We have had a lovely week across school and everyone has coped really well with the changing weather. It has been great to welcome the sunshine, but important that we have wrapped up warm when going outside in the cold temperatures!

This week in school we have continued our focus on positive friendships linked to our anti-bullying work last week by thinking with Mrs Bretherton on Monday about how to express ourselves in a polite and friendly way. We thought about different scenarios where we might feel frustrated and how we can share this emotion whilst staying as polite as we can. All of the adults were really impressed with the examples and ideas shared by children from Y1 to Y6 in this assembly.

In Wednesday's assembly, Hannah shared with us the importance of being thankful and finding a sense of peace. These were important ideas to be thinking about and reinforced our monthly value really well.

Years 5 and 6 have been busily creating their delicious soup ready to share with families in school next week. This activity is linked to their topic work on World War II and Remembrance and the children are excited to welcome their families into school for this special opportunity next week. We would like to thank Mr and Mrs Evans for their generous donation of vegetables, which were really appreciated by all of Years 5 and 6.

Our Year 2 class had an amazing visit to St. Mary's this week, where Reverend Sally, Phillippa and other members of the congregation shared the nativity story and songs with the children and had prepared a selection of activities to work on. Year 2 had a super time and felt very special to have been invited to take part. Reverend Sally has shared with us information about a family session similar to this which is available tomorrow – please see the poster in the photos.

Our teaching staff had the exciting opportunity on Tuesday to work with teachers from another local school to look at writing and, in particular, handwriting and presentation. This was a really valuable opportunity and gave us time to celebrate and to consider how we can help to make our writing even better.

This week we also welcomed Year 2 parents to a maths workshop with Mrs Roberts-Powell and Mrs Hedley. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend.

Next week, we have invited families from Years 1, 4 and 6 to come to our year group workshops which will support parents with the national assessments which these year groups take part in. We look forward to welcoming our Y1, 4 and 6 families on Tuesday after school.

Our building project is really starting to take shape now, and we have all been excited to see the windows and external doors being fitted this week. As ever, we would like to thank our great build team who have managed to keep smiling despite the changes in weather. As you can see from the photos, the building is really starting to emerge and as the scaffolding continues to be taken down, we know that it will be amazing to see the changes.

In today's whole school assembly we have celebrated achievements in and out of school. We have heard about fantastic horse riding and a victory at a local competition! We have also said 'well done' to children from Reception through to Y6 who have shown particular qualities this week, including working really hard in their spellings and maths, working so hard to improve their cutting skills, for focusing on their reading and making fantastic progress with it, for coping brilliantly with our recent assessment fortnight, for being an excellent friend, for sharing wonderful ideas with others and for making super progress in all subjects. We also said a fond 'Goodbye' to children who are moving to a new school.

We hope that everyone has a fantastic weekend, and we look forward to welcoming everyone back on Monday.