Newsletters

George Spicer Newsletter - Friday 7th October 2022

Harvest - A big thank you goes out to all those families that donated to the North Enfield Food Bank this week. There was an impressive amount and shows the compassion and generosity demonstrated by our school community. Thank you. 

Breakfast and After School Club - Can now be contacted via BASC@georgespicer.enfield.sch.uk. Please ensure communication relating to breakfast and after school club is sent to this email address. 

Year 6 secondary school transfer - A reminder that deadline to submit your application is 31st October 2022. Please click on this link to apply School Admissions and for more information visit  www.eadmissions.org.uk

Important dates for your diary:

Wednesday 2nd November - Individual children's photographs during the school day and an opportunity for family photographs after school at the Sketty Road site from 3.30pm -4.30pm

Monday 21st November - Parent Consultant's 3.40pm - 6pm

Wednesday 23rd November - Parent Consultant's 3.40pm - 7.30pm 

Friday 2^nd December - Y4&5 Carol Service at Enfield Baptist Church

Friday 9^th December - Y3&6 Carol Service at St Andrews Church

Introduction from the new Chair of Governors

We would like to introduce ourselves as the new Chair of Governors – in fact Co-Chairs - for George Spicer primary school. Our names are Deborah Dykins and Anne Del Greco

We were recently elected following Phil Page’s decision to step down at the end of the summer term. Phil led the governors over the last 9 years and we would like to thank him for all his hard work and dedication to the school, especially during the pandemic and the development of the Kimberley Gardens site.

We have been co-opted governors at George Spicer for 4 years (Anne) and 2 years (Deborah). We both have backgrounds in education, have lived and worked in Enfield and have played active roles as governors particularly with regards to safeguarding, the wellbeing of pupils and staff, health and safety and pupils achievement, giving us a good knowledge of the school.

The Governing body has four main purposes, which are to:

• support the headteacher and all the staff
• ensure the school has a clear vision, ethos and direction
• hold the headteacher to account for the educational performance of its pupils, and the performance management of staff
• oversee the financial performance of the school and make sure its money is well spent. 

We will shortly update the governor section on the school website so you can find out more about the governors and what we do.
We also want to say a huge thank you to all the staff at the school for all their hard work, especially during the last couple of very challenging years for all the school community. They are a committed team who we have had the privilege of speaking to, observing and supporting. We are looking forward to supporting Mr Spong and the staff in our new role and to meeting more members of staff. We aim to work with all the other governors to build upon the strengths of the school and collectively strive for the best outcomes for every child.

We hope to meet as many parents as possible during our visits to the school, but if you would like to contact us, please do so via the school office by emailing office@georgespicer.enfield.sch.uk

Kind regards
Anne Del Greco & Deborah Dykins

Safer School Streets

I wanted to give parents a quick update regarding the number of Fixed Penalty Notices that have been issued since our Safer School Streets cameras went live.  In the first 2 weeks back in July 172 Warning notices were issued.  Since then 167 FPNs have been issued including 116 since the start of term.  I am hopeful that the majority of these are not our parents and that you are using the park and stride locations.  In the coming months more measures will be coming into place to prevent cars using the side roads to avoid the cameras, which I wholeheartedly support.

Inconsiderate Parking

Despite several warnings it is clear that parents are still selfishly parking across peoples driveways along Southbury Road (See pictures below).  Two of our school values are Kindness and Respect please model these to your children and our wider community and don’t be so selfish when parking.  I will again be contacting the Police and Parking Enforcement agencies to conduct regular patrols of the area.

This week we kicked off our Black History Month celebrations in school. Mrs Mangiapane and Miss Eberle delivered fascinating assemblies on inventor Garret Morgan, who invented the traffic light, the smoke hood (a precursor to the gas mask) and a range of hair care products. The children learned how Morgan used

 a white actor to pretend to be him so that more people would buy his product! KS2 also learned about James E. West, an inventor from Virginia, who was a key individual in the development of the microphone. Thank you to Miss Dawson and Miss Keceli for putting this together. Over the next few weeks, children will be introduced from a range of people from our community as part of our 'See It to Be It Celebration'. Keep up with everything on the Twitter page @GeorgeSpicerSch  

Wellbeing Day ~ Mental Health Day 10^th October 2022   

Next week at George Spicer, the staff and children will be recognising World Mental Health Day by investigating different emotions that may arise at various times in our lives.  Each year group will be exploring a specific emotion and discussing scenarios that might trigger the emotion. They will gain a deeper understanding of what the emotion looks and feels like and most importantly, develop strategies for coping with ‘tricky’ emotions and realise how they can turn a negative emotion into a positive action. 

Look out for each year groups wonderful work in next week’s newsletter.  

Attendance week ending 07/10/2022

Overall school = 94.34%  Lates = 40

Best attendance: 1st Robin & Odysseus 98.79% 2nd Sparrow 97.89% 3rd Ash 97%

Punctuality: Well done Bluebell, Primrose, Willow, Woodpecker, Odysseus and Hurricanes all with 100% for punctuality 

Reception Class

In Reception we have been reading the book, 'The circles all around us.' It is the story of a circle that starts with us as individuals and circles get added as we expand our lives whilst growing up. The children thought very carefully about who is in their circles. Most children drew their family and pets in the circle outside of themselves. Ava said, "My next circle has my mummy and my daddy and my brother and my nanny in it." Leo said, "To get our circles bigger we make friends."

Year 1

This week in Maths, Year 1 have been comparing amounts. We grouped different objects and compared them using the language 'more' and 'fewer'. We then used the greater than and less than symbols to compare numbers. We looked at the number lines to help us identify which numbers are greater. 

In English, we have been looking at 'What am I' riddles. We practised writing a riddle altogether. Here is the riddle that Oak class wrote. Can you guess what they were describing? 

I have an orange chest and face.

I am small.

I am covered in feathers. 

I have skinny legs and sharp claws.

I can fly.

What am I?

Later on in the week we will practise writing our own riddle. Keep an eye out in next week's newsletter to see some of our riddles! 

Year 2

This week in Year 2 we have had exciting news – the butterflies have begun to emerge from their chrysalises!

As part of our ‘Habitats’ topic this week we have been learning how to mix colours together to paint rural landscapes.  First we recapped primary and secondary colours and how to mix brown (a primary and a secondary colour mixed together).  Then we learned how to mix tints by adding white to a colour.  The pupils were amazing and were able to recall how to mix the paints independently. 

We were also very lucky last Friday to have a wonderful visitor, Carolyn, to explain the festival of Rosh Hashanah to the pupils as part of our RE curriculum.  All the children were so engaged in the session and asked lots of questions, particularly about the different foods that are eaten and why. 

Year 3 

This week in English we have been learning to describe, evaluate and interpret a piece of artwork. The abstract artist we have been focussing on is Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid. Each day we have studied a different piece of Zeid's art and written our own art critique. Some examples of our writing are shown below. 

    (Fight against abstraction, 1948)       

  (My Hell, 1951) 

Year 5 

 PSHE

During PSHE this week, Year 5 started their session by watching a short video which showed a man protesting about having refugees in his county.  He wore a placard saying, ‘Refugees are scum’.  They children observed the horrified reactions this man got from the people walking past him on the street. 

They then watched as the same man stood on the same street wearing a placard saying, ‘Help refugees,” whilst trying to hand out information leaflets about what people can do to help them. Again, they were asked to observe the reactions of the people walking past. 

At George Spicer, we are very proud to be a Gold Rights Respecting School.  We know our Rights and the Rights of others but how do we show these rights are respected! Knowing them is not enough – we must respect them through our actions.  

The children then used the UNCRC Charter to offer some advice to a variety of problems faced by some young children who were about to start at our school.  Here is an example of one of the scenario and the advice and reassurances they offered.  

Hi my name is Imari.  My parents moved to this country for work.  I don’t speak the same language as you.  In my last school I got teased because I was different from the other children.  My parents are sending me to a new school hoping I will be happier there. 

Advice from the children:  We are a Gold Rights Respecting school and we will make sure you feel welcome and safe.  If we are seen being kind and supportive to others and respecting these rights, we are moved up the ladder or given a star of the week. Kindness is one of our values.  

In our school, we have families that come from all over the world.  Lots of the children in our school speak another language like Turkish or Polish.  Some came to our school and didn’t speak much English like Defne.  She gets lots of help from the teachers.  They give her special resources to make sure she understands.  

As class teachers, we were very impressed with the thought-provoking discussions the children had with their partners and also the advice that they offered which was supportive, friendly and kind. Well done Year 5! 

Year 6 

Computing 

This week, Year 6 have started their computer unit looking at coding. We began by looking at how technology has evolved, even over the course of 20 years. To do this, we were given 7 different mobile phones, with the earliest dating back from 2002. We had to decide on the chronological order of these phones by their appearance. 

We then began to learn about different written codes and how to break them. We were given 5 different styles and had to, with our partners, use the given information to solve the code. We found some easier than others.  

We then learnt about a very famous code used during WW2 (the enigma) and the secret war that took place. Learning about Bletchley park, we discovered how the people based here helped save millions of lives and may have even shortened the war by 2 years. 

This links to UNCRC Article 17: Access to information as without the information found in these coded messages, the allies may not have won the war. 

We look forward to continuing our computing unit over the next two weeks.

GSPS Ambassadors

Congratulations to our newly appointed GSPS Ambassadors.

We are delighted to announce that the KS2 GSPS & Community Ambassadors had their first meeting last week.  The new ambassadors are excited to be a part of the school councils and have their voices heard.  Watch this space for news and updates on their upcoming activities and ideas.

Meet the Ambassadors

This year the KS2 GSPS Ambassadors are:

Year 6 – Lewis, Madina, Zakariya and Ethan

Year 5 – Bella, Meghan, Leyla and Kesha

Year 4 – Harry, Erin, Emilia and Theo

Year 3 – Erin, Elektra, Edith and Zia

The KS2 Community Ambassadors are:

Year 6 - Olivia, Mason, Melina and Aden

Year 5 -  Khan, Jessica, Luca and Anders 

Year 3 -  Hannah, Dimitris, Almira and Kamal

The Community Ambassadors are currently working on ideas for Road Safety Week on November 7th.