Celebrating Achievements
Celebration Assemblies
After a prolonged break from our usual Friday Celebration Assembly, they are now fully back up and running and everyone in school looks forward to the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of our pupils at the end of the week! We celebrate a whole range of skills and achievements including:
- Star of the week for each class
- PE Star of the week for each year group
- Headteacher awards
- Reading certificates (half termly)
- Sports team participation
- Awards from events outside of school
Photos of all children who receive awards in our celebration assemblies are posted on our whole school Class Dojo page every week!
Children who achieve awards in our celebration assembly also receive house points. When the children receive their certificate, they also take a counter in their house colour. This is placed in the corresponding box in our house point counter. The points are added up at the end of each term and the winning house gets a treat. Blencathra house won for the Summer term of 2023 and went to Clip 'n' Climb in Maryport!
Class Dojo
Class Dojo is an online tool which gives us the opportunity to share your child’s achievements, events and work and create individual portfolios for each child where they can complete online tasks, share photos and videos. In the rewards system, the children can be awarded points for a wide range of things such as ‘Reading at home’, ‘Great effort in class’, ‘Being helpful’ or ‘Showing resilience’. Parents will receive an instant notification to let you know your child has been given points and what they were for.
We will also have the ability to notify you of any areas that the children may need to ‘work on’, such as incomplete class work or homework, no indoor shoes or PE kit or any disruptions in lesson time. Hopefully, this will give you an opportunity to discuss the successes the children have had at school, as well as any areas that may need some additional attention. Any issues that are more serious will be discussed with you in person.
This is all very secure, with only parents of our school seeing the ‘School Noticeboard’ and only parents of your child’s class seeing the ‘Class Noticeboard’. Your child’s individual achievements and portfolios will only be shared with you. You can access Class Dojo through the app or on the website www.classdojo.com.
Within Class Dojo, there is also a messaging tool which allows class teachers to send home messages to all the parents of their class or a private message to individual parents and vice versa. This may prove very useful in the coming months with the possibility of bubbles having to be at home or local lockdowns and children having to access work at home. This messaging facility will allow parents to message the teacher with questions or queries regarding work, homework, reading etc. Please message your child’s teacher on Class Dojo if your child has any minor worries, for example:
- Jack didn’t quite understand fractions today; could you speak to him about it please?
- Sarah thinks she has lost her reading diary in school, could she have a look to try to find it please?
We must request that this service is not be used for issues or concerns that must be followed up in the usual way of a telephone conversation, or where necessary, a face to face meeting. Teachers will always endeavour to reply as quickly as possible however, please bear in mind that school life can be incredibly busy and whilst every effort will be made to reply or acknowledge messages, there may be a slight delay on occasion. As with the school messenger service, out of hours and weekend days will register any messages received but will not be responded to until the hours of 8am and 5pm Monday to Friday term time.
We would like parents to:
- To use images and house points to discuss with pupils about their learning.
- Not to share images on their own social media unless a photo of your child only.
- To use the whole school communication system; telephone, email and personal messages to inform the school of important information about pupils– please do not notify school of a child’s absence through Class Dojo. The office must be notified of this so that the correct procedures with registers can be followed.
As the children become more familiar with the platform, we hope to use the online learning tasks and sharing of work regularly.
