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Congratulations to our new 2023-2024 school councillors who were elected by their class peers earlier this term.
It was straight onto business in their first council meeting last week, deciding on their key priority for this term: How to create more things to do or play at lunchtimes?
Councillors asked their classmates for suggestions regarding equipment and games and decided, as a group, what equipment they could purchase according to their allocated budget. Their next step will be decide how to share these resources between the two primary school playgounds.
Future projects will also involve getting involved in the local community and developing links with a local charity. Check back here for further updates.
What is Rainbow Talk?
If you have been following our Instagram posts, you may have heard about “Rainbow Talk” but what actually is Rainbow Talk?
Rainbow Talk is a fun, organised and creative way of encouraging talking, building confidence in communication and developing and promoting thinking skills—which are all at the very heart of young children’s learning.
Through the use of colour and image pointers, Rainbow Talk provides a structure to support children as they develop their talk about objects, experiences and ideas—proving ‘hooks’ on which they can add new information. The ‘Rainbow fan’ (as shown above) comprises of the 5 senses plus feeling and thinking which can used in different combinations based on their suitability to the stimulus being used at that time.
As well as supporting talk for effective and confident communication, Rainbow Talk is also an invaluable resource for vocabulary building, developing thinking skills, and promoting supporting and inspiring children to write.
Many thanks to Ann Dawson for the development of Rainbow talk and for its introduction here at Malin Bridge School.
Not another lost cardigan…
Every day, we find lots of lost uniform items left all around the school and yard. Children abandon their cardigans and coats at the drop of a very small hat! These items are regularly collected up and brought to lost property where they are searched for identifying information. We have a lovely lady in school who is equipped with a big list and whose job it is to process this school uniform and return it to the children’s classroom for returning to the child. This is why it is so important to clearly mark all uniform items with your child’s name. Unlabelled items are then sorted into clothing type and stored in the boxes in the lost property area of the junior building for collection by parents/carers.
Occasionally, it may happen that an item may be taken home by the wrong child but this is usually returned on recovery of the error. Item slefy on the classroom are usually stored in the child’s drawer.
The above processes can take number of days to complete so please be patient.
We know how much time, money and effort it can take to keep a child supplied with correct uniform so please feel to take from the Uniform Recycling Area next to the Lost Property Area. Unclaimed items from Lost Property, that still have a lot of life in them but are not named are moved into the Uniform Recycling Area at the end of a term. Parents can also donate lightly used uniform by bringing it to the office. All items are free of charge and can be borrowed, washed and returned or simply and taken (labelled) and used.
04/09/2023 – A message from our head teacher regarding the recent school closures due to lightweight concrete:
Dear Parents and Carers,
You may have seen recent media coverage regarding Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) and its use in educational settings. RAAC is a lightweight form of concrete; because it is weaker than regular concrete, concerns have been raised about its long-term durability. Department for Education (DfE) has recently changed its guidance to education settings on the management of RAAC to take a more precautionary approach and as a result areas in affected spaces will be vacated.
We wanted to inform you that we are not affected by this decision as we do not have RAAC in any of our buildings and therefore they will continue to function as normal. We understand that parents may want to understand more about the support to educational settings to manage RAAC safely. You can read more through the article published by the DfE on the Education Hub.
I hope that this offers reassurance.
Yours faithfully,
Robbie McGrath
Headteacher