We welcome our new intake into our Birchwood Family
Our new Reception children have made a great start to their time at Birchwood. They have very quickly got into excellent routines and have had a very positive impact in school. It is lovely to see all the children so happy to be at Birchwood.
Our Early Years Foundation Stage Leader Mrs Willis and the rest of her team, Miss Lowe, Mrs Stockton, Mrs Spong and Mrs Tweed have all been hugely impressed with the children. They have commented on their outstanding learning behaviours, their excellent listening skills, their co-operation and sharing skills and their overall positive attitudes.
Our induction process for our new Reception intake starts long before the children enter school in September. As soon as Warwickshire Local Authority Admissions department inform us of children who have been given a place at Birchwood, we set about contacting families to share details of organised events that we run. We begin with a welcome meeting for parents led by Mrs Willis. We also organise for all the children to attend 3 story time sessions in school, where the children and the parents have the opportunity to get to know their key workers. We also hold a meeting for parents on induction day, where myself, the school nurse team, County Caters and Team Birchwood (our PTA) share some important information to help support families with the process of starting school.
The children have all had an extremely busy couple of weeks in school that began with a home visit by their key workers. During the first two days of school each family was visited at home. This is a really important part our induction process and has many benefits. Children are more comfortable in their own environment, staff get to share key information about our school and processes and parents get an opportunity to have some quality one to one time to discuss any queries or concerns they may have.
The children have all spent three mornings and three afternoons in school learning all about our routines and how our school works. Having only half the children in at a time enables our Early Years team to really get to know the children well and gives them an opportunity to show them in detail all the fantastic learning that they will be doing. The routines that are established in the first few weeks are followed by children all the way through their time at Birchwood.
Today was the children’s first full day in school. It was lovely to see them join the rest of the children at Birchwood during dinnertime. The children all had a brilliant, but very tiring day and fully deserve their rest over the weekend. I am sure all of our new Reception children are going to have a brilliant first year in school and make lots of progress in their learning!
Mr N Coleman
Headteacher