Science Family Fun - THS

The Thomas Hardye School is pleased to invite you on Saturday 17th March, 2012 from 1.00 till 4.00pm to 'Science Family Fun' in the Science Area. Bring your family and friends and come and work through a range of experiments and problem solving activities. This is a rolling programme of events involving St. Osmund's, Dorchester Middle, Puddletown St. Mary's and the Thomas Hardye School. Participating students will be awarded a school ceetificate. Attendance at three Science Family Fun Days will lead to the award of a CREST Science Investigators Star certificate. -Celebrating National Science and Engineering Week "Our World in Motion" - Open to all members of the public - Admission free - Refreshment available donations to Julia's House - Fair Trade produce available.

A note from Mr. Butcher's Blog - FREE SMARTIES

Taken from Mr. Butcher's Blog - I (Mr. Butcher) am giving away Free tubes of smarties to those that want to help with fundraising. There is a catch……you can eat the smarties but then save up all those odd 20 pence pieces putting them in the empty tube, once full you bring the tube to me with the money inside (about £6) and I will give you a new tube full of smarties to start all over again.

Song for Dorchester - Tag Cloud

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our tag cloud for the 'Song for Dorchester'. The tag cloud created can now be seen by clicking the image on our blog, the more popular a word was, the bigger it appears in our tag cloud. I have now sent this through to the Mayor of Dorchester so that it can be used as part of the wider project. Thank-you again for your help. Mr. Spracklen

Video Problems

If you are having any difficulties in playing the Year 1 Parent Information Session video through the school website please can I encourage you to download a copy to play in one of two formats: .m4v and .wmv (recommended for Windows users). These downloadable videos are listed on the same webpage as the original.

New school certificates...

New Certificates


You may be aware if your child has received any certificates recently that we have changed our use of certificates, cups and stickers to uniform use throughout the school and also to focus on children who work exceptionally hard throughout the school year.

Below is a summary of the changes we have made.

Each term cups and certificates are handed out to individual children in each class for the following subjects:

Creative Arts, PE, Maths, English and ICT.

Seven children per class are also awarded certificates for demonstrating any of the 7 aspects of our Caterpillar Citizenship standards.

We also have two new certificates which will be handed out in assemblies by Mr Farrington, these are, ‘Home School Learning’ and ‘WOW! Writing’.

Certificates which will be used in Praise assemblies or throughout the week by the Class teacher are:

* Well done for ___ from your class teacher

* ______ has been praised today in Praise assembly


A new sticker is going to be handed out throughout the week by team members for children who display excellent citizenship skills on a daily basis.

* ‘I got this for being a good citizen!’ Look out for these!!


New Praise cards

We have designed new praise cards which will solely focus on behaviour. The new system will split the school into two stages, KS1 and KS2. Each child will have a praise card and when excellent behaviour has been seen a child will be awarded a stamp on their card. The children will work towards the following levels:

KS 1 - Bronze (25), Silver (50), Gold (75), and then platinum (100)

They will then begin again on a new card when entering Yr 3.

KS 2 – Bronze (25), Silver (50), Gold (75), and then platinum (100)

When the child achieves an award they will receive a colour certificate in whole school assembly by Mr Farrington.

I hope this clarifies what you may have been seeing coming home recently. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask the class teachers about the new system.

Mrs Mewett

Mr. Butcher's Blog

Mr. Butcher (site manager) will be embarking on a Trek in Nepal this May to raise funds for the Fostering Network. To keep us up to date with his fundraising progress and how the trip goes, Mr. Butcher has kindly set up his own blog which can be accessed by clicking the link on the school homepage or by going direct to: http://www.johnfbutcher.blog.com/. Please check out the blog and consider sponsoring Mr. Butcher for this worthwhile charity.

POWSA Easyfundraising.org.uk

POWSA have raised £139.83 (as at 13/01/12) with easyfundraising.org.uk so far but we need your help to keep donations coming in. Sign up at http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/powsa and start making a difference...simply by shopping. Shop Online and Raise Money! Have you heard about easyfundraising yet? It’s the easiest way to help raise money for Prince Of Wales School Association POWSA - Dorchester! If you already shop online with retailers such as Amazon, M&S, Argos, John Lewis, Comet, Vodafone, eBay, Boden and Play.com, then we need you to sign up for free to raise money while you shop! So how does it work?  You shop directly with the retailer as you would normally, but if you sign up to http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/powsa for free and use the links on the easyfundraising site to take you to the retailer, then a percentage of whatever you spend comes directly to us at no extra cost to yourself. How much can you raise?Spend £100 with M&S online or Amazon and you raise £2.50 for us. £100 with WH Smith puts £2.00 in our pocket and so on. There's over 2,000 retailers on their site, and some of the donations can be as much as 15% of your purchase. Save money too! Easyfundraising is FREE to use plus you'll get access to hundreds of exclusive discounts and voucher codes, so not only will you be helping us, you’ll be saving money yourself.

La Jolie Ronde - Spanish club

Just a reminder that we have attracted a brand new Spanish club to our school which has been successful in other First schools in the locality. At present a YR,1 and 2 club is running after school on a Thursday, however there is a lot of interest for a Yr 3&4 club, we just need a couple more names to make this viable.

Class teachers or the school office will be able to give you more information, or likewise see me (here for a couple more weeks yet, hopefully!).

Mrs Mewett

Streetwise Competition

LV=Streetwise is a Safety Activity Centre in Bournemouth that pupils in Year 2 visit each year. This year they are running a schools' competition to re-name the railway station (currently Streetwise Central). The overall winner's prize is First Class return train travel to London and entrance to Madame Tussauds for a family of four, with a runner up cheque for £50. There are two age groups - 8 and under and 11 and under - and both winners will be invited to LV=Streetwise for a presentation photograph in early April with one or more of the judges at the newly named railway station. The closing date is Friday 30th March 2012 giving the overall winner an exciting day out in London for the Easter holidays! If you would like more information or would like to enter the competition you can visit: http://www.streetwise.org.uk/new/index.php?ref=63 to find out more.

Parent Information Session

If you were unable to attend this morning’s parent information session you can now view the video of the session online. To view the video please visit the school website and click on the parent tab at the top of the page. Next click the Year 1 button on the right hand side, a link is then given to the video. The video should play on the school website if you have QuickTime installed, alternatively you can download a copy to play in various formats. We would welcome your feedback on this new way of sharing this information. Comments can be made directly to Mrs. Moger or through writing a comment on the class blog, simply click the blog title on the school website. Mr. Spracklen