St Birinus School News – March

Below article is taken from the April edition of the Dorchester Newsletter:

We had a very unusual start to our assembly at the beginning of Term 4, as we discovered some very strange footprints on the floor and even up the wall near the fire exit in the hall.

There were some fantastic ideas about what could have made those type of footprints and how they could have possibly entered and exited the school – it was a total mystery (to most!). It was the start of our new Big Write topic of Monsters and Aliens, in which the children are letting their minds go wild with ideas of a variety of monsters and even a quick look at the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.

World Book Day gave us the excuse to dress up as book characters, this year was no different and I must say the variety of costumes was brilliant – there had certainly been a great deal of effort in their preparation. The children also shared books with each other across the school as well as some of the Year 6 children reading with the Pre-school children.

On the theme of books, we recently introduced our ‘Kung-Fu Reading Challenge’ to encourage more reading across the school. The word Kung-Fu refers to any study, learning, or practice that requires patience, energy, and time to complete – which is very important in the art of reading. The children work their way through the various coloured belts to reach the Black level, the Kung-Fu Reading Master. We are all heading for the White level as I write this.

Our next event will be our May Dancing on the 29 April at 1.15pm – please come and join us on our playground for this annual event.

Russell Leigh
Headteacher
Dorchester St Birinus CE Primary School

Website updates

Hello everyone, as you may have noticed, we are trying to improve the online presence of the village at the moment, and so I just wanted to give you an update on what we have managed to do so far.

Events
The most recent addition being the updated events section. The plan is to keep this up to date with all new events as they come up, so please, if you have something happening, whether a garage sale, sports event, or full on festival, let us know, so we can get it online, and share the information, hopefully getting you some more fans to join you. This section, whilst having the main events section, has an events list on the homepage, and also a filtered list of ‘special events‘, which excludes the more regular events which happen in the village.

There is also a new news/events submission form on the events page which can be used to submit new content to both the website AND dorchester newsletter. So if you have anything, this is a new way to let us know.

Social media
We also now have live twitter and facebook accounts for you to follow and talk to us on. All news posts from the website will be appearing on these accounts, as well as being a place of conversation, and sharing anything else the community there might be interested in.

The future AND YOU
Whilst we have several ideas on making the website better, and more useful, to the local community, the best way we can do this is with your help. If you have any ideas, please let us know using the form below, and we will note it into our list of ideas.

Submit your thoughts on how to improve the website
[contact-form to=’website@dorchesteronthames.co.uk’ subject=’Submission to the website ideas form’][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/]
[contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/]
[contact-field label=’News/Event details’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]

“A Celebration of Community” – 11th/12th June

Get the date(s) in your diaries for “A Celebration of Community” to commemorate H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth II. There will hopefully be several special events on the way such as a fun sports day in the recreation ground.  Please get in touch with Claire Andersson if you would like the be involved, or have any ideas.

celebration_of_community

Road works near Abingdon road

As you may have seen, there have been workmen digging up the road along the Dorchester end of Abingdon road, and are now proceeding along past the park, and up Drayton road.  Whilst I am not sure exactly what they are doing (no obvious signage on the sides of the vans), I wonder if anyone in the village has asked so I can share the info as to whether we are gaining anything as a community (eg. faster internet or better water drainage).

I know that there are some residents with slow broadband coming from a distant box, and so have been looking at paying to get new connections laid, so wonder if this is why.

If anybody knows more, please do let us know either via the contact form, or through twitter @DorchesterOx and I will try to update this article with updates.