Friday 1st December
Co-headteachers’ welcome
We hope that all were able to have a relaxing and happy long weekend. Certainly the students (and staff!) I have spoken with this week were pleased to have an opportunity to rest and recoup because it is a busy and exciting few weeks ahead, academically and in relation to so many wider community opportunities.
And so, first to reflect upon our open events for prospective students and their families in the last fortnight. Our sixth form open evening was busy and vibrant with our current sixth formers doing us proud in showcasing departments across our broad curriculum, giving guided tours and talking with such eloquence and confidence to both our current Year 11 and external students interested in Simon Balle. With more than 500 visitors to site, and a packed out hall for speeches, it was a privilege to share the success of our sixth form with so many. ‘More than just great A levels’ is what we are, and we received much positive feedback from students and parents visiting as they understood both our high expectations academically, and our extensive enrichment programme. Music, as ever, was front and centre with live performances and a packed out department to find out more about our music academy and its opportunities. Visitors commented too on the tangible ethos of care communicated by our students. Students make progress that is significantly above the national average if they join or continue their journey at Simon Balle, and a broad and ambitious curriculum, as well as a pathway to excellent future destinations is what we pride ourselves on. To find out more, and to apply for sixth form please visit here – applications must be in by 10th December 2023.
Similarly, as ever, it was a privilege to be showing prospective parents around the Larch on Wednesday. Parents commented on a calm and purposeful ethos; engaging learning taking place; support and challenge a-plenty; excellent relationships between staff and children, and children with one another; and the breadth and ambition of the curriculum exemplified. The Year 6 tour guides were incredible – every parent commented on their enthusiasm, their sense of belonging, their confidence, their pride. It is clear that we remain a school of choice – and across all of our three open events, a huge thank you to our Larch children for their music, and their tours.
Each newsletter we comment on enrichment – but each newsletter there is more to share! Much news is contained below from secondary phase geography field work to Year 6 Macbeth performances in London. Music concerts have spanned secondary strings and singing, secondary wind and brass, rock school, and a Larch extravaganza with both choirs, strings, wind and brass providing a lively and happy evening of music. Despite the darkening evenings, sports opportunities continue to abound – just this week we have been so proud of our Year 7 rugby team, and our Years 8-9 with hockey. Great performances, great values shown.
As you know from our pedagogy portal as a fortnightly focus on teaching and learning, we do not shy away from informing you as parents what we are doing to ensure that we sustain and further advance outstanding teaching at Simon Balle All-through school. This week, at our INSET day, we were privileged to welcome Tom Sherrington to inspire us all and set us on the next steps of weaving together his insightful work on walkthrus (teaching and learning guides) with our bespoke Simon Balle teaching and learning principles. We invest in excellent professional development to ensure that our students from 4 – 18 are taught consistently by subject experts who are passionate about the craft of teaching and learning together with their care for every student.
And finally, we look forward to so much coming up in the next few weeks. Firstly, good luck to our Year 11 students who are showing so much dedication to their learning. We wish them all the best on study leave and their mocks commencing soon. As the festive season comes once again, we welcome students and their families warmly to join us in so many events. Please do support us at The Frost Fair tomorrow (see below), and attend our Larch and/or secondary Carol services at All Saints Church, our Reception Nativity and much more. We hope that your children will enjoy all that we have on offer at this special time of year – please see below for a round up of dates.
- Saturday 2nd: PSA Frost Fair
- Thursday 7th: All-through Christmas Jumper Day
- Wednesday 13th: Reception Nativity Play
- Thursday 14th: Y12 Herts Young Homeless 5K run
- Friday 15th: Secondary Book Flood in the library
- Monday 18th: Secondary Carol Service
- Tuesday 19th: Secondary Christmas lunch
- Tuesday 19th: Larch Carol Service
- Thursday 21st: Early finish (12pm)
Christmas dinner
We hope that as many students as possible will join us for Christmas Dinner this year. A letter regarding dates and cost has been sent to all parents (primary and secondary). Tickets must be purchased via ParentPay by the end of today (Friday 1st December).
Frost Fair this Saturday
Get ready for a frosty fiesta at the upcoming Frost Fair tomorrow (December 2nd, 12-4pm)! Your presence will make it truly special.
A quick reminder that our event’s magic is fueled by volunteers. A heartfelt thank you to those who’ve already signed up! Your support means the world. To those still considering, it’s not too late to join the festive fun – lend a hand and be part of the jolly crew!
Check your existing sign ups, look for empty slots and sign up here.
Let’s make this Frost Fair the best one yet!
Christmas Jumper Day
Please join us in supporting Save The Children on Thursday 7th December. Make a donation via the link and then wear your Christmas Jumper to school.
https://christmas.savethechildren.org.uk/fundraising/CJD230032080
Parent Staff Association
Exciting news awaits! Elfridges (Larch Secret Shopping) and the KS1/2 UV Party tickets will soon be on sale. To join the festive fun, you need to register on the PSA website first. The process is simple. However, your registration will need to be manually approved by admin before you can checkout. Register today for a smoother checkout experience.
If you are able to volunteer at events such as these, please join our volunteer database.
Link to UV Party Save the Date
Food Bank collection (Herts and District Food Bank) OOD BANK COLLECTION FOR HERTS AND DISTRICT FOOD BANK:
From Monday 4th December until Tuesday 14th December, the Year 12 House Leaders will be collecting donations in our Primary and Secondary phases for our local food bank in Hertford. Providing families are able to donate, the following items would be gratefully received:
- Cup of soup packets
- Jars of sauces
- Tea and coffee
- Tinned tomatoes
- Spreads such as jam and honey
- UHT milk
- Long life juice
- Tinned meat/fish/veg
- Biscuits
- Tinned fruit/custard/rice pudding
- Toilet rolls
Students may leave their donations in their classrooms/form rooms, and secondary students may take their items to the sixth form resource centre.
Many thanks in advance!
Library news
Jólabókaflóð (Book Flood) and Christmas Bingo
Celebrating the Icelandic Christmas tradition, bring a book from home as a gift and hand it in to Mr Belsey and Miss Iles any time from Monday 4th December to Monday 11th December to collect a Book Flood ticket. Then join us at 1:25 pm in the library on Friday 15th December for the Book Flood: there will be Christmas bingo, Christmas music, and books to read and take home. Students should speak to Mr Belsey and Miss Iles if they would like to attend the Book Flood but are not able to bring in a book as a gift.
Book fair in the Larch
The Travelling Books book fair will be returning to the Larch library between Monday 4th December and Thursday 7th December. During the fair, the books will be available in the Larch library for students to browse. Here is a wish list document that students may bring into school and use during the school day if they wish to write down the books they would like to buy. Parents/carers can then view students’ book choices when they take their wish lists back home with them. Alternatively, you can browse the books online. The book fair will be open to parents from 3:15-3:45 pm each day from Monday 4th December to Thursday 7th December. Please note that the book fair will be cash free.
If you would like to purchase any of the books you can either 1) pay for the books using a bank card and this QR code in the Larch library during the fair or 2) pay for the books online at home and then collect them from the Larch library during the fair.
To make payments please use the following link: www.travellingbooks.co.uk/pay. Then in the ‘Find your school’ search box, please type in the following number: 16903841. Please bring evidence of the book order and payment.
(You will not be able to purchase books until Monday 4th December.)
Piano concert on Thursday 23rd November
Thank you to the students from the Larch and secondary school that played the piano for the lunchtime concert in the library. Well done to Ethan, Seren, Sophie, Dominic, Zoe, Lucas, George, Oliver, Ziva, Ethan, Vanessa, Ben, Hector, Sylvie, Orson, Edward, Lola, Holly and Charlie for your piano playing.
Pedagogy Portal
On Tuesday’s INSET day we were fortunate enough to have Tom Sherrington work with our staff to help develop our School Improvement Priority around ‘Walkthrus’. Tom (the author of ‘Teaching Walkthrus’) works with schools and colleges providing support on curriculum, assessment and the quality of teaching and learning. He is a regular speaker and contributor to conferences and education festivals. We were extremely fortunate to spend time with him and the portal this week shows what he went through with staff during the INSET day.
https://www.simonballe.herts.sch.uk/category/teaching-learning-news/
Careers
Please click here for our latest Career Opportunities Blog. This has a range of different opportunities for students in Year 11 -13 including CISCO work experience and virtual sessions with TFL, Lloyds and the RAF. You will also find some free resources for primary and secondary school students.
Please click here for a really useful document regarding current trends in the labour market.
Musical News
Head over to the Music pages to read about November’s Musical News
Volcano Day
It was great to have Y9 showing off their volcano creations last week. The whole year group took over the hall to showcase their models, cakes and artwork created as part of the tectonic hazards topic in Geography. The pictures here show a small selection of what was on display. You can also see how excited the Larch students were to find out about what the older students had been up to.
Harry in Year 9 reflected on the day:
“Volcano Day is a yearly event at the end of the volcano section of year nine’s tectonic hazards topic. During this topic, we have learnt about the earth’s structure and what benefits and negatives this causes for us. One of the hazards that is caused by the earth’s formation and tectonic plates are volcanoes. As this has been a key area of our topic, for volcano day we were given the opportunity to make a model, piece of artwork, cake or explosion and bring it into school to show other students and our teachers. We also got the opportunity to show this year’s creations to some of the younger years at Simon Balle school, who have also been learning about volcanoes. Volcano day was a fun, informative end to our topic and was a fun way to learn more.”
Y12 Geography field trip to Manchester
The Y12 Geographers have been exploring Manchester this week. They have interviewed BBC staff about the corporation’s move to Media City in Salford, attended a lecture at the Etihad about stadium-led regeneration in the east of the city and carried out fieldwork in a variety of locations around the city centre.
DofE “Making a difference”
The school has been running the Duke of Edinburgh awards scheme for the last 2 years, in that time we have helped many local causes through the volunteering aspect of the award.
It was so nice to receive a letter from the Manager of Hertford Library about three of our students and how impressed he was. He went on to say: “They have been polite, punctual, engaging, friendly and have built nice relationships with the children and staff at the library. The parents have also given me glowing reports about how much their children have enjoyed the club and look forward to coming every week, they have been as impressed as we have with how the boys have gone about running the club”
We would also like to thank Jonathan, Jack and Soham for entering into the true spirit of DofE, reinforcing the core values of the school. If you are interested in The Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme we will be looking to recruit the next cohort around February 2024 (information to follow).
Health, wellbeing and safeguarding
What parents need to know about…
Please click here to find out about supporting children to deal with upsetting content.
Physical Education News
It’s been a fantastic month for Sport at Simon Balle across Football, Rugby, Netball and Hockey. You can read all about this in our latest blog post.
In relation to PE kit, we no longer are using Stevenson’s for PE kit and for this year have moved to ProSportskit.
The white polo top is no longer available and for this year (2023-24), if necessary you can purchase a Simon Balle PE T-Shirt as an alternative option. The information below can be located on our website.
PE kit is now available to order from ProSportsKit http://simonballe.deco-apparel.com/
- White and green PE top
- Black shorts or skort
- Green rugby socks
- Shin pads and gumshield
- Football / Rugby Boots
- Optional Extras: (from ProSportsKit – http://simonballe.deco-apparel.com/)
- Simon Balle Black Midlayer
- Simon Balle Shorts
- Simon Balle Black Leggings
- Simon Balle Tracksuit Bottoms
Year 11 Outdoor activities Trip
During the past couple of weeks, our Year 11 OCR Sports Studies students attended an Outdoor Activities trip to Harlow. Students completed 2 activities which were the High Ropes and Kayaking. This was part of their course and they were assessed on the practical skills as well as their knowledge and understanding of using equipment safely. Our students behaved impeccably and were a real credit to the school displaying resilience and courage in abundance.
Learning in the Larch
Reception: In Reception the children have been learning about doubling in Maths, using numicon to support their understanding. The children have also enjoyed the story of ‘Not A Stick’ and have done some brilliant writing with their own ideas, as well as being very creative during child initiated learning with what they can create!
Year 1: Year 1 have continued their hard work in Phonics as they learn more Level 5 sounds, and have focused on doubling and halving in Maths this week. They have also been learning about Advent, and have made a fantastic class Advent wreath!
Year 2: The children in Year 2 have been working hard on writing brilliant poems based on ‘The Sound Collector’. It has been wonderful to see the children use a variety of wonderful language to describe all of the sounds they have collected.
Year 3: It has been fantastic to read so many brilliant fables written by Year 3 this week. Taking inspiration from well-known Aesop fables, the children have taken those familiar stories and morals and turned them into their own original versions. When writing them, the moral was ‘slow and steady wins the race’ as it kept children focused which helped them take their time on each element of writing.
Year 4: In PRE, the children in Year 4 have been focusing on the Christian faith, learning about Advent. They were learning about the significance of the candles on the advent wreath and what each part symbolises. This continues their learning on the significance of a range of symbols from different religions.
Year 5: Over the past two weeks, Year 5 have been looking at how recent redevelopment has changed Hertford and how it has impacted local residents in their Geography lessons. In English, they have been working hard creating cinquains (small poems).
Year 6: Last week we were blown away by the courage and determination shown by all Year 6 pupils at the Shakespeare festival in London. We are so very proud of all of the efforts you put in and it well and truly paid off.
Year 6 SATs information evening
We would like to invite Year 6 parents/carers into the Larch for an information evening to give you more details about the end of KS2 SATs and the year ahead. We highly encourage you to attend, and in previous years have had near 100% attendance. We look forward to seeing you in the Larch hall at 6pm on Wednesday 10th January.
Larch Survey results
Thank you to all parents and carers for your invaluable feedback. We will endeavour to respond to all specific individual questions and below have responded to more general questions raised.
Some key statistics we are proud to share:
- 98% of parents/carers would recommend Simon Balle to others.
- 98% of parents/carers said their child is happy at Simon Balle.
- 99% of parents/carers said their child feels safe at Simon Balle.
- 98% of parents/carers said the school deals effectively with bullying, or that they don’t know as their child has had no experience of this.
- 98% of parents/carers said the school makes sure children are well-behaved or they’re unsure as they’ve not had any experience of this to comment.
- 91% of parents/carers feel the school has a wide range of extra-curricular activities.
- 95% of parents/carers are aware of what their child will learn during the year.
A selection of quotes from some of our families:
Thank you for ensuring that my daughter is not only being well-educated through your exceptional curriculum but will also graduate from the Larch as a well-rounded individual by exposure to the value system reiterated throughout the curriculum and school.
A truly wonderful school whose core values are event in their pupils and teaching staff. My children are thriving both emotionally and educationally, I couldn’t be happier.
We are constantly impressed by the standard of education, the range of activities available and the way progressive independence and choices become available as your child develops.
How do I find out what my child is learning this year?
In September we held information sessions for each year group that outlined the curriculum for the year and shared these slides with families- please let your class teacher know if you’d like this to be reshared. On our school website, our curriculum maps are plotted so you can see what your child will learn in each term, but also if you would like to look into a particular subject you can get more information as well as what they will learn in future years.
https://www.simonballe.herts.sch.uk/curriculum-years/
https://www.simonballe.herts.sch.uk/curriculum-overview/
When will I hear about my child’s progress?
We have plotted our parent evenings for Autumn to discuss settling into their new year group and targets for the year ahead, as well as another before May half term to summarise progress so far and any final targets to work on for the final half term. Your child’s annual report will be with you in Spring term (around half way between the two parent evenings), which will outline in more depth the specific strengths and areas for development in each core area and the wider curriculum. Spreading these progress updates to once per term means that enough time is given to work on their areas of development. Your child’s class teacher will be in touch if there are any concerns their progress has slowed down, however if you have any questions please speak to your child’s teacher and they will be happy to give you more information. Your child’s weekly dictation is also completed in their home learning book for you to see on a weekly basis.
Each year group has either workshops, assemblies or performances throughout the year- please look out for more information! We also look forward to inviting parents into the Larch for our annual summer open celebration evening where your child’s work throughout the year will be celebrated.
Why are parent evenings held virtually?
Feedback from our School Cloud system has been overwhelmingly positive, with 92% of parents reporting that they find it easy to navigate. Parents have informed us that the virtual evenings are useful as it means that families can attend appointments more easily with flexibility from home or work, appointments are held promptly with no risk of them running late, and more than one parent can join from different locations. On the rare occasion there is a technical difficulty, we are able to follow up with a phone call to ensure no information is missed. As always, please catch your child’s class teacher on the door at home time or drop an email to larch@simonballe.herts.sch.uk if you have any questions about your child’s learning.
Parents and carers of children with SEN
In September, your child’s student profile was shared, and progress will be reviewed and updated in January, and will be shared with you.
A reminder for all that the first point of contact (both for learning and pastoral wellbeing) should be your child’s class teacher/form tutor. Beyond this, please reach out to the heads of year and/or primary phase leaders. If your query is specifically in relation to SEND, please book a Calendly meeting in the first instance using this Booking link.
Term dates reminder (this year)
We will be breaking up for Christmas at 12.00pm on Thursday 21st December. The new term starts on Monday 8th January.
Term dates for this year and next year can be found here on our website.
The assessment and reporting schedule can be found here on our website.
Wishing everyone in our community a positive and fulfilling fortnight ahead.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs Rachel Kirk and Mr Michael Moss (Co-headteachers)
