Samuel Ryder Academy
Issue: 35 Date: 30 Jun 2017

Dear Parents and Carers

 

This week I had the pleasure to give the opening remarks at the inaugural Samuel Ryder Academy Sports Awards Evening.

It was great to see so many pupils invited to attend such an event, recognising the participation, effort and achievement of our talented sports men and women across primary and secondary phases of the school.

I know Mr Pike and the PE Department have been planning such an event as this for a long time but they wanted to wait until there was enough strength in depth to warrant a whole evening of celebration – I am pleased that we have now reached such a point.  That is a compliment to them and to the pupils and testament to the hard work, dedication and effort, they have all put in in the last year – well done!  Also, I would like to say thank you to Mr Barlow for the time and effort he put into the evening – it is a big event and I know a lot of thought and planning had gone into ensuring it ran smoothly.

I was also delighted to welcome Mike Mullen, our special guest for the evening, who talked about his experiences and the importance of having a growth mindset.  Mike is a professional BMX rider with 29 years’ experience. He was the 2014 & 2016 UK Pro Halfpipe champion and former Master World Champion. He is also a qualified sports mentor and BMX coach.

It was an extremely successful evening and congratulations to all those invited and to those who won an award.  I look forward to the second Samuel Ryder Sports Awards Evening this time next year!

Finally congratulations to three member of staff who were nominated for the Herts Advertiser School Awards 2017: Mr Amos (Secondary Teacher of the Year), Mrs Godden (Support Staff Member of the Year) and Mrs Ech-Chadli (Unsung Hero of the Year).  All three were worthy nominees and particular congratulations go to Mrs Ech-Chadli for winning her category. 

As always, if you have any comments or suggestions I would be pleased to hear from you, please contact me at head@samuelryderacademy.co.uk.

Mr Gauthier

Headteacher

 

SIMS

We have had a huge take up of the replacement for Sims Learning Gateway. This new system show your childs’ homework set by their teachers along with attendance and their behaviour data. However some people still haven’t activated their accounts, the invitations were only valid for 14 days. As a result we have re-sent them to the email addresses that we hold on file for parents.

This system is available on a standard web browser or as an App on virtually all mobile devices. Once registered if you search your devices app store for “SIMS Parent” it should direct you to the correct app.

The automated email from noreply@sims.co.uk contains a unique invitation code. You will need this code to set up your SIMS Online Services account. If you have not yet received a registration email, please check your SPAM folder and if there isn’t one in there please contact App_Help@samuelRyderAcademy.co.uk and a member of the support team will be in contact with you.

 

Samuel Ryder App

Please remember that we supply the ‘Samuel Ryder’ mobile app.  We use this for non-student specific communication, it also has a copy of the school calendar and the latest Samuel Ryder news.  This can be downloaded from your mobile device’s App store by simply searching ‘Samuel Ryder’. Click here for a guide on how to download.

We have recently created ‘All Primary’ and ‘All Secondary’ notification groups. We ask that you please select one or both of these options in your app settings in order to receive information about primary or secondary as a whole. This needs to be done in addition to your year group selection. If there are any queries regarding this please don’t hesitate to contact App_Help@SamuelRyderAcademy.co.uk

 

Primary Phase News

Attendance

As parents/carers, it is your responsibility to ensure that your child arrives at school ready to learn every day. Doing this gives your child the best possible chance to develop socially, emotionally and academically. It also gives your child’s class the best chance of winning the prestigious attendance trophy.

The figures below are for last week.

Weekly attendance winner

Primary attendance (target 97%)

Orange Class with 100%

98%

 

Stars of the Week - To be distributed next week

Oliver Fields - for showing sensational improvement in learning and behaviour and for being kind and considerate to others.

Lily Clarkson - for her amazing effort in maths when adding lots of 10! Keep it up!

Parth Pandya – For helping us learn all the words to our songs for the production. He wrote out all the words for the songs, added pictures and gave everyone in Green Class a copy! You are a star! Thank you!

Haneefah Jahangeer - for her patience and persistence when doing her paper weaving.  Well done, Haneefah, you were a fantastic role model for the class.

 

Sports Day

 

As you know, our Primary sports day is being held on Wednesday 5th July this year. NEXT WEEK!!

 We are inviting parents to arrive at 13.35 through the Primary gate so that they can get down to the field for a 14.00 start. We are expecting the afternoon to finish at normal school finish time. The weather is currently expected to be ok but if there is heavy rain, we will contact you via the SRA app to confirm whether Sports Day will go ahead or not.

 At the end of the event, all Primary children will need to make their way back to their classrooms before being dismissed. To ensure that all children make it back to their classrooms safely, we ask that all family members supporting the children stay on the field until all of the children have left and are back in the school. At this point, family members will be able to make their way back into the playground area to pick up the children from the usual place. 

 If you would like to bring a blanket along to sit on, this is possible, however we will have arranged a certain number of chairs for family members to sit on. 

Looking forward to seeing you there to support the children. 

 

Open Evening

The school will be open between 17.30 and 19.00 on Thursday 13th July for you to drop in at any point, though we expect you to only stay for as long as necessary. Please arrive through the main school entrance and feel free to bring the children along with you. 

 A reminder that this is your only opportunity to meet your child’s teacher for next year before September so please do your best to make it along.

 See you there

 

Year 2 Trip to Whipsnade Zoo

 

Year 2 had a wonderful day at Whipsnade Zoo last Friday!

 

 

Primary Move Up Day

This coming Thursday is Primary move up day. The children will all spend a session with their new class teachers getting to know them and their expectations.

Parents will receive a letter on Tuesday 4th July informing them of where all teachers are going to be next year. Please spend time talking through where different teachers are moving with your children to make the transition process as smooth as possible. 

Thank you

 

 

Birthdays

Birthdays of children from Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will now be celebrated in the Key Stage 1 assembly held every Wednesday.  This week, we celebrated the birthday of:

 

 

Primary Diary Dates

Summer Term 2017

 

Tuesday 4th July

Parent drop-in session with Mr Gunning

Wednesday 5th July

Primary Sports Day – parents invited to attend from 2pm onwards

Thursday 6th July

Primary Move Up Day

Friday 7th July

Primary reports out

Friday 7th July

Sports Day (all year groups – students only)

Saturday 8th July

PTA Family Camp Out

Tuesday 11th July

Parent drop-in session with Mr Gunning

Wednesday 12th July

New to Year 5 Parents’ Evening

Thursday 13th July

Primary Open Evening

Wednesday 19th July

Reserve date for Primary Sports Day

Friday 21st July

Summer term ends (12.15pm for Primary phase)

 

Secondary Phase News

 

Artwork of the Week

 

An amazing mixed media piece of work created by one of our very talented year 9 students, this is on one of our new displays for our exhibition next week!

 

 

Sport

Well done to all of the winners and nominees at our first Sports Awards Evening on Wednesday. Pupils from both primary and secondary made a real effort by dressing smartly. The PE department are looking forward to making this evening bigger and better next year! Ross Johns won the prestigious Secondary PE pupil of the Year, team of the year was won by the Year 7 boys football team, Hannah Morriss was awarded Sports Leader of the Year and Sophia Stacey Primary PE Pupil of the Year. Grace Bilantz was also recognised in the primary assembly and received an additional certificate as well as being shortlisted for Primary Pupil of the Year.

 

Rounders

The year 7 girls had an excellent rounders tournament last Monday, they won five out of their six games and were narrowly beaten in the semi-final by Roundwood Park. I was very proud of all the girls; they have been a pleasure to coach and take to matches this term.

Mrs Holton

 

Forthcoming Fixtures

Date

 

Fixture

Wednesday 5th July

 

Year 9 Staff & Students Rounders

Wednesday 12th July

 

Primary Staff & Students Rounders

 

Secondary Diary Dates

Summer Term 2017

 

Monday 3rd July

Year 7 Drama Club Showcase

Tuesday 4th July

Year 11 into Year 12 Induction Day

Wednesday 5th July

Year 7-11 Dance Showcase

Wednesday 5th July

Art / D&T Exhibition

Friday 7th July

Sports Day (all year groups)

Monday 10th July – Friday 14th July

Year 10 and Year 12 work experience week

Tuesday 11th July

Year 7 and Year 8 Drama Club trip to Wind in the Willows

Thursday 13th July – Saturday 15th July

Year 7-9 Paris Euro Disney trip

Thursday 13th July

Year 11 Leavers’ Prom

Friday 14th July

Reserve Sports Day

Friday 21st July

Summer term ends (12.30pm for Secondary phase)

 

General News

 

House Super Star!

Elise has made outstanding contributions to our House charity this year, The OLLIE Foundation. She took an incredibly active role in the house Fun Run by designing T-shirts for our primary students, designing my T-shirt and helping set up and tidy away the event. Elise has also managed to raise over £1,400 pounds by promoting our charity outside of school. She was able to engage businesses, such as the St Albans Pudding Stop and a recruitment company to sponsor us. She really has blown me away with her efforts, well done Elise!

Miss Shirazi

 

 

Art and DT Exhibition

Please see below the details of our Art and Design Technology Exhibition coming up on 5th July. There are some truly outstanding pieces of work created by very talented students, we look forward to sharing their work with you and seeing you there!

 

 

PTA News

St Luke's Summer Fair - Saturday 1st July 2017

 

Tomorrow is St Luke’s Summer Festival we hope that you will show your support between 5.30pm-7.30pm, it is always a wonderful event with lots for all of the family to do. We would love to send 10 volunteers to help run their event especially as they so kindly volunteered at our Summer Fair, thank you to those of you who have already offered to help, if you can spare some time please arrive at the church around 5pm tomorrow.

 

Primary Camp Out Fundraiser - Saturday 8th July 2017

 

 

Thank you to all of you who have handed in your Camp Out forms. We now have over 100 people coming along and it is shaping up to be a wonderful event!  We are all hoping for a lovely sunny day but will keep you posted next week if we need to make any alterations due to a bad weather forecast. If you have gazebos please bring them along for protection from both rain and sun!! We will need some volunteers on the day both to set up the camp and also to marshal the cars onto the tennis courts, if you are free to help please sign up via PTA Social or let one of the committee know. It is vital that we have enough volunteers to make this a safe and enjoyable event for everyone.

 

Aladdin at the Alban Arena - Wednesday 13th December 2017

 

 

 

Thank you to everyone who has bought tickets to come along to the pantomime in December so far. We will write to you over the course of the next week to confirm your tickets. We have only a few tickets left and will close the chance to buy a week from today (Friday 7th July 2017) so please do get your forms in ASAP. 

 

 

We hope that you have a wonderful weekend!

The PTA

 

Free Parent eSafety Workshops

Are you confident that your children are safe online?

 

Could you do with some tips on how to monitor or restrict their access?

 

Parents are invited to come along to an engaging free presentation at:

 

Roundwood Park School

Wednesday 5th July

7.00pm – 8.00pm

 

Primary Autism Family Support Group

Informal support group for parents and carers of children who have Autism or are awaiting an Autism diagnosis. Come and meet other families over a tea or coffee, share experiences and provide mutual support.

On Thursday 13th July at Fleetville Junior School at 10.00am – 11.30am

Contact:

abelfield@linksacademy.herts.sch.uk for more information

Or see our website: http://www.dspl7.org.uk