Amazing news about an ex Guildford Grove pupil

We were delighted to hear that Graham Spencer, a former pupil at Guildford Grove, won the under 14s London mini marathon wheelchair race on Sunday. His win was shown on the BBC1 coverage of the London marathon where he was interviewed and awarded his trophy. 

Our pupils met Graham last summer when we held a special assembly which Graham, his coach Jenny Archer and his mentor David Weir all attended.   

On Monday's assembly, we celebrated Graham's win and discussed how hard work and dedication can help people succeed. 

So congratulations to Graham and we can't wait to hear about all his future successes.

Graham Spencer at the London mini marathon

Rona Mackie
Head of School

Attendance assembly

I hope you all enjoyed the Easter holidays. We have been so lucky with this wonderful weather and it has been fantastic to see all the children playing happily on the field this week. After the assembly on Monday about sun safety, I was pleased to see children wearing hats and suncream to protect them on the playground and on the field.

This morning, I was delighted to present the 100% attendance certificates for the Spring Term to our pupils in our Friday assembly. It is incredible that 135 pupils received a certificate. This is a fantastic result! Here are some photos to celebrate (unfortunately not all the children who received a certificate are in the photos). The winning class with the most amount of 100% attendance certificates was 6K with 13 children. Well done 6K! Also well done to Year 4 and Year 2 for having the most certificates in a year group.

1T

1S

2P

2J

3G

3B

4H

4C

5H

5J

6K - The winning class!

6J

I will also post pictures of our Foundation Stage children when they receive their certificates next week. I must say that we were very proud of our Reception children this week. They attended a local sports event and competed against a number of other schools. They had a fantastic time and represented our school perfectly. 

Have a fantastic weekend everyone,

Rona Mackie
Head of School

Our School Performances

I continue to be amazed by our talented pupils. Over the last few weeks, I have been lucky enough to watch our pupils perform at the Guildford Schools' Music Festival at G Live, watch Guildford Grove's Got Talent and enjoy our Year 3 and 4 pupils perform our annual Easter concert. The standard of singing, dancing and narrating was, as always, incredibly high.

The Guildford Grove choir at G Live. They look great in our green performance shirts and they were even asked to sing a song all by themselves!

Katie and Alice singing 'Let it go' from Frozen in GGGT

Our Year 5 girl group performing Jump

Ethan, Owen and Dillan singing 'Little things' by One Direction

Inez, Jamie and Jess singing 'The climb' 

Our Year 5 boys performing 'Love me for a reason'

Abi and Conni singing 'Yours'

Megan and Lucy performing 'Thinking out loud'

The whole cast performing 'Uptown Funk'

Year 6 boys performing Bon Jovi

Year 6 girls singing 'Shake it off'

Our wonderful Year 3/4 Easter performance. They sang with great emotion and spoke so clearly. We had a packed hall full of parents too who then went on to enjoy a hot cross bun with their child in class

What a great way to end the Spring Term.

Have a lovely Easter holiday,

Rona Mackie
Head of School

Speak up, stay safe week

A few weeks ago, Guildford Grove organised its first ever safety week. During the week, the children designed their own safety superheroes to help them understand the meaning of safety. They also took part in daily PSHE lessons focusing on staying safe.

On the Wednesday, our school council organised an after school session to review our anti-bullying policy with staff, parents, volunteers and governors. It was an excellent event and the school council, along with some of our Year 6 yellow band lunchtime helpers, spoke confidently and worked with the adults to come up with a definition of what bullying is. We were very proud of them all.

Morgan speaking confidently to the audience

Mya sharing some national statistics about bullying 

Our staff, parents, volunteers, governors and pupils completed a market place activity

One table's work

Staff reading the definitions of bullying

As part of the week, we also held a 'Make Technology Safe Fayre'. Parents were able to bring in their electronic devices and speak to experts to get advice about how to ensure they were safe for their children to use. It was great to see so many parents and children attend with a range of devices from gaming devices to mobile phones.

What a great week!

Rona Mackie

Head of School

Lunchtimes

I hope everyone enjoyed a lovely half term. The children looked so smart this morning in assembly and are ready for their next half term. We talked about how our attendance is slowly improving and how this half term is a perfect time to get back on track by attending school everyday.

I was pleased to see a number of our pupils in their Brownies and Rainbow outfits for 'Thinking Day' today. It's lovely to see so many of children committing to an out of school club and working hard to earn their badges.

This week, is a special week at school as we are holding our first ever safety week. It is called 'Safety Super Heroes - Speak up, Stay Safe!'. During the week, the children will be learning about the meaning of being safe and focusing on key areas such as the safe use of technology and safety on the roads. I hope that parents and children attend our 'Make Technology Safe' Fair on Thursday 26th February from 3pm in the hall. We are encouraging parents to bring their electronic devices (phones, laptops, iPads, gaming devices etc) to this event to get expert advice on how to make them safe for children to use. 

Lunchtimes

Just before half term, I spent a lovely lunchtime out playing with the pupils. It was an extremely cold day but the children were still enjoying themselves and the lunchtime supervisors were doing a great job with keeping them moving and entertained! The smiles show how much they love their time outside.

Some of our Reception children staying out of the cold!

Great friends

Imaginative games

Supportive staff

They love the bubbles!

A great way to keep warm!

Mehmet showing his batting skills

Freddie and Junior having fun on the trim trail

Friendships across the school

How many children can fit into one skipping rope?

A chain of Year 2 pupils

Many thanks,

Rona Mackie

Head of School

Wonderful World Week 2015

This week, we held our annual 'Wonderful World Week'. 

We started the week celebrating diversity and discovered the variety of nationalities that we have at our school. This became one of our themes of the week!

The other theme focused on food. We were really lucky to be visited by a range of local restaurants throughout the week who put on cooking demonstrations and also got the children cooking too. It created a real buzz around the school! Thank you to Sir and Madam, Ask, Jamie's Italian, Yo Sushi and Burrito Loco for running the sessions for free.

Ask session with Year 1 where they tried pasta and sorbet and learnt about where food comes from

Jamie's Italian came in to help the Year 6 children make crostini bread starters

Burrito Loco having fun with Year 2

At the end of the week, we welcomed back Jim who visits us every year to run our drumming workshops. The children love his sessions and we all enjoyed his assembly today where he played the steel pans to 'Under the sea' and 'Let it go'. The children sang along beautifully.

Jim working with our Year 6 and Lighthouse children

Many thanks to Mr Crossley and Mr Thomas for organising such a successful week. I know many of you will either be attending the Year 6 drumming assembly or going to our open classroom session at the end of the day to see what your child has learnt about this week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Rona Mackie

Head of School