This is proving to be a very busy term for us at Ferry Lane. As you know, we had an Ofsted inspection in September and we are now working on our action plan and making sure we address all the areas that were identified for us to focus on improving. One thing we have felt very grateful for in this challenging time is the trust and support given to us by parents and carers. We thank you sincerely for this.

As part of our improvements we have appointed new staff including a SENCo and four part time teaching assistants. This will enable us to better support children throughout the school and in Early Years and KS1 in particular. We will be having a particular focus on speaking and listening and literacy so watch out for ‘Talk Boost’ and ‘Impact Literacy’ initiatives (amongst others) which will be starting soon.

You may have noticed we have made some structural changes to the Nursery outdoor area and we are pleased with the improvements we have seen there. The new artificial grass has made the area much more usable and we can use it more easily when it is wet. We have seen that the children are much more actively involved with their outdoor learning and that they are making better progress as a result. We hope parents and carers agree!

Reception class have also changed their outdoor routines and we think this is also having a positive effect on learning both inside and outside the classroom. The Reception class assembly on Divali was very well presented and helped to celebrate an important community festival.

Phonics has been given a much bigger focus in Early Years (Reception and Nursery) and in Years 1, 2 and 3. In Years 1-3 we are now having mixed groups for phonics lessons so we can match the children’s needs better and make accelerated progress in the sessions. Our phonics scheme (Letters and Sounds) has been augmented by the addition of Jolly Phonics which we are using in the mixed class sessions taking place three times a week. Children are particularly enjoying learning the songs and their actions. You can see videos on www.jollylearning.co.uk where you can also get ideas for follow up work you might like to try at home!

In Key Stage 2, we have been able to keep going with the weekly French lessons thanks to the hard work of M Jutel and Mr Mackie. We enjoyed hearing about M Jutel’s home country (France) and also Ms Verkuelen (Germany) in our European Languages Assembly. Children in Years 5 and 6 are also writing penpal letters to children in our partner schools in Oslo, Norway and Palafrugell, Spain, where we hope to be able to send a lucky few children to visit in the second and third terms (we will do our best!). In the meantime, please visit our shared blog where you can see some of the art work that all classes did for the project. It was really tricky choosing which work to put on the blog as there were so many excellent pictures to choose from!  You can see our art galley here at www.place.ferrylane.net and please do leave us a comment! We looked at Spanish, Norwegian and English artists…

As a response to parental suggestions, we have been trying to raise the profile of our celebrations of different cultures. In assembly we have celebrated Divali (Reception class) and Eid (Year 6) as well as having parent coffee mornings to celebrate the festivals   The children also wrote newsletters to celebrate both festivals, which you can read by clicking on the icon on this page. (All this term’s school newsletters are to be found there). Thank you to all who donated food items to the Harvest Festival;  these were donated to elderly people living on the Ferry lane Estate. They asked us to pass on their thanks. We also really enjoyed the International Food event for Eid where we raised funds for the PTA (thank you all for delicious food and good times!). Looking ahead to Christmas, we will be having the usual Christmas Lunch and Class Parties as well as having a Carol Concert where we will raise funds for Shelterbox, this term’s charity. You can find out more here www.shelterbox.org. We hope to raise enough to fund at least one and hopefully two boxes which we can then track as they are deployed to an area of need around the world.

We have also had a bigger focus on Black History Month this October and have displayed work from all classes (1-6) in the foyer. Years 1 and 2 went to the British Museum to take part in African Maths and African storytelling. Other classes found out about famous black politicians, sports people and historical figures as part of their learning on this topic. Please do come and look  at our display! Or you can click on the photos below to enlarge them…

Our eco-team has been looking at recycling and waste with a view to making this better in our school and they led a very informative assembly with lessons for us all to reduce, reuse and recycle!

Parents have also been very busy at Ferry Lane with the ESOL classes being oversubscribed and very well attended! We thank HALS (Haringey Adult Learning Services) for organising the teachers and the crèche workers. We also really have to say a huge THANK YOU to the Stay and Play parents who have worked really well alongside the extra children and crèche workers for this term. We hope to be able to offer more adult learning opportunities next term too. The science coffee mornings run by Lloyd Forster from Haringey’s School Improvement Service were very successful and gave parents lots of ideas on how to work on scientific activities at home.

Parents Evening was well attended and the Topic Exhibition gave you and overview of the work we have done on our cross-curricular topics last half term (these were all science themed). This half term our topics are all Historical and several classes have shared their work in their assemblies (who can forget Year 4′s Tudor Axe Factor assembly last week?). Or indeed the first half term’s Year 2 Food Rap, Year 3 retelling Anthony Browne’s scary forest story with a fairytale ending and Year 5 showing us all how to make the best use of the new projector and screen in the main hall by researching Earth Sun and Moon, creating their own powerpoints and presenting them independently!

We have also had support from our local shops with Asda giving us a welcome donation of £100 as their chosen local school and Tesco giving us a box of goodies. Thank you to both shops and it was especially great for our children to meet our Tottenham MP David Lammy!

Finally, our chickens are doing well. They have really grown their feathers since they arrived here as rescue hens. There were some problems earlier in the term with one chicken being unhappy but a brief holiday at Mr Mackie’s house has enabled her to regain her strength and she will soon be back at school with the other two chickens. Thank you to all who baked, sold cakes and cleared up after the Bake Sale this term, we raised enough money to order a new run so the chickens will be more comfortable!

Congratulations Ferry Lane… We have done really well in the Educational Blog Awards 2012. Out of over 900 nominated schools, we were amongst the 10 shortlisted schools in three categories. We were shortlisted for y6.ferrylane.net as most influential blog of the year and best class blog of the year, and for ferrylane.net for best whole-school blog.

Well… The judges have looked closely at all the shortlisted blogs, and we did rather well, although we didn’t win any of the categories. We were first runner-up for best class blog. The judges said:

It was great to read lots of children’s contributions on the blog. There is evidence of lots of learning being shared and the class will be motivated knowing they have so many visitors.

Ferrylane.net was also a runner up as best whole-school blog. The judges commented:

Very good literacy blog posts from children, with blogs for each class, plus a leadership blog.

So well done! You’ve all worked really hard and the quality of writing on the blogs is going from strength to strength. To find out more about the winners, or to get some tips on how we might improve our blogs, click here.

On Wednesday last week we had an extremely special trip. Children will recall that some time ago they were asked to to think of some names for boats that go up and down the river. We had some really good ones! Here they are…

On Friday 4 classes of children from Ferry Lane made the tube journey to the Royal Albert Hall to take part in a huge singing concert in preparation for the Olympics. It was amazing!  There were schools from all over North London. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra were there and they played the songs that have been written by all the London boroughs, such as Haringey, Enfield and Brent. It was wonderful to hear them play these classical pieces and the children really enjoyed singing the songs they had been rehearsing. Their favourite one was Superhuman Strength which is about being an athlete, getting stronger and training for the Olympics.

Therefore it made me very happy yesterday to see our family’s athlete, Peter, who you will remember last year ran the London Marathon but was very disappointed with himself as he nearly had to stop and he did not beat his best time. Well this year was very different and I am pleased to say that he has beaten his personal best and also come in under 3 hours! This time he had a bit of excitement around the east London section where another runner tripped him up (by accident) and he hurt his hand, elbow and shoulder. He nearly gave up! But he carried on, in fact, because he knew he had to catch up, he made a even bigger effort and ran faster, breaking his 3 hour time! You can see in the photo, he is really pleased with himself! Remember, believe you can do it and don’t give up!

Today is the first day of Spring and we have had beautiful weather. We took advantage of this and started our Gardening Club today. So far, two children have been nominated from each class from Y3-6 and we went outside and planted potatoes today into grow bags. I am going to put up some photos and ask the children who helped me to write some instructions on how to plant potatoes.

We have also received some new raised beds that Mr White is building and we hope to have one per class very soon. We are going to grow things we can eat! This is part of our project with the school in Tobago. They are also growing food in their vegetable beds.

Children have also asked if we can get the Garden dug over and re-planted. Would any parents be able to volunteer to help us please? Let Mr Hall know if you would like to help and we will try to come in one Saturday!

So Gardening Club, can you tell us how to plant potatoes please? Here’s the sequence of photos….

This week I really enjoyed my assembly and it started with a simple question…

Why do gorillas have such big nostrils?

Not a lot of children knew the answer to that one!

If you know please keep it to yourself and send me a comment at the end…

Then I asked a few children to come to the front and tell us a joke… they did a great job and the audience thought it was hilarious! We were really laughing! Our noses were wrinkled up, our mouths turned up, our tummies shook and we made funny whooping noises. We felt good!

The point of the assembly was really all about our feelings; sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are sad. When you are sad, sometimes you can cheer yourself up by thinking about things in a more positive way. One example was to think that when it is wet playtime don’t just feel sad because you can’t play football, think about how much you will enjoy playing a game in the classroom with your friends. Also if we don’t expect too much (don’t be greedy!) then we will often be pleasantly surprised which will make us happy. Children said that they felt happy when they played with their friends and family and when they thought about happy memories. We thought it would be good to tell each other jokes to make us laugh as this feels good.

So can you tell me a joke? Go on! Make us smile!

What about the answer to my question?

Why do gorillas have such big nostrils?

Because they have big fingers!

I have to thank my nephew Euan for telling me the joke. It makes me smile every time I think of him laughing with me!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you had a wonderful time over the holidays and enjoyed relaxing with friends and family.

The new year brings lots of new resolutions and a chance for us to make a fresh start. Today’s assembly was all about finding solutions to problems and setting goals for each of us to achieve. Some children have already told me that they are going to make sure they make an extra effort in lessons (especially writing!) and some have already said they want to work on making sure they get their behaviour right every time. I am very impressed that these children have already chosen what they want to do and have begun to identify ways forward.

In our assembly story, we learnt how you need to see what the setting or situation is, identify a goal, think of what can go wrong (obstacles) and make a plan to enable you to achieve your goal. This can be applied to any situation, from completing homework to improving behaviour, from being a good friend to stopping bullying. Children were very quick to think of solutions to the problems in the story and some were quick to be able to apply the process to other problems. Try it – it may help! There are 4 steps: Setting, Goal, Obstacles, Plan…

One goal that we are setting for our school is to make sure that as many children as possible do as well as they possibly can. In the last newsletter (written by children), you read the interview with David Lammy where he explained that people always said to him, ‘You can’t do that’ and he thought to himself, ‘I will show them, I WILL do it’. He identified his goals, looked at what might go wrong and made a very successful plan to achieve his dreams.

Each of us now needs to take some of his exceptional attitude and make
it our own. Decide what it is you want to achieve; going to university,
having a job you enjoy or being supportive of your friends and family. If you are determined to succeed, you will find that you are likely to do well…

One saying that I like is ‘Shoot for the moon; if you miss, you might land among the stars’. Can you think about what this saying might be telling you and write a comment please? Or you could tell me what your ambitions are and what goals you have set yourself. Whatever it is, good luck!

My goal? I have got to get back to writing my essay as part of my goal to complete some learning I am doing about how to be a better headteacher! You see, we never stop learning and we all have to keep trying hard to achieve our goals!

We are very pleased to say that we recently had a visitor from HMI (Her Majesty’s Inspectors) who are part of Ofsted and came to see how we are improving as a school and to see the progress the children are making. As usual, pupils at Ferry Lane showed that they are well behaved and confident children who enjoy being at school. The inspector was pleased with the progress the school has made since the Ofsted inspection of July 2010 and said that we have made Good progress and have Good capacity to continue making further progress. We wanted to thank all members of our community for the hard work they have all put into our school. Parents and carers have also done their bit by making sure we improved our attendance and punctuality and by supporting learning at home.

The inspector visited every class and noticed that the curriculum has improved teaching and learning and that we are very aware of the next steps we must take to continue to raise standards in English, maths and science. We need to maintain our progress in English and maths and improve even further for more able children and for all children in science. One of the suggestions the inspector made is that all children need to know what levels they are at and so this week you will be given this information at Parents’ Evening. You will also be told if they are on track, below or above age-related expectations. This should help you to see where they need a little extra practice to catch up or where you might like to visit a museum to support and extend their learning (the Science Museum is always great and like lots of our museums it’s also free!). www.sciencemuseum.org.uk (but remember you have to pay to see an IMAX film).

One other thing the Inspector thought we should concentrate on is our handwriting and presentation of our work and you can certainly help at home by practising writing and spellings. Try to use a pen and join your writing!

The Inspector’s report will be published on the Ofsted website soon at www.ofsted.gov.uk.

The progress the school has made is evident in our results this year and we believe they are the best KS2 results the school has ever achieved! The progress the children have made is also clear and we are very proud of their hard work and achievements. We now need to make sure we carry on achieving this well every year! We know that we can do it if we all work together to support the children and that includes staff, parents and Governors, not forgetting the children themselves!

This year we are pleased to be starting a new international project (as I told you in my last post) and soon we will have a space on our blog where we can post things for each other. We have also been joined by a French Language Assistant and Mlle Gaulthier hopes to be with us for the rest of the year. We are also looking forward to having teachers from Tobago visiting our school and Mr Mackie is getting the chickens sorted out for that project.

All in all, it looks like this will be a really good year so lets work hard and enjoy making the school an even better place together!

Hei… I am writing this from Norway where we are visiting a school called Arvoll Skole in Oslo. There are also some teachers from Escola Carrilet in Spain and this is the start of our two year project together. We have been working out the timetable and thinking about the work we will each do in our schools when we get back. We are all very excited that we are in this project!
One of the things we have agreed is to have a shared blog and website areas where all children and staff from all three schools can communicate, share work and tell each other about Healthy Lifestyles. It will also help us to understand people in different countries and learn how to get along well together.
We have also agreed (and this is the really exciting part!) that we are all going to take children to visit each others’ schools and we will be thinking about how we can select children for the trips. We can’t all go!
If you want to start doing a bit of research about the two countries and their languages that might give you a head start!
Staff will also be visiting each school and the first visit will be when Norwegian and Spanish teachers come and visit us in London in November. We are looking forward to welcoming them to Ferry Lane!
Children in years 5 and 6 will also be writing pen-pal letters to children in years 5 and 6 in Spain and Year 6 on Norway (their school is bigger and they have 2 classes in year 6).
Here in Oslo it is a beautiful day and the children at the Arvoll school have been playing outside, just like you do at Ferry Lane. We noticed they also have a lot of footballs stuck on their roof, just like us!
Last night we ate dinner in a famous fish restaurant and we even tried some whale (Mr Leuzinger tried it but was not convinced!). Norway has a very proud seafaring tradition and they cooked us some excellent fish dishes! Today we are visiting the school and meeting children and staff. This afternoon we are going on a walk through the city and tomorrow we are hoping to go and see some very old Viking ships. I wonder if they were the ones that went to Britain that Year 4 will be learning about…
In Norwegian to say thank you, you say Takk. The train is called the tog.  Hadet is goodbye, see you all on Monday!
PS Can you figure out how to say school in Spanish and Norwegian? What do you think hei means?