Latest News
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school and our community at the moment.
-
September Inset Day
Tue 29 Jun 2021Friday 3rd September 2021 will be an INSET day and the school will be closed to pupils. This is in addition to Thursday 2nd September 2021.
The first day back for pupils will be Monday 6th September 2021.
-
Information for this half term
Thu 17 Jun 2021Please find below information for this half term to the end of this academic year.
School reports
School reports will be sent out to parents and carers on Friday 2nd July. After reading your child’s report, if there are any questions or queries could parents / carers please e-mail the class teacher in the first instance using their Hwb account. The teacher will then respond either via e-mail or phone to address the point raised.
Heads e-mail
Should parents / carers wish to e-mail me, can e-mails please be sent via admin.pontyclunprimary@rctcbc.gov.uk Please do not use the heads Hwb address as I do not use this account and your e-mail won’t get the response that it should receive.
Positive behaviour approach
This half term the school is focussing on ‘Respect’. We are looking at respect for peers, respect for adults, respect for self and respect for the school and equipment. As part of this approach, all adults in school will have raffle tickets that they will provide to children demonstrating respect. Each adult is allowed to give 5 tickets a day. If your child receives a ticket then this will be placed in a box either in the infant building or the main office. A weekly draw will take place and the drawn ticket will receive a £10 Argos voucher to spend as they wish. There will be a new draw every week until the end of term. Obviously the more tickets they achieve the greater the chance of winning so could all parents / carers help us by reiterating our message of respect for all. Thank you for co-operation in this matter.
End of term arrangements
The continuing Covid restrictions continue to dampen the opportunities for end of year festivities. The Local Authority has taken advice from the RCT Director for Public Health for guidance. She said, ‘’that anything that is organised in our schools must be robustly risk assessed by HTs, all social distancing guidelines must be followed, numbers of pupils must be kept low, the outdoors is the preferred location as being outside is better and poses less of a risk as opposed to being inside, additionally there must be no crossing over of bubbles.’’ Due to the high number of pupils in the different classes and the difficulty imposed by effective social distancing and non-crossing of bubbles we will not be hosting an end of year prom for year 6.
However, we would like to host a Dress up Domino’s day for year 6 where, rather than have school dinners, the year 6 will have domino’s pizza and sides delivered to the school and if they wish to dress up for the day they can. Year 6 teachers will send further information shortly.
Pontyclun’s Got Talent.
We will run the annual ‘Pontyclun’s got Talent’ event digitally this year. Each class will host an audition day and pick one act to go through to the Grand Final. These acts will be videoed and all will be shown on the last Friday of term. Classes will then vote on their top 3 acts and an eventual winner will be crowned.
Sports days
We are unable to run whole school sports days this year. Instead, teachers will run individual sports afternoon for their classes.
Last week
The last week of term will be called ‘Challenge Week.’ Teachers will be running a series of challenges that will be of varying length. They will be fun, practical and quite possibly a bit messy! Hopefully this will give us the opportunity to finish the year on a high. Children will not be expected to wear school uniform for this week.
-
Inset Days
Wed 12 May 2021School will be closed to all pupils for INSET days (staff training days) on :
Friday 11th June 2021
Monday 19th July 2021
Tuesday 20th July 2021
The last day of this academic year for all pupils will therefore be Friday 16th July 2021.
-
Update on symptoms requiring COVID test
Tue 27 Apr 2021We have been asked by the Director of Education to make you aware of the following additional symptoms that require a COVID test.
The Welsh Government are making Covid-19 testing available to people with a wider range of symptoms such as fatigue, muscle ache or pain, a sore throat, a headache, a runny nose, nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea. This is because some variants and young children do not display the classic three Covid-19 symptoms initially.
The request therefore is for people (including children) to get a test if they are feeling unwell in any way. Further detail on how to apply for a test is provided at https://gov.wales/apply-coronavirus-covid-19-test or simply call the free number 119 between the hours of 7am to 11pm.
Individuals and their households who take a test because of these other wider symptoms are not required to isolate while they await their test result. This includes learners, who can continue to attend their school or setting while they await a test result.
If individuals then receive a positive Covid-19 result, they and their household must then isolate. Households must also isolate if anyone develops any of the three classic Covid-19 symptoms while waiting for a test result taken on wider symptoms to come back.
Clearly, children and adults with diarrhoea and/or vomiting should not attend their school/setting until they are symptom-free for 48 hours, even if their Covid-19 test result is negative.
The FAQs on the Council’s website have been updated to reflect this latest advice – www.rctcbc.gov.uk/schoolfaqs
Stay safe
-
Latest school news
Tue 20 Apr 2021It's lovely to be back at school following the Easter break and fingers crossed we will not have any more disruptions to your children’s learning.
We are still operating under covid-19 restrictions so we can’t claim to be fully back to normal, although as the days go by, we are more and more hopeful that this may soon be the case.
Under the present guidelines, we will not be in a position to run a year 6 leavers assembly or a year 6 prom in their traditional formats. However, we are looking at ways that we can do something that allows us to celebrate year 6’s time with us before they leave and head off to pastures new. Information for this will be sent when the LA have confirmed their guidance on these matters.
School Photo’s
We will be taking a year 6 photo this year on Wednesday May 12th. The 2 classes will have a separate photo which we will have merged so it is a whole year photo. These will be given to pupils as part of their leaving celebrations.
Individual pupil photos will be taken on Thursday 13th May and Friday 14th May. However, as pupils are not allowed to cross bubbles we will not be able to have photos with siblings.
Parents Evenings
We will be holding on-line parents evenings this half term and a parent booking form will be sent shortly via ParentMail. The meetings will be held via google classrooms- the platform the pupils used for their live teacher sessions. You will need your child’s usernames and passwords to access the meetings. Staff will ensure your child is reminded of these prior to the parents evening. Appointments will be for 10 minutes per child and staff will need to stick quite tightly to this. If there is a need for an extended conversation then an additional appointment will need to be made. Parents will be able to log into the meeting at their appointed time and will wait in a virtual waiting room until their class teacher is able to admit them.
The school’s internet capacity has been undergoing an upgrade over the past few weeks so hopefully there will not be any connection issues!!
Homework
Homework for pupils in KS2 is now being sent out via google classrooms and My Maths. If passwords are required to access these please e-mail your child's class teacher directly.
Internet Upgrade
On Friday 23rd April the school will be having the final stage of its internet upgrade. In order for the works to be undertaken the schools wi-fi and internet will be down for the day. Therefore we will not be able to send or receive any e-mails. Our phone system also runs through the internet so we will be operating a ‘patched’ through system to one mobile. Please can parents / carers only contact the school in the event of an emergency on this day.
Many thanks
-
Comic Relief Red Nose Day Friday March 19th
Tue 16 Mar 2021The last 12 months have been incredibly tough for all of us, but we’re so proud of the way our school community has managed through this tough time and we’re so grateful for all of your efforts at home.
It will be the first week when all of our pupils will be back together and I'm sure you agree that we could do with a laugh!
We know things are a bit different this year, but we can’t wait to take part in silly activities and raise a smile and some life-changing money.
As well as taking the opportunity to be part of something positive, we’ll be using Red Nose Day as a learning opportunity. We’ll explore the issues facing young people across the world, and how the money we raise can help.To celebrate the day, children can wear something red, or anything comic relief related- past or present.
We aren't collecting money in school. Please follow the link below if you feel you can support this wonderful charity.
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sue-harwood4
Many thanks again for your fantastic support.
-
Inset Day cancelled
Fri 12 Mar 2021The INSET day for March 26th is now cancelled. This will be a normal school day.
INSET dates for the Summer Term will be sent out once we have clarification from Welsh Government regarding their use.
Many thanks.
-
KS2 Return to school
Tue 09 Mar 2021As you no doubt are aware, the Minister for Education has announced that pupils in KS2 can return to face to face teaching from Monday March 15th. It is, therefore, with great pleasure, that I can inform you that all children are able to return to school on Monday.
On returning to school, the systems that were in place before the present lockdown will remain. There will be a staggered start to the day from 8.40am – 9.00am and children will go straight to their classroom. Similarly there will be a staggered end to the school day with pupils able to be picked up from 3.20pm -3.30pm. Parents/carers will still need to follow the one way system around the school, entering via the pedestrian gate of the Maesyfelin entrance and leaving via the staff car park gates by the library. The drop and go system will still operate and we would urge parents/carers to not congregate and meet other parents/carers whilst on the school grounds. We would also urge all parents/carers to wear a mask whilst on the school grounds unless medically exempt.
Parents/carers will not be permitted into the school buildings, with the exception of the school office, unless by appointment. If parents/carers need to contact the class teacher please do so via their hwb e-mail accounts in the first instance.
If parents/carers need to visit the school office then can you please observe a one in one out rule. For non-urgent issues can these be via e-mail- admin.pontyclunpri@rctcbc.gov.uk. If queuing outside the office please can you observe the two metre social distancing protocols.
The school office is open to sell school uniform.
School dinners will be available for those pupils who want them, and these will be collected by the pupils to eat in the classrooms. Those pupils having sandwiches will also eat in the classrooms.
The school will still continue to maintain class bubbles for pupils in school and run staggered playtimes and lunchtimes for the different year groups.
It is such a relief that we are able to welcome your child/ren back to school and we look forward to seeing them all again soon. However, we would urge parents/carers to still follow the Welsh Government guidelines on socialising with other families to minimise the risk of infection rates going back up.
If your child displays any of the symptoms of Covid-19- a new continuous cough, a high temperature or the loss of taste and smell, then please keep your child and any siblings off school and organise a test. Please send your test result to school via the e-mail address and, If it comes back negative your child can return to school as normal.
If pupils are in receipt of a shielding letter, self-isolating pending a positive result or self-isolating due to a positive result then work will be provided by the class teacher. If however parents/carers wish to keep their child off school for other reasons, then work will not be provided. All absences need to be reported to the school office with an explanation of the reason for absence.
We look forward to seeing you all next week.
-
Covid regulations reminder
Mon 08 Mar 2021We have, not unexpectedly, had a spate of colds and sickness in the Foundation Phase over the last couple of weeks. We understand that children have colds and usually a dose of Calpol before school is enough to get them through the day when they are slightly under the weather as opposed to ill. However, in the current pandemic, we do have a strong concern that this is masking possible COVID 19 symptoms. Also, on several occasions, we have had to follow our COVID 19 regulations and isolate a pupil for a high temperature of 38C and above and call parents / carers to collect their child and siblings. If your child is suffering with a high temperature, then please, follow the advice and guidance from Public Health Wales and take them for a test. Siblings should also be kept home until a negative result is returned.
PLEASE DO NOT DOSE YOUR CHILD WITH CALPOL AND SEND THEM TO SCHOOL WITH A HIGH TEMPERATURE.
Once you have the results of your test, please email them to admin.pontyclunprimary@rctcbc.gov.uk. Your child is then able to return to school once they are well enough to do so.
Stay safe
-
PTA Bake Off
Fri 05 Mar 2021Please see below a poster with full details of the Pontyclun Bake Off.
Happy Baking :)
