St Thomas More Catholic Primary School
Inspiration, Celebration and Education
Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
Dear Parents,
Please note that our Little Way partnership have decided to have an extra training day on Monday 3rd June 2024. This extra staff Inset has been placed at the start of Term 6 which means that the Summer half-term has been slightly extended for pupils. Pupils will return to school after the half-term on Tuesday 4th June.
Thank you.
Dear Key Stage 2 Parents and Carers,
We have been offered an exciting opportunity for our Key Stage 2 children to be involved in a community event over Easter 2024. The Parish of West Cheltenham in collaboration with other local churches and schools, including All Saints Academy, Dean Close, Hester’s Way Baptist and St Thomas More Catholic churches, is producing a Community Passion Play. The event will take place on Good Friday 29th March 2024.
This will be an outdoor roving performance retelling the events of the last week of Jesus’ life leading up to Easter and will be take place at key sites around Hester’s Way, starting in Hesters Way Park and ending at St Aidan’s site on Coronation Square (see www.westcheltpassionplay.or.uk for more details).
There will be a combined school’s choir performing some original songs during the production and we would love our school to be represented. The play’s Musical Director, Ruth Mulligan, will be holding a choir workshop in school during school time to teach the songs to any children who would like to be involved. The various school groups will then gather together in early March to practise singing the songs together.
If your child would like to take part the full commitment includes:
As this production will take place in the school holidays without the presence of staff, you will need to accompany your child to rehearsals outside of school and at the event itself and be responsible for them throughout (or nominate a responsible adult to do so).
On the performance day, the children will sing at the start of the play and at the end. In between times they can join the audience and enjoy the performance. As an optional extra the children are invited to sing at the Celebration of Resurrection on Sunday 31st March 2pm at St Aidan’s to which all the audience will be invited to see the next scene of the story unfold.
If you would like your child to take part in the Community Passion Play, please can you send back the permission slip by next Friday 26th January 2024.
Thank you so much for your generous donation of cereal boxes. We had 94 boxes and had a fun time in the School Hall watching the boxes fall in the shape of a heart 💗 We have donated the boxes to the local Food Bank and have lived out our mission of Little Acts - Great Love - Big Difference. A wonderful finish to our LWCET Launch Week. You can watch the video under the "Our Catholic Life" tab on our website.
Please see a letter below from Gloucestershire Music Service:
Dear Parent/Guardian,
If your child is receiving Whole Class Ensemble Tuition (WCET) in school through Gloucestershire Music, we are delighted to extend this amazing offer. Through this scheme, our ethos of making music fun and accessible will enable your child to benefit from affordable instrumental hire and music centre membership allowing them to continue their enjoyment of music outside of the classroom. We’ve lit the musical spark, now let us show you how exciting the next stage can be!
Visit www.gloucestershiremusic.co.uk or call our team on 01452 427242 for more information.
Happy Music Making
Nick Steel
Music Service Schools Manager
The Children's Commissioner for England has launched a national campaign called ‘The Big Ambition’. It is one of the largest surveys of its kind, to help make sure that every child in England has an opportunity to share their views with policy makers ahead of the General Election. They have asked us to share this survey with you to ensure that the children and young people of Cheltenham are fairly represented in the results.
Children and parents or carers can complete the survey here:
www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/thebigambition
They have asked if the survey can be completed by Friday 19th January please. Thank you.
Yesterday we had a wonderful celebration day for the start of the Little Way Trust. To end the week in a fun way all our schools are going to have a "Creal Dominoes" challenge, where we line up cereal boxes throughout the school and all the children will watch the display. Please could you send in one box of cereal per family so that we can have as large a domino chain as possible, hopefully that can run from one end of the school to the other! After the event, the boxes of cereal will be donated to the food bank to demonstrate our new trust motto "Little Acts - Great Love - Big Difference".
We would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! St Thomas More Catholic Primary School is now part of the Little Way Catholic Educational Trust (LWCET). We are going to have a day of celebration today, watching videos from the other schools in our trust:
St Gregory the Great
St Catharine's
St Joseph's
St Peter's
The Rosary
We will also be doing lots of craft activities, zooming in with our linked classes and finishing off the day with juice and cake 😊