A Look Back
As always, the end of the school year in the summer was very busy but great fun for the children. Sports day took place with a slightly different format, with key stage 2 in the morning and key stage 1 in the afternoon – the weather was ideal, the children did themselves proud and it was lovely to see so many parents and grandparents enjoying the day; the plan for the day seemed to work really well and many parents have commented that they enjoyed it.
As ever the end of year school play, Cinderella and Rockerfella, was fantastic. We always see a different side of so many children when they perform in this way, and it’s great to see some grow in confidence after ‘giving it a go’.
Building on performances, we had a ‘Millfield’s Got Talent’ competition. The children volunteered themselves for a short performance piece. We had, among other things, dancing, singing and the playing of instruments. Auditions for the final took place in year groups, and in the last week of the summer term honorary judges were invited to judge those who got through. All the children did themselves proud and we had a winner from each of key stage 1 and 2, plus an overall school winner.
Also in the last academic year we achieved a great deal across the whole of the school community.
We converted to an academy and achieved an overall attendance figure of 96% which is really good. Friends of Millfield grew, Family Learning started, we began whole class music provision in Y3 that now extends into Y4 and been part of a highly successful project for Early Years. We won a lottery bid for our own similar project and started a school Young Carers group. We developed the School Council who have also attended Governors’ meetings and have created a ‘den’ where children can climb trees and build dens at lunchtime if they wish (closely supervised).
This academic year
All these activities and more have been put in place for this new academic year.
A Family Support Adviser started in September and continued our Early Years lottery funded project with further development of Family Learning. There are changes to how children will approach reading and further developments within our Learning Challenge curriculum.
Friends of Millfield
This has grown and with the support of parents and grandparents the children have had some really lovely opportunities made available to them. These have included a KS1 sleepover, KS2 youth club, coin art, disco, different craft activities and much more. It has been good to see some new faces of parents and grandparents able to offer help, and we are pleased to be able to offer a different range of activities for the children. Friends of Millfield, together with a donation from a local company, has raised around £5,000. To date we have purchased soil and railway sleepers for our vegetable beds, plants and raised beds for a ‘Nectar Garden’ (named by the children) and a climbing/traversing wall.
We were pleased to receive a donation for a ‘Buddy Bench’ from Littleport Life in honour of Sue Summerside, who was a founding member of the village magazine.