Letters

Dear Parents and Carers

I am keen to update you on how I am settling into my role as Headteacher of Falmouth School and how, together as the Falmouth Family, we have commenced our operations so far.

Firstly, well done to all our Year 11, 12, and 13 students for concluding their week one of Trial Exams.  I think it is fair to say that everyone, staff and students, are successfully embedding all our routines associated with exams. With continued practice, by the end of next week, we will support students in reducing as many unknowns as possible so they can be emotionally more comfortable and embrace any exam process with determination to succeed. The information gathered during this process will help us to navigate their next learning, independent revision and targeted support. We need your support as parents/carers so please ask how your son/daughter has got on, help them check that they have all the correct equipment, correct uniform and perhaps additional snacks as all they will utilise a lot of energy throughout the highly focused periods of time.

I will say that it has been great to see students smiling after an exam, telling me that they felt good about a paper, that they know now which aspects to look at next, or that they were at the end of the day less worried than in the morning.

It is about developing emotional resilience for many of them, learning and rehearsing how to retrieve information and continue learning about how to effectively revise. We will support students to develop their skills further.

A very important aspect that I have increased focus on is the school daily routines and lesson routines. We want to have only positive conversations in the morning to welcome our students and we wish this to continue throughout the school day. We are working hard to achieve this aim by following Students’ Standards for Success which students are becoming increasingly familiar with.

We will embed this really effectively with your increased help and support. We expect every student to be lesson ready and by that we mean that a student has their mobile phone switched off in their school bag. In their school bag students should have a pencil case of pens, pencils and a ruler. The school bags always played a part as the key aspect of school equipment and it is possible that due to the pandemic, when learning often remotely for prolonged periods of time, this was not necessary. I am letting you know that I would really like to see a child in school with their school bag so that they can benefit from using different equipment and different learning aids. Students often need to bring additional equipment for their school day:

we are used to having five lessons a day now instead of four, this means that potentially more things may be required to bring in, including a reading book. Having the opportunity to take home an exercise book and continue studying through the exercise book whilst making flashcards is a really effective method of sharing their learning with you, and drilling that knowledge in a creative way. Being able to show you what work your son/daughter may have completed in school and that they are really proud of is an important moment to have and enjoy and we want all the students to have these opportunities.

As a reminder, the use of mobile phones during the school day is highly inappropriate.

Our assemblies over this half-term will focus on how to interact with one another and how to share the spaces across the school in harmony. This approach should support social-emotional development and also students’ communication skills. The assembly programme will include focus on ‘child-on-child’ abuse and we want all our students to manage their interactions safely throughout their school days, on and off site. To support the positive behaviour further, we are launching a student report form where a student can report remotely an incident they may have experienced or witnessed. This is to strengthen the focus on the positive behaviours and to increase students’ confidence in the school systems.

I would like to invite you, as parents and carers, to meet with me where I can share with you my vision for Falmouth School and how you could be part of it. If this is something you would like to do, please follow this link https://forms.gle/Dwo1BuuCUiCbnQAa7. The date of the event is 25 January 5.30pm – 6.30pm.

Yours sincerely

Lenka Chanter

Headteacher