Ho! Ho! Ho!

Hello and welcome back to the Dorchester Middle School Blog!

As we hurtle towards Christmas, I continue to admire the children's positive attitude to their learning and the pride that they take in their work. I am lucky as I teach four different classes a variety of subjects and their enthusiasm and sense of fun when it comes to their learning is second to none. Don't get me wrong, some days it can feel like I'm swimming in PVA glue but my love for teaching and imparting knowledge never dwindles.

The other day, I received a Christmas Card from a parent whose child was in my first ever Year Five class. In this card, the Mum told me how well her child was doing (she is now 30!) and my heart swelled with pride. This lovely Mum then went on to say that, as a teacher, I gave her child a good start and helped make her the person she is today. Once I finally stopped crying (happy tears) it made me realise what an impact we have on the children in our care and that will never change.

Right, enough about me and more about our fabulous children...

Christmas Jumper Day

Team DMS, you did not disappoint! 

It's official, you rock the most fantastic Christmas Jumpers known to man. 

It was a rather hectic day on Friday so I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked but here are a few of our Year Six children who, as always, know how to embrace a theme.

Not to be outdone, our marvellous staff donned their Christmas Jumpers too. I think Mr Haigh and Mr Murry in particular were really on message!

I'm not sure how much we raised for Save the Children but I will let you know next week.

SCARF

This week, we were fortunate to have a visit from the Life Education team who worked with our Year Five and Six children. 

They delivered their 'scarf' programme to the children and it was an extremely successful and informative visit.

I was lucky enough to accompany 6JH for their session and it was fabulous. The children were incredible as they always are and provided thoughtful, inciteful and well informed contributions.

A huge 'thank you' to Mrs Emery for organising this.

Sporty Children

My goodness me, what a sporty lot our children are!

As reported in Ms Pluck's weekly letter, the matches that went ahead this week were exceptional with many victories and close run results.

I would like to say a HUGE 'Thank You ' to all the members of the PE Department who go above and beyond, come rain or shine, so that our children can participate in and gain experience in playing matches against other teams. It takes hours to arrange and organise.

Total heroes! 

Be prepared

Whilst I'm on the subject of sport, as the weather has taken a turn for the soggy worse, it would be worthwhile to make sure that you bring an extra pair of shoes/trainers into school on Games lesson days. 

Trench foot is avoidable!

Uniform

As we limp towards the end of term, some of the children's uniforms have taken a turn for the worse. 

We will be conducting uniform checks at the beginning of the Spring Term so that we get back on track.

Equipment Plea!

Many of our children are not coming fully equipped for their lessons. Handwriting pens (not biros) are in particular demand but, as mentioned in a previous Blog, we don't have a finite supply in school.

Stationery is an excellent stocking filler...

Worth a Mention Children

Huge congratulations to this week's Worth a Mention Children - you are complete and utter superstars!

Here are the Year Six WaMs:

Now the turn of Year Five:

Well done Key Stage Two - you are all AMAZING!

End of term

With less than a week to go, the Year Teams are in the process of finalizing the end of term arrangements. 

It will be business as usual up until the last day. 

As soon as we have our plans in place then we will be letting you know what we will be doing.

Well, that's it for this week. I hope that you all have a good week and that it's not too incredibly hectic. Don't get me wrong, Christmas is great but my word, it's all exhausting isn't it? 

I'll be back next week for the last Blog post of the year.

Mrs Ray

(who decided to participate in the Blandford Parkrun this weekend where it was a Team Ray effort!)