Vale Mail Inside this issue

Headteachers Welcome ..............2

School Council .............................3

Head girl and Head boy …………….4

Belfast rugby Trip 2019 ………...….5

Farewell to Wendy Cook .............6

Farewell to Wendy Cook cont. ....7

Mr. Grew’s Orchestra concert .....8

Oral Health Talk ...........................9

Goodbye Judith Syvret ................10

Sports day with Logan and Leo ....11

Work related learning 3BT ..........12

Summer Term in Residential .......13

Mr. Grew Music...........................14

Diary Dates ..................................15

Dear Parents /Carers

It is with sadness that I am writing my final contribution to The Vale Mail, but with joy that I reflect back on the wonderful achievements and experiences of this year. I am once again very proud of our pupils and the staff who have supported them. I am also grateful to our families for sharing your fan-tastic young people with us and for supporting us in achieving the best for them.

The summer term has again given us plenty of opportunities to access a wide range of experiences out of school with a number of residential visits and the annual tag Rugby tourna-ment that was once again in Ireland.

Several of our young people have successfully completed their Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award expedition. Our pupils from across the school have also demonstrated their sporting abilities through two fantastic sports days and in other exter-nal competitions, with one Middle school relay team winning their competition against eight other teams.

Our pupil’s skills in the arts have also been demonstrated through public displays of their work and their performances, including their contributions to our fantastic 50 year celebra-tion.

I look forward to our final week, with many opportunities to award and celebrate the achievements of our young people. The glamour of our prom will be a fitting send off for our stu-dents who have reached the end of their school career with us and will move on next year to many wonderful destina-tions. Cont….

2019

2

We will also be saying goodbye to a number of our staff at the end of this school year. We will be sad to lose Kerry Webb and Clare Lane from the residential team, Nick Knight as our groundskeeper, Wendy Cook who has been at the school for 20 years and has been key to supporting our young people and their families with communication, Judith Syvret who has been teaching at the school for 17 years and most recently took the lead role for Teaching & Learning and Alison Young, the former Business Manager of the school and current Busi-ness Director for the Trust who has been with the school for 29 years. All of these valued members of our community will be deeply missed.

Finally I would like to take the opportunity to say goodbye to you all. It has been a true pleasure and privilege to be a part of this school community, to lead such a fantastic team of people and to share in the growth and development of such an amazing group of young people. I would like to wish you all the best for the future and share my confidence in the quality of the team here at Vale of Evesham to continue to take the school from strength to strength and provide the best opportunities for everyone. Have a lovely summer break and come back safe and well in September.

Mr Stephen Garside Headteacher

3

Dear Parents/Carers

Have a lovely summer holidays from the School Council and ECO Warriors.

The Vale of Evesham school has had a very enjoyable and hard-working term this summer.

The school council and ECO warriors were very sad to hear of Mr Garside our head teacher leaving and wish him well. We thank him for all his hard work and we will miss him. We are also sad to hear Mrs Syvret and Mrs Cook will be leaving and wish them all the best for the future.

The school council have been working hard promoting our fifty year celebration of our school opening. We have many fantastic acts for the performance rehearsing regularly. It should be a wonderful even-ing to share with parents/carers and our friends on the 11th July.

The ECO warriors have been hard at work recycling and reminding people at home and school to reduce their plastic and litter use. We now have re-usable straws made of metal in classes.

Many classes have been taking part in the litter picking campaign on the school grounds and outside in the community.

Darren and Jack (Chairpersons)

Head Girl and Head Boy

It was very fun be-

ing Head Girl and

Head Boy helping

young

people with their

problems.

We enjoyed the

freedom being

Head Boy and Girl

and the responsibil-

ities.

We showed the

parents where to sit

in the hall for the

performance

evening. We also

had to show visitors

around school.

Head Boy and Head Girl

4

Belfast Rugby Trip 2019

This years rugby tournament was held in Belfast at Ballyclare RFC, a fantastic 21 pupils from our school attended the event that hosted over 1000 participants and coaches! The teams were split into Under 15’s and Over 15’s, both teams were very successful, with the Under 15’s winning all of their games and the Over 15’s winning 3 out of their 5 games.

As well as playing some fantastic rugby, the pupils met other children from other teams, danced at the disco, went swim-ming and enjoyed a lovely breakfast at the hotel.

Belfast Rugby Trip 2019

5

All staff have commented on how proud they are of each of the pupils that took part, it was really nice to see pupils displaying good sportsmanship and being positive role models for each oth-er.

Well done guys! We look forward to next year.

Nicky

Farewell to Wendy Cook.

I have worked here at the Vale of Evesham

for the last 20 years. I have been lucky enough

to work in Communication supporting the

Speech and language team. Eleven years ago, I had

the opportunity to train as a Signalong tutor and have

taught many pupils and parents how to sign.

I have loved working every minute here with your children

and would like to wish them all the best for the future. Goodbye.

Wendy

MEMORIES

6

7

Mr Grew

Mr Grew put on a concert with some of our pupils for their parents and carers.

Mr Grew invited the parents to come and see what the pupils have been learn-ing this year.

Some of the young people have only just started to learn their instruments so were very brave performing in front of an audi-ence.

At the end of the perfor-mance there were refresh-ments and bis-cuits for the au-dience.

Class 3BT

Mr Grew’s Orchestra Concert

8

3BT

Oral Health talk

Today, two dental nurses, Jen and Laura came to visit Middle School.

They talked about how to keep our teeth clean and healthy.

At the end of the talk, they gave everyone a pack with a new tooth-brush in!

Oral Health Talk

9

Staff Training Summer Term and a Farewell from Me

The summer term’s staff training schedule started with a thought provoking day on the 29th of April led by Dr Ann Ozsivadjian who is the principal clinical psychologist spe-cialising in autism spectrum disorder at Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospital. We looked at the prevalence and causes of anxiety and behavioural issues in ASD, including PDA, differential female presentations, complex mental health problems and strategies we could use.

A big thank you to Amy Bresnen who led the staff on a 5 module CEOP (Child Exploi-tation and Online Protection) training course on Monday’s after school. The course contained some essential information for staff to know in helping to keep our young people safe, keep staff abreast of new developments, as well as pointing us in the di-rection of valuable resources. Amy did a great job, again thanks.

This is the last time I will be writing this article for the Vale newsletter as I will be retir-ing at the end of this term. Laura Wainwright will taking over the role of organising training.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have worked at the Vale for so many years. I have met and got to know so many inspiring and wonderful young people and feel very lucky to have had the chance to work with such amazing individuals. I wish all the students, their families and the staff the very best for the future.

Judith Syvret

10

Leo and Logan went out and took photos of lower school eating their lol-lies and play-ing.

First School were very lucky with the weather and as an extra treat they were all given ice lollies to cool down! They looked like they were enjoying their Sports Day.

Sports Day with Logan and Leo

11

McDonalds Career talk

As part of Year Nine’s Work Re-lated Learning, we had a visit from the Business Manager of Eve-sham’s McDon-alds who came to talk to Class 3BT about the type of work that people do in his store.

The pupils all asked lots of fan-tastic questions and we learnt a lot about the different roles that they have there.

Lewis asked “What is your job?” Ryan told us that he does lots of different jobs, as he is charge of the whole store, including looking after the crew, health and safety, training staff and hiring staff. Ryan told us that he had started his shift that day at 6am and wouldn’t finish until 4pm!

Work Related Learning Class 3BT

12

A fun filled summer term in the residential school, we have had

activity days, trips to the circus, a visit to the confetti fields, safari

park and water zorbing and most recently a lovely trip to the beach.

Summer Term in Residential

13

I have been teaching the clarinet and piano at the Vale of Evesham school for the past couple of years, but its been great to get to know students and staff better since taking over some of the class music teaching in January for three days a week

We`ve been lucky enough to be able to update some of the instru-ments in the music studio over the past couple of terms and a cou-ple of favourites are the Gathering Drum which lets everyone play together around one big drum and make one big noise!-and when we want to play some quieter music we have a set of bells which has let us enjoy all sorts of gentle tunes from all over the world, from Indian Ragas to Jazz from America!

In music sessions we always make sure we sing and play lots of dif-ferent sorts of percussion instruments sometimes even including the drumkit. We also listen to lots of different sorts of music and stu-dents have been able to choose their favourite music to share with everyone I have really enjoyed getting to know some new music and widen my horizons!

We also have music clubs going during lunchtimes and have good numbers coming along to our Samba Band on a Thursday and Choir on a Wednesday- do look out for them at the next concert!

Simon Grew

Mr. Grew

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Academic Year 2019 - 2020 AUTUMN TERM 2019

SPRING TERM 2020

SUMMER TERM 2020

TERM STARTS Tuesday 3rd

September 2019 PD Day - Monday 2nd

Septem-ber 2019

HALF TERM Monday 28th October – Friday

1st November 2019

TERM ENDS Friday 20th December 2019

TERM STARTS Tuesday 8th January 2020 PD Day – Monday 6

th January

2020

HALF TERM Monday 17th February – Friday

21st February 2020

TERM ENDS Friday 3rd

April 2020

TERM STARTS Tuesday 21st April 2020

May Bank Holiday – Friday 8

th May 2020

PD Day – Monday 20th

April 2020

HALF TERM Monday 25th May – Friday 29

th

May 2020

TERM ENDS Friday 17th July 2020