Book Day 2018
On Friday 9th March, our children came to school dressed as characters from their favourite books to celebrate World Book Day. Even though it was a week late because of last week’s snow, we all really enjoyed the day! We had characters from Disney stories, Harry Potter, David Walliams, super heroes, Roald Dahl, footballers, traditional stories and even Trolls!
We all love reading at St. John’s – feeding our imaginations and helping us improve our reading and writing. Books are amazing!
We also say a big thank you to all parents and carers for the help getting their children’s costumes ready for World Book Day!
Safer Internet Day – 6th February 2018
Today is Safer Internet Day and we would like to take this opportunity to remind you of the importance of online safety for our pupils. Please see below some resources which we think are particularly useful for parents wishing to know more about these issues:
Fundraising
Thank you to everyone who attended or donated to our recent Coffee Morning. You helped raise an amazing sum of £220. This will be split between Macmillan Cancer Support and The Children’s Society.
You also donated over 700 cans for the 1000 can challenge. Again, this is amazing achievement. There were over 2000 cans in total donated by the local schools to St John’s Church and these will all be shared out to our local community.
Thank you for all your help.
Snapchat Snap Maps: Advice for Parents
Snapchat has developed a new feature call Snapmaps which allows users to see the location of other users of snapchat. There are three possible settings, sharing with no-one (Ghost Mode), sharing with select friends (Chose which friends you share your location with) and my friends (Share your location with all your friends).
Many children have a large number of ‘friends’ on their accounts who they probably do not know well, and could be accidentally sharing their location.
Please can parents check their child’s privacy settings if you allow your child to use Snapchat.
For full details click on the link below.
Online Safety Advice
We have become aware of a significant number of issues with children sharing content using the app musical.ly, and also safety issues involving the game Roblox.
Full details can be found by clicking on the following links.
Train to Teach
Dear Parent / Carer
Do you have any family members or friends that are looking to train to teach in 2017?
St. John’s C of E Primary School is working with Prince Bishops Teaching School Alliance and we are part of a growing number of schools providing outstanding school-led teacher training. This is really important to us because it means we can choose the very best talent and develop them into teachers. Being able to choose who we train as teachers helps us in delivering the best outcomes for our students.
We would be interested to hear from you if you are thinking of becoming a teacher, or know someone who is. We are looking for people who have (or will have) a degree, a passion for teaching and want to inspire young people to fulfil their potential.
We are now meeting individuals who are looking to train to teach and embark on our school direct training programme which will start in September 2017.
We are hosting both primary and secondary train to teach school experience days across the North East, where we will provide potential students with support, guidance and answers to any questions they may have. Those interested in training to teach will also have the opportunity to find out about our successful volunteer programme. Many of our previous school direct students have confirmed that our volunteer programme provided them with the necessary experience needed to enhance their UCAS application.
Places are limited on our school experience days and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
Should you require any further information regarding our programme then please do not hesitate contact our Teaching School Manager – Colleen Miller on colleen.miller@pbtsa.co.uk or if you would like to attend one of our school experience days, please visit our website and book your place: http://www.pbtsa.co.uk/what-we-do/train-to-teach/.
Yours sincerely
Mr. A. Farnell
Please see the About Us section of the website for more details on our partnership with The Prince Bishops Teaching Schools Alliance.
