A Review of Last Half Term

The children settled into their new classes quickly and have coped well with the increased demands and expectations of the higher class despite this being quite a challenge for many of them. We hope that your child has settled into a pattern for homework and that you are able to support the weekly learning of spellings and regular reading at home as part of that homework.

Our awareness of those less fortunate than ourselves was quickly raised through our Jeans for Genes day (we raised £150) and our collection of harvest produce that was very gratefully received by St George's Crypt. Thank you for your contributions for both those causes and also for supporting the PTA coffee morning for the Macmillan Nurses appeal, where over £200 was raised.

Year 6 held their residential at Holly How in Cumbria much earlier this year. They all had a super time and enjoyed the good late summer weather. They were not so fortunate on their Geography study morning in Roundhay Park when they got soaked!

We all enjoyed the concerts given by the Wind trio and years 4 and 5 also had a workshop on Tudor dancing with them. Years 3, 4 and 5 benefited from working with the safety rangers on various aspects of safety.

School Meals

There has been some recent adverse publicity about the quality of school meals. We are happy to confirm that at St John's our school meals are of a high quality, the children have plenty of choice and they receive a balanced meal each day. Mrs Lee regularly talks to children about their likes and dislikes and is happy to adapt menus to meet the children's wishes.

On the other hand, we are concerned about the meals that some children are bringing for a packed lunch. Many of the younger ones find it difficult getting into the packaging of what they bring and some of them seem to have a meal that is high in salt and sugar but low in protein and carbohydrate. Also, from some children a great deal of their lunch is thrown away despite our best attempts to get children to bring unwanted food home. We do not like to see such costly waste. As a "Healthy School", we want to support all our children to eat well.

If you wish your child to change from packed lunch to school meals, please see Mrs Davies or one of the office staff.

Absence from school

Hopefully you all received a copy of a letter from our Education Welfare Officer at the end of last half term about absence from school. If you have not received this, please ask for a copy.

Useful web-sites

You may be interested in accessing one of the following websites that are available from home.
www.learnpremium.co.uk is owned by The Guardian and contains useful curriculum material for children and parents. The school has a subscription to this site and to access it you will need:
User name ID: roundhaystjohns
Password: ls85qj

www.parentcentre.gov.uk is a Department for Education and Skills website that contains a range of useful material for parents.

Pantomime

The PTA have arranged for Leeds Art Theatre Group to present Cinderella as a performance for children and their families. This will be on Tuesday 20 January 2004 at 7.00pm, lasting about 90 minutes. In order to enable more people to see this performance, it will be held in the Parochial Hall on Fitzroy Drive. Tickets are £2 each, including a soft drink, and will be available at the beginning of next term. Children should be accompanied by a responsible adult.

Prayer Group

A group meets regularly to pray for the school. The next meetings are on Wednesday 12 November from 1.45 - 2.45 and Monday 8 December from 8.30 to 9.30. For further details and venues please contact David or Julia Thompson (Tel. 0113 2402036).

Parent Governors

Mrs Shiela Hind was the only nomination for parent governor and so has begun a 4 year term in that position. She and Mrs Eileen Greenwood are happy for you to talk to them about any issues that you feel the governors would want to know.

May we all thank Mrs Sue Moores for all the work that she has done during her term of office as a parent governor.

Books & Comics

If anyone has any spare books and/or comics which are no longer needed at home, we would really appreciate them for the children to enjoy during the lunchtime play.

Please bring them to Mrs Hodges - Thank you.