WORLD OF WOODLAND ISSUE 49

This month’s value is: APPRECIATION

We have arrived at the final edition of 2017 of The World of Woodland. As with all years, there is a furious pace of activity that means all pupils, staff and especially parents are left wondering ‘Where did that year go?’

Our December value of appreciation is the perfect emotion we should all feel when reflecting on the past year with so many brilliant moments to remember. From our Twitter feed, here is just one highlight from each month of a year at Woodland:

January—on the beach at Calshot; February—the library became Hogwarts; March—dressing up for World Book Day; April—our skiers in Disneyland; May—the Timberland Trail charity walk for Hand in Hand Ethiopia; June—our U13 girls’ cricket county champions; July—the T-birds from Grease; August—no photo but fabulous GCSE results for Y8; September—Pink Ladies in the PTA Fun Run; October—the visit by Baroness Floella Benjamin; November— The Last Post for Remembrance Day and December—carolling this week in Flitwick Church.

December, of course, means Christmas and so far our festivities have included the Fayre, the Christmas Recital, our Carol Service, Christmas dinner and the discos last night. This afternoon is the Y5 Christingle Service and, in our final assemblies on Tuesday, we celebrate Christmas with the Reverend Lucy from Flitwick Church. Did I forget something? Oh, yes I did! The staff panto is on Tuesday morning for all year groups and our entire KS2 is off to Milton Keynes Theatre to see Cinderella on Tuesday afternoon. I think this is why the school needs to close for two weeks, just so we can recover from the run up to Christmas!

I would like to offer my huge thanks and appreciation to the following for making the Woodland Christmas celebrations so special—Mrs Hardacre for the Carol Service and the pantomime trip; Mrs Payne for the ‘One Bright Light’ performance, the staff panto and Christingle; Ms Gibson for being the ‘disco diva;’ Miss Dobson for the Christmas Recital and our PTA, including Mr Smith, for the fundraising, serving and organisation. This Christmas, we also remember fondly Lucy Green—our Y8s especially miss her and we have sent messages to her family via a decorated Christmas tree. Lucy’s memorial statue will be ready for unveiling in the Spring, which is very exciting, as the crowd funding has enabled us to commission an amazing piece of artwork to remember her at Woodland. A small staffing update: we are saying farewell to Michael Bartley (our DT technician) as he departs for a new chapter in his career. Thanks for being an excellent member of an outstanding team. We will fill this vacancy internally; however in January we will be recruiting for an additional teaching assistant—if you are interested in applying please email martink@woodlandacademy.co.uk I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my staff for being amazing, not just in re-securing our ‘good’ OFSTED outcome, but for making Woodland such a vibrant, positive, fun-filled values based school! And finally…let me wish all our pupils, parents, Governors and staff a wonderful Christmas, a restful holiday period and a super 2018. School re-opens for pupils on 3 January 2018 but our staff are back in on 2 January and the office will be open for enquiries then. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...

Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament
We are thrilled to announce that two of our year 8 students will be representing our school in the Central Bedfordshire Youth Parliament. Georgia Cavadias and Thomas Lee will be making a difference as our new reps, raising issues that face young people in Flitwick and being the student voice for our town. They will officially take their roles in February and will serve until December 2019. Congratulations to them both!

The whole school will soon get a chance to vote for candidates from Central Bedfordshire to become the UK Youth Parliament reps, where young people from across the country will be able to voice issues in the House of Commons.

Pupil success
Congratulations to Amelie Williams for making it to the final stage of auditions for West End school of Rock.

Charitable thoughts
Last year Michael Chapman, 7HM, held a competition amongst family friends called the £5 Food Bank Challenge. The rules were that you had to buy as many non perishable food items and toiletries as you could for £5 from a supermarket of your choice. The people entering the competition then had to bring the bag of food to our house with their receipt. The winner with the most amount of food items then won a meal voucher paid for out of Michael’s own pocket.

Last year we received lots of food so Michael decided to do it again this year. We have received over 514 items of food/ toiletries this year for the Dunstable Food Bank, all of which will be donated to families in crisis and who are in need of extra help and support this Christmas.

Christmas jumper day
Total funds raised amounted to £520.28 for Save the Children Fund.

Attachments:
World of Woodland Issue 49.pdf