City AcademyWhitehawk
Mr Church’s Newsletter
9thMarch 2018
Congratulations to our first ‘Million Word Reader’, Oscar from Y6. This means he has read books that total 1,000,000 words since November!
Thank you all for your patience and support with the challenges that we faced with the snow and disruptive weather last week. Closing the school is always the last option but we also need to ensure that the school runs safely and effectively. Last week we had concerns at times over staff being able to get to school and also over the safety of some of the footpaths around the school. When Mr Hill (Premises Manager) and myself inspected the site Wednesday morning, there was significant icy patches on some of our footpaths that would have become more dangerous as the day went on. There were at times problems with the buses running in the Whitehawk area which also made the situation more challenging.
All of the local Head Teachers speak regularly and it was clear that many other schools in East Brighton and Woodingdean were suffering from similar issues. Many of these local schools were also closed during this difficult period.
INSET Dates
As you have seen from a separate letter, school is closed for INSET training on the following dates for the 2017-18 year:
Friday 15th June
Monday 23rd July
Tuesday 24th July
This means that the final date for children to come to school this academic year is Friday 20th July. I will be writing to you all soon with details for 2018-19 INSET dates.
Paragon Events – Spring 2nd Half Term
We had some fantastic events last half term, please try to attend the next round! Children and staff really appreciate it!
Y1: Thursday 22nd March
Y2: Wednesday 21st March
Y3: Tuesday 20th March
Y4: Tuesday 27th March
Y5: Monday 26th March
Y6: Wednesday 28th March
Facebook Page
One good outcome from the bad weather last week was the fact that our Facebook page has nearly doubled in followers. If you haven’t followed yet, please do! Search ‘City Academy Whitehawk’.
Last newsletter, Mrs Storey wrote a piece explaining her role. This time it is the turn of our PE Specialist Teacher, Mr Chick to let you know about how PE/Sport is getting on in the school.
I have been delighted to see our school sports teams do so well in the last couple of months! All of the children across the school work so hard in PE lessons and it is great to see their hard work allow them to compete so successfully with other schools. Below are some headlines from the last couple of months (if you would like to read full reports they are on our school website in the ‘PE and Sport’ section):
Basketball: In early January we had three friendly basketball matches against St John the Baptist which we drew overall. Then in February we participated in the first ever 4 team basketball tournament here at our school, and in the final we lost 8-6 to finish runners up!
Indoor Athletics: In our best showing for a long time at the annual indoor athletics competition we finished 3rd out of 8 schools, competing in events involving running, jumping and throwing skills. We have since found out this performance helped us to finish 13th out of 30 Brighton and Hove schools- our best finish in many years!
Football: In the Autumn Term Boys’ Football League we finished 3rd out of 7 schools overall. Then this January, we got through to the quarter finals of the Fitzgerald Cup thanks to a great 4-3 win v Saltdean.
Hockey: Two weeks ago, we attended the quicksticks hockey tournament for the first time. We played exceptionally well, won 4 out of 5 matches and came 2nd on goal difference in our pool of six schools.
Well done to all the children involved in these fantastic sports performances- let’s keep aspiring to perform as well, and perhaps even better, at these inter-school sportingcompetitions!
Finally I’d also like to tell everyone that we have some exciting new clubs being planned for the summer term. Since Mrs Storey has joined the school, we have been working hard to get new clubs to add to the current favourites and these clubs will be:
Table TennisTag RugbyAthletics
Active StorytellingCoding
Watch out at the end of term for more news on these and possibly more summer clubs!