21-22 Headteacher Blog

21st July 2022

What a week! The week has been hot and emotional!

We started off the week on heatwave alert, shutting windows and trying to keep cool and we have ended the week and the year quite emotionally (well I have!)

We loved competing with Year 6 in the annual Year 6 vs Staff Netball match (4-3 to the staff) it was so much fun!

Today we said our goodbyes and thanks to our Year 6 class. 

Congratulations to them all. We are so proud of everyone of them.

We said our Goodbyes to Mr Fenton and Mr Barnett and gave Mrs Martin a send off she will never forget. 

Wishing you all a wonderful summer break and we look forward to seeing you back at school on Monday 5th September at the local time. 

Mrs Cohen

15th July 2022

As we are nearly at the school year it has been quite incredible how fast it has flown. We returned to school last September after a couple of patchy years and I truly didn’t quite believe we would be back for good…but thankfully we were!

We have had visitors, trips, exciting learning opportunities and our pupils and staff have worked their socks off!  We have had a successful year with our new Art and DT studio and had our first ever STEM week.

Our Year 6 pupils experienced their residential, performed an incredible play ‘Aladdin’ and all were amazing role models for the rest of our school. We will miss them very much as they go off to secondary school. They have encapsulated all that Clore stands for and shown true ‘Chesed’ (loving kindness) in their time with us.

This week all the children had the opportunity to spend some time with their new teaching teams, in their new classrooms and we welcomed our new Reception children to Clore Shalom. All were settled quickly and the staff fed back that everyone had made great first impressions.

This morning was our last Kabbalat Shabbat of the year and and we awarded two much coveted leaves for our tree. The first went to Mrs Gilbery-Phillips for her passion and enthusiasm in leading our PTA so well and we thank her for her hard work. The second leaf went to Mrs Martin, our Deputy Head, who is leaving us next week to start her headship in September. Her leaf was for ‘commitment’ as she has shown such commitment in playing her part of the Clore journey over the last 5 years. We will say a proper goodbye to her in on our leavers assembly next week.

The PTA have done incredibly well this year raising an impressive £12,363 thank you to them and to you for the support you have shown.

Next year our focus is on the development of our pond area and we have some exciting plans to share shortly.

Congratulations to our attendees for the tea party this week

Rec: Cody 

Year 1: Annabelle W

Year 2: Jonny 

Year 3: Charlotte

Year 4: Charlie

Year 5: Max 

Year 6: Jake

Today, every pupil has taken their report home. We are so proud of the progress they have each made and we hope you enjoy reading their reports. 

It is going to be even hotter next week. All pupils are welcome to continue to wear PE kits. Please make sure they have a water bottle, hat and have sun cream applied.  We will manage break and lunchtimes accordingly, using areas with shade and limiting the amount of time spent outside. 

We will be collecting in reading and library books over the next week, and will not be issuing new ones until the new year. Please ensure that you send back any that you may have at home to enable us to be prepared for redistribution in September.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, See you on Monday.

We finish the term next Thursday 21st July at 1.30pm and 1.45pm.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

8th July

Last Sunday was our Clore Carnival and it really was a lovely day for us all to be together. It was wonderful to finally be able to have our school fair after not being able to hold it for the last few years. It was a great opportunity for our families to get together and we also welcomed some families who will be new to our school in September. The choir sang beautifully and we also had an incredible steel band who provided the music. The 'Teachers Family Fortunes' was so much fun and I feel incredibly proud that 100 children voted me as the second best dressed teacher at Clore! 

Massive thanks to Jo Graham, Claudine Gilbery-Phillips, Mrs Shani Allan, Mrs Laura Rappaport, Mrs Leanne Jacobs, Mrs Hannah Barth, Mrs Yael Levy, Mrs Ronit Raman for their meticulous organisation and drive and passion to put a fantastic fair on for our community. Also thank you to Neil Rosen and his security team- for keeping us safe! Thanks to the Collins, Konopinski, Franks, Levey, Nemenyi, Balsam, Sais and Rosen families, Reception parents, Year 1, 2,3,4,5 parents, Engel Jacobs, Comedy Club, Amazing Support, Sycamore Wealth for sponsoring stalls and activities at our fair. This has meant we have raised an incredible....

We have loved our Commonwealth games week this week! We have learnt about countries in the commonwealth and experienced sports and activities that we have never done before!

On Monday we had a Martial Arts expert in and we enjoyed learning about all the moves he showed us! We also had Mr Harris (Jayden's Dad) join us and he ran fitness sessions for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. Thank you so much to him for his time. 

On Tuesday we had BMX Mike in school and work with our older children. Everyone loved the bikes and learning tricks!

Wednesday was Sports day and the children participated in track and field events and representing their house(we will hear who the winning house was on Monday!) Thank you to those parents who supported their children with all the events.

Yesterday we had 'Road 2 Tokyo' in, which seemed to be one of the highlights of the week for us all. They ran workshops to educate our pupils about the Paralympics. Our pupils participated in activities using wheelchairs and really considered what competing must be like for athletes with an impairment.

Today we have a hula-hooping workshop, which has been huge fun!

Thank you to Mrs Goldsmith and Mrs Benson for arranging such a fantastic week!

Well done to those who attended tea party today. They were treated to these amazing 'Sporty' cakes!

Toby and Bailey, Thursday, Cole, Leo S, Nate, Ava, and Anya 

We look forward to welcoming our parents to see our Year 6 show next Tuesday and Wednesday. Please call our office for more details.  On Thursday all our pupils will be having some time with their new teaching team. 

Next Friday is our last Kabbalat Shabbat of the year- All are welcome- you don't need to book tickets to come!

Please make sure your child has got a named water bottle and hat in school and has had suncream applied as its going to be scorcher next week!

If you have any links with any landscape architects or building project managers who would be interested in supporting us with our latest amazing project to rejuvenate and develop our pond area please get in touch with Mrs Goldsmith asap! 

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

1st July 2022

This week we invited our Hertfordshire Improvement Partner into school. He worked with Mrs Spencer who shared with him the many developments we have made in our Art and Design and Design and Technology curriculum. He was so impressed at the quality of work being produced and commented on how the use of our studio has raised the profile of this curriculum area throughout the school.

We welcomed Year 1 parents in to school on Tuesday and Year 1 shared some lovely songs they have learned through the year.

Year 5 went to Chertsey Museum to develop their understanding of the Vikings and Viking life. They made swords, dressed up in traditional clothing and listened to a talk with a 'Viking'

This week we completed our SLT recruitment and I am pleased to announce that Mrs Goldsmith will be our new Deputy Head and Mrs Berger will be our new Assistant Head for Curriculum. Mrs Lax remains Assistant Head for Pastoral and Behaviour.

Next week is our Commonwealth Games Sports week and we have lots of amazing activities planned- including our traditional sports day. It is meant to be a very hot week next week so please make sure your child has had suncream applied before they come to school, has a named water bottle and hat in school.  Year 4 and Year 5 please send in your child with a helmet for the BMX workshop. Children can come to school wearing the PE kit all week. 

Congratulations to all those that joined me for celebration tea party.

R: Freddie F

1: Spencer 

2: Jack 

3: Leo B

4: Charlie 

5: Chloe 

6: Eitan

Well done to Emily and Orli who have been learning and developing strategies of what to do when they find something really challenging. They have received my academic excellence award this week.

Lastly our class arrangements letter will be sent out shortly. I respectfully request that you enable our teachers to finish their time with their current class before making a time to meet with them, if you need. We have a thorough handover time between our team.

We are looking forward to seeing many families at our Clore Carnival on Sunday from 3pm-6pm. Thank you to the incredible PTA team who have put all their efforts in to making this event such a success.

Shabbat Shalom

Mrs Cohen

24th June 2022

This week we welcomed Year 2 parents in for their assembly. The children presented a wonderful account of their year and it was so pleasing to see the wide range of learning they have been doing. Well done to all the team and to the children, who shone like super stars!

Reception and Year 1 visited the Barnet Environmental Centre on Monday and Tuesday and both classes had an amazing day.  

Year 6 have been on their residential and it was an absolute delight for me to spend the day with them yesterday. The activities they have been able to do have been incredible; climbing, making campfires and cooking pizzas, swinging, archery to name a few. They have loved and appreciated their time away and I look forward to them being back in school on Monday. 

Thank you to Mrs Martin, Miss Winwood and Mr Thompson for looking after our Year 6 pupils so well and giving them an amazing, memorable time away. 

Well done to Cole and Samuel who received academic excellence awards this week. They certainly deserved it for their English work.

Our corridors look incredible with our Maths learning and the skills that children need to progress, evident on display. The children have pointed these out to me this week and they have shown such pride for their learning. 

Well done to those children that joined me for celebration tea party today:

Bea(Y4), Sloane(Y5), Felicity(R), Annabelle W(Y1), Seth(Y2), Zack(Y3)

Next week is Year 1's assembly and we look forward to welcoming parents to that on Wednesday and also to next weeks Kabbalat Shabbat. 

Please don't forget to come to our school fair on Sunday 3rd July...even if its just a pop in! We would love to see as many families as possible. 

Have a lovely weekend. 

Mrs Cohen

17th June 2022

It has been another busy week here at Clore Shalom. On Sunday the choir attended the Jewish Care Family Funday and performed for the crowds. They sang brilliantly and did an amazing job, passers by even stopped to ask us who was singing as they were so blown away by the performance. A massive well done and thank you to Miss Grant and the choir as well as the families that supported in the audience on the day.

On Wednesday Year 3 had their class assembly. They played a great game of rock Guess Who and taught us all how to mummify things and how to 'Walk Like An Egyptian'. 

On Thursday Year 6 had a workshop delivered by volunteers from the National Holocaust Centre. They learnt about the journey of Leo, a 10 year old Jewish boy from Nazi Germany in 1938 to his safety in England via the Kindertransport. The children were able to handle museum objects and documents from Leo's life and discovered more about pre-war Jewish life in Germany under the Nazi regime.

Today we have taken part in A Day of Welcome. A Day of Welcome is a day of solidarity and learning in schools that aims to build a culture of welcome and understanding for refugees and asylum seekers. The celebration is designed to support schools and families in marking Refugee Week (20-24th June) and to send a clear message that for those in need of sanctuary, our communities are welcoming places. The children all thought about what it might be like to be a refugee and how to welcome people into our school and local community. Some made cards of welcome and some wrote poems welcoming refugees into our school. Year 5 wrote a collaborative poem as part of their lesson:

If you were stuck in a lesson or a blessing, we would be your map in a maze, guiding you round.

If you were sad, we would always be with you.

If darkness is pressing against you, we would be there to fight with you.

If you were stuck, we would give you a helping hand.

If you needed to jump out of the toaster, and turn into toast, we would be the ones to support you the most.

If you're feeling sad, we could be your 'lad'!

Have lunch with us and by our friend, and remember you're not pretend.

Well done to those that attended tea party today:

Reception: Sloane G

Year 1: Noah

Year 2: Gabby 

Year 3: Adam 

Year 4: Ella 

Year 5: Callum 

Year 6: Harry 

Clore Shalom have been very lucky to have been supported by Jewish Child’s Day over the last few years. They are celebrating 75 years as the UK’s leading Jewish grant giving charity. In the last 10 years they have supported 1500 organisations and allocated £4million in grants through health, equipment, education, activities and therapy projects in the UK, Israel and worldwide.

Please support their Transforming Lives campaign. With your support for 36 hours, we can transform the lives of even more children through even more projects in even more locations. For 36 hours every donation will be doubled. Donate by clicking the below link on Sunday!
Thanks for your support.
https://www.charityextra.com/jewishchildsday/joandmatt

Shabbat shalom,

Mrs Martin

10th June 2022

Welcome back after our half term break, we seem to have fitted a lot in to our 4 days this week.

On Wednesday, Year 4 shared their wonderful assembly with us, showcasing Science, History and Music. It was so lovely for Year 4 to have their parents here to watch and from the faces of the audience, it was clear everyone enjoyed the performance. Thank you to Miss Grant and Mrs Woolstone for all their work in supporting Year 4 with this.

Also on Wednesday Year 2 spent the day at Southend, as part of their topic on ‘The Seaside’. Much fun was had by all and the children loved the trip.  Thank you to the parent helpers that went with and to Mrs Gee. Mrs Spencer and Mr Fenton, who organised a fantastic day for the class

This week we welcomed the Jewish blind and disabled charity to school and they informed us about the important work they do in and out of the community.

Yesterday we had a very thorough safeguarding review carried out by Herts for Learning. I had requested the visit to ensure that all our processes continue to be robust and secure and to identify any aspects of safeguarding we could improve, if needed.  The advisor examined all of our safeguarding processes, including health and safety processes, policies, and training and also had the opportunity to talk to staff, pupils and parents. It was an extremely positive experience and she was impressed at all aspects of our school and how we keep our pupils safe. She commented that ‘our pupils have a strong moral compass’. She was extremely impressed at our drop off and collection routines and the amount of parents that volunteer. After meeting with parents, the advisor noted that although all our policies and information are on our website, parents would benefit from clearer direction to them and our safeguarding procedures. Over the coming weeks I will be drawing your attention to key information on our website through this blog. She ended the visit by telling the SLT and governors “It is rare to get to the end of a full safeguarding review with so many positive points”.

I am extremely proud of our embedded safeguarding culture and as a team we all play our part to ensure every child is emotionally and physically safe in our community.

On Sunday our school choir will be singing at the Jewish Care family fun day at Aldenham Country Park. The fair is on from 12pm to 4pm and we will be singing from 3.25pm. We hope you will be able to join us. For more information please visit Jewish Care Family Fun Day

Well done to our tea party attendees:

Reception: Emmy 

1: Ava 

2: Jonah 

3: James 

4: Daniel 

5: Scarlet

6: Jonah 

and Mrs Drew !

Lastly huge congratulations from us all to Miss Winwood, who got engaged over the holiday. Wishing her and her new fiance Lee much happiness together. 

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

27th May 2022

Today we have been celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. We are all in school dressed as royalty and there have been some amazing costumes! We have decorated cakes, made bunting, table cloths and prepared sandwiches for our tea today. 

Thank you to Wenzels for donating 150 delicious cookies to us! 

Well done to the following children you joined me for tea party:

R-Jodie 

1- Ayden 

2- Samuel A

3- Jayden 

4-Maxwell

5-Louis L

6-Casey

and Mrs Martin!

Wishing you a lovely half term break- lets hope the sun continues to shine!

See you after Shavuot on Tuesday 7th June at the usual time. 

Mrs Cohen

20th May 2022

We loved having parents in school for our first class assembly, this week. Well done to Year 5 for their fantastic presentation and sharing some of their learning this week- we all so enjoyed it. 

On Monday we say goodbye to one of our security guards, Romeo, who has been with us for the last two years. We thank you for looking after us so well and wish you luck as you return to your family in Romania.

Well done to the children that joined me for celebration tea party today. Nathan C, Indi, Lexie, Hanna, Oren, Rupert and Bertie. We enjoyed delicious cake made by Mrs Drew. 

Next Friday we are celebrating the Queen's platinum jubilee and look forward to everyone dressing up as royalty!

Tickets are now on sale for our Clore Carnival!

Shabbat Shalom and have a restful weekend. Mrs Cohen

13th May 2022

Congratulations to our Year 1 children, who this week recieved their siddurim (prayer books) in a special ceremony called a Chaggigat Ha Siddur. Parents joined us for the ceremony and presented their children the siddur as a symbol of passing Jewish traditions down to the next generations. Year 1 sang some beautiful songs and we all thoroughly enjoyed their assembly. Today Year 1 children had the opportunity to use their siddirum in Kabbalat Shabbat.

This week we have been giving our Year 6 pupils the support they have needed to complete their SATS tests. I am so proud of the way each and every one of them has demonstrated a positive attitude and shown such determination to do their best in every test presented to them. It has been a completely new experience for them all and they have tackled the challenges in such a mature way. Regardless of their results, we think you are a great Year 6! Yesterday they had the chance to have a celebration party with their Year 1 buddies, which everyone enjoyed!

On Tuesday, a group of September school starter children came to visit from Tots & Scholars Nursery Shenley to deliver cards they had made for the Reception children as they have been learning about going to school. They were very excited to see what our school looked like and went back to their nursery and told all their friends about 'big school'! Reception will be writing letters back to the children to tell them what it is like to be at school and when the nursery children come to visit again, they will share these with them. 

Last night we held an information evening for parents whose children are starting with us in September. It was a great opportunity for them to meet the staff and see the school. We look forward to welcoming their children in for some transition time towards the end of Summer term.

We do still have places available for Reception class for this September, so if you know of anyone who would like a pace please ask them to be in touch.

We are so pleased to announce that thanks to you all and Tesco, we have received £500 towards a school project of our choice- this money will go towards developing out outdoor environment near the field, which we would like to convert to an outdoor learning area.

Well done to those children that achieved excellence in their work this week. Flora re-wrote The Bear Hunt, using a shark! Thomas created an amazing animation film with playdough.

We are very proud of our tea party attendees this week:

Reception Jacob

1 Bella B

2 Rose

3 Alex

4 Ethan H

5 Ollie

6 Tali

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Cohen

6th May 2022

Although this week was a shorter week due to the bank holiday we have still crammed a lot of activity and learning in the 4 days! 

Watford football club have been coming to visit Year 6 each week as part of a 'Positive Minds' session. Taylor leads the session, with focus on mental health and wellbeing.  The pupils complete activities about promoting discussions for mental health and strategies they can use to stay mentally healthy. 

Next week our year 6 pupils will be sitting their SATS tests. We are especially proud of each and everyone of them and know how hard they have worked to get to this point. We will celebrate what an amazing class they are at the end of term but for now wish them lots of luck and success and hope they gain much from the experience next week (especially breakfast at school!).

Today we all dressed in blue and white and celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaout (Israel’s Independence Day). Noa (Our shinshin) and her friends ran some amazing activities and taught us all some Israeli Dances. 

Well done to these children who achieved excellence this week in Maths!

Also a very well done to all our tea party attendees who were lucky enough to have Mrs Garfen's amazing Yom Ha'atzmaout cakes!

This afternoon our PTA are selling donuts in the playground. Thank you to them and to you if you have bought some! Yum!

Next Friday, parents are invited to Kabbalat Shabbat please remember to book your space!

Wishing you a lovely weekend, Shabbat Shalom.

29th April 2022

Welcome to Summer term! It has been a very busy week and has felt like the holidays were long ago!

We started the week with an assembly on another one of our school values, 'Inspire'. Thank you to Annabelle W, in Year 1 who shared with us her definition of 'inspire', "When someone does something really good and you want to copy them!" We are hoping that over the coming weeks our 'Inspire' assemblies will provide inspiration for us all to achieve all we can in our academic work and in our day to day actions, for us all to be the best we can be. 

Today we welcomed back our parents to Kabbalat Shabbat and what a special morning it was. Our school choir presented two songs for us and sang so beautifully. Thank you to Miss Grant for guiding them and helping them prepare for this morning. Our Shabbat service was especially lovely today and, judging by the watery eyes I saw in the audience, moving too! Thank you to Rabbi Neil, for his inspirational words and Mrs Silverman for her wonderful piano playing.

We have invited our families to sponsor a Kabbalat Shabbat, to mark a special occasion or commemorate something that can be shared by us all, as a community. Today I sponsored the Shabbat, as I wanted to mark today and celebrate the fact that we can come together and be a community once again. 

We also celebrated the achievements of the following children, who were invited to my tea party this morning:

R-Nathan

1-Spencer

2-Skyla

3-Scarlett

4-Raphael

5-Elisheva

6-Sammy

Next week, we are celebrating Yom Ha'atzmaout, and dressing in blue and white on Friday.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and enjoy the extra long weekend!

Mrs Cohen

12th April 2022

Happy Holidays and Chag Sameach!

8th April 2022

As we have come to the end of another busy, (but nearly normal term) I am struck by how resilient our pupils and staff are. Despite the messages that we have received that Covid has finished, we certainly haven't felt that this is the case. This term with staff absences and cover implications this has been one of our biggest challenges. Our team have soldiered on and am so appreciative of the constant flexibility they have applied to anything that has been asked of them. Thank you team!

Sadly we said goodbye to Mrs Nunn on Tuesday and I look forward to sharing with you some new office news when all is confirmed.

On Monday we were visited by the Animal Edge mobile farm. The children had great fun interacting with the animals and were able to groom, hold and feed them. They learnt how to handle them, what they eat and the needs of the individual animals. This supported our teaching in the science topics of animal behaviour, habitats, life cycles and classification. Thank you to the PTA and our families for helping to make this happen!

Next week we are so excited to welcome our parents in the building for our model seders. Much work has gone in to them and thanks must go to Mrs Martin and Rabbi Neil for what we know is going to be a fantastic experience for the children.

Congratulations to Sienna and Jasper for achieving excellence for some amazing writing! 

We are also very proud of the children that attended celebration tea party this week:

Amelie (R)

Tilly (Y1)

Jonah (Y2)

Jake (Y3)

Abigail (Y4)

Maya (Y5)

Daisy (Y6)

Wishing you a lovely weekend and holiday- we break up on Tuesday 1.30pm and 1.45pm and we are back to school on Monday 25th April at the normal time.

Mrs Cohen

1st April 2022

Well what a strange weather week we have had this week. Thank you to all our volunteers who have stood in the rain, sun, wind and snow this week!

We have, again welcomed parents in to school for parents evening this week and have had such lovely feedback on the progress our pupils have made and how impressed parents are with how well our staff know their children. 

Today we had Rabbi Neil and Mrs Silverman join us for Kabbalat Shabbat, we are so excited to have parents back to join us for the service after the holidays and there will be more details regarding this today. 

On Monday we say a fond farewell to Mrs Nunn, who is leaving us after 8 years. She started here as a classroom assistant and ends her time as an administrator for the school office. We will all miss her very much and will to be sad to see her go, but wish her lots of luck and success in her new job at Hertfordshire County Council. 

We are especially proud of the following children who have received 'Achieving Excellence' awards this week:

Mia, Freya, Isaac and Louis for the most incredible writing based on the blitz.

Nate for writing his version of the school story

and Max for some incredible writing

We have had a delicious celebration tea party today. Well done to the following children, who joined me:

Rec - Freddie F

Y1 - Henry 

Y2 - Mia J

Y3 - Raphael C

Y4- Thomas 

Y5 - Zack 

Y6 - Saul 

We are looking for the following volunteers to help us in school:

Reading volunteers- parent or family member who is able to commit to coming in to school once a week to support children with their reading skills in English OR Ivrit

Librarians-who can  recommend books to our children, has a love of reading and is able to use a barcode scanner (it's easy!)

Please contact the school office if you or know someone who is interested in these positions. 

Wishing you a wonderful Shabbat and weekend. 

Mrs Cohen

25th March 2022

We have all enjoyed the beautiful weather this week, it certainly makes a difference when the sun is shining!

This week, we welcomed parents back in to school and had our first face to face parents evening. We have missed having the opportunities to chat with parents in this way and I was so pleased to meet properly, our parents from Reception and Year 1 who haven't been able to have the full Clore community experience over the last couple of years. We are all so proud of how hard our pupils are working in all their subjects and it was so lovely for our teachers to share pupils' achievements and progress. The notes the children left for parents showed our children have such pride in their work and the excitement this morning when they read parents replies was so special. We look forward to welcoming parents for the second parents evening next week. 

Our corridor displays have been changed and celebrate the high level of learning that took place during STEM week last week. Thank you to all the staff for the tremendous amount of effort they have put in to making our school not only look lovely, but also celebrate such a clear focus on high quality learning.

This morning we had a wonderful Kabbalat Shabbat with Rabbi Neil and for the first time were joined by Reception class, who all really enjoyed their first experience of Kabbalat Shabbat. 

Well done to Toby in Reception who achieved excellence this week for his reading.

Also to Mason S in Year 4 who produced the most amazing piece of writing

Today I was joined for the tea party by the following children, well done to them all.

Reception - Leia 

Y1 - Ruby 

Y2 - Seth 

Y3 - Jacob 

Y4 - Romy 

Y5 - Louis L

Y6 - Issy 

We all enjoyed delicious cakes baked by Mrs Martin. 

Wishing you all a wonderful sunny weekend and Shabbat Shalom. 

Mrs Cohen

18th March 2022

The sun is shining and we have had the most amazing week! We have all enjoyed our first ever STEM week with every class taking part in amazing experiments and having the opportunity to develop our deep thinking around Science and Maths!

We have welcomed visitors running forensic scientific sessions, Lego challenges and robotics and the teachers have also planned some incredible activities. A big thank you to Mr Thompson and Mrs Berger for arranging such a fun and exciting week for us all.

Yesterday we celebrated Purim, we all got dressed up, made misloah minot for our friends, heard the Purim story, and had lots of fun! Everyone loved the bouncy castles and the day was so special for us all. 

Congratulations to all those that made it to celebration tea party today:

Rec - Zachary

Y1 - Bella F

Y2 - Leah 

Y3 - Ruby  

Y4 - Ella 

Y5 - Callum 

Y6 - Ethan Z

Thank you to Mrs Drew for her delicious bakes

A big thank you to all those families that have sent in much needed supplies to Ulkranian refugees. As well as wipes, nappy sacks and other baby bits, we have collected 2383 nappies! We are still collecting unopened packets of nappies, wipes, medical supplies. Thank you so much!

11th March 2022

This week we kicked off the week with International Women's Day. Miss Winwood spoke about powerful, influential and inspiring women. We also linked this to our school value of Respect and how we must respect everyone' s differences.

Noa, our Israeli Shinshin (youth worker) has created a board dedicated to Israeli inspirational women.

Today Noa brought her Israeli scouts into school and work with years 4,5, and 6. We have had some amazing sessions and during playtime we danced with them all. Such fun was had by all of us and our children loved the Israeli music and dancing. 

In other news Year 3, as part of their hook lesson for their non-chronological report writing about the U.K had a tea and biscuits tasting session. The children then generated expanded noun phrases and similes based on the textures and flavours they tasted. 

 Well done to Issy J(Year 2) and Emmy(R) who received my 'strive for excellence' award.  

Issy has made great progress with her writing and has produced an incredible story. 

Emmy made her very own story book!

We are also very proud of all the children that attended my tea party this morning. They enjoyed little chocolate sandwich cakes baked by Mr Barnett!

Well done to Ella (R), Max(1), Zachary (2), Leo B (3), Chloe(4), Sam(5), Mia (6).

Congratulations to our Netball team who participated in the Maccabi Year 5/6 Netabll competition this week. 

Lastly we have all been watching the news with concern and worry for the people of Ukraine. The terrible images of young children forced out their homes resonates with all of us and really want to try and do our bit to help in any small way we can.

We would like to coordinate a Clore collection for the refugees from Ukraine.

We will be collecting baby items - nappies, wipes and non-perishable items that will travel well. Mr Levy, who has already been collecting donations has kindly agreed to collect all these items and deliver them to the 'Goods for Good' depot in Northampton.

Please bring whatever you can and drop off each morning, through drive thru, where we will have boxes ready for you. Let's work together and really make a difference to other people!

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

4th March

The highlight of this week was yesterday when we celebrated World Book Day. Mrs Brahams and Miss Grant, our English leaders provide us all with a book to inspire us. 'Mixed' by Arree Chung is story about how a group of colours learn to live with each other despite their differences. We have used this book in various ways; creative writing, drama, Art.  Each class dressed in a different colour and together we made a pretty cool rainbow!

The Strive for Excellence award was given to Max in Year 5 for writing the most incredible story based on the book 'Mixed.' 

Well done to the following children who had some delicious cornflake cakes made by Mrs Bean at celebration tea today:

Rec - Dylan 

Y1 - Sophia 

Y2 - Isabella 

Y3 -Taylor 

Y4 - Jack W

Y5 - Scarlett 

Y6 - Ava 

Please find below a message from Dave Salmon, Humanitarian Assistance Lead Officer at Hertfordshire County Council.

We thought that it would be helpful to share with you, advice for families who may wish to support those fleeing war torn Ukraine.  Financial donations to organisations that have a presence on the borders is the most effective means of providing support to families in need.  Community collections tend to be resource intensive and can involve costly logistics whilst transporting goods through many countries can be frustratingly slow.  Therefore, we are not supporting local collection points at this time.

A financial donation to one of the organisations below will have an immediate impact and help fund what is most needed on the ground:

• The British Red Cross has launched an appeal to help the Ukrainian Red Cross to provide food, medicine, clothing and shelter, as well as first aid training in bomb shelters.
• The UNHCR refugee agency is funding emergency shelters, repairs for homes damaged by shelling, emergency cash assistance, psychological support and warm clothing.
• UNICEF is helping to ensure families have clean water and food and that child health and protection services continue.
• The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain is fundraising for medicine, food and other essentials.
• Save the Children is providing cash assistance, food and other support to refugees crossing into Romanian and Lithuania, as well as in Ukraine itself.

For those who still wish to make a physical donation we understand that Goods for Good are running a Ukraine Appeal and are seeking donations:

Goods for Good Ukraine Appeal

25th February 2022

Well we have certainly kicked off this half term with a busy week!

We started on Monday, with us all coming together in the hall, once again for our whole school assembly.

The theme of our assembly was 'Respect' the first of our school values we are going to be looking at this half term. We introduced our new playground equipment and the rules that go with them. I have been delighted to see how well our pupils have been using and looking after the equipment and playing so well with each other.

We also celebrated our house point champions this week, well done to Kara, Sammy, Gracie, Taylor, Matan and Sam!

On Tuesday we invited children who are part of uniformed groups to wear their uniform to school for Thinking Day. It was so lovely to see how many of our children are part of organisations out of school and how they contribute to the wider community.

Tuesday(2.2.22) was also the end of our PTA 2's day challenge, where families collected 2p's, £2, 20p and £20 for our school. Thank you to you all for raising a massive amount of money for our school.

Well done to those pupils who came to visit me this week and have been 'Striving for Excellence'.

Bertie and Kitty writing about their responsibility to be good global citizens, Sophia completing her English work and Charlotte for working so hard on her Maths. 

Congratulations to the following tea party attendees. Thank you to Mrs Katz for her delicious cakes. 

Reception - Amelia 

Y1 - Oscar 

Y2 - Poppy

Y3  - Abby 

Y4 - Oren

Y5  - Amelia 

Y6 - Isaac 

Today we had our first whole school Kabbalat Shabbat in the hall.

It was so special to be able to pray together. Rabbi Mark joined us and taught us all about the meaning behind the prayer Lacha Dodi. He also led us in prayer thinking about the people of Ukraine and the difficult and challenging time they have are having at the moment. Our thoughts are with them and their families. 

Wishing you all a peaceful and restful Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

11th February 2022

Firstly thank you to Mrs Martin for writing my blog over the last two weeks. I can't believe that we have reached half term, we have all been so busy!

This week has been Children's mental health week, and just like every week we make sure that we incorporate time for mindfulness and checking in on each other.

We have also launched our new 'Strive for Excellence' awards. These awards are in line with the rest of our school values, 'Achieve', 'Pride', 'Respect', 'Inspire', 'Include', and of course 'CHESED' (loving kindness).  The 'Strive for Excellence' awards are awarded to pupils who achieve excellence in any aspects of their learning.

Congratulations to Judah in Year 5 who has received the first 'Strive for Excellence' award for his amazing Maths work:

This week Year 5 have completed their Design and Technology projects, having researched, designed and learnt different stitches and then made some wonderful soft toys. 

We have managed to arrange after school provision for the rest of the academic year and a letter will sent out this afternoon with a link to booking with Active London, who will be facilitating our after school provision. Sadly we are unable to have the early morning provision at the present time.

Congratulations to all tea party attendees:

Well done to Micah(R), Amelia(1), Raphael (2), Jayden(3), Natasha(4), Kyle(5), Danny (6) who enjoyed Miss Winwood's delicious chocolate muffin cakes.

On the 22nd February we will be inviting children who attend a uniform club to wear a uniform to school as part of 'Thinking Day' so if you are a Rainbow, Brownie, Cub, Scout, Guide or member of JLGB feel free to come to school in your uniform. 

Wishing you a wonderful half term break and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen 

4th February 2022

The staff have been hard at work this week changing the displays in the hall so that the children are able to see the fantastic work that has been produced across the school this half term.

Reception learnt about Chinese New Year, the year of the tiger. They used the book The Tiger Who Came to Tea to inspire some of their learning. They made vegetable spring rolls and created Chinese fans which they decorated with Chinese numbers.

Year 1 have been learning about toys from the past and how they have changed over time. They explored what materials they were made from and how they were made.

Year 2 have been learning all about maps. They wrote fun mnemonics to help them remember the four compass points, wrote detailed directions to find buried treasure and drew aerial views of the classroom.

Year 3 have been using atlases and iPads to find out about the UK. They have learnt about the different seas and rivers in and around the UK, the different cities as well as the countries that make up the UK. The children have created maps and fact files demonstrating all they now know.

Year 4 created their very own water filters to model how drinking water is treated in the UK. They had a lot of fun outside creating their own contaminated water using mud and leaves to dirty it. They then constructed their own filters using a variety of materials such as pebbles which they found themselves around the school grounds. They were amazed to see their muddy contaminated water filter through the funnel and collect as clear, transparent liquid.

Year 5 have been learning about Eastern Europe. They have researched and found out about some of the different cities and famous landmarks in Eastern Europe. They have also looked at the flags of the different countries and recreated them.

Year 6 have been learning about World War 2 and the Holocaust. They have worked hard to try and put themselves in the shoes of a child that was evacuated during the war and have written diary entries about their experiences as evacuees.

Today, we had a visit from Oliver Dowden MP. He visited us as part of the Year 5 PSHE topic  Parliament. The class learned all about his life as an MP and how he became one. He told us why he wanted to represent Hertsmere in Parliament; how he works closely with the Prime Minister in making and deciding on laws for the country; how he got voted in as an MP; and what he does day-to-day. He certainly works long hours - especially early in the week! They then had the opportunity to ask him questions, which he was happy to answer (even if the question about his age seemed to trouble him the most!)  It was great to have the opportunity to meet an MP in real life and to hear about what has been discuss in class direct from someone who does it for a living.

Well done to the following children who joined me for celebration tea this week. It was Mrs Lax's turn to bake, she made delicious malteser cookies for tea.

Rec - Gabriel 

Y1 - Phoebe 

Y2 - Ella 

Y3 - Ava 

Y4 - Ethan 

Y5  - Katie 

Y6 - Sophie 

We have also had the book fair in school this week. Our staff have loved taking the children to the fair and talking to them about books and the joy of reading. There was a large selection of  books in school for the children to look at. They have clearly inspired and entertained your children as so many orders have been placed. Please allow us time to process the orders, we will deliver them to your children as soon as possible.

Shabbat shalom, Mrs Martin

28th January 2022

It has been another busy week here at Clore Shalom. This morning we were joined for Kabbalat Shabbat by Rabbi Tanya from Elstree Liberal Synagogue. She spoke about Holocaust Memorial Day and told us about her brave Grandfather. She ended her Dvar Torah by saying Kaddish for the 6 million Jews that died during the Holocaust as well as those who have died in subsequent Holocausts around the world.

On Wednesday some of our Year 5 and 6 boys competed in the Maccabi Football Tournament. All three teams did a fantastic job and one even managed to get to the final, sadly loosing 2-1 in the final seconds of the match. Well done to Ethan, Harry, Nathan, Sammy, Louis, Louis, Sonny, Rupert, Sam, Ollie, Jonah, Casey, Ethan, Josh, Louis, Callum, AJ, Rafi, Eitan, Bertie, Max and Ethan for their sterling effort.

On Thursday Year 1 and 2 had a toy making workshop. During the workshop they looked at examples of toys and games from the past and learnt about their origins. They were also able to make their very own toy to take home and learnt how to safely use a variety of tools to make their toy.

During the Ivrit lesson the children in Year 5 and 6 wrote letters to their Israeli pen-pals.  Throughout the academic year the children will be sending each other letters, cards and video messages (Clore shalom pupils will be writing/speaking in Ivrit and Geva pupils in English).  

They posted our first letters to Israel last week and we were very excited to receive the first letter from our Israeli pen pals this week. 

Congratulations to the following children who joined me for celebration tea today. Mrs Goldsmith baked some delicious chocolate cupcakes for us all to enjoy.

Rec - Sofia 

Y1 - Sienna 

Y2 - Izzy 

Y3 - Cooper 

Y4 - Jack 

Y5 - Max

Y6 - Nathan 

On Sunday 1st May Mrs Bean will be taking part in a sponsored sky dive in order to raise money to buy exciting new equipment for our school playground. Please show your support to her by donating what you can using the address or QR code in the poster below.

Time to Talk Day - Thursday 3rd February

This day is all about creating supportive communities by having conversations with family, friends, or colleagues about mental health. We know that conversations about mental health have the power to change lives.

We want everyone to feel comfortable talking about mental health – whenever they like. Talking about mental health reduces stigma, helping to create supportive communities where we can talk openly about mental health and feel empowered to seek help when we need it.

That’s why opening up the conversation about mental health problems is so important – by talking about it we can support ourselves and others.

However you do it, have a conversation about mental health.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Martin

21st January 2021

We started our week with the celebration of the Jewish festival of Tu Bishvat. Our pupils enjoyed a wide variety of fruits and we completed some Tu B'shavat activities.

The Wonderdome mobile planetarium came to Clore Shalom on Wednesday. All classes had a show inside the dome to learn about our solar system and the wonders of space. The dome created a unique environment to do this in. They found out all about the different planets in the solar system and our incredible Earth. Our visitors were so impressed with the level of questioning from our children (and staff!) and we are all getting used to the idea that the sun will explode in 5 billion years!

I have had the pleasure of helping Year 5 make Challah today as part of their Shabbaton. They have also made their own candles, design aprons and after school will be having a special quiz. Although we haven't been able to have our normal residential, they are still having a very special day together (even our isolating children have been able to 'zoom' in) 

Well done to the following children who joined me for celebration tea party this morning, where it was my turn to provide the treats, today it was chocolate fudge brownies!

Reception- Sadie

Year 1-Reuben

Year 2- Rafael

Year 3-Ollie

Year 4-Theo

Year 5-Harry 

Year 6-Eitan 

and lastly, a short reflection...this week has been a very busy week for me as I have been in the privileged position to have visited some other schools through my other role as a school improvement partner. Being away from Clore, allows me time to reflect on our special school, on how amazing our staff are and what ways we can make our school even better. It also has made me realise, this week, how very lucky I am to be able to be in a position to be able to do this. Thank you to my senior leadership team for ensuring our school runs brilliantly whether or not I am in the building.   

Shabbat Shalom

Welcome back to 2022!

We had a fantastic start to the term, last week, with a focus on RE and learning about Christianity. Our pupils told us that they love learning about different religions and shared with me some similarities and differences between Christianity and Judaism.

This week we have all settled back to learning and there have been some great learning experiences I have seen around the school. Reception pupils found some huge footprints made from the giant, from the traditional tale ‘Jack and The Beanstalk’. The giant got in to school and stole the ‘magic bubble’, he even set the alarm off in the early hours on Thursday! Year 6 have been exploring the effect on germs and in Science carried out experiments on washing and not washing your hands and used different slices of bread to test out their theories.

Today the following children joined me for Celebration tea party:

Rec - Olivia

Y1 - Matan

Y2  - Jessica

Y3  - Raphael

Y4 - Max

Y5 - Anna

Y6 - Ilana Ford

Thank you to Mrs Jacobs for providing a delicious chocolate fudge cake as our tea party treat.

We seem to be banking many blue tokens at Tescos for our outdoor learning project, thank you to all of you who have spread the word! These are the Tesco stores that have nominated our school for the charity fund:

Bushey Heath Express, WD23 1EL 
Leavesden Watford Express, WD5 0BT
South Oxhey Express, WD19 6EG       
Shenley Express, WD7 9AA
Watford Extra, WD17 2BD       
Watling Radlet Exp      WD7 7LA Express
Watford Express, WD25 0EL       
Harcourt Rd Bushy Express, WD23 3PP       
Watford Wipendell Express, WD18 7NB
Watford St Albn Express, WD24 4AU     
Watford 114 Hi St Express, WD17 2BJ       
Watford Langley Express, WD17 4BU        

The Really Jewish Food Guide 2022 has been published and is being delivered to the Jewish shops next week.

The distributor in London is Torah Treasures, Tel: 020 8458 8289. They take credit card orders over the phone and can mail out the guide. Our distributor in the North, including Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow and Gateshead, is Judaica World, Tel: 0161 773 4956.

It is with great delight that children in years 2,3,4,5 & 6 will now have the opportunity from Spring Term 2022 to learn recorder, flute clarinet or saxophone with Stewart Curtis, a professional musician and experienced music teacher. Children in years 2 & 3 will be able to have recorder lessons only.

Tuition costs are £15.50 for 20 minutes or £22.50 for 30 minutes. These are individual lessons.

For further information please contact Stewart Curtis on 07976 558564 or via email; stewcurtis@ntlworld.

Lastly please read our updated Covid guidance letter below. We still have a high number of Covid cases amongst our pupils and staff and we are continuing to carefully manage the spread of the virus.

Below you will find the Spring term HfL online safety newsletter for parents and carers. I would encourage you to take 5 minutes to have a read as it shares some really useful information supporting you in keeping your children safe online.

Wishing you all a safe and relaxing weekend, Shabbat Shalom.

17th December 2021

As we come to the end of the Autumn term, it has certainly been a mixed bag with highs and lows throughout. We started the term with very short weeks due to the Chagim and although it was lovely to have family time and celebrate the Jewish festivals, this was a challenging time in school to re-establish routines and expectations for many of our children after the last couple of disrupted years of schooling.

We all loved the launch of ‘The Studio’ and the opportunities having a dedicated space has given us to enhance Art and Design Technology and improve our teaching and learning in this area of the curriculum. We have enjoyed exploring these subjects creatively with fun and enjoyment. As you have seen by my previous blogs, the standard of Art has increased along with pupils and staff confidence in this area. Our next fundraiser for this area is to purchase a purpose built woodwork bench to use in our Design and Technology lessons.

Some of our classes have enjoyed workshops to help bring History topics to life such as Stone age and Ancient Mayan workshops. 

It is clear from talking to our pupils with their books there is so much learning happening. We have really focussed hard, this term in making sure that all the skills we learn in our English lessons are being applied across the curriculum in our other books, and this focus is really helping us to improve standards in all areas of the curriculum.

We have been working on developing other areas of our curriculum and alongside our work on Art and DT, we also have identified a way to excite our pupils about Science, Maths and Computing and that is through a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) approach. More details to follow over the coming year.

We are also exploring ways in which we can make good use of our outdoor area and pond so that we can use this valuable resource to enhance areas of curriculum.

As you can see, despite the challenges that Covid has brought this half term, we continue to drive forward and improve our school by always evaluating what we do and identifying how we can make our school even better and the learning exciting, relevant and meaningful for all our pupils. If any parents have any links within the STEM or outdoor environment and can help us with these areas, we would love to hear from you.

We have also had a focus on Early Reading this term, and thanks to you and the PTA have been able to fully resource a new set of reading books that link explicitly to our phonics programme.

I have been particularly proud of the charity work we have done this term, supporting the Camp Simcha present drive, the Borehamwood foodbank and welcoming refugee children to come and play football with us.

Unfortunately,  we have had to postpone our prospective parents events this term, if you or you know anyone that would like information about applying to Clore Shalom for 2022/23 or would like to be included in our prospective events at the beginning of January, please contact the office.

We are excited to tell you that we’re in the customer vote for a Tesco Community Grant. It’s a scheme which gives community projects like ours grants of up to £1,500. Tesco customers will now vote in Radlett, Shenley, Watford stores during January to decide how much funding we get, so please support us next time you shop at Tesco!

www.tesco.com/communitygrants

Well done to those children who have joined me for tea party today:

Rec - Sasha 

Y1 - Talia J

Y2 - Sam 

Y3 - James

Y4 - Charlie 

Y5 - Sonny 

Y6 - Freya

We had delicious treats from Mrs Scott, thank you. 

Lastly a massive thank you to all our Clore community, thank you to our parents for the help, volunteering and support they give us, to our wonderful and committed staff who always (especially this week) show such care and thought for one another and our children, and to our fantastic children who have worked so hard this term and (mostly) always show CHESED (loving kindness) to others. 

Wishing you all a wonderful winter break and Shabbat Shalom. 

We break up on Tuesday 21st December at 1.30pm and 1.45pm and look forward to welcoming everyone back to school on Wednesday 5th January at the usual time. 

Mrs Cohen

10th December 2021

We really enjoyed being on ABCDoes instagram page on Tuesday (see below) we shared our EYFS practice and got some great feedback from other colleagues around the country. We are so proud of the way our children engage with high level learning activities every day and it was lovely to share the work of our Reception staff team and children.

This week, we have muddled through with a large number of staff absence due to Covid issues. Thank you as ever to the most amazing staff team who, as usual, have been flexible in covering classes and duties that they have done. Our staff are one of our biggest strength of our school and I appreciate every one of them.

Congratulations to the following children who joined me for tea party today. Thank you to Mrs Gee for the most delicious cupcakes!

Rec - Joel 

Y1 - Noah H

Y2 - Sophia S

Y3 - Leo 

Y4 - Nate

Y5 - Sloane S

Y6 - Kitty 

3rd December 2021 

It certainly has felt cold enough to be December, especially in school with the windows and doors open to allow ventilation to limit the spread of Covid infections!  

Despite our return to remote assemblies we have enjoyed our Chanukah celebrations this week. Each day a different class has prepared a Chanukah song to share with us over Zoom. Well done to every class, you all performed brilliantly and thank you to the staff who supported the children with this.  

We have also lit our special Chanukiah this week and enjoyed seeing the number of candles increase each day. We did have some drama yesterday, when the candles were lit, the heat from the flame caused the fire alarm to go off and the fire brigade joined us at school! Thankfully the fire fighters were pleased that it was a false alarm.  

We have also been joined remotely from the Maccabi Scouts, from Israel, who facilitated Chanukah activities over Zoom for our children to enjoy. Thank you to them for the work that was involved in the activities and adding some ‘Israeli’ life to Clore Shalom. 

Year 5 have got in to the festive spirit and decorated their door!

Year 1 made their own Chanukiot out of clay in the studio.

This week I have seen some amazing Art from pupils in Year 6. They have worked hard to produce these incredible sketched drawings, developing shading and adding dimensions to their drawings.  

Today we have all enjoyed doughnuts and ended the week with a final Kabbalat Shabbat assembly with Rabbi Debbie at EHRS. Year 6 shared with us their rendition of 'Judah Maccabee'. 

Well done to these pupils who joined me to celebrate their achievements this week: 

Rec - Frankie G

Y1 - Anabelle 

Y2 - Lily

Y3 - Jayden

Y4 - Aiden 

Y5 - Kara 

Y5-Noah

Y6 - Rafi 

Lastly, I am pleased to welcome Rockel Thompson, to Clore Shalom. Rockel is a student Educational Mental Health Support Practitioner, who will work with some of our children and their families to support them with low intensity therapy to work on fears, anxieties and self-esteem. She is from a new service across Hertfordshire, who are training professionals with a view to them staying in schools once they have qualified. As she progresses with her training, she will be able to expand her offer and we hope very much that she will be able to stay with us next year once she has qualified too. If you have a concern about your child's wellbeing in any of these areas, please speak to your child's class teacher or to Mrs Lax.  

Wishing you an enjoyable last few days of Chanukah and a restful weekend. 

26th November 2021

This week has seen an increase in Covid cases, which has meant we have had to increase our measures accordingly. Despite this, we have tried hard to continue to continue with school life, as normal as possible for our children. Thank you so much to all our staff who have adapted and have been as flexible as ever, always going above and beyond their  normal duties!

Please do not send in your child if they are unwell and that if your child is unwell, with whatever symptoms, they have a PCR test, and they do not return to school until the test is shown to be negative. Please see email sent today for further adaptations to our school.

Thank you to all those parents that have joined us for parents evening over the last two weeks. We hope you found the consultations useful. 

It has been an absolute pleasure to walk down the corridors and listen to all our classes practise singing their Chanukah songs for us to enjoy next week. We are certainly getting in the festive spirit! This morning Rabbi Mark, form EHRS taught us Makaton signing to 'Spin my dreidl' in our Kabbalat Shabbat-back-to-zoom-assembly!

We were able to present Borehamwood food bank with plenty of supplies to help those in need. The school council identified this charity as one they wanted to support and collect food for, so well done to them for arranging this great initiative.

We also enjoyed hosting refugee children this week who played football with our children. This was part of Mitzvah day and we have definitely made some new friends! I just want to say a big thank you to our children who made our visitors feel so welcome. A friendly game of football was had by all.  

It was lovely to welcome the following children to tea party this week and we enjoyed Mrs Garfen's amazing cake treats!

Reception - Freddie F

Y1 - Bella  

Y2 - Johnny

Y3 - Ralph

Y4  - Dylan

Y5 - Louis B

Y6 - Louis J

I hope you have a wonderful start to Chanukah on Sunday night and a lovely weekend, 

Mrs Cohen 

19th November 2021

I was delighted that so many families were able to join me last Sunday at the Shenley community Remembrance Day ceremony. I was so proud of our Year 6 pupils who performed a poem in front of so many people. Thank you to those families that came and supported such a worthwhile event.

This week we have joined in with the National Anti-Bullying week. On Monday we all came to school wearing odd socks and heard the story Shine, in assembly. Each class teacher has planned an activity for their class that promotes kindness or friendship.

We were delighted to hear that Bertie's song ‘No More’ has reached number 1 in the itunes chart this week!

https://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/hertfordshire-schoolboy-10-tops-itunes-6218030

This morning we recorded our version to be part of the ‘Sing Out Against Bullying’ project. It was incredibly moving to see and hear the whole school singing the school and we are so proud of Bertie and showing his thoughtfulness for others in writing the song.

On Wednesday, our Year 6 Netball team represented the school in their first tournament. They really enjoyed the experience and learnt a lot about competing.

Well done to Nola, Ava, Evie, Kitty, Ilana, Ruby, Issy and Freya.

Congratulations to those children that joined me for my celebration tea party today:

Rec - Corey 

Y1 - Flora 

Y2 - Samuel 

Y3 - Lily 

Y4  - Mia 

Y5 - Orli 

Y6  - Ethan 

Thank you for the delicious cookies and cakes baked by Mrs Drew.

Thank you so much to all our families who have bought in presents for the Camp Simcha toy drive and food for the Borehamwood food bank as part of our contribution for Mitzvah Day. 

If anyone would like to join the Myisrael campaign please see the following:

Myisrael is a wonderful charity that work to improve the lives of vulnerable people in Israel. This Chanukah you can help by buying a gift on behalf of your family. There is a list of eight gifts ranging from medical supplies for homeless people to a heater for a family in need. Please visit https://mychanukahgift.myshopify.com/ and chose a gift.

Next week we are so excited to welcome some refugee children from Afghanistan to our school on Monday and Wednesday. They will meet some of our children, have some time to play with them and will then join in with after school football club.  This is part of our extended Mitzvah Day activities and a way to teach the chidren more about inclusivity and different communities. 

Wishing you a restful weekend and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

12th November

It has been an eventful week here at Clore Shalom. As usual, we have been very busy. It has been so wonderful to see lots of great work in books this week. Teachers have planned some amazing things to capture pupils’ excitement about their learning. Year 3 team organised a Stone Age workshop and all the children (and the teachers!) loved the opportunity to get dressed as people from the Stone Age! Jonah said "The day was so much fun and we didn’t just learn about the Stone Age, we learnt about how our brains work too”.  Year 4 have had the opportunity to be Historians and investigate interesting artefacts that they may find in a museum. Year 2 have completed some amazing writing, writing explanations texts about healthy eating and exercise and they have even learnt how to say the alphabet in sign language.

Year 4 have had the opportunity to be Historians and investigate interesting artefacts that they may find in a museum. Year 2 have completed some amazing writing, writing explanations texts about healthy eating and exercise and they have even learnt how to say the alphabet in sign language.

After school, on Tuesday we had the pleasure of hosting a staff meeting for many of the local schools. Our teachers were so pleased to have the opportunity to be able to learn from others and share their good practise too.

On Thursday we held two minutes to remember and pay our respects to our armed forces, past and present. We are looking forward to meeting up with Clore families on Sunday at 10.45am in Shenley to lay our wreath and participate in the Remembrance Day Ceremony, with the rest of the community. Our Year 6 class have written a beautiful poem to share in the ceremony and I look forward to hearing it on Sunday.

We have all been learning Bertie’s Anti-Bullying song that he wrote and we are looking forward to recording it next week to send to the charity Sing Out Against Bullying.

Today in Kabbalat Shabbat Year 5 shared their rap they have written in their English lessons and also sang the beautiful hebrew song that our Shinshin(Israeli Youthworker), Noa, has taught them. 

Year 1 earned a fantastic pyjama day today as they had collected lots of points for great work and good behaviour (at least they don't need to get changed for bed this evening!)

This week I was joined by the following children for my Celebration tea party. Well done to:

Rec  - Freddie Bookatz

Y1 - Lyla Molyneux

Y2  -Jesse Haik

Y3  - Guy Vega

Y4 - Anaelle Moore-Peul

Y5 - Rupert McEvoy

Y6 - Ruby Mallett

Next week we are having an Anti-Bullying week. On Monday we are coming to school in odd socks, to remind each other that each one of us is unique and special. 

Wishing you a wonderful weekend and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

5th November 2021

Welcome back to the second half of Autumn term. We have certainly started off with a busy week. Mrs Martin delivered an assembly on Monday all about being Proud.  We are using our assemblies to re-visit our school values and it was so lovely to hear about what makes us all proud. 

On Tuesday, we welcomed Anthea Jackson, Executive director of Jewish Child's Day to join us to see how their donation has helped enhance our playground. Anthea said " It was so great to see our support making such an impact- what a fabulous school!" The School Council joined Mrs Martin and Mrs Weir for this special event.

This week we were pleased to send our Year 3 and Year 4 footballers to their first Maccabi Competition. In the first round they lost 2-1. second round lost 2-0. third round drew 2-2, fourth round lost 2-1. Despite this, the team played brilliantly together.

Well done to Cooper, Adam, Jayden, Taylor, Leo H, Aiden, Jack, Mason, Dylan, Jakey, Jonah, Zak and Millie. We are all so proud of you.

Last night the PTA held a Psychic fair, we are so grateful that they raised over £1000 for our school. Thank you to those that showed their support for this event. 

Well done to our House Point Champions who were presented with their certificate today in assembly: Orli, Issy, Taylor, Leo H, Charlie, Lily and Amelia.

Our Year 6 T'fillah leaders also presented their own certificates to those children who had been participating in our morning prayers. Year 6, you are becoming such great leaders of our school!

We are so proud of Bertie, whose song No More is going to be part of Bullies out, Anti-bullying week.

We are all learning the song so we can take part in Sing Out Against Bullying during Anti-Bullying Week 15th-19th November.

Lastly well done to my tea party attendees who joined me today for delicious treats baked by Mrs Goldsmith

Rec-Nathan 

Y1-Jasper

Y2-Jayden B

Y3-Amy

Y4-Mason

Y5-Chloe

Y6-Nola

If you are going to a fireworks display this weekend, please be careful and stay safe. 

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

Friday 22nd October 2021

We have made it to the half term and although it has been incredibly busy, it is has been a strange one with broken weeks and many of the Jewish festivals. Our pupils have continued to work so hard and we are getting back to where we are all meant to be! Our staff have continued to provide exceptional learning experiences for their classes. 

I am continually struck by how lucky I am to work with such a dedicated staff team who all have our pupils learning needs and emotional needs at the core of what they provide, whilst always checking in on each other. A massive thank you to you all. As Simon Sinek says:

Our studio has really taken off and all of our pupils describe the excitement of going into a dedicated, special room to focus on Art and DT as a highlight of their week. The Art that is being produced by our pupils is starting to be of a high quality.

Congratulations to the girls football team who won all their first round matches and only conceded one goal in this round. Unfortunately they lost 2-1 to Rimon in the quarter finals. They should be very proud of themselves as they played fantastically as a team. 

Mrs Lax had the first school council meeting of the year this week, which our new Head boy and Head girl led. They discussed their roles in the school and we look forward to the impact they will have in contributing to the improvements in our school.

Well done to our new school council:

Josh C, Ava, Evie, Nathan, Hazel, Noah, Eloise, Maxwell, Jonah, Scarlett, Seth, Zoe, Max and Annabelle

Thank you to our Catering staff for getting in to the Hallowe'en spirit today and providing some spooky desserts!

and lastly well done to all my tea party attendees today:

Rec - Emmy 

Y1 - Sophie 

Y2 - Jack 

Y3 - Guy 

Y4 - Eloise 

Y5 - Judah 

Y6 - Daisy Gr

We all enjoyed a delicious slice of Mr Barnett's Victoria Sponge- it was delicious!

After half term we will be supporting the Royal British Legion with their annual poppy appeal by selling poppies at school. We will be joining the Shenley community on Remembrance Sunday on 14th November at the Memorial. We would love as many Clore families to join us meeting at 10.50am and have some Year 6 pupils reading a poem as part of the ceremony.

Thank you to our volunteers who have stood outside in the cold, wind and rain this half term. If you have agreed to do a shift, whether on drive thru or on at the gates at the end of the day, please try and give Mrs Gilbery-Philips and Mr Rosen as much notice as possible if you are unable to do it. We are desperately looking for volunteers on a Wednesday and Thursday morning for drive-thru. Please contact Mrs Gilbery-Philips if you can help.

Finally it leaves me to say I hope you all have a wonderful half term holiday and stay safe and well. Thank you as ever for all your support and we look forward to welcoming all our pupils back to school on Monday 1st November.

Mrs Cohen

Year 6 Job and Responsibilities

It was a pleasure for me to join Miss Winwood last week for the Year 6 interviews . It was clear to us both that our pupils had spent time and effort in preparing their application forms and interviews. Today, in our assembly we made the announcements of who had been successful for which positions, congratulations to them all!

15 October 2021

We have had another busy week here at Clore Shalom. 

On Tuesday we held a phonics workshop for parents in Reception. Mrs Benson explained to them how we teach phonics and explained some of the terminology we use in school. She even delivered a phonics lesson to her new 'class' and said they all behaved very well in the lesson!

On Wednesday Year 6 had an Ancient Mayan learning day. They spent the day in the hall acting out scenes from Mayan times. They had a cooking bake off where they made pretend hot chocolate the Mayan way, even hunting for a goat to get milk. Their special recipes included chili, lemon, cinnamon, cocoa beans and goat milk. In the afternoon the class split into groups and acted out what happened when people were sacrificed. All the children agreed that it was a fantastic and entertaining day that brought their learning to life.

Wednesday was a busy day as we also sent some of our Year 5 and 6 boys to the first football tournament of the year. Mr Thompson and the parents managed the teams so well that they were able to get to the quarter finals. 

A big well done to the team for working together so well - Bertie, Casey, Ethan, Ethan, Harry, Joshua, Louie, Louis, Louis, Max, Nathan, Ollie, Rupert, Sam and Sammy.

Congratulations to the following pupils who joined me for celebration tea today. Thank you to Mrs Bean for baking delicious crispy cakes for the children to enjoy.

Reception - Jacob

Year 1 - Thursday

Year 2 - Zoe

Year 3 - Zack

Year 4 - Cecelia

Year 5 - Orli

Year 6 - Joshua

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Martin

8th October 2021

This week we welcomed one of our Hertfordshire Improvement Partners, who spent the morning with us focusing on the teaching of Maths. She was impressed at the high quality of teaching and the way in which our pupils were engaged and motivated with the lessons. It is always interesting when I see the school through others and I was especially proud of our staff team who continually teach to a high standard every day!

On Monday, we had an assembly about Black History month and learnt about key figures in History and the present day. Some Year 6 pupils helped me to present the assembly and we all discussed the theme of Black History month, which is “Proud to be…” It was a pleasure to listen to many of our children express what they are proud to be.

On Tuesday we had our first face to face governing body meeting since the start of the Pandemic. It was so lovely to be able to sit in one room together and have some good discussions about our school. We would like to welcome Mrs Beth Bean on to the board, as a Staff Governor. We will be looking for a new Parent Governor in the next couple of weeks, more details to follow.

This morning we were joined by Rabbi Paul, from Radlett Reform who shared with us the story of Noah and the Ark and the importance of the dove, which we all wear on our tops with pride. 

Congratulations to the following pupil who joined me for Celebration tea party today-Thank you to Mrs Nunn for her delicious chocolate chip and honeycomb cookies!

Rec - Sloane

Y1 - Annabelle

Y2 - Mia R

Y3 - Ruby  

Y4  - Daniel

Y5 - Sophia

Y6 - Evie

Year 6 have been making good use of their studio time and have created their own printing tiles, working together to create this masterpiece.

We hope you will join us for our first PTA events of the year! See below for details.

Wishing you a lovely weekend and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

1st October

This week we celebrated Simchat Torah and although it has been lovely celebrating all the Jewish festivals, we are all really looking forward to our first full week of term next week!

We have seen lots of great work this week and everyone is trying hard to make sure their best work is in every book!

Next week we start afterschool clubs so please make sure you send your child with a nut-free snack. 

This morning we were joined by Rabbi Debbie from EHRS who shared her thoughts about communal responsibility. This fitted in really well this week, as Year 6 are working hard on their applications for positions around our school. It is so lovely to re-instate the Year 6 responsibilities and the class have already had such a good start as leaders of our school as they have been leading t'fiallh (prayer) in all the other classes. We have also re-instated 'Buddy' time with our Year 6 and Year 1 pupils and this is proving to be a highlight of the week for many of them.

Congratulations to the following children who joined me for celebration tea party today and thank you to Mrs Rathbone who made delicious brownies and cookies for us to enjoy.

Reception - Jesse

Y1 - Hallie

Y2 - Gabby

Y3 - Leo

Y4 - Jamie

Y5 - Alana

Y6 - Anya

I hope that the petrol situations doesn't have too much of an impact on your weekend and that you enjoy seeing these great photos from Reception.

Shabbat Shalom

24th September 2021

This week we have been celebrating Sukkot. Thank you to the Janes family for sending in their lulav and etrog for us to see. Our Sukkah looks beautiful and I would like to thank Mr Simons (Jamie, Anya and Ella's Dad) for providing us with all the fruit and vegetables that we were able to hang. Well done to all our children who added beautiful decorations to our sukkah too. We have all really enjoyed having our snacks in there this week (and on Monday!)

Congratulations to my tea party attendees

REC - Zakary 

Y1 - Abraham

Y2 - Daniel

Y3 - Jay

Y4 - Gracie

Y5 - Ava

Y6 - Jake

This week Mrs Jacobs made the most delicious chocolate cake! We all felt like the judges on Great British Bake Off!

Wishing you all Chag Sameah and Shabbat Shalom. 

17th September

As I write this weeks blog it is the end of Yom Kippur and I have been lucky to not only spend time with family and friends today but have had the opportunity to reflect on the year that has been. 

This is a time for fresh beginnings and a time for us to draw a line under difficult and challenging times over the past year. Let us try and think about others more, those that need our help, those that live in fear or those who are not treated nicely because of the colour of their skin or their religious beliefs.  Please let’s treat others kindly and talk nicely to one another so we can teach our children the right way to communicate.  Let’s look after the world we live in by taking home rubbish, thinking more carefully about re-cycling or getting sustainable food.  Let’s all try to be better people so that our children can learn the most valuable lessons from us as teachers and parents. Let us all show CHESED, loving kindness to all we meet.

As we look forward to the festival of Sukkot and hope that the weather continues to be warm and sunny let’s try and appreciate the beautiful world we live in.

Today we were joined by Rabbi Mark Goldsmith and he shared some thoughts about Sukkot, 'made' a sukkah with us and noted that we are all individual and unique just like leaves on a branch.

This week I was so pleased to be joined by the following children who have showed such Chesed (loving kindness) this week and made such a fantastic start to the new academic year. Well done to Sienna, Sienna, Sophie, AJ, Cole, Cora and Harry. We have gone back to having a staff baking rota and this week it was my turn to provide the treats!

Well done to Bertie and Jessica and their Grandpa, Irvine Gersch who have written and published a useful and beautiful book all about sleep worries. Thank you for our school copy, we just love it! Please feel free to order your own copy!

 The Amazing World Of The Little Sleep Doctors

A big thank you to all of our teaching assistants this week as yesterday was National Teaching Assistant Day! We do appreciate all you do for the children in our school-you make such a difference!

Well done to us all for contributing so much to our PTA events over the last year. We are so excited about attending in person so that we can enjoy the events and enjoy being with each other once again.

Wishing you all a peaceful Shabbat and a lovely Sukkot.

10th September 2021

We started off our week with a wonderful Rosh Hashana assembly where we managed to serve all our children apples with honey and bring in the new year together.

We returned to school yesterday and have continued our Art work looking at the artist Keith Haring.

All the classes have now spent time in the studio and have had the opportunity to recreate their own Haring inspired master-pieces!

Kantor Sarah joined us this morning for a wonderful Kabbalat Shabbat service where we heard the shofar blow and discussed what would happen if we had Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana the other way round! 

Next week we will be focusing on apologising for things we have done, in preparation for Yom Kippur.

We would love it if all the Clore community could send in some creative fruits and vegetables to decorate our sukkah.

Congratulations to Mia and Emily who have won the competition to design a new Celebration Tea Party certificate.

Lastly have a wonderful weekend and a meaningful Yom Kippur. 

Mrs Cohen

2021

Friday 3rd September 2021

It is so lovely to be back at school and although we have only had half a week we have started with a bang!

We would like to offer a warm welcome to some new members of staff, Mr Fenton joins us as a teaching assistant in Year 2 and Mr Barnett joins us as a trainee teacher in Year 5. We hope you will be very happy at Clore Shalom. We said Goodbye to Miss Baker but hello again to her as Mrs Gee, who finally got married over the summer-Mazel tov to Mrs Gee and her new husband!

Also I would like to extend a warm welcome to our new Reception families who have joined us over the last few days, the new children have settled in very well. 

On Wednesday we had a great Inset day with all the staff. Mrs Lax led us in some updated safeguarding training. We then spent the remainder of the morning enjoying and exploring (and learning) art techniques in our brand new studio! Some of us were outside of our comfort zone, but all agreed it was so lovely to have some time to be creative ourselves.

We can't wait to show the studio to all the children and for them to have their Art and D&T lessons in it.

Our pupils and staff have settled in to school so well this week and it is clear to see how much effort our staff have put in to ensuring that our pupils have a wide range of exciting learning activities this term. The new year group teams have really got to know their classes, and it is so pleasing to see and hear through the corridors that we have happy children and staff in our school. 

I am particularly proud of the start our Year 6 class have made as leaders of our school and today Rabbi Neil started to support them in developing some of their leadership skills to prepare them to lead t'fillah in each of our classes. 

This morning was our first whole school Kabbalat Shabbat in the hall, and it was so special. We welcomed back Mrs Silverman and Rabbi Neil to help us with the service and we carried out the Mitzvah of hearing the shofar blown by Jonah, in year 6 and Rabbi Neil, to prepare us for celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, next week. I must confess, I felt quite moved seeing and hearing us all sing the Shema together again after feeling like we had a fragmented school for so long.

We are all so excited for the year ahead and can't wait to see what we all achieve together!

Wishing you all L'shana Tova and Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Cohen

Friday 23rd July

Well we have made it!!! I am so happy that we have managed to make it to the last week without having to close bubbles or finish our term early. We have given everyone a great ending to their year that they have deserved!

As we come to the end of another unusual year, I am continually struck by how special our Clore community is. Our pupils have delighted us (most of the time) in the way they are with each other, the focus they bring to their studies and the pure happiness they show being part of our school. They have engaged with the high level of teaching and learning that has been provided for them and have made the most of every opportunity, whether it be through remote learning or here in school, to achieve their best.

Thank you to all of our parents for their continuous support for all we do as a school and for the way they have rallied around when we have needed help, whether that be providing extra security volunteers, funding for our new initiatives and the general appreciation the have showed me and the team for all our work. A special shout out to Claudine Gilbrey- Phillips, Jo Graham and Shani Allen for leading the PTA so well despite not being able to hold events still managed to raise much needed funds for our school. Also to Neil Rosen who has organised and run the security rota and is always there when we need him!

Thank you to our dedicated and committed group of governors who all put the needs of our school at the forefront of any strategic decisions they help me make. A special thanks to Sara Levan, our Chair of Governors who has completed her first year as Chair so ably and supported me in leading our school in the next phase of development. 

Our staff, as ever have gone beyond what is expected of them. All of our staff from our office and site team, teachers, teaching assistants and SLT have all contributed to our school being the best it can be and I so appreciate each and every one of them and what they bring to our school. 

It has been so special to welcome in groups of parents this week and have real live audiences here in school for the Year 6 production of ‘Alice’ a truly wonderful show and opportunity to showcase our Year 6 pupils’ talents.

It was also lovely to welcome the Reception parents in to school, through the tears yesterday, we enjoyed the Reception graduation show and it is clear to see our Reception children are ready to fly off to Year 1.

This week we said Goodbye to our wonderful Year 6 class, they have been a true epitome of how we expect Clore Shalom Year 6 pupils to be and we have all so enjoyed seeing them grow and develop over the last few years. They are ready to leave us and we say thank you to them for all they are and all they have taught us!

Congratulations to our Year 6 prize winners:

Savanna-Progress Award

Rafi-Sports Achievement

Evie-Jewish Achievement

Benji- Acheivement

Sophie- Chesed award

Ayelet-Academic Excellence

Danna-Headteacher's award

We have also said goodbye and thank you to the staff members who are leaving us this year and we managed to surprise Mrs Sandler with a tea party. After 14 years at Clore, Mrs Sandler has had such a huge impact with the children and staff she has worked with and we wish her all the best in her new job. 

Lastly I want to wish you all a lovely holiday, it has been my privilege to lead our school for another year and am so excited about the new initiatives and the exciting opportunities we have planned for our pupils next year.

Happy holidays, please be safe and Shabbat shalom, Mrs Cohen

16th July 2021

As I write there are more and more bubbles closing in local schools and this week has really been challenging with trying our hardest to ensure that we are all kept healthy and safe and that we can keep our bubbles and school operating as near to normal as we can. Please help us by carrying out regular lateral flow tests and getting your child tested if they have any Covid symptoms.

Thank you to the whole team here for always going above and beyond-especially this week with the amount of classes and duties that everyone has had to cover. 

The initial aftermath of the football saddened me like many others, I have seen the galvanising effect that the national football team has had in and around our school over recent weeks. For quite a while, it has formed the basis of many conversations amongst both pupils and staff, yet those that have represented our country so admirably have had to suffer some horrific abuse.

As a school, we encourage each other to recognise and celebrate our individualities and differences, as this is what makes us all special. We at Clore Shalom are wholly committed to ensuring that we continue to educate our pupils and play our part in eradicating racism.

The achievements of the national team this summer go a long way to demonstrate the strength of working together. Taking players of all ages, races and experiences to come together harmoniously in this tournament has shown the value in creating a clear culture of togetherness in being successful. This is something that we as a school promote and will continue to in our efforts to educate our pupils.

We have also had lots of fun things going on this week. We welcomed the story telling company, ‘Shooting Stars’  in this week for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 and the children loved exploring the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

For the first time since last March we invited parents in (to the playground) for an amazing singing concert performed by our Choir club. It was so special for them to perform to a live audience and the songs were sang beautifully.

I was also lucky enough to attend the Nursery show this morning- which they have recorded to send out to the parents. I am so proud of how our Nursery pupils are ending their year with us, especially considering they have had such an unstable year.

This week we have also had a governing board meeting. We are so lucky that we have such a committed group of governors and I want to thank them for all they give to me and our school.

A massive thankyou to all those families who have contributed to our ‘Studio’, either through our Gateway account or the PTA Go fund me account. We have reached the astonishing amount of £6,500, which will be spent on resources and equipment for our pupils to use!

Thank you to the PTA who today are selling lollies for Frozen Friday, they too work so hard for the good of the children in our school-Massive thanks to Mrs Gilbrey-Phillips, Ms Allen and Mrs Graham and all the other parents that help to raise vital funds for our school.

This week we are launching a big competition for children to design a new ‘Celebration Tea Party’ certificate. Please send in your entries to Mrs Lax. The winner will have their design produced as the invitation and attend the first tea party of the new academic year.

Next week we have lots of fun activities and shows and assemblies! We are looking forward to the Reception Graduation show, the Year 6 show, and Leavers assembly. It is going to be a very warm week, so please make sure your child has sun cream applied, has a water bottle and brings a hat in to school.

Have a lovely weekend and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

9th July

Obviously, the football has been a highlight of all of our week this week! We are all so over-joyed that England are through to the final on Sunday. It only seemed appropriate that we all wear Red and white today to show our support for the team.

We can all learn so much from the England team, they have displayed so many of the qualities that we strive to have here at Clore Shalom. They have shown determination and resilience in the way they have focused on what they need to achieve, despite the perceived barriers that are in their way. Our pupils here have shown the same in recent weeks settling back in to routine and expectations and achieving their targets and goals despite the patchy year they have had in and out of school.  Gareth Southgate is a leader we can learn so much from, his calm manner and patience in the way he carries out his plan and is not deterred by mistakes along the way.  A fine example for us all and here’s hoping he can keep a smile on all of our faces for the beginning of the week!

"Sometimes you have to go through difficult times as a team, and failures, to learn and to improve" Gareth Southgate

On Thursday this week, we were able to hold our transition morning for all pupils. It was fantastic to see (and hear) everyone in their new classes, with their new teaching teams. All our children really enjoyed their mornings, getting to know their new teachers and familiarising themselves with their new surroundings. In addition to this, we have also welcomed our new Reception children in to school for these sessions. It has been great to welcome some new families to our community, and we look forward to seeing them all again in September.

Year 3 enjoyed their stone age workshop this week. By the end of this term each class would have had a visitor to help enhance the curriculum and bring some kind of 'real life' learning to school.

We are all getting excited about the creating of our Studio and have already put our first order in for resources. Thank you so much to the parents that have already donated money to help us have the right equipment. 

Next week we have another transition morning, where the children will spend time with their new teaching teams.  Year 6 pupils are busy practising for their end of year performance and their leavers assembly, which we can't wait to see.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. For many of us this Sunday is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see our National football team compete in the final of a major championship. 

Let’s hope that it does come home this weekend, enjoy watching with your families and take pride in the team’s achievement whatever the outcome of the match!

Shabbat Shalom

Mrs Cohen

2nd July 2021

Healthy Mind and Healthy Body week has been a great success this week! We have had a wide range of activities and visitors and given our pupils some amazing experiences. We started the week (although raining!) with Mr Harris (Jayden's Dad) and Mr Fennessey (Ava and Bella's Dad) with Fitness training. All of us really enjoyed the exercise. Mr Harris also led our staff meeting and the staff participated in some fitness training of our own and we were thankful to Mr Harris for putting us through our paces! Adam Harris Personal Training

In our classes we have been learning about sun safety, the importance of exercise and having healthy diets, what makes us feel good and having healthy lifestyles.

On Wednesday we welcomed Mike Mullen who worked with are older pupils, teaching the children BMX tips and tricks. Whilst that was going on, the guys from Rubicon worked with the younger pupils on skate boarding skills. 

On Thursday we welcomed A-Life back to our school and they worked with all our classes delivering a workshop about healthy living. 

Today we welcomed Happy Little Yogi company who led some mindful yoga sessions, which we have all really enjoyed.

Throughout the rest of the week we have had field events, in each class and track events and these have been done in our houses. Pupils were able to be rewarded by house points across the events.  Sports leaders were delighted to announce that the winning house over the week is...Hertzl!

This week Mrs Lax and I hosted a coffee morning for our Parent reps. Mrs Lax presented the new RSHE policy to the group and I was able to share some exciting plans for next term regarding our new initiative to raise the standard to Art  and D&T(more on that further in my blog!). It was a great opportunity to have some time with our parents and have discussions in this informal way.

We are excited to announce that in September we will be launching 'The Studio' this will be a dedicated area in the school where pupils will be able to develop their Art and D&T skills. 

And Finally, we are all so enjoying Euro 2020. England are playing so well and we can't wait to cheer them on tomorrow night as they play Ukraine.

This photo and caption says it all about the inspirational Gareth Southgate. A powerful message about being resilient and determined despite mistakes... 

This is Gareth Southgate in 1996 after he missed a penalty for England causing them to exit out of Euro 96 to Germany and him again 25 years later as the England manager.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom

25th June 2021

Life is like a roller coaster! It really has been for me this week(literally!)...At the beginning of the week, myself and Mrs Goldsmith met with each class teacher and discussed where pupils were in relation to their learning. We were so pleased to see how hard pupils had been working and that where there are gaps, due to the Covid closures, staff had worked hard to try and close the gaps and enable our pupils to fly. We are confident that all our pupils will be starting the new academic year in a good position and this is down to their hard work, our partnership with you, our families and the hard work of all of our staff.

This week we thanked all of our staff, with some nice treats in the staffroom. Thank you to those parents who sent virtual cards, via the Thank A Teacher website, and To Mrs Franks who sent in the most delicious lemon cake for our staff.

Year 1 had their Chaggigat Ha Siddur ceremony, where they received their siddurim(prayer books). Parents were able to join us on Zoom and despite families being on a screen, many emotional tears were shed! Thank you to all the Year 1 team for putting together such an amazing ceremony, every child shone and the songs were just beautiful!

Year 6 pupils have had the most amazing week.  On Tuesday, they went to Stanborough lakes and participated in some canoeing, team games and raft building. On Wednesday they went to Kidzania and yesterday I had the privilege of joining them at Chessington World of Adventures. I was so impressed with our year 6 pupils, they were so well behaved and caring towards each other. They were a pleasure to be with despite dragging me on all the rides!

We ended their celebration week with pizza and cinema night and a sleepover at school.  Miss Winwood has given them a week to remember, a huge thank you to her and all the team who have joined Year 6 this week. Thanks also to our parent security volunteers who have joined the class this week, Mr Rosen, Mr Bernstein, and Mr Bispham (sorry for screaming in your ear on the rides!)

We are really looking forward to ‘Healthy Minds and Healthy Body’ week next week. We have some great activities and events planned and the staff are especially excited as they get to wear tracksuits and trainers all week!!

Have a great weekend and Shabbat Shalom.

Mrs Cohen

18th June 2021

Well it is that time of the week again, and despite the rubbish weather we have had today, there has been much noise and excitement filling the corridors of our school today.

This week we welcomed new Reception parents in to school, each morning. It has been so lovely to show them around our school (whilst adhering to the covid restrictions!).

We have been planning some exciting things for next year and I will soon be sharing with you an incredible opportunity for our school...

Year 4 had the most amazing Roman workshop yesterday when they all got dressed up and had a ‘Roman’ visitor to share artefacts and experience life in Roman times. Even Mr Thompson and Mr Manning adorned capes and helmets!

Year 6 had a holocaust workshop this week, where they learnt and heard stories about The Kindertransport. I was particularly impressed and the level of questions our pupils asked.   

I have seen some amazing work this week, our pupils have been writing, recording, drawing across the curriculum and the buzz of learning is certainly evident in every area of our school.

Next week there is a national initiative, National Thank a Teacher Day on Wednesday 23rd June. This is a day that seeks to recognise the hard work and dedication that all school staff put into their jobs. As a school we will be thanking our staff next week. I know how much it would mean to our staff if your children would also like to join in with thanking the staff that work with them. If you would like some more ideas please follow the link below.

Have a great weekend, and let’s hope that England are able to give us something to cheer about this evening!

Mrs Cohen

11th June 2021

Despite the warm weather we have all continued to work hard in our lessons:

Reception class have been working really hard on their writing and have produced the most amazing books.

Year 1 have been writing their own stories and learning all about the astronaut, Neil Armstrong. Year 2 have been learning about telling the time and using the book 'Storm Whale' in their English lessons. Year 3 have been writing instructions and Year 4 have been working hard on learning about co-ordinates and writing explanation texts about electricity. Year 5 are reading 'Viking Boy' and are designing and making their own Viking ships. Year 6 are preparing for secondary school and are so excited to start working on their school play 'Alice'!

It is so lovely to see all of our children playing on our new playground equipment, this week. We must say a special thank you to our wonderful PTA and Jewish Child's Day who have made it possible for us to have this equipment! 

A very well done to Charlotte and Gabby who have raised over £1700 for charity by cycling. We are so proud of you both!

Bertie, in Year 5 met with Perrie Young today to start producing his winning song from our recent song writing competition. 

Please remember to send your child in with a hat and water bottle and make sure sun cream is applied before they come to school.

We are all getting so excited about Euro 2020! It is just so lovely that we can enjoy and follow the tournament this year! Come on France!! (my team in the staff sweepstake!)

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

PaJeS, the go-to organisation in the community for supporting Jewish Schools, is launching their Power of Partnerships Matched Funding campaign.  Whilst we ask our parents to always prioritise donations to the school, PaJeS works very closely with our school and we are happy to endorse this campaign.  

Around 60% of children in our community attend Jewish Day Schools. PaJeS plays a critical role in representing our schools at government level and meeting the range of needs of the Headteachers, teachers and governors who lead Jewish schools. PaJeS has been at the forefront of developing our best school leaders, helping our children face the challenges of this past year and been a powerful advocate for Jewish schools at local and national government level. A partnership with PaJeS means greater collaboration between schools, excellence in school leadership and schools being more financially efficient and sustainable. 

Please help to raise much needed funds and help ensure that Jewish schools continue to provide the best possible education for our children. Every donation is doubled so whatever you can give will have twice the impact.  

Click here to donate.

28th May

We have all worked so hard over the last 7 weeks to get back in to school life and I have been so incredibly proud of everyone. I have seen some amazing learning and our staff have created exciting lessons and opportunities for all our children. Thank you to all the staff for your hard work and committment, as always, this half term.  I know it hasn't been easy and we have had to adjust some of our practices after returning to school. You are the best team and I appreciate every one of you and the contribution you make to making our school great!

As well as returning to school after a Pandemic we have also had to increase our security around school and I just wanted to thank the many parent volunteers who have helped out and continue to do so after the half term break.

Today our winning house 'Chagall' got to be the first children on the new play equipment which is on now on the field. We are so excited that we have another area for children to play.

We have so much to look forward to in the next half half term. We have our Healthy Mind and Healthy Body week, Sports day, (which we are hoping to have on 29th June) our Year 6 events and we are also welcoming our new Reception families to see our school.

We cant wait for the PTA Summer fair on the 11th July where we can truly get together and celebrate our wonderful community! Please see message from PTA below. Huge thank you to all our sponsors for helping make this event be an incredible one so that w can raise some much needed funds for our school.

I hope you have a lovely half term and the weather is glorious.  Looking forward to seeing you back to school at the usual time on Monday 7th June. 

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

CAN YOU HELP OUR SUMMER FAIR?

Hi all.
We are delighted that Engel Jacobs have once again agreed to help towards sponsoring our summer party.  In return would you be willing to have a Engel Jacobs board outside your home for 4 weeks around the event?

The wording on the board would simply be, ''Proud to sponsor Clore Summer Party July 2021".

Sponsorship is essential in helping us to stage events that the whole community can enjoy and through these events we are able to raise essential money for the school.

If this is possible at your home, or you know of a family member or friend who may be willing, we would love to hear from you.

Please get in touch with ptacloreshalom@gmail.com for more information.

Many thanks.

21st May 2021

As we are coming to the end of the first half of the summer term, life at Clore is beginning to feel more and more normal. Over the last two weeks I have spent time in class and it has been a delight to see how well our pupils are engaged and excited about the wonderful lessons that have been prepared for them. We are really focusing on supporting pupils to expand their knowledge and the teachers are finding so many creative ways to help our pupils know more and remember more.  Please make sure you look at your child's class blog for further information on their learning. 

This week, work is underway on our new adventure playground on the field, and we just can't wait to see children playing on it at the beginning of next week, when we hope it will be finished.

Today we managed to have Year 1 and 2 and Year 3 and 4 in the hall for Kabbbalat Shabbat. Year 5 and Year 6 joined us on zoom from their classrooms, but the singing could be heard through the school and after such a long time of remote Kabbalat Shabbats today's was extremely special. The Ruach (spirit) that used to be so evident on a Friday morning was definitely there this morning.  The children sang the Shema with gusto and after feeling that our school was fragmented for such a long time, for that moment, I felt that we were a community again. 

Sadly we said Goodbye to Rabbi Celia who is leaving the community for a new adventure in New Mexico. We were so pleased she was able to join us physically today, for her last Clore Kabbalat Shabbat. Rabbi Celia has been a school governor for 8 years and we thanked her for her huge contribution to our school during that time. On a personal note, I am hugely grateful for the support Rabbi Celia has given me in my work here at school, she always offers great advice, shares empathy of some of the challenges we both face in the community and I will especially miss the way she always just went with the flow during numerous Kabbalat Shabbat services!

Good Luck Rabbi Celia, we will miss you! 

And lastly I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all for playing your part to keep us all safe, whether you are volunteering, parking your car in the right direction or just making sure you leave the site quickly...thank you.  Here's hoping and praying that the cease-fire in the Gaza conflict can lead to peace.

Shabbat Shalom 

Mrs Cohen

14th May 2021

It's been another full and busy week here at Clore Shalom. On Tuesday we had 'Rockstar Day' when we all dressed up as Rockstars so we could get excited to relaunch Times Tables Rockstars. There were some amazing outfits and even the staff dressed up too!

This week Year 6 have been debating big issues in class and learning how to convert numbers using comparison graphs. In Year 5 pupils have been writing amazing mystery stories. Year 4 have been working on setting descriptions and finishing their Roman shields.

Year 2 have been writing their own instructions, despite Miss Grant buttering whole loaves of bread! Year 3 have been writing postcards to their parents and learning about the stone age by handing some artefacts and deciding what they were used for. In Reception, there has been much work around the book Zog and the children have been writing sentences about dragons and making potions. 

Pupils in EYFS have finished the week making their own dragon shaped challah- Wow! it looks scary and delicious!

On Tuesday evening we had a very special staff meeting and invited school governors to join us to discuss and share ideas on the next stage of our school development. We began to explore what our pupils and our school may look like in the year 2031 and it was great to spend some time being reflective as a team and really thinking outside the normal parameters of school curriculum.  We all had some great ideas that included developing our Israeli garden and looking at STEM opportunities. 

There was much discussion about wanting to provide more creative opportunities for our pupils to truly fly as high as they can.  

Talking about butterflies and flying high this week I loved joining Year 5 as they released their beautiful butterflies into the world. We had watched them hatch and we were all so delighted to see them fly off in to the sky...

It has been so worrying to hear and see the images on the news about the Israel and Gaza conflict. The situation is complex and it has been challenging to answer some of the questions that our children have asked. Our thoughts are with all the people that have been affected by this situation and we all need to wish and pray for a peaceful solution.

As the actress Gal Gadot tweeted earlier in the week

"This is a vicious cycle that has been going on for too long. Israel deserves to live as a free and safe nation, our neighbours deserve the same. I pray for the victims and their families, I pray for this unimaginable hostility to end, I pray to our leaders to find the solution so we could live side by side in peace"

Wishing you all a Chag Sameach, have a lovely Shavuot and Shabbat Shalom. See you on Wednesday.

Mrs Cohen

7th May 2021

This week has been book week and we have had a fantastic week! 

We welcomed Tom Palmer, the author, in to school and loved hearing him read his books to us. Many of us bought his books and he signed them. He told me that he loved talking to our children. 

Brooke said “It was so lovely to hear about Tom’s new book”.  Ethan said “I loved hearing about how he got his ideas for writing!”

We also had a drama teacher, Sophia, who worked with Nursery and Reception children bringing books to life through drama and movement.

We have also done some fantastic writing in response to our Book Week. Well done to Ruby in Reception, to Jonah and Sam in Year 1.

Our book fair had been a success and our pupils have loved choosing and buying their own books. It is not too late to order if you need please see this link.

Book Fair

We have got the builders in this week and they are building a brand new climbing structure for the field. This has been part funded by the PTA and you through all the fundraising events over the last two years! I am so excited to share with you the finished structure next week and even more excited to see our children play on it.

This week we also welcomed Taylor Morrison from Watford FC who spoke to Years 4,5, and 6 about what it was like for him going to a school being the only person of colour. He spoke to pupils about this feelings and experiences and the challenges he faced growing up. I was so impressed at the sensible questions our children asked Taylor. 

Rafi I in Year 5 says " It was so interesting to hear Taylor speak about having to be resilient in his school.  I know that being racist is really wrong!"

Thank you to Farmer Field for starting us off with our Gardening Group- we can't wait to see (and eat) our carrots and beetroots when they are grown!

The weather forecast is a mixed bag this weekend, so I hope you enjoy spending time with family and friends and having a restful weekend.

Please also remember we are closed for Shavuot on Monday 17th and Tuesday 18th May.

Next Tuesday is Rockstar dress up day where we are re-launching Times Table Rockstars- we can't wait to see all of you dressed up ready to Rock Out!!

Mrs Cohen  

30th April 2021

Hi everyone! 

We have had another busy week here at Clore Shalom. We started the week with a Ramadan learning day; In Nursery and Reception classes children made Ramadan biscuits and masks, Year 1 wrote about Muslims making lanterns to celebrate Ramadan. Year 2 and Year 3 made lanterns, Year 4 discussed the fact that Muslims fasted and made lots of similarities with Yom Kippur, Year 5 and Year 6 made information leaflets, created some Islamic repeating patterns and discovered that as well as fasting Muslims also ask for forgiveness, just like we do at Yom Kippur! 

Today we were joined, virtually, by our ex-parent and real-life published author, Steven Vinacour, as our first event to launch book week next week. Steven shared extracts of his latest book 'Tudor Tangle' which we all laughed and loved! He then led a question and answer session with some of the classes. Some of our pupils came up with some very interesting story ideas for him and we can't wait to see how he includes them in to his next novel!

Next week we are so excited to welcome the author Tom Palmer to school, Tom has written lots of different types of books. He will be joining each class and sharing some of his books. We will also be selling his novels, which he will sign (please see letter sent out today). He has also very kindly said that if you have any of his books at home to bring them in and he will sign them for you!

We also have the book fair in school and your children will have the opportunity to visit the fair with their teacher so they will also be able to buy books then too. 

Book Fair details

This week I enjoyed hosting my tea party for the following children; Toby, Flora, Sophie, Danna, Ethan, Johnny, Jake and Anaelle.

Well done also to Lily, Skyla, and Samuel A in Year 1 who all came to see me this week to show me their wonderful work.  A special mention must go to Benji in Year 6 who passed his grade 4 in drumming this week, we are all so proud of him!

I hope you all enjoy the sunshine and the extra long weekend, I will see you all on Tuesday.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

23rd April 2021

We have all enjoyed the sunshine this week and have made excellent use of our field! Everyone has been working so well and it is such a joy to walk through the corridors feeling the buzz of learning throughout each class. 

This week Mrs Benson led our staff meeting and talked everyone through the EYFS environment and described the learning behind the play philosophy. We all gained so much from this, as teachers, we don't often spend time in another key stage and it is so important to consider where pupils we teach have come from and where they are going and the skills that they need to build upon in their learning.

On Monday our assembly featured the sad passing of Prince Philiip and the children had the opportunity to discuss this and the impact this would have on our Queen and our country.

Tali, in Year 5 decided that she would write to the Queen to convey her sympathies. 

Before the holidays, Year 5 wrote to Oliver Dowden MP about how we can protect the environment and the impact that the pandemic had had on woodlands and rivers. We were very exited to receive a letter back from him this week.

Congratulations to Bertie and Lily who have won the song writing competition.  Their prize will be to attend a song writing workshop. We are so proud of them and they will be performing their songs in next weeks Kabbalat Shabbat.

Today myself and Mrs Martin met with the Chairs of the PTA and they are busy planning a wonderful Summer Tea Party...more details to follow! We can't wait!

Our Year 6 pupils have gained so much from participating in the cycling profeciency course we arranged for them. Thank goodness the weather was good for them. They have gained the confidence and skills to ride their bikes on the road and the instructors were so impressed with them. Well done Year 6!

I hope you have a lovely weekend, enjoying the sunshine and time with friends and family.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

16th April 2021

I hope everyone had a great holiday. Life certainly feels a little freer now that some of the lockdown rules are starting to be lifted. We have really enjoyed welcoming back our pupils and they have settled back in to their learning in a wholly positive way.

This week Mrs Lax led our staff meeting and she shared with us some theories of Resiliance. This was so interesting for many of us and it gave us some understanding and knowledge of how our pupils (and in some cases our families and us) are feeling about issues that affect us. We had some discussion about what we need to provide to ensure that our pupils can develop their resilience.  We really enjoyed our new initiative that we started this week, Wellbeing Wednesday!

Our pupils have been busy with their learning; Year 4 have been exploring the melting point of chocolate in their Science lessons, Year 2 have been investigating the growing conditions for growing beans, Year 3 have enjoyed reading 'The Iron Man', Year 6 have been finding out about the amazing Americas and Reception class have been making their own treasure maps.

Yesterday was Yom Ha'atzmaout and as well as wearing blue and white the whole school participated in different learning activities. It was so lovely to see children working together across year groups and everyone seemed to enjoy the activities. Thank you to Mrs Martin and Miss Bard for their support with this.

Congratulations to last terms House Point Champions:

Thank you to Mr Jason Graham for standing as a parent governor, I look forward to working with him in his new role!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, Shabbat Shalom. Mrs Cohen

23rd March 2021

Although this has not been a 'normal' term, we are definitely ending it in the Clore Shalom way with some great learning and celebrating Pesach (Passover). Yesterday the pupils participated in some creative activities on the theme of Pesach- making matzah cloths and posters.  It has been so lovely to see all the children dressed up today in their smartest clothes for the model sederim. Thank you to Mrs Martin and Cantor Sarah for leading us through the service and all our staff who prepared 200+ seder plates for the children. Pupils in EYFS enjoyed their seder and a special mention must go to Mrs Sharron who created such a wonderful Seder table and service- not sure who enjoyed it more the EYFS staff team or the children!  

I hope you all have a lovely Pesach and enjoy time with your families.  Have a wonderful break and I will look forward to seeing you back to school on Monday 12th April.

Mrs Cohen

Please scroll down and see our photos.

Life at school is certainly beginning to feel nearly normal.  There has been much learning and many exciting activities going on across the whole school.  This week we have had a focus on the book 'Here we are' Oliver Jefferies. Pupils have used the book as a stimulus for writing and exploring how they are feeling since returning to school.

In Reception, they have been learning about the story 'The Bad Tempered Ladybird' and have been linking this learning to work on Our Planet. In Year 1, they have been counting in 2s, 5s and 10s, learning about the UK and Van Gogh. Year 3 have been creating poems (see below for Natasha, Theo, Mia and Abigail's poems). Year 4 have had a busy week! They have been learning to use fractions, use column methods for multiplication in maths. In History, they have been learning about how to use primary and secondary sources. In English, they have been applying their skills to write letters to say why a person or a pet is special. In Science, they had great fun experimenting the difference of the weight of carbon dioxide in different fizzy drinks! 
Year 5 have been recognising each other's talents and achievements and have written certificates for each other to acknowledge what they should be proud of.

Year 6 have been estimating volume and using objects from World War 2 to discover about the Blitz and protecting people. 

This week we welcomed our Hertfordshire Improvement Partner and Mr Conway (who is now one of our school governors). Together we looked around the classes and saw some great learning. They both commented how focused our pupils are and how well pupils have returned to school and to the high expectations of learning and behaviour we all have for them. 

Our corridors look amazing! Our staff have created displays from work that was completed during Science week each class focussed on a different aspect of animals and I am sure you will agree they all are so effective(see below!)

Next week we are sending information about a vacancy for a new parent governor.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend. Mrs Cohen

12th March 2021

What a wonderful week it has been. We have all been so delighted to welcome back all our pupils and they have made such a tremendous start back to school. We are so pleased that overall everyone is happy to be here and it has been pure joy watching the children (and the staff) enjoy being with their friends. I am sure you will have noticed that your child may be more tired than usual and this is entirely normal as we get used to the routines and systems of school life once again.

Having additional time devoted to PE and games has proved to be successful this week and as well as children having more exercise, they have had more opportunity to work together in teams and groups. I would like to welcome out two new PE coaches from The Elms, Mr Robert Kane and Mr Jake Cuthbert who have made such a great start here at Clore Shalom.

I have been particularly impressed with the following pupils this week, Abraham and Oscar In Reception who produced their own ‘Hungry Caterpillar’ books, Alicia in Year 6, who produced some wonderful Art, tied in to our Science week, and Jonah, Lily and Leo H in  year 2 who did some incredible writing in their English lessons this week.

We have all really enjoyed Science week this week, and it has provided us all with an exciting focus to our week, along with our usual high quality Maths and English lessons. Each class has focused on a different theme about animals and it has certainly created a fantastic learning buzz throughout the school. A big thank you to Mrs Berger who has co-ordinated a great Science week this week.

Pupils are managing really well, to keep within their paired year groups bubbles.  Although adults are wearing masks in crowded areas of the school, pupils have really adjusted well to the adaptations we have had to make.  

We have been inundated with the positive comments we have received from both children and feedback from parents about how delicious the new school meals are. There have been an increase of the amount of school meals being ordered this week.  In comparison to Autumn term with the previous school meal supplier, we had on average daily 104 meal take up (approx. 90 meals were provided through Universal Free School Meals for pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) and this week we have seen an increase in school meals ordered with 186 school meals being provided today! When we can, we will be inviting parents to join us to try the new lunches.

Thank you to those families who have completed our remote learning survey this week. We will be summarising the key points and sharing these with you in the next few weeks.

We are looking for a new site manager, please pass on information if you know of anyone who may be interested. https://www.cloreshalom.herts.sch.uk/caretaker-2/

Next week we will using the book, ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers. Please find link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkcjKbbF9JA if you would like to share this with your child over the weekend.

We will be shortly sending out information regarding a Parent Governor vacancy, so please look out for this.

Wishing you a wonderful, restful Shabbat, and weekend and a lovely Mother's Day to all our Mothers, Grandma's and Nana's!

Mrs Cohen

5th March 2021

We have made it!.. and survived(mostly) another lockdown. Well done to us all.

I, together with the staff am so excited to welcome back everyone in to school on Monday but whilst many of us are excited to be back, we also realise that some of us will be nervous and anxious about returning to school. We have planned lots of opportunities for pupils to express how they are feeling, to re-join their friends and get back to learning in a calm supported way. Thank you to those families that have sent back their questionnaires sharing with us, issues that their families have experienced over the last term-this has really helped us to support your children.

This week we have enjoyed World Book Day, we loved watching our special 'Masked Reader' video and tried to guess who the readers were! Thank you to Mrs Goldsmith for putting it all together- it was such fun to be part of!

Well done to all those pupils who sent in photos and videos of them reading in strange places. Some of you read in some very unusual places! I hope you enjoyed seeing the video in our Kabbalat Shabbat assembly this week.

This week all the teachers came in to school and set up their classrooms and planned their lessons. It was so lovey for me to catch up with them in real life, as opposed to talking through a screen.  They have worked hard to plan a fantastic 'Science week' next week, the theme of the week is 'Animals' and we are also going to combine it with teaching our pupils some Art skills too! 

We have also got some exciting plans for the Summer term when we hope life will be 'nearly normal'!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, Shabbat Shalom...and see you on Monday!

26th February 2021

As we start a new half term, I am sure that like me you are all hugely relieved at the glimmer of light that we can all see, as life is starting to feel like it is getting back to normal. We are all so excited to welcome back all of our pupils and staff on the 8th March. 

This week we have been meeting staff and compiling our own ‘Roadmap’ to get all the children back to where they need to be. As I communicated with you earlier in the week, our priorities in the next couple of weeks are going to be re-establishing expectations for learning behaviour, providing social support opportunities, having lots of physical exercise and establishing what has been learned during this lockdown.  This will help us to effectively plan for each pupils’ learning for the remainder of the academic year.

We have all loved visiting all the children this week, delivering Mishloah Manot, a big thank you to my Purim Posties for making the deliveries! We hope everyone enjoyed the little treat.

On Wednesday, many families took part in our Humantashen bake. A massive thank you to Victoria Prever for leading us all and helping us make delicious white chocolate and lotus biscuit flavoured humantashen.

We hope you enjoyed our Purim Kabbalat Shabbat today.  We had such fun making the film, as you could see, some of us took our acting very seriously! Well done to Mr Thompson our film director, producer, script writer, costume designer, runner…for all his hard work this week in creating such a masterpiece!

Next week is our last week of home-schooling!(loud cheer heard from miles away!)... we are so proud of the whole school community, it hasn’t been an easy time for any of us but we did it!  Please encourage your children to join the live workshops in the morning, next week, even if they don’t need the help it will help with their transition back to us for them to spend some time with their teachers.

Next Thursday is World Book Day and we will be having some special activities. Please send in some photos of you reading in extreme or unusual places to celebration@cloreshalom.herts.sch.uk by Wednesday 3rd March so we can share next Friday.

I hope you enjoy the sunny weather this week, it certainly feels a lot brighter everywhere.

Chag Sameach, Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Cohen

12th February 2021

As we come to the end of another strange half-term I can’t help but feel proud to be leading our school in this time of home-schooling and lockdowns. The teachers, as ever have risen to the challenge of adapting their planning and teaching to accommodate this now new way of school life, whilst having their own children and dogs to care for! 

I have loved visiting registration sessions and seeing our wonderful children and their (mostly) happy faces and I have been reminded at just how adaptable children are to different situations. As ever, please do not worry if you think your child is not learning as much as they need to, I promise we will ensure they have all the support necessary for them to have any learning gaps filled when they return to us.

I have been blown away by the commitment our support staff have shown in facilitating our on-site provision.  It hasn’t been easy and some of us have felt nervous about being in the building together, whilst the rest of our families are locked safely away, but the measures that we have put in place, including the twice-weekly lateral flow testing has ensured that we all keep as safe as possible. Thank you to our wonderful team at school. 

Huge well done to all our parents for (just about!) surviving a half term of home-schooling, I know it has not been easy. I hope those parents that attended our ‘Home-schooling…a survival guide’ information evening found it useful and managed to take a couple of bits of useful advice from the evening. Thank you to Mrs Martin, Mrs Lax, Mrs Goldsmith, Mrs Berger, Miss Winwood, and Mrs Benson for joining me for the evening. The feedback we received from parents was positive and parents told us it was a relief to hear that everyone was feeling the same way and had similar challenges.

This week we have had Safer Internet Day, thank you to Mr Thompson for supporting the learning with this. We hope that everyone is feeling a little more knowledgeable about being safe on line. 

A massive well done to us all for raising a staggering £1,759 for our two charities, JAMI and CHAI Cancer Care, I hope you enjoyed completing your marathons.

In January, the government asked all school Nursery classes to open, we were unable to do this, at the time, due to prioritising our Critical Key Worker and Vulnerable Pupil Group and the staffing implications that were involved. We are now in a position to open Nursery class, with Miss Grant, Miss Barber and Mrs Sharron, and we welcome them and the children back from Wednesday 24th February.  

I am delighted to be able to welcome two new members of staff Mrs Becky Cheung and Miss Charlotte Maylor, who will be joining the Clore Staff team as Teaching Assistants. I hope you will join me in wishing them a successful time at Clore.

Please make sure you scroll down this week and see some of our amazing work!

A great Zoom Disco to end our half term- thanks for dancing along!!

Bye from all the staff xx

Wishing you all a good half term break, huge thanks for your support and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

5th February 2021

We have all taken part in lots of activities during Mental Health Week this week, we have been carrying out our activities towards our ‘5 ways to Wellbeing’ which have included ‘Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give’. Well done to you all on achieving so much this week. I know the weather has not helped us to be sunny and positive but I do hope you have managed to find some fun things to do.

Well done to you all for all your amazing home teaching this week. I know, myself, how hard it is supporting your own children with their learning, whilst trying to do your own job (as well as, trying to jolly everyone along)! I recommend walks outside and trying to find a little bit of time when you are on your own!

This week all the staff received a ‘hug in a mug’, which was a hot chocolate treat. They are all working so hard, whether at home planning and teaching remotely or in school we so appreciate their dedication.  They too are so eager to return back to normality and for us to be together in school safely.

Sad news this week about Captain Sir Tom Moore passing away. Captain Sir Tom first came into the limelight last April when he decided to try and raise £1000 for NHS charities by walking 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday. He raised a staggering £33 million pounds and on his birthday he received over 150,000 birthday cards from people all around the world!

Captain Sir Tom Moore was truly an inspiration to us all, he had such a positive view of the world even over the last year when things have been tough for us all. I especially love this quote which was how he lived his life "My today was all right and my tomorrow will certainly be better. That's the way I've always looked at life.” .

I have been so pleased to see so many of us doing our bit for charity by doing our own marathons, just like Captain Sir Tom Moore we have been doing something to raise money to help others who are need it. Well done to Rafi, Mrs Lax, Sophie and Natasha, Leo and Noah, Isabella, Issy, Ilana, Freya and Sam, Ethan H, Mrs Woolstone, Mrs Scott, Jonah and Theo, Mia and Zoe, Zack, Kitty, Sophie and Louis, Kara and Taylor and Hayley Herman and me for getting out at completing our own Marathons over the last 10 days.  We have all raised £1,144 for both JAMI and CHAI cancer care! Thank you so much to those families that sponsored us and those that took part...Just amazing!

I do hope you will join us for our information evening on Monday night ‘Home-Learning…a survival guide’ meeting on Zoom. Please check your emails for details. It will be lovely to ‘see’ you all then.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and a restful weekend, Mrs Cohen

29th January 2021

As we end our 4th week of remote teaching and home schooling we must take a breath and acknowledge our survival and successes so far.  Having spoken to many colleagues this week it is apparent that this week has been a struggle for many.  Here’s hoping the news from the government this week, although not definite, has given us a slight glimmer of hope of this lockdown starting to be a lifted a little bit at a time.

The snow last week definitely brought some well-needed excitement and break from the norm and it was so lovely to receive wonderful photos of children in the snow having so much fun.

This week I have loved joining your registrations and seeing all your happy faces. The highlight of my week has been delivering the celebration tea boxes and hosting my Zoom tea party. It was delightful to see so many of you pleased and proud to be nominated by your teachers!  

I was also lucky enough to see some of the most amazing Art work in Year 5 and Year 6, their edible art was based on the artist Archimboldo and was a perfect link to us celebrating Tu B’shvat this week.

This week we had a full governing body meeting, where I shared some examples of some of the video lessons that our teachers have worked so hard to produce. The governors appreciated the opportunity to gain some understanding of the learning that is being offered to our children and were impressed at the creativity and dedication of our staff and pupils.

This morning I was asked to present our remote learning offer to other Hertfordshire Headteachers at a webinar, a couple of other Heads also presented what was going on their schools and it was so interesting to hear about the differences and appreciate the reasons why schools have chosen to do what they do.

Well done on all of you have completed your marathons this week. I have been so impressed with all those who have taken part. We have currently raised £732! This is amazing!

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?userUrl=CloreShalom&pageUrl=1

It is not too late to participate if you want to get your trainers on!

Well done to you all for another week of home-schooling, we know that it is challenging for many of us. Keep going there is light at the end of the tunnel!

22nd January 2021

This week has been a strange week for me as I was at home for a few days this week after not feeling very well. I took myself off to get a covid test and thankfully, my results were negative. 

The time working at home forced me to work at a slightly slower pace than I am used to and gave me a little more time to think through everything that we have put in place over the last few weeks and months. I reflected on the many conversations I have had with parents and staff recently and I have been struck by how impressed our parents have been with the care and warmth that our teachers and other staff have shown towards their children. I take it for granted that being a teacher it is in our makeup to be caring to the children we work with and as a parent too, I have always assumed that my own children’s teachers would be caring and supportive.  As parents, I imagine that many of you are seeing, for the first time the natural interactions between your child and their teachers and thank you to those of you who have expressed their gratitude for this support during this challenging time.

We are excited to announce the launch of our Clore Shalom Marathon

https://www.cloreshalom.herts.sch.uk/marathon-challenge/ 

We can't wait to hear about all your walking and running achievements over the next few weeks!

Our pupils at school have been enjoying our new school meals:

“Really good actually, the fish fingers are delicious!” Daniel

“Super Duper all of it!” Seth D

“Chips taste yummy!” Ruby

“I like the pizza, it tastes delicious!” Cole

“Lunch is spectacular” Daisy

We are so impressed at the quality and taste of our new menus, and can’t wait for you all to try them.

Wishing you all a peaceful Shabbat,

15th January 2021

As we come to the end of our second week of home schooling and remote teaching, we should all be very proud of what we have achieved. Having spoken to many families this week, it is clear that we all have different circumstances that we are dealing with at home, whether it is trying to balance a full time job or business while home schooling, dealing with tantrums or tears (from our spouses at times!) or simply feeling alone and that your struggles are unique to you. This is not the case. As I wrote in my letter last Friday, it is ok to take time out of the structure if you think your child or you may need it and go for a walk, play a game or put the tv on. We all need to focus on making sure our relationships with each other are positive. I read something recently, that it is so much more difficult to be a parent when we are home-schooling. We seem to miss or forget to celebrate the normal ‘parent’ moments, like sharing a bed-time story, or sharing a giggle at bath time, simply because we are all exhausted from the day we have had, we have just run out of steam, or are struggling to switch between ‘home-teacher’ to ‘parent’. 

This week I have been so impressed at the quality of work the children are producing, the teachers report back that the half hour live Maths and English workshops are successful and purposeful for those that need and want the support or a bit more structure. Much feedback has been appreciative of the fact that children can go at their own pace, re-watch our videos, and have the balance of contacting the teachers when they need support and have the option to join our live workshops if needed.  Implementing a remote schooling strategy has been extremely challenging and I would urge people not to compare what one school is doing with another because every school will have its own particular reason for choosing one option over another.  

We have been thinking about how we can still have some of our lovely whole school initiatives and I am delighted to announce that next week we re-instate our Celebration tea parties. Your teachers have selected children who have put in maximum effort in to their home learning or shown good Chesed and a ‘tea box’ will be delivered to you over the next couple of days, with further information so that you can join me, remotely, on Tuesday afternoon to celebrate your achievements and enjoy a yummy tea together. 

We are also going to be awarding our ‘Special Mentions’ certificates through a fortnightly video. Your teachers will award their pupils' certificates according to our school values but you can also send in any videos or photos of yourselves perfecting a new skill, like the skipping girl I shared with you last week, or a new hobby you are proud to share.  Please send photos and videos to me at celebration@cloreshalom.herts.sch.uk

 by Friday 22^nd January for our first video.

I hope you find some time over the weekend to have fun and enjoy being with each other.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

18th December 2020

This week we have really enjoyed celebrating Chanukah, we decorated our classroom doors, ate doughnuts, welcomed Israeli scouts (over zoom), lit candles and sang songs. Despite not being together we certainly heard wonderful singing and Chanukah excitement throughout the corridors. 

So, we've made it to the end of term!

It's been another very challenging term but we have got through it.  I want to take this opportunity to thank all the staff, governors, parents and of course our wonderful children, you have all played your part in making sure we were able to get through to this point.

We know that more challenging times are ahead, but it is now time to stop and take a breath and try to have a break.  We know there is light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to keep going and as always continue to provide the best education and support to our children, when we return to school next term.

I am so proud to lead an inspirational team, especially this year.  We are so very lucky to have such a hard-working staff team. Thank you to them all.

We have all been delighted at the progress our pupils have made despite missing a term in school and the disruptions that the pandemic has brought, and this is testament to our staff adapting our curriculum, creating engaging learning opportunities, targeted teaching and also to the support that you parents have given your children with their reading, writing and home learning. 

I want to say a special thank you to everyone who has given me and the staff encouragement and love. What has warmed my heart is those who have gone to great lengths to think of others less fortunate at this time and help them out. I know it was appreciated by those that needed help and it was a perfect example of one of our school values, CHESED, which runs through our school and reminds our children to show loving, kindness.

I hope that you all have a wonderful break and although not a 'usual' winter break, spend some time with those you love, enjoy your children and have a rest.

I look forward to welcoming you back to school on January 5th at the usual time.

Have a safe, happy, healthy new year and let's hope 2021 brings fun times for us all.

As I communicated this week please remember to use our special covid@cloreshalom.herts.sch.uk email address if you need to.

11th December 2020

As we come to the end of another challenging term during this Pandemic I am so proud of the progress that all our pupils have made in their learning and their attitudes. It was really hard for us all to come back to school in September having had such a disruptive year but our children have settled well to the expectations we have of them.

As a Headteacher, this term as not been easy, holding my breath every time a child or member of staff had to go and be tested for Covid, making plans A, B and sometimes C for potential closing of classes, bubbles or even the school has been challenging but we have nearly got through it with limited disruptions to our school life.

Having to cover staff who are off with their own children, isolating, or them waiting for test results has put a huge pressure on us all as a staff team and often we would be coming in to school not knowing which classes needed extra cover for learning, playtimes or lunch time. The staff hear me thank them a lot (via zoom or email at the moment!) but you guys are amazing!- Thank you for helping to keep our school open and being adaptable to whatever is asked of you.  

Thank you to you parents for raising much needed funds for our school with your class events this term, we really rely on those PTA events and I know how hard the class reps and PTA have worked to try and have these remote events.

There has been a Chanukah buzz about the place and we really enjoyed lighting our special menorah this morning in our Kabbalat Shabbat. We have some wonderful Chanukah activities planned for next week and I look forward to sharing them with you.

As we celebrate the story of Chanukah and remember the story of Judah Maccabee being a real hero, we have been surrounded by many heroes over the last year. Rabbi Celia shared with us during our Kabbalat Shabbat service, this morning, that each night of Chanukah she dedicates the extra candle to a hero that inspires her- that is definitely an idea that I will be borrowing for the remaining nights of Chanukah.

Chag Sameach, Happy Chanukah and Shabbat Shalom,

Mrs Cohen

Philip Simon, one of our parents has been producing an online children’s comedy show called School’s Out Comedy Club where children sending jokes for me to perform. You can check it out here: bit.ly/SchoolsOutComedy. 

The £6.99 book is available here: https://www.philipsimon.co.uk/product-page/school-s-out-comedy-club-children-s-joke-book

These are being sold to raise profits for FareShare, a charity that helps feed families and vulnerable children. You may have heard of them from the work Marcus Rashford did encouraging the government to continue providing school meals for children.

4th December 2020

It's definitely starting to feel like the festive period is approaching. Walking around the school today hearing children practise Chanukah songs and talk about their winter break plans, makes us all feel cheerful and positive about the time ahead. 

This week we had one of our governors come in to school to talk to the children about how they were feeling about being in school. The children expressed their delight at being back to a routine of school and seeing their friends, but it was also understandable to note that some of our children are nervous about Coronovirus and the fear that their relations could possibly contracting the virus.  We have put lots in place for pupils to talk about how they feel and our staff are going above and beyond to make sure they support the children and each other in these, still, crazy times. 

This week I was delighted to award some of my special stickers to Reception children who have been working so hard on their sounds and constructing sentences. In Year 1 pupils have been learning to use their knowledge of tens and ones in addition sentences. In Year 4 pupils are busy planning non-chronological reports about Olympics. In Year 5 pupils are simplifying fractions and Year 2 are writing and performing their own poems. Well done everyone, some amazing learning!

I would like to wish a warm welcome back to school to Mrs Dani Athersych, who will be joining the Year 3 teaching team.

Thank you to all the parents who have adhered to the new pick up times on a Friday, it has really helped with the traffic coming in and out of Hugo Gryn way. 

We were delighted to host a Zoom prospective parents evening last night- please see our two videos under the admission tab on our website.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend, Mrs Cohen

27^th November 2020

This week was another first as we held zoom parent evening appointments. I hope that you all found them useful and you were able to discuss with your children their achievements and their areas for improvement.

We were nominated for a National award this week at the Education Business Awards in the category of ‘Outstanding Progress in a Primary school’. We were very pleased to be shortlisted to the final 5 schools but sadly didn’t win! Very excited to have got that far though!

All our classes have been really busy as usual.

In EYFS pupils have been really excited about moon and space and have been making their own moon rocks and using them for counting opportunities.

In Year 1 pupils have been making friendship kindness paper chain and working on their handwriting, Year 2 pupils have been writing and performing their own poetry and performing list poems. Year 3 have been fact files and about Cleopatra for their Ancient Egypt topic. Year 4 have been making Olympic crowns. They have also learnt about ‘capacity’ in Maths. Year 5 have made up similes and mataphors about Giants, in their writing and have learnt about Benin- the Artist.  In Year 6 they have been learning about Literary heritage.

Sadly we say Goodbye to Ori and Itai this week as they head back to Israel with their families. We will miss you both and hope we can stay in touch and meet your new class mates over zoom in the near future.

Wishing you and your families a Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

20th November

What another busy week at Clore Shalom. On Monday all the children learnt about Diwali. The children learnt about the story of Rama and Sita and were able to retall it or act it out brilliantly.  Some classes also listened to Diwali music, made rangoli patterns using coloured rice and made colourful elephants. 

This week has also been anti-bullying week. The whole school have been looking at the picture book 'I Walk with Vanessa', a book about a child who was being bullied because of her skin colour. 

We have had an extensive anti-bullying week this week with English worked based around the book "I walk with Vanessa" which is a lovely non- word/picture only book about a girl who is picked on because of her race and another child supports her and becomes a friend. 
 

The book focuses on the kindness of a child who stood up for the victim and encouraged others to do the right thing. If you would like to view the book with your child please use the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF1FhV_Bw3w. We have also learnt about the different roles within bullying e.g. ringleader, defender, target, reinforcer, assistant and talked about everyone's responsibilities. 

The children had a fantastic lesson working with someone from another class in their bubble. They worked together to create a picture of a playground where nice things are happening or where someone is helping put something right, these will be displayed around school to act as a reminder to all.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Camp Simcha toy drive. We collected an enormous amount of new toys which the charity will be wrapping and distributiong to hospitals over the next few weeks.

13th November 

It's been a great week this week! Everyone has been working really hard and we are all doing our best work. This week was Armistice Day and we sold a record number of poppies and snap bands raising money for The Royal British Legion. We also had a video assembly, which everyone seemed to like. 

This week's staff meeting was focused on 'Resiliance' and how we can support our children to be more resiliant in these challenging times and also with their learning. 

A few weeks ago we had the real story of 'The Windrush' as our focus for Black History Week. Please see our photos of our hall displays where pupils work is celebrated.

Thank you so much to the Nursery children for making me pizza. They loved having their pizza party!

Reception children have been learning about animals and doing lots of messy play with spaghetti, shaving foam and paint!  Year 1 have worked exceptionally hard in Maths this week. In year 2, Ollie wrote an excellent explanation paragraph about recycling using time conjunctions. Year 5 have been painting their own poppies an learning about WWI.

6th November

Welcome back after the half term break.  It has certainly been a busy week as usual here at school and although the country is in lockdown again, we are keen to run as normally as we possibly can (with necessary adaptations, of course!).

This week we have welcomed our new Informal Jewish Educator, Isabel Bard, who has settled into Clore life really well. We hope she will be very happy here. 

In Nursery this week, they have been linking their phonic sounds to the sounds of the fireworks. Reception have been making mezuzot. In Year 6 they have been making models of their Flanimals and Year 5 have been writing their own creative descriptions.

We hope you enjoy our Clore promotional videos which we have made in place of our prospective parents events. 

Have a lovely weekend and stay safe. 

Mrs Cohen

23rd October 

We can’t believe we have reached the end of this half term. It has been an interesting and challenging half term for us all, however as a whole school community we have embraced the adaptations and settled back in fantastically well. I would like to thank everyone for their ongoing support, it has made a real difference to the way that we have been able to get children back into the routines and expectations of school.

This week we would like to congratulate the house point champions for this half term:

N-Zachary

R-Amelia

Y1-Lily and Mia J

Y2-Scarlett

Y3- Aiden

Y4-Kara and Sophia

Y5-Ava

Y6 Ayelet

We are very proud to announce this years school council:

Y1- Jessica and Rafi

Y2- Leo B and Sophie L

Y3-Ori and Jamie

Y4-Emily and AJ

Y5- Ethan M and Mia

Y6- Alysia, Samuel, Cooper and Ayelet

We can't wait to hear about your ideas to make our school even better!

Wishing you all a restful, happy half-term break.

Mrs Cohen

16th October

It's so lovely to have everyone back in school, where they belong!

This week has been Black History week and we have been learning about ‘The Windrush’ which was a ship that bought Caribbean migrants to Britain. This was such a creative and exciting way to commemorate Black History week and I want to thank Miss L Grant and Miss Baker for inspiring us all to take such a creative and important approach to this subject.

In EYFS, pupils have been learning about Usain Bolt and Jamaica and they have been drawing their own versions of their flags. I was delighted to see some amazing pumpkin hammering and children have been creating their own ‘leaf man’ based on the story book, which they have also been enjoying.

In Year 1, Jessica did some amazing windrush writing and Samuel wrote about what he would like to take with if he was on the Windrush boat.

In Year 6 Pupils have been experimenting with paper mache and using different techniques to make masks. They also spent some time in their English lesson writing speeches to persuade the government to let the Windrush generation stay in the UK.

We were excited to have the Magen David ambulance visit us today, the children loved seeing a real ambulance and some had the chance to go inside. Thank you to Mr Burger for arranging this for us. 

I had the opportunity to have a socially distance tea party in the playground today and although we are not baking home made cakes at the moment, it was lovely to celebrate with some chocolate mini-rolls and hear from the tea party attendees how they have been showing CHESED this week.

Have a lovely weekend and stay safe!

Shabbat Shalom 

9th October 2020

This week we have so enjoyed using our sukkah to have our lunch and snacks. Thank you to all the children who made wonderful decorations.  We have loved celebrating Sukkot this year.  We will be keeping the sukkah up for our Year 4 and Year 5 children on Monday, so they also get a chance to enjoy being in the sukkah. 

Today we have been celebrating the festival of Simchat Torah. In Nursery and Reception, the children have been finding out about Israel and looking at maps.  They have also made some wonderful flags.  Reception have been acting out the story of the ‘Three Little Pigs’ using story maps.

In Year 1 and Year 2 the children have been making scrolls for Simchat Torah and really enjoying their learning.

Year 3 made made Ancient Egyptian collars and played fraction games! They loved writing their own versions of 'The Magic Box' poems!

Year 6 pupils have been writing diary entries based on the book ‘Oranges and Lemons’ and learnt the Mayan numbers! Ask them to count for you in Mayan!

Year 5 have been writing the most amazing raps and performing and all of our pupils have been working so hard working remotely. Mrs Goldsmith says she has really enjoyed seeing the children on google meet a few times during the day, it has been good fun but she can’t wait to see all her class properly, in school, on Monday!

Year 4 have been writing character descriptions of their own character in Percy Jackson and have written their own introductions. Louis said “he loves google classroom and it’s been really good fun”

We are so proud of all our pupils in Year 4 and Year 5 and our staff who have worked so hard despite being at home.  We know it hasn’t been easy for our parents too!

We so look forward to welcoming back our classes on Monday.

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom

2nd October 2020

It seems so typical that as we welcome in the festival of Sukkot we are faced with rain and wind!

Rabbi Debbie, from Edgware and Hendon Reform synagogue joined us on our online Kabbalat Shabbat service this morning and she spoke about the need to adapt and change direction according to what’s needed at the specific moment in time and this has been so true this week, with two of our classes having to isolate and adapt swiftly to the way of remote learning.

This week in our remaining classes there has been a hive of activity.  In Reception, pupils have learnt about senses and have been walking around the school on a listening walk, making instruments out of junk and made decorations for our sukkah.

Year 3 have performed a ‘school kids’ rap, learnt how to find ¾ of amounts in their Maths lessons and also had such fun dressing up as Tutum Carmen.  Year 3 have had a big focus on kindness and making sure they are being good friends.

In Year 1 Leah and Jessica C have written some fantastic poems about Autumn and Mia J and Sophie have made some challah covers.

In Year 2 Sophie L wrote about The Great Fire of London “People were racing down the streets and screeching in horror!”  Jonah also wrote about the fire which he thought was petrifying!

In year 6 they have been writing newspaper reports and diary entries and imagined being Mayans and discovered what life was like in this period.

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom

25th September 2020

I hope everyone had a sweet and happy new year. This week we have all been extremely busy with our learning.

In Nursery pupils have been learning about Jonah and the big fish.  Reception pupils have been busy collecting conkers and then using them for paint printing and counting. In Year 1, pupils have been loving their English lessons, they told me how exciting it was to make dream catchers and write about their favourite (good) dreams.  Year 2 children have been learning how to construct story maps of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. 

In Year 3 pupil have been leaning about life in Ancient Egypt and reading ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. Year 4 have settled back to school life really well, and highlights for them this week have included learning about Ancient Greeks and Harry particularly enjoyed his Science lesson about teeth!  Year 5 have been focusing on learning how to write non-chronological reports about unicorns and dragons!

We are so pleased that Year 6 can start to carry out some of the responsibilities around the school that our previous year 6 classes have been able to do.  Today started with a Y1 buddy time and Year 6 pupils were able to plan some activities for their year 1 buddy over zoom. 

This week Mrs Berger and I have been very lucky to join Miss Winwood in interviewing all the Year 6 pupils for their jobs and responsibilities. We were so impressed at the quality of application forms and the answers that were given in our (very) formal interviews. A huge well done must go to all the class for their maturity and support for one another.  When we announced the positions all the pupils were genuinely really pleased for one another.  We know this Year 6 will rise to all the challenges we give them.

Head Girl                             Alysia

Deputy Head Girl              Ayelet

Head Boy                             Samuel

Deputy Head Boy             Cooper

Meir House Captain        Rafi & Danna     

Chagall House Captain   Oscar H & Lucy

Einstein House Captain  Benji & Daisy

Herzl House Captain        Talia & Ruby F   

Sports Leaders                   Asher, Evie, Georgia, Brooke

Digital Leaders                  Oscar K, Seth

Ruach Leaders                   Josh & Meytal

Learning Leaders              Jessie, Marley, Alicia

Buddy Leaders                   Sophie & Charlotte

Environment Leaders     Amber, Rocco, Savannah, Olivia

Lastly I would like to take this opportunity to wish you well over the fast and wish you a meaningful Yom Kippur and look forward to seeing all the children on Tuesday at the normal time.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

Friday 18th September 2020

Another busy week and I am so proud of the way that everyone has taken to their learning.

This week we have focused on Science and the children have loved investigating, observing and exploring their Science topics that they weren’t able to study last term.

Highlights of my week have included giving out stickers to pupils who have tried hard with their work and making challah with our Nursery children.

We hope you enjoyed the Curriculum zoom evenings. Thank you to all the staff for adapting to this ‘remote’ model.

This week we have been preparing for Rosh Hashana, we have made cards, learnt about what Rosh Hashana is and also heard the shofar (thank you Jonah!)  and we thoroughly enjoyed our class zoom Rosh Hashana assembly with Rabbi Celia this morning!

Today your child will go home with a honey bun made lovingly by some of our staff. Thank you to our cake team: Mrs Martin, Mrs Lax, Mrs Sharron, Mrs Goldsmith, Mrs Garfen and Me!

As we go in a new Jewish year we hope that the new year brings us all health and happiness and progress towards being able to socialise and be back to living normally.

I do hope that you find some time to celebrate the new year. Even though we won’t be having large gatherings I hope we can all have meaningful times with our immediate families.

Stay safe and wishing you all L’shana Tova.

Friday 11th September 2020

Walking around the school this week I have been so impressed at how the children have settled down to school life and how they are responding so well to the high expectations that we have of them. The teachers have worked hard to adapt their lessons to make sure they are able to teach the children at the point where they are. I am sure it will be no time at all until everyone is exactly where they should be.

Playtimes have been particularly enjoyable with less children in the playground as usual and there are definitely some ‘covid’ adaptations that we will consider keeping!

Today we tried a Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat and it worked out really well. It was so lovely to be ‘virtually’ together. The teachers had the opportunity to award ‘Special Mentions’ to members of their class and we celebrated birthdays too!

We are really lucky that Ms Allen and Mrs Rathbone have joined us as mid-day supervisors, they have been an enormous help with our 4 lunch shifts and making sure that our pupils are happy at lunch time. Our new caretaker, Daniel Winston, has definitely made his mark, turning his hand at everything from making sure the sanitising gel dispensers are full to constructing a music stand, out of pallets and, as I am sure you have seen, also helping direct the traffic at the end of the day.

Thank you for being patient with us with our new collection arrangements, I hope you have found them quicker and easier this week.  

Please be reminded that it is now against the law to have any parties or social gatherings with more than 6 people. I am sure that if your child has a missed birthday party, this may be disappointing but we will still acknowledge their birthday here in school.

We look forward to you joining us for our Zoom ‘Curriculum Evenings’ this week. We would appreciate it if you joined the meeting at your specific time as we are using one zoom account for 4 meetings during the two evenings.

This week, homework will be uploaded to Google Classrooms(see letter) and also our class blogs.  Please make sure your child is able to log on. If there any problems please do not worry we will sort it out.  

We are slowly getting back to life as we know it at Clore and it feels great!

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom and a restful weekend.

Welcome back to school everyone!

The sound of happy children and teachers teaching fill our corridors once again! We have been delighted to see everyone return to school and eager to learn, play and be with their friends (including our staff!). We started the week with two days of inset where the staff worked hard to plan and adjust their curriculum, make their classrooms inviting and engaging and get their heads around some of the latest government guidance.

We were all so happy to open our drive thru once again on Thursday, and see many of our pupils skipping in to school ready to learn and have structure and routine in their lives once again.  Today we ran four Kabbalat Shabbat assemblies and enjoyed marking the beginning of Shabbat and being together again albeit in our paired year group bubbles. Although we are unable to include parents in our assemblies at the moment, the children enjoyed singing songs and sharing birthdays. There are many 'Clore' traditions that we are trying to adapt so that our pupils don't lose out and that we can still carry on in our 'bubbles'. We will be still awarding 'Special Mentions' certificates and have attendees at 'Celebration Tea' next week.

Thank you for your patience during pick up, we are reviewing and adapting our procedures continually and we are fully aware of the parking and collection issues. Please help us and each other by parking your cars in the direction of the main road to ease for exit.

We are excited about the term ahead but obviously cautious about the ever-changing picture of lockdowns and isolation issues.  We will be sending some important information out next week regarding what we will be doing with regard to remote learning if you child/children have to isolate or if we have a local or country lockdown once again. 

I am so happy to be leading our wonderful school, once again and although we don't know what the near future will hold we are determined to continue to 'Engage' and 'Inspire' our pupils and help them 'Achieve' all they can.   

Shabbat Shalom and have a good weekend.

20th March 2020

This has been without doubt one of the most challenging weeks of my career, thankfully made a little easier being part of our wonderful community. The children, who despite their innocence have had such strength to carry on regardless, even making sure that their neatest writing was in their exercise books this afternoon. My wonderful staff, have been incredible, they have tried throughout this week to deliver, as ever the highest quality of teaching, with the children's well-being at the forefront of all they do.  Thank you to you, our parents who have been showering us with supportive emails, letters, empathy and good wishes. My headteacher friends have been invaluable, without them to share ideas, best courses of action and a well- needed laugh or two, have helped to navigate through this crazy time.

You have all given me the strength to steer our beloved school through this difficult time and I hope we can be together physically soon.  

Enjoy this time with your families, be safe and well,

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

13th March 2020

Last week was International Women's day and it was interesting that the theme of IWD was "Each for equal-We are all parts of a whole.” Our individual actions, conversations, behaviors and mindsets can have an impact on our larger society. This can be said for everyone. We all need to take responsibility to make a difference in the world in which we live. This led me to thinking about the Purim story which we heard this week, Queen Esther, despite putting her own life at risk, stood up to the King and declared, proudly that she was Jewish and that she along with all the Jews should be allowed to live equally with the rest of the kingdom!

All of us have to be brave in these strange and unpredictable times of disease and germs. We must make sure we share responsibilities to make a difference in the world, to look after ourselves and others and make sure that we are making sensible decisions for our loved ones. We must remember to check in on our older relations, even if that means through telephoning or face-timing. We also need to make sure that whilst informing our children of the safety precautions we are not scaring them.

A big well done to Year 4 who presented the most amazing Purim show this week! 
Have a safe and healthy weekend, Shabbat Shalom. Mrs Cohen

6th March

This week Year 6 visited the civic centre in Borehamwood and participated in a special event to educate Year 6 and Year 7 about understanding politics.  They learnt about what the council does, how the whole electoral system works and had the opportunity. They even had a mock election and met the Hertsmere councillor Morris Bright MBE.  All of our Year 6 pupils made the most of this opportunity and represented our school so well. Thank you to Miss Winwood and Mrs Lax for taking them.

Year 6 girls also did us proud this week, representing our school in the Maccabi Netball tournament, they played so well and we are really proud of how they have improved this year.

Our key stage 2 gymnastics team completed in the Hertsmere school sports partnership making it to get to the finals, coming second. Our key stage 1 team also did extremely well and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

We have spent a lot of time talking to children about thorough hand washing and hygeine, please ensure these messages and carried through at home.

Have a good weekend and shabbat shalom, Mrs Cohen

Friday 28th February 2020

Welcome back to the second half of Spring term- which is ironic considering how much snow and rain we have had this week!

We started the week with some inspirational assemblies from Jonny Benjamin MBE who spoke to the children about it being ok to not be ok. Huge thanks to Jonny for taking time out of his busy schedule to visit us- we always love seeing you!

Everyone has worked really hard this week. Year 6 had an ‘no pens’ day on Thursday when they had to complete all learning tasks using other methods of recording their ideas!

We also had a successful bingo evening for the parents run by the PTA. Huge thanks go to them for their hard work and brilliant organisation in running the event- it was enjoyed by all!

Lastly we have been holding a parent governor election this week, I am hugely grateful to the three candidates Neil Rosen, Michelle Janes and Jackie Forster for putting themselves forward to stand as parent governors. Whatever the outcome of the voting, am so proud and pleased that we have three candidates that have so much to offer our school and who want to contribute to the strategic development of the next stage of our school. We will announce the result on Monday.

We are still looking for volunteers to help run our library at lunch time, please contact me if you are available.

Shabbat Shalom and have a lovely weekend, Mrs Cohen

14th February 2020

Wow! What a week! We are all so proud of the whole Clore community for a fantastic Ofsted report. Huge thanks to the whole team and our wonderful pupils. Thank you to all the parents that have written in and sent lovely things for us all to enjoy!

See some great press coverage below!

This week we have celebrated children’s mental health week through our 'Feeling Good Week'. The children have taken part in a variety of activities including lessons on feelings and managing strong emotions, daily mindfulness activities and some enrichment sessions which were designed to remind the children of different things they can do to feel good. We have also painted rocks in response to the book “Only One You” which all classes have worked on in English this week. The rocks will then be made into a rock garden which children will be able to access for positive affirmations and another area of the school that will hopefully encourage the children to feel good. 

On Wednesday we had Safer Internet Day, we looked at our online reputation, being respectful on line and how we can show our school values on-line as well as off-line. 

We were delighted with our girls football team who represented us at the Maccabi Football tournament this week.

Well done to Year 5 on a fantastic assembly this week, you shared some amazing learning and your performance was excellent!

We are ending this half term having had such a wonderful celebratory week. After half term we are back to business making our school even better!

Shabbat Shalom and happy holidays!

Mrs Cohen

7th February 2020

School has continued as usual after last weeks Ofsted inspection and this week as proved as busy as ever.  We celebrated 'Inside out day", a new initiative for mental health week. All our pupils and staff wore a piece of clothing inside out to demonstrate that we sometimes don't truly understand how people are feeling on the inside. We are looking forward to continuing our awareness of having good mental health with our 'Feeling Good' week next week.

Huge congratulations to our fabulous year 5 mathematicians, Ayelet, Rafi, Samuel and Evie who came 3rd out of 17 schools in the Maths tournament this week. We are all so proud of you!

We are also proud of our year 3 and 4 football teams who played in the Maccabi football league this week. They wore their Clore Shalom kit with pride and thoroughly enjoyed their matches.

On Monday we will be celebrating Tu B'shavat, the Jewish festival to celebrate the birthday for trees. We will be planting some trees, kindly donated to the school and having a Tu'B'shavat seder where we will be eating a range of delicious fruits!

Shabbat Shalom

31st January 2020

A huge thank you to you all for your support and encouragement this week.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

23rd January 2020

We are so proud of all our Art displays up in our school hall, they really showcase our talented artists and the skills that are being taught through Art lessons. The pupils thoroughly enjoyed learning about the different artists too(see below).

On Tuesday we hosted a training session for staff from four other primary schools and invited Robin Launder, the behaviour buddy https://behaviourbuddy.co.uk to share some of his strategies for helping pupils to retain knowledge. The session was both thought-provoking and also essential for us as educators. Our teachers have already began to use some of his ideas successfully and everyone who attended really enjoyed the session.

Next week we are learning about the Chinese new year and we have a book fair every afternoon next week!

Welcome to 2020!

We have all enjoyed having 'Rockstar' hair today in celebration of kicking off with Times Tables Rockstars! Your child will have a login and a passwords which they can play at home each day! We look forward to announcing who our top times table rockstars are each week! Rock on!

Congratulations to Herzl who won the house prize for last term, they enjoyed a party today and celebrated. Also congratulations to our house point champions(see below).

I want to also take this opportunity to welcome some new members of staff, Mrs Jude Spencer, who will be working as a class teacher in Year 2, Mrs Nicky Bennis, who is teaching Year 3 and Mrs Dee Katz who will be working as a teaching assistant in Year 4. We hope that they enjoy their time at Clore Shalom and feel part of our wonderful team very quickly.

Have a great weekend and Shabbat Shalom.

20th December

We finished the term with a fantastic series of special 'Festival of Lights' showcase concerts for our three key stages. Last night Year 4,5,6 performed songs and narrated stories about Divali, Christmas and Chanukah and entertained us all with the most incredible singing. Although this was a completely new format for our school to come together and perform in a group of 90 we are really proud of the community spirit that they showed.

This morning we have enjoyed a fantastic Shabbat and 'Festival of light' concert from Nursery and Reception children-they shone and we are all so proud of them.  We have all also enjoyed a wonderful celebration of diversity with Year 1,2,3 in their fabulous 'Festival of Light' concert this morning. Huge well done to all the staff involved, this was a new event for us and  we are so proud of every child and their wonderful performances!

I hope you enjoy reading our termly newsletter which will be emailed out later today.

Lastly I just want to take this opportunity to express my thanks and gratitude to you our children, staff and parents for your contribution that each of you make to ensure this school community is a rather special one. 

Happy holidays and Shabbat shalom.

Mrs Cohen

13th December 

This week Year 3 had a fantastic Ancient Egyptian day, where they all got dressed up and had a visitor and workshop and learnt all about the Ancient Egyptian era and what life was like for the Ancient Egyptians. 

Max B told me "I really loved the role play especially when Sloane had to pretend to be one of Pharoah's tasters because in those days people tried to poison the Pharoahs so they needed someone to taste all their food first! I also really likes seeing the tombs, which was quite scary but so interesting!

Year 4 shared with us their wonderful assembly, the highlight of it had to be the model they made of the digestive systems and actually what happens when our body digests food!

On Wednesday two year 6 teams represented our school at the Maccabi Netball competition and were so proud of themselves, winning and drawing in most of the matches that were played. 

On Thursday we had our own 'General Election' , Year 6 pupils had researched important information about the 4 main parties and then helped the rest of the school vote. They ran a polling station and worked out exit polls too!  The buzz about the general election was absolutely amazing.

"It helped us to understand how difficult it is to make these decisions and how to choose a leader responsibly" Tami

"It was good for our independence to help choices for voting" Rocco

"Our election gave us a taste of how I would voted when I am 18" Levi

"I voted for the Conservative party because I like some of their good ideas such as more money being spent on the NHS" Sophie Li

Yesterday our choir went to Northwood and Pinner Liberal synagogue to entertain the elderly people by singing some Chanukah songs and chatting with them. Our choir was a big hit and everyone enjoyed the visit. 

We are so looking forward to seeing as many people as possible at our Chanukah fair and fireworks event at the weekend. Thank you to all those families that sent in a bottle and chocolates for the tombola stall. 

Have a lovely weekend! Mrs Cohen

6th December 2019

We love Fridays here at Clore Shalom, we really enjoyed welcoming Rabbi Mark Goldsmith from Edgware and Hendon Reform syangogue to our Kabbalat Shabbat service this morning. We are fortunate to have great links with our Rabbis and also always enjoy it when Rabbi Neil and Rabbi Celia also attend our Kabbalat Shabbat celebration assemblies.  Shabbat is a time of reflection and as I walked around the school this morning seeing children hard at work, looking at their wonderful work and smelling the delicious challahs baking in the 'Early Years' kitchen I was struck how lucky we are here at Clore Shalom,  where eventhough we are a Jewish community school, our children also have the opportunities to learn about the whole world around them and about different religions.  This week we learnt about 'Advent' and had an 'Advent' learning day where some of our children experienced making a christingle and writing their own advent promise. We recognised that Christians celebrate advent and many of us now know why advent calendars are significant to the Christmas story. 

We thoroughly enjoyed welcoming the Israeli scouts from Maccabi Tsiar who spent time with our classes teaching them Chanukah songs and doing some great Chanukah activities as part of their Maccabi Torch Relay.  

Everyone is busy practising for our special Chanukah showcase 'Festival of light' and they all sound absolutely incredible-we can't wait! 

We hope you are all enjoying this festive time of year and wish you a shabbat shalom.

Mrs Cohen

29th November

This week we have seen lots of our parents in school. Thank you to those that came to parents evening this week. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the wonderful work and progress your children have made this year. The excitement from the children when they come in to school the next day to read the notes you leave them on their work is just magical! We look forward to seeing more parents next week at our 'part 2' parents evening.

Today I had the pleasure of hosting a parents coffees morning where we all had discussed a variety of different issues and suggestions, whilst drinking tea and eating cake! Thank you to those parents reps who were able to attend, we so appreciate the opportunity to hear your views about how we can make our school even better and I hope you found the tour around our school informative.

This week Year 4 had a visitor who helped them build an Ancient Greek Temple to the Goddess Athena from just wooden sticks and rubber bands. There was much excitement as the temple was nearly as tall as the ceiling in the hall!

All of our children have been busy practising and singing to prepare for our very special 'Festival of Light' holiday showcase. We can't wait to share it with you in the last week of school.

Well done to the year 5 and year 6 girls football team who played at the Maccabi tournament, they played so well and did not lose any of their games! Well done girls!

Next week we look forward to welcoming our parents to the Year 4 assembly.

Have a lovely weekend and Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

21st November 2019

Another week as flown by and we haven't let the cold weather affect how hard we are all working. This week we were delighted to host a visit by 'zoolab' for Nursery and Reception children who all loved looking at snakes, spiders and snails and related the patterns and textures that the animals had to their learning in their classroom.

Our Year 5 and 6 boys football team participated in the Maccabi football tournament and played really well, we were so proud of how they conducted themselves and represented our school. 

We have had lots of prospective parents look round our school this week and I have been so proud of showing them our wonderful school. We had many comments from our visitors about how exciting the learning looked and how engaged our pupils are in their lessons and I was especially proud of our pupils who also showed our visitors round and spoke so eloquently about our lovely school!  

We have started our special 'General Election' project by having our first 'Election' assembly and we look forward to Year 6 pupils preparing interesting information about the main political parties so that we are ready to 'vote' when we hold our own 'general election' on the 12th December.

8th November 2019

Welcome back after the half term break. We are all glad that we are back to full weeks and can make the most of every learning opportunity.  This week our Year 1 class were very excited to received their siddurs(prayer books) in their special 'Chaggigat Ha Siddur ceremony'. It was lovely to have so many parents join us and be able to pass the new siddur to their children, to represent the passing of Jewish traditions and values to the next generation. Well done Year 1 on using your new siddurs today in Kabbalat Shabbat!

Thank you to our wonderful PTA and sponsors for putting on a successful movie night this week  The children really enjoyed watching the films and having their supper at school. The whole evening raised much needed funds for our school.  This term we have spent PTA funds on Music resources, books, book corners and stationary, so thank you to you all for supporting this event.

This week the teachers worked with our colleagues from Yavneh Primary and Monksmead and had the opportunity to share good practise and professional discussions about teaching and learning. 

On Wednesday the Year 5 and 6 boys football team represented our school in their first inter school match of the year, at Woodlands school. Although we came second(!), the team really enjoyed the experience.

Please join me on Sunday at 10.50am at the war memorial in Shenley to lay our school wreath and to join the Shenley community for the memorial service.

Lastly please note our school library is open every Monday and Wednesday lunch time for children to borrow books.  Please discuss with your children their book choices and enjoy them at home.

Shabbat Shalom, Mrs Cohen

25th October 2019

This week we have have focused on Anti-Bullying week, Mrs Lax has led some great assemblies and today the children worked in their houses creating portraits inspired by the cubism movement, identifying positive changes they wanted to make to create harmony in their lives!

I always enjoy hosting our celebration tea party where pupils have been rewarded by showing loving kindness. Our staff are on a baking rota and provide the most delicious treats each week.

We have had quite a few governors visiting the school this week, identifying examples of good behaviour and they have been so impressed at how our pupils and staff care for one another.  

After half term, we will be sending out information about parents consultation evening and how to book your appointments for the 28th November and 3rd December 2019.

Well done to Meir house for winning this terms house point competition!

I hope you all have a lovely half term and we look forward to seeing you on Monday 4th November at the usual time. 

Friday 18th October

We have had another busy week in school this week. On Wednesday morning Years 1 to 6 took part in a model Sukkah making morning. The children worked so hard and created some amazing models which we have enjoyed looking at around the school all week. Lunch in our beautifully decorated Sukkah has been a great success despite the rain.

Our week ended with a fantastic whole school assembly to celebrate Simchat Torah. Rabbi Celia unrolled the Torah for us all to see.

We had a successful fire drill today. All children behaved brilliantly and were extremely sensible during the whole practice, which took us less than two minutes.

Chag Sameach, looking forward to seeing everyone back in school at the normal time on Wednesday morning.

Friday 11th October

We loved raising money for Young Minds, as we all enjoyed wearing yellow!

This week the sukkah has been built ready for our Sukkot celebrations next week, which include carrying the mitzvah of eating in the sukkah and creating our own mini sukkahs. Thank you to all those children that entered our sukkah decoration competition, we will be announcing the winners very shortly.

We look forward to seeing you all back to school on Wednesday 23rd October, have a lovely weekend and a good yom tov.

4th October 2019

We hope you all had a wonderful new year celebration. This week, despite only having a short week, we have all worked extremely hard with our learning. I have loved hearing about Ancient Greeks and Anglo-Saxons from children in Year 4 and Year 5 and have so enjoyed reading the work that pupils have brought to me!

We have also been learning about people from different cultures as this month is Diversity awareness month, and we are all so especially proud of Dina Asher-Smith, the British Athlete, who won the gold medal at the World Athletics Championship in Doha this week.  Year 2 know a lot about her and her achievements, as they used their research and writing skills to write information booklets this week.

Next week, we are closing early on Tuesday to celebrate Yom Kippur and will be closed on Wednesday.

Please all remember our Sukkah decorations competition, we are looking forward to receiving waterproof decorations from the children.

Happy New Year-L'shana Tova.

We hope you a have a lovely long weekend and look forward to seeing you back to school on Wednesday 2nd October 2019

20th September 2019

Another week has flown by! This week the PTA had their AGM and it was quite amazing to hear about the phenomenal success they have had this year in arranging fantastic events enjoyed by all AND raising money for our school. It was a great turn-out and we thank all those that volunteered to join committees for our events. Since the start of term we have spent PTA money on: non-fiction books (that link to our topics), resources to enhance our book corners, Music teaching resources, and playground equipment! We wish our new Chairs of the PTA, Mrs Graham, Ms Allen, Mrs Gilbrey-Philips lots of success in their term of office and thank Mr Bispham and Mrs Landsman for staying on as treasurer and secretary.

I have been inundated this week with children showing me great examples of their writing, everyone is working so hard!

Today we announced which Year 6 pupils were going to take up some of our key positions in our school. After much deliberation by the panel, we are pleased to announce the following:

Joey-Headboy

Poppy-Headgirl

Luca-Deputy Headboy

Zoe-Deputy Headgirl

Dexter-Sports Leader

Amelia-Sports Leader

Josh-Sports Leader

Sadie-Sports Leader

Tami-House Captain for Herzl

Gabriella-House Captain for Herzl

Coby-House Captain for Chagall

Ruby-House Captain for Chagall

Monty-House Captain for Meir

Eva-House Captain for Meir

Oliver-House Captain for Einstein

Rebecca-House Captain for Einstein

Congratulations to you all. We are especially proud of the whole of Year 6 with the way they have conducted themselves since the beginning of the year. Your focused learning behaviour and support for one another just shows how you are meeting the expectations we all have for you and showing good 'CHESED'!

Shabbat Shalom 

Friday 13th September

Wow! What a busy week we have all had. On Monday our Hertfordshire Improvement Partner (HIP) came to visit our school and really enjoyed seeing the wonderful work the children were doing and meeting some of our staff.

It was great to see so many parents at our Curriculum evening on Tuesday night, I hope you received your class teachers presentations if you were unable to attend.

On Wednesday we were very lucky to have 'Living the Dream' here to run street dance workshops all day, which everyone loved!

Thank you for your support with our 'Healthy Eating in school' initiative, your children have come up with some alternative ideas to celebrate their birthdays including games for wet break times and some playground equipment.

Shabbat Shalom

6th September 2019

Welcome to a new year at Clore Shalom. We have had a great first week back. The teachers had two days of inset where we identified some further developments to make our school even better!

All the children have made such a positive start to the new term and have settled in to their new classes so well.

Please don't forget to come to our curriculum evening next week where we will share with you our plans for the new year and you will have an opportunity to meet your child's teachers.

Have a lovely weekend and Shabbat Shalom. 

Happy Holidays to you all. 

Thank you to you all for your support this year and I hope you have a wonderful summer holiday and look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Mrs Cohen

CloreFest 2019

Yesterday was one of our highlights of our year. It was wonderful to see our school community come together. The classes performed brilliantly, the Clorefest finalists were great and volunteers ran some fantastic stalls. New additions to the festival this year; 'Gunge the Teacher' and the 'Clore Bake off' were hugely successful. Everywhere I looked people were smiling and having fun. There was a record breaking turnout and in the first time in the history of Clorefest-more food had to be sourced during the afternoon! Lee Raw was our compere and he did a sterling job of steering the afternoons proceedings. The work and effort from the Clorefest committee in putting on the spectacular afternoon was incredible, not only did they raise a lot of money for the school they also helped us to create the spirit and warmth that Clore is known for. Huge thanks to all the CloreFest committee, our generous Sponsors, Zack Isaacs, our volunteers and our Clore families for making this years CloreFest one to remember!

Mrs Cohen

Year 6

So proud of our Year 6 pupils this week, as they performed 'Annie JR' so well. The singing, dancing and acting was absolutely incredible and we were so pleased to see you all shine.

Sports Week

Last week we had the most amazing sports week...

We started the week with our field events. All the children had great fun, working in their house trying to gather as many points as possible. Years 3-6 also had the opportunity to try archery-which they loved!   On Wednesday each class participated in skipping workshops and we had loved learning tricks and ended our day with a skipping performance!   On Thursday A-Life came to school and we all loved the circuit training they ran for us (even though Miss Winwood beat me in the burpee competition!)  Friday was the highlight of the week for many of us. We were so pleased to welcome the Olympian Marilyn Okoro to school, she inspired us all with her story of perseverance and determination and left us with the notion to "Dream Big!"

We are looking forward to having our Sports Day during the last week of term(email was sent out).

A 'Rocking' Week!

We loved having 'Rocktopus' here on Tuesday. We all contributed to writing our own school sports day song and we can't wait to share it with you next week at Sports Week.  Rocktopus also spent time with pairs of classes writing songs about the different sports and PE activities that we do here at Clore Shalom. We loved 'Rocking out!'

The school choir performed brilliantly at the community fundraiser for Barnet hospital and I was so proud of the way each of the pupils behaved and represented the school. Huge thanks to Mrs Benedick for all the singing practises, Mrs Silverman for accompanying the children on the keyboard and to Mrs Globe for helping at the event. 

Year 6 went to Kidzania on Thursday and had the most amazing time being 'Capital Radio DJ's', bank clerks, and trying their hand at many other occupations!

Well done to Year 5 and 6 boys who represented our school in the Maccabi Football competition.

We have some exciting Sports week activities planned for next week, pupils can come to school in their PE kit. Please can you make sure they have suncream applied and have a water bottle and hat in school.

Please don't forget to support all our Clore Shalom runners on Sunday at the Maccabi fun run. Mrs Benedick, Mr Thompson and I and some of our wonderful pupils are all going to attempt the 5K! Wish us luck!

Don't forget that we have the Olympian Marilyn Okoro coming to our school next Friday for our Team Super schools event. The children will have an opportunity to have their photo taken with Marilyn and participate in fitness circuits. 

We can't wait!

A soggy week in review....

We come to the end of another soggy, yet immensely busy week here at Clore Shalom. There have been some fantastic things happening over the course of the week, and we are all getting excited about some of our upcoming events.

On Tuesday night we welcomed our new Reception and Nursery parents for their initial welcome talk, and opportunity to meet the Early Years Team. The evening and information was very well received, and we are very much looking forward to welcoming in our youngest pupils in September. Thank you to those parents who attended, and our committed staff for facilitating the evening.

Unfortunately the Year 4 Tri-Golf festival on Tuesday afternoon was washed out by the weather! Our Year 4 pupils will now be competing next Tuesday having been entered straight into the partnership finals. Let’s hope they swing smoothly and score lots of points, good luck.

Wednesday was a busy day indeed; Year 2 made the trip out to Southend for the day, visiting the Sea Life Centre, walking along the wet and windy promenade, and travelling along the ‘longest pleasure pier in the world’ on the miniature train. It was an enjoyable, fun and damp day! Many thanks to Mrs Benedick, Mrs Garfen and the other staff and helpers involved in organising the day.

Our Year 3 & 4 footballers participated in the third and final Maccabi football tournament on Wednesday. Both teams acquitted themselves competitively with credit in each of their matches. This year has been a fantastic opportunity for many of these players to get their first experiences of competitive school football, and we have high hopes for them in the future.

To round off the week Year 5 visited  the Watford FC dome at the training ground today. They attended a session led by Year 10 pupils from JCOSS, a great time was had by all while they were there.

Shabbat Shalom!

Welcome back to the Summer term...

Well we have been back for a week, and already it feels like the break never happened! There has been so much happening this week, and our pupils have been engaging in a wide range of curricular and extra-curricular activities.

Year 5 spent an action packed 3 days at Gilwell Park, taking part in a wide range of adventurous activities including; rock climbing, archery, free-fall and orienteering. The pupils were impeccably behaved and the staff are incredibly proud of how well they adapted to being away from home and working together to support each other. I would also like to thank those members of staff who gave up their time (and sleep) in organising and facilitating this trip.

You may have seen a large amount of bikes around the playground this week, this is because our Year 6 pupils have been participating in their cycling proficiency training this week. They have had a series of sessions teaching them about how to ride safely on the roads and understanding how they should conduct themselves. They have all had a chance to have their training in the playground, before being taken out to practice these skills on the roads in the surrounding area. They have all done very well! 

Wednesday this week was an extremely busy day for many...Year 4 ventured out to the British Museum to learn more about their history topic The Ancient Greeks. They participated in an interactive activity finding different pieces of artwork around the exhibition from the descriptions given on iPads. It was a great day that was enjoyed by all. A huge thank you to Mr Thompson and the other staff and parents who facilitated this trip.

In the afternoon our Girls' football team participated in the third and final Maccabi football tournament of the year. Each time they have participated throughout the year they have improved immensely, and have become a force to be reckoned with in both the local league and other tournaments. They played 5 matches, winning 4 of them, narrowly missing out on a place in the semi-finals. They have been a great credit to the school during their matches, and will be a hard act to follow next year.

Finally Friday has seen our children participating in Shavuot learning activities, being run by the Year 6 pupils. They have planned a range of activities for the other classes to learn more about the upcoming festival of Shavuot, which celebrates the receiving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Wishing you all Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach!

Welcome back to the summer term!

This week has seen the start of our competitive sporting events for the term. We had a group of Year 4 pupils competing in a sports partnership tennis tournament at Queens' School. They each competed extremely well, being very determined and playing every match in the right spirit. It was a team event where we played matches against 4 other teams, resulting in a mini league table. We were victorious in each of our matches, meaning that we won the mini league and made it through to the partnership finals later on this half term.

A fantastic achievement for our competitors Asher, Rafi, Ruby and Talia, well done and good luck in the finals!

We also hosted Shenley Primary netball team here on Wednesday and they played against our year 5 and Year 6 teams. We had a great afternoon. Our Year 6 team beat Shenley Primary and their Year 5 team beat ours! We all had a fun afternoon!

Next week we are celebrating Yom Ha'atzmaut-don't forget to wear blue and white!

Shabbat Shalom.

Mrs Cohen

We have loved hosting some of our grandparents this week, for our Pesach sederim. Thank you to those parents who helped Miss Stubbs set up for all the sederim too. 

We have had a lovely week this week. Year 2's assembly was a great success and the children performed their parts so well. Thank you to the staff that put so much work in to it and to the parents who managed to source some incredible costumes!  We have really enjoyed the start of what we hope will be some glorious Spring weather and hope you have a lovely holiday.  Please look for my end of term letter next week with some key information on it together with key term dates. We hope that parents will join us for our end of term assembly next week, please call the office for details.

Shabbat Shalom

Mrs Cohen

Thursday 21st March 2019

We have loved celebrating Purim today. Year 6 pupils did such a fantastic job of delivering Purim activities to the whole school. All the children enjoyed making their own Misloah Minot, eating hamantashen, listening to the Megillah and looking fantastic in their Science themed fancy dress! Pumin Sameach!

15th March 2019

The end of another busy week for us here at Clore…with the highlight being a fantastic performance by everyone involved in Year 4’s Purim Play. I would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate the whole class for their commitment to create such a fantastic show, with special thanks to Mr Thompson and Miss Goulding for their creativity, effort and patience in producing it. I am very proud of all of you!

On Monday this week Year 2 ventured across the fields to the De Havilland Aircraft Museum to further their knowledge of aviation over time. Everyone had a fantastic day, learnt a huge amount and saw some amazing aircraft! Thank you to those parents who helped with the trip, and the Year 2 team for arranging an enriching trip for the children.

Thank you to those parents who came to hear more about the Year 1 phonics screening check on Wednesday of this week. As with all statutory tests, the phonics screening ensures that not only are the children developing the basic skills for decoding, but also that we are delivering phonics in an effective way.

Next week promises to be another busy week across the school, with everyone participating in Science Week and participating in a range of science linked activities, as well as our dress up day for Purim on Thursday. Remember that we are linking this into Science Week and would like everyone to come dressed as something science related.

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom 

8th March 2019

Well done to our KS1 and KS2 gymnastics team this week. The KS1 team are through to the next round of the tournament with Hertsmere school sports partnership. Year 5/6 Netball team represented our school in the Maccabi tournament this week and played brilliantly!

Huge thank you to all those parents that help in our drive-thru, it makes such a difference to our start of our day and it means our staff can start working with children as soon as they come in. If you see there are not many parents out and you can spare 10 minutes to help we are always grateful.

Wishing you Shabbat Shalom.

15th February 2019

We have had a great half term. Life at Clore is always busy and pupils have a clear expectation of the standard of work and behaviour we expect. We have had many visitors during the half term including Viking Kings, Pharoahs and Saxon Kings, governors and external advisors from the local authority. All our visitors have commented on how well our children behave and how calm our school is, as well as commenting on the wonderful displays and writing in our corridors. Thank you to all the staff this term for giving our children such fantastic learning experiences!

Kabbalat Shabbat services continue to be popular, despite our change of timings, it is the one time in the week where we all come together as a community and share the spirituality of Shabbat and celebrate the achievements of our pupils. Our ‘Chesed’ tea party is much enjoyed by all attendees and the staff take turns to bake for the tea party (some staff members are more competitive than others!).

I have been particularly proud of all our sporting achievements this term and we have competed in many different competitions (see Sports blog, in classes).

We are looking forward to Science week and have got some great activities planned. We are also very excited about our Purim celebrations and Year 4 are working hard on their play. Don’t forget the Purim dress up theme is anything Science related!

Children are enjoying our library and are taking full advantage of our lunch time opening times.

Make sure your children have the correct PE kit in school and they are wearing the correct school uniform, accessories and sensible shoes.

Sadly we have said goodbye and good luck to Mrs Jacqueline Bernard this week, who has been at Clore Shalom for such a long time- we will miss her dearly. After the half term break we welcome Mrs Lorraine Field, our new Office Manager and she and Mrs Mesnick will be working together for the rest of the term to ensure a smooth transition before Mrs Mesnick leaves us in April.

Congratulations to Mrs Emma Caplan who joins the Governing body as a parent governor, we look forward to working with her.

Please make sure you check your children’s class blogs, sports blogs and this one regularly as we have now stopped producing Clore Chronicles.

Wishing you all a lovely half term and Shabbat Shalom

Mrs Cohen

I was especially proud of our Sports teams this week (see Sports blog for reports!).  The year 5 team went to Arsenal double club and won the Maths part of the tournament and our girls football team played exceptionally well at the Maccabi football tournament on Wednesday.  

Everyone is working hard and the teachers enjoyed an inset given by the Science museum last week. We are very lucky to have some student teachers in school at the moment. Miss Reich(Year 5) is from the University of Hertfordshire and Miss Judah(Year 3) is from Schools Direct Teacher Training. We wish them luck in their studies and we look forward to learning from them too.

Welcome back to a new term and 2019! 

We have all made a really great start and the pupils are fully immersed into their new topics and excited about the trips and visitors that the teachers have planned for them. We have some new equipment for the playground and the children are making full use of our new astro-turf too!

Please check out all the class blogs there is some wonderful learning happening in our school!

Happy Holidays to you all. 

We hope you have enjoyed reading about our term and our news in 'Clore Chronicles'.

Have a wonderful break and we look forward to seeing you in 2019!

23rd November

This week HMI visited our school for a monitoring visit. A big thank you to all the staff for their tremendous hard work this week. 

I have seen some brilliant lessons this week, and everyone is enjoying and learning all about their History and Geography topics. 

We are so excited that our new astro-turf area is finished and we will be using it during play times and PE lessons. We will be having our official opening ceremony in a few weeks time.

Thank you to you all for your support and good wishes for the HMI visit, I hope to let you know the outcome of the visit very shortly.

Shabbat Shalom 

9th November

We have really enjoyed anti-bullying week this week. The highlight of the week for the children was when they worked in their 'houses' and produced their own videos.

Have a lovely weekend and we hope you get the opportunity to join a remembrance day commemoration ceremony.