Weekly Parent Bulletin - Friday 26th June
Dear parents,
Having witnessed snow days and even a storm day a few years ago, closing the school for extreme hot weather was not on my 2026 bingo card!
Whilst Avonwood is well designed to meet the challenges of regular summer weather, on Wednesday it became clear by late morning that we just didn't have the level of adaptions at our disposal to keep everyone safe. By the end of lunchtime, air conditioned offices were converted into mini safe havens for those children struggling to regulate. I'm really grateful to parents for helping us manage this with the combination of early pick ups on Wednesday and keeping everyone home on Thursday. Whilst we sadly cannot afford to install air conditioning across the school, I will certainly look to see if we can install it in one or two larger areas to give us some capacity to better manage when events like this inevitably occur again.
Thank you to be those parents that lent us a fan for classrooms today. Where everywhere is out of stock, we would never have been able to buy these with such a quick turnaround. With roughly 60 needed, we also have nowhere to store them for the remainder of the year. So being able to borrow them today was really helpful.
Next week is due to be a regular sunny summer week of school. We will keep all current adaptions running... so children bringing iced water in, having mini handheld fans and wearing PE kit daily continues to be fine. Should temperatures be more normal, we will also return to outdoor PE lessons. Having a cap daily and a good suncream applied remains essential. If you don't mind lending fans again, I suspect staff and children will continue to be grateful for the extra breeze generated.
This afternoon, we enjoyed Teddy Bear Club which is our first opportunity to welcome the new cohort of EYFS children to Avonwood. They had a lovely afternoon getting to know each other and seeing the school. While this event was happening, the rest of the school moved to their new classes to meet their teachers for the 2026/27 academic year. Much thought goes into these classes to balance ability, gender, send and friendships. Whilst we won't always be able to offer the perfect fit, where classes change annually we find children will adapt to new classes in a positive manner. Should your child not remember their new class name and teacher, a printed letter is coming home in their book bags / rucksack. If you have any questions or queries, chat to a member of SLT.
The next challenge is for Year 4's to pack for their residential next week... bring it on!
Thanks again for your understanding this week.
Have a great weekend,
Mr Jackson