News from the School
As a school, we are keen to promote all activities that develop our children’s resilience, teamwork, cooperation and communication skills. These skills were tested to the limit last week when year 5 braved the cold and wet weather outside all day for a jungle survival workshop with Kev and Heather from Team Challenge Adventures.
The children were required to work together to complete a set of difficult challenges that tested their outdoor survival skills. This included putting up tents, overcoming obstacles whilst trying to protect the precious little amount of water they were given and even solve a difficult jigsaw puzzle with a hidden message. The children really pulled together and had a great day despite the freezing conditions.
Next stop: the jungle to put our new found skills to the test!
In this week’s Friday Flyer, we have news of Mental Health Week, which is taking place this week. The children in Year 5 have had Team Valley Adventures in and performed activities that develop resilience, teamwork, cooperation, and communication skills. We also have a list of items that are urgently needed at Sunderland Food Bank. All this and much more. Happy reading!
Congratulations to the Year 5 basketball team who are the new Sunderland Hoops4Health 2024 champions!
After a whole day of basketball in the first round, the team qualified for the semi-finals which took place at the Newcastle Vertu Arena, during a home game for the Newcastle Eagles. Our semi-final was against Barnes Junior School. A close game ended 4-4 after two brilliant baskets from Aadil and Ethan. A tense shoot-out followed with Leon and Fateha representing the team. Shots were taken for quite some time before Leon came up with the winning hoop to push Richard Avenue into the final. The final was played at halftime, in front of thousands of Eagles’ fans. An even closer game finished 0-0, after some excellent last minute defending from Isa. It was time for another shoot out. This time Fateha would be the shootout hero as she scored with the last throw – Richard Avenue were the winners!
This was a fantastic team effort with every player showing determination, passion and teamwork to contribute to the success of the team. A HUGE well done to Aadil, Isa, Fateha, Dylan, Varin, Ethan, Leon and Aisha. We are all so proud of you! Thank you to the families who were able to attend and helped support the team.
Last but not least, great big thank yous to Miss Scott and Miss Hoggett, with extra-special thanks to Mr Spoors for all he did to organise the evening and for his brilliant basketball skills and tactics.
In this week’s Friday Flyer, we have news of our Year 5 Basketball Team who have just been crowned the new Sunderland Hoops4Health 2024 Champions! Year 6 have visited the Empire Theatre, which included a backstage tour. We also have photos from the Mayor’s recent visit to open our new Outdoor Area. All this and much more. Happy reading!
We are excited to announce that we will be moving our MIS to Arbor.
Adopting Arbor will allow us to communicate with you more efficiently and bring all core school data and workflows into one system.
Over the past two weeks we have sent out invites to you all. Going forward, once everything is is place, we will be using this to do things such as communicating with you, using it for payments, parent consents for their children, update of details, booking into trips and clubs, and using it for booking slots for parents evening.
The parents evening bookings we will trial in the upcoming February parents evening, so it’s important that you all sign up for Arbor, and download the app from either the Google Play Store for Android or the Apple App Store for iPhones and iPads. There are some clear instructions on how to do this in the email you received yesterday. Here is the link if you need it again: Getting started – Log into the Parent Portal and the Parent App.
Downloading the app on your phone is useful as you will receive notifications when we send you a message and you can easily message us directly from it. You can also access arbor from any web browser.
We will still make provisions for those who don’t have a smartphone or don’t want to sign up for the app, however this app will be our primary method for everything.
If you didn’t receive anything yesterday, then please first check your SPAM folder in your emails, and if there is nothing there, there is a chance we either don’t have your email address on the system or we have an incorrect version of it. Please contact the office if you feel this is the case, or if you have any queries.
We have noted that many of you have already signed into the app. Thank you for that.
Regards
We had a wonderful time this morning as we welcomed the Mayor and her husband to officially open our wonderful new Early Years’ outdoor area.
We were delighted the Mayor, Councillor Dorothy Trueman, could join us to celebrate alongside school governors and the Sunderland Echo, who wrote about us in the weekend’s press.
Although the weather was chilly, it did stay dry as Dorothy cut the red ribbon to officially declare the outdoor area open after saying a few words to the children and staff who had gathered outside. Dorothy said she was thrilled to have been invited to our school and spoke about the importance of high quality early education saying that at Richard Avenue, it was clearly one of the highest priorities. She was so impressed with our fabulous new outdoor area and commented on the huge financial investment we have made in our youngest children to ensure they enjoy the very best experiences and are able to make a flying start in their education at Richard Avenue.
You can imagine it was a wonderful morning and an opportunity to celebrate the many strengths of our school. Our children were brilliant, and those who joined us commented on their superb behaviour as they listened well and enjoyed the event from beginning to end. Once the ribbon had been cut, Dorothy enjoyed a tour of our school led by our wonderful Head Pupils, before joining governors for a little tea party with extra special ‘outdoor area opening cupcakes’ made by our wonderful Catering Manager, Cathy.
Yet another wonderful event thoroughly enjoyed by all who joined us.
The school performed various Christmas Productions and Choir Services over our 2023 Christmas term.
The children both delighted staff and parents who attended with their brilliant singing and festive spirit.
Please lookout for links to the photos albums via Seesaw.
Mrs Walsh and I were incredibly proud of our choir who sang with confidence at the local Sainsbury’s last week.
We walked there and back, and, in spite of the rain, the children were in good spirits and lovely company as we chatted together. We sang a number of carols and were supported by some of our families which was a welcome sight, as well as by a large number of shoppers who commented with delight that we had made their day.
It was a wonderful morning, with a huge thank you to Mrs Walsh for preparing the children so well, and for all she does across our school to support and encourage singing confidence.
Thank you Mrs Walsh, you are wonderful!
