Newsletter 8 November 2024

Dear Parent/ Carer

Welcome back to the second half of the autumn term! This week has seen Year 11 make a brilliant start to their mock exams – well done to everyone.

The remainder of my section of this week’s newsletter focuses on parent engagement, followed by a number of items around upcoming events.

Parent Advisory Council (PAC) minutes

The minutes of the last PAC meeting can be found here for reference: https://www.astreastivo.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/20240925-PAC-meeting-minutes.pdf

Please note that you can send emails directly to the parent advisory council using the email address pac@astreastivo.org

Parent engagement evening (reminder)

Just a reminder that Monday 11 November 2024 will see the return of the parent engagement evenings between 5pm and 6pm in the main hall. The format of the evening will cover (1) upcoming developments in the school, (2) how we are responding to parent/ carer, PAC and LGC feedback, and (3) responses to anonymised individual parent/ carer questions submitted in advance of the evening.

You can submit questions ahead of the meeting by using the following link:
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=gGfPFvBL70-q-gtugufqCmtFNXMeEpVKr-NMlbqauotUQTNHQlVIVVAyVENGU1JRREtMNlMxUVI3MC4u

Education updates

You may have noticed that we have started to include in the newsletter ways in which we are developing teaching and learning within the school. The 18 October 2024 newsletter discussed fluency, and Mrs Warriner has provided information below about the weekly quizzing that has started in tutor time. I hope you find this helpful as it was something suggested by parents.

Yours faithfully

Tony Meneaugh

Principal

Year 13 Parents’/Carers’ Evening

Parents’ evening will be held online on Thursday 21 November from 4pm-7.30pm.

Appointments can be booked via SchoolCloud – St Ivo Academy. Booking open on Wednesday 13 November at 6am and will close at 8am on Thursday 21 November. If you have any difficulties using the online platform, please call the school office on 01480 375400. If you have any other queries about parents’ evening, please contact your child’s Head of Year.

On the evening itself, please once again log on to School Cloud then click the “join video appointments” button. The system will then load your appointments, please see https://support.parentseveningsystem.co.uk/article/801-video-parents-how-to-attend-appointments-over-video-call for further information. You can use most phones, tablets, laptops etc to access this service. Please note that in order for the evening to run to time, calls will automatically cut off at the given end time (there will be a countdown on your screen).

Remembrance

As many of our community will be aware, Remembrance Sunday will take place this weekend and Remembrance Day on Monday 11 November. All students have watched an assembly about Remembrance this week which focuses on its meaning and gives students a variety of reference points for them to think about during Remembrance events. These range from the 80-year anniversary of the D-Day landings this year, the contribution of Empire troops to war and the devastation caused by more recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East. All tutor groups have followed up this assembly with a personal development session allowing students to explore Remembrance more fully and consider what Remembrance means for them. On Monday 11 November 2024 we will alter lesson timings to allow the whole academy to observe a minute’s silence at 11am.

10.35 am – Period 2 ends 10 minutes early
10.55 am – End of break, Period 3 starts
11.00 am – Bell sounds, with another at 11.01 am

We encourage students to wear their poppy as a symbol of Remembrance; it would be nice to see as many as possible wearing poppies on Monday. Students who wish to wear their cadet uniforms as well on this day may do so; however, we recommend that they wear their normal school uniform (or PE kit) on the way to and from school and change into their Cadet uniform when they arrive.

Weekly quizzing

We are keen that our students develop a secure foundation of knowledge across all subjects so that they can make connections to new knowledge and apply their knowledge to different situations.

Cognitive science tells us that repeated retrieval of knowledge is a good way to secure it in our long-term memory. We are excited to have introduced weekly knowledge quizzes in form time for Years 7 – 11 this half term. Each tutor group completes a 15-question quiz (questions submitted by our very knowledgeable Heads of Department) once a week, with tutors keeping track of scores so that we can celebrate our quiz champions and students who are making great progress by improving their scores.

Students and their families can access knowledge organisers on our academy website (https://www.astreastivo.org/knowledge-organisers/) so that they can get prepared for the next round of quizzing! You can look at the knowledge organiser, then cover it and try to recall aspects or you might ask questions in order to practice your powers of recall.

We will be following this up with some more tips on building knowledge in the next couple of weeks.

History homework – carousel

Please see guidance notes on completing history homework.

Ivolution

Tickets are now on sale for our annual dance show Ivolution. This features around 150 students from across all year groups. Performances will include our dance clubs, dances choreographed by students themselves and our BTEC classes.

This is always a highlight of the St Ivo calendar – tickets can be purchased at www.ticketsource.co.uk/stivo

Christmas Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme

Families with children entitled to free school meals may be interested in the local authority HAF programme for the Christmas break. Details can be found here.

Cambridgeshire County Council Public Consultation

We have been asked to share with families information regarding the A141 and St Ives Improvement Scheme public consultation.

Student fundraising

Well done to Jamie in Year 10 who has designed and written poems for Christmas Chocolate Boxes to raise money for two amazing charities – A Mindful Paws (a children’s mental health charity) and Kick (a children’s charity that help aspire and improve lives).

Large Poem boxes are £8 each, small chocolate/ sweet boxes are £3 each, Christmas Eve certificates with chocolates are £2.50 each and Nice List Certificates are £1 each. If you would like to order please contact Nikki 07725196500 email nic.el@hotmail.com