On Friday 25 October the whole school and many invited guests celebrated the completion of the building work at the school … we now have a wonderful school with all work complete and no scaffolding anywhere!

Mr Dickinson welcomed councillors, the building team, council representatives, governors, special guests, teachers, staff, parents and children, including past pupils who had spent their whole time at Stanley when building work had been taking place! Mr Dickinson went on to thank everyone involved in the work that has created “wonderful facilities and a large campus to benefit all the children now and for many years to come.” He also thanked parents, children teachers and staff for their “forbearance, support and hard work”.

The children then sang a song they had created that emphasized how proud they are of Stanley.

Sir Vince Cable, MP for Twickenham, remembered his involvement in the building project over 8 years previously and congratulated the school on the buildings and facilities but highlighted the fact that “What happens inside the buildings is what really matters and here that is really excellent.”

Gareth Roberts, Leader of the Council, congratulated the school on their “achievements through adversity” and apologised for the upheaval the school community had experience, thanked them for their patience and looked forward to a year of “calm time” when they could enjoy the wonderful facilities.

Fliss Syrad, Chair of Governors at Stanley, responded saying “We are so happy to have these buildings and facilities that do justice to this wonderful school community … thank you to everyone who made it happen.”

Clare Davies, Chair of FOSP, thanked the “great Stanley Community that stuck together through the building project” and presented Mr Dickinson with a memento of the project … a piece of the rotting timber that was removed with the words “Your determination and dedication saw Stanley School children thrive and achieve despite the ‘rotten’ start to the building project.”

The Mayor of Richmond Councillor Nancy Baldwin then cut the ribbon to complete the celebrations and our guests toured the great facilities Stanley has … and sampled the cakes provided by our always supportive parents!

Thank you to everyone for the celebrations, the work that is now complete and has created wonderful facilities and the support over the 99 months of the building work.

Year 4 visited the Verulamium Museum in St Albans as part of their Romans topic.

Year 4 were able to see the impact of the Romans on Britain. Verulamium was the third largest city of Roman Britain and the museum stands on the site of the Roman town.

The children were lucky enough to be able to handle real Roman artefacts and  found out how the people of Roman Verulamium lived, built their homes, cooked and what they ate. They also saw a hypocaust, a Roman central heating system and the mosaics covering it as well as dressing as Romans.
 

Our values education project involves teaching the children 8 values throughout the year, and having a rewards system to praise those children who adhere to these values. The values are: Aspiration, Cooperation, Courage, Gentleness, Honesty, Respect, Responsibility and Tolerance. 

As part of this values education project, the second value for this term, Courage was launched on Monday 14 October.  

Some examples of behaviours that demonstrate this value are:

• willingness to have a go
• demonstrating an inner confidence about self and what is important
• having confidence to do something challenging
• facing a fear or phobia
• not being afraid to make mistakes, and seeing mistakes as a way of learning
• showing resilience- bouncing back after making a mistake
• standing firm by one’s own faith, beliefs or courage of conviction
• choosing to stand up for others, even if it makes you unpopular
• being able to make up your own mind and not be swayed by pressure from others/ peer-pressure
• refusing to be involved in bullying.

Parents are encouraged to discuss Courage with children at home, and explore ways to reinforce it. Each week we will give special certificates to those children who demonstrate good values, and these will be displayed in the office reception area. Please do come and look at them.

It was Bring a Man to School Day on Friday 4 October and we were delighted to see so many dads, granddads and uncles arrive to help out.

We really appreciated the 'men' joining us and so did the children - as our Year 6 Bloggers said: "We had a fantastic day with our dads coming in to help us make Anderson shelters.  We’d like to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all the dads who came to help – we loved it!"

We'd like to repeat that HUGE THANK YOU from everyone at Stanley to all the 'men' who made Bring a Man to School Day so special!