Planting the roots

Hello and welcome back to the Dorchester Middle School Blog!

As we settle in the Autumn Term with relative ease, I cannot quite believe that our new recruits in Year Five have only been with us for just over two weeks! It feels like they have always been with us which is a huge testament to how quickly they have found their feet and have acclimatised to their new life at Dorchester Middle School.

Moving around the school is still quite a novelty and seeing children being able to access the variety of resources and facilities that we have to offer has been a joy to witness although some of them do get terribly lost!

This week's Blog seems to have an unintentional theme - planting the roots for the year ahead so, without further a do, I shall crack on.

Class Tree

Last week, I proudly showed you some of the class trees that have been produced as part of our connecting/reconnecting with each other after the summer holidays. There are many that are almost finished but I thought I would show you 6JH's gorgeous tree. The children are so proud of it and you can see why can't you?

Eco Warriors in training

This week, Miss Easton and I had the joy to spend a lunch time with Lilia and Isla who are both huge advocates for looking after our school environment by ensuring that we are ecologically aware and mindful of our increasingly fragile planet.

 

Lilia and Isla are going to start an Eco Club with Mrs Bunting so we spent some time thinking about the things we could do and the initiatives that we could start as a school. Needless to say, they have brilliant ideas that they will now share with Mrs Bunting.

It's all rather exciting...

How could our garden grow?

One of the things that was discussed with Lilia and Isla, was involving the school garden more actively. Mrs Whiting has set up a Gardening Club with some of our Year Five children and is looking to transform a specific area of the school into a lovely garden space for the staff to enjoy as well as maintaining the school garden.

To enable us to do this, we will be participating in Morrison's 'It's Good to Grow' campaign so if you receive any vouchers then we will be extremely grateful if they headed our way. I use the Morrison's App so I was able to allocate my vouchers to the school with incredible ease. 

So good to meet you!

On Wednesday, the Year Five Team, along with the PTFA, hosted our first Meet and Greet event of the school year. 

This was an opportunity for the parents to meet with the Year Five Homebase Tutors on an informal, drop in basis where they could get the chance to have a cup of tea and a biscuit and catch up with other parents. They were also given tours of the ground floor of the school by our amazing Year Eight pupils.  

I was so pleased that lots of our parents picked up our fabulous flyers about joining the PTFA. I chatted to a few parents about it as well and hopefully, some of you will join us.

Our AGM will be held on Wednesday 6th October at 5.30pm in the school library. Please do come along, the more the merrier.

I can't believe that we had such glorious weather!

A huge thank you to everyone who was involved in such a successful evening, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.

Being Active

Mr Roberts, Mr Krige and Mr R from the PE Department, held an excellent assembly for our Year Five children on Friday. They were promoting the Playground Leaders Scheme for our Year Five children as well as the Sports Clubs that we are currently running at lunchtime and the ones planned for after school. A list will be published once they have all been confirmed along the starting date that will hopefully be soon.

All three of them delivered a cracking assembly. I am extremely confident that they will have a lot of applicants for the Playground Leaders roles.

I know that there has been a bit of confusion over the PE and Games Kit by not knowing what to wear to which lesson. I wasn't able to find any models in time for this week's Blog but I will endeavour to get pictures on here for next week so you know what needs to be worn and when.

Worth a Mention Children

HUGE congratulations to ALL of the children who found their names on this week's Worth a Mention Boards. The range of reasons were a joy to read.

Let's start with Year Six:

Now it's the turn of Year Five:

Please don't forget that we expect ALL of our children in Key Stage Two to:

* Get their Home/School Diaries signed every week

* Have THREE reads signed into their diaries by ab adult every week

* Complete their Homework on time

We're in this together

One of the connecting activities that we are completing in school is looking at how we can support each other in school. Although it is very important to support each other socially, it is also important that we support each other with our learning, making sure that everyone has the best possible chance at doing well in our lessons.

I love what 5MW have got up on one of their display boards in their classroom.

All Change!

Every year, in schools across the land, there are always changes. There are changes of staff, children, classrooms, playgrounds - you name it, it changes!

This year, we have re-introduced Year Leads to DMS.

The fantastic Mrs Emery is the Year Lead for Year Six and I am the Year Lead for Year Five.

We are fortunate as we share an office and sit right next to each other so there is no escape from me (poor Mrs Emery!). It also means that we are always communicating with each other and sharing information.

Year Six, you are very lucky bunnies!

Well, that's it for this week. I hope that you have a fabulous weekend. At the time of writing this Blog, we have had a gloriously sunny day although the forecast is not looking great for tomorrow. Sigh.

See you back here next week!

Mrs Ray

(who had to take Roy the Rabbit to the vet on Thursday - hasn't he got a rather stylish carrier? I got a few looks, I can tell you!)