I am pleased to share that Nicky Ellis, who has worked across both Hob Moor Oaks and Primary in a Federation role for Safeguarding, Behaviour and Wellbeing, will move into a full time Hob Moor Oaks role this year. Nicky has a wealth of knowledge of SEND and is very excited to work alongside pupils and staff in the Oaks full time.

Over the upcoming weeks the children will be interacting with their story texts for our school performances. There are lots of lovely learning opportunities within continuous provisions to help the children to become familiar to the characters, stories and songs. We are looking forward to welcoming you in to see the live performances. Please look out for a parent hub message regarding the timings and groupings early next week.

Thank you to a lovely parent for pointing out the errors on the diary dates. Please see the amendments to World Book Day and Mother’s Day. Many thanks, Olivia

 Please can Y6 parents/carers let teachers know via the care diary if they are attending one of our Lea Green residential meetings.

This week has been a very festive one but also an emotional one with a few goodbyes.

Thank you to Rev. Biddlestone for a lovely Christingle service, the children loved your Makaton skills, singing and humour! Thank you to those parents for joining us back in class to make a Christingle. UKS2 classes visited a church in York, St Michael Le Belfey for a Christingle session. The children did us proud in a very unfamiliar setting for some. Thank you to Ruth for arranging this visit.

Our lovely Janet Harris is retiring today! She has worked at Hob Moor for 16 years and has welcomed our children every morning for all of those years. She is a constant in our children’s day as she stands on the door to safeguard and welcome. We will miss Janet very much, she is a fantastic administrator and we wish her lots of love in her retirement! Goodbye Janet.

We also say goodbye to Gillian, Val, Di and Amy who are saying goodbye to HMO. Collectively with over 62 years of experience, you will be greatly missed. We wish you all luck in your next adventures, enjoy the rest and keep in touch!

We welcome Sorrel, Gemma, Meg and Charlotte in the new year to team HMO! We are excited to welcome Richard into our teaching team, Richard who is a TA in Trunks will be starting his level 6 teaching  apprenticeship in January!

Now for the thank yous. This term we have welcomed so many new staff and celebrated a fabulous Ofsted. We could not achieve this without the dedicated staff who make this school a community! Thank you to you all for your energy, creativity and support. Please have a wonderful Christmas holiday, rest and  recuperate ready for 2023! I look forward to seeing you all in January for our school production. The dates are as follows Wednesday 25th January at 10am and Thursday 26th at 1:30pm (the timings may change slightly due to the performance timings and groupings). Have a very merry Christmas!

This week we congratulate Emma Priest on the birth of her baby boy! George was born on Saturday morning,  weighing a lovely 7lbs 7oz. During Emma’s maternity leave, Liz Waters will be leading Key Stage 1- Saplings, Buds, Branches & Twigs classes. Congratulations Liz on this leadership progression.

A huge thank you and well done to Sammie, Stacey, Donna and Becky in our school kitchen for a lovely Christmas lunch yesterday, the children and staff looked fabulous in their Christmas jumpers.

This week I’ve had the pleasure of joining three school trips. On Monday I supported on a Penathlon sports event with some of our Y6 pupils, on Tuesday I visited the garden centre with Buds and today I joined our annual Ice Factor trip with of our wheelchair users. All the children represented the school brilliantly and did us all proud! It was lovely to have so many  pockets of joy within my working week!

Have a lovely festive weekend and we look forward to our final week of 2022!

Other stalls that the children will enjoy are face painting, snow machine, decorating biscuits, glitter tattoos, guess the name of the teddy and cake stall. Raffle tickets continue to be sold until 3pm Monday, prizes include hampers, vouchers and even a bed and breakfast at the Marriott hotel.

We also have a pre loved clothes sale. It’s not too late to send in any bottles of fizz or alcohol for our ‘water or wine’ game.

The school is looking very festive! We are excited to have you join us on Friday 16th for a lovely Christmas Sing Song to finish a very happy and successful term. Watch out for our article in the York Press, a pupil from each of our 14 classes represented their class team alongside the leadership team to celebrate our Ofsted report.

We benefit from having trainers within our staff team for Makaton, NAPPI and Moving & Handling. A big thank you to Sarah T, Shona, Sarah S & Stacey for their training.

Just a few ‘shout outs’ from parents this week. Kate has shared her excitement of a UK based company for blended meal pouches for older children, this is great for last minute meals, camping trips, holiday essentials. Thank you Kate for sharing this with us. Visit the website for more information. https://wilbosblends.co.uk/

The second shout out is for SENses, is a group set up by a group of HMO parents (past & present) for children in special schools to share information about provision and offers in York and the surrounding areas for pupils with SEND. Please visit their Facebook group to join the group.

Today we say goodbye and good luck to Emma Priest who is starting her maternity leave today. Lucia will be Seedlings new class teacher, Lucia has worked in Hob Moor Oaks since September. We wish Emma lots of luck and best wishes as she hopefully has a little rest before her new arrival.

I am proud to say our Ofsted report is ready to be shared, as you can imagine I have read it a number of times and each time my smile gets bigger. The dedication across our school community is profound! We do our job because of the impact your amazing children have on us, Hob Moor Oaks is a wonderful school for many reasons but to read a report which celebrates the ambition, care, curriculum, safety and progress your children make whilst attending school makes me exceptionally proud. Thank you for your continued support and a very big thank you to all the staff for their enthusiasm for training, problem solving, positive   relationships you’ve built and the copious amounts of energy you give to your work daily. I hope you enjoy reading the report and reflecting on the part you play in our GOOD school!

For very exciting reasons, we need to move the date for our Christmas fair! It turns out that Rudolf and his friends are busy on Friday 2nd. Therefore Santa has asked me to move the Christmas Fair to Monday 5th December! The stalls, games, live music and grotto will be open 9:30-3pm – it will be lovely to see you! If you are keen to make some toy space in preparation for  Christmas Day and you would like to donate any toys, soft toys, sensory resources/toys, alcoholic drinks or school uniform for our swap shop please send it in during the next fortnight.

Don’t forget to sign up to our school lottery— https://www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/lottery/school/hob-moor-oaks-academy

Tomorrow Freya, Joe, Mira and Poppy represent our school with their Hob Moor Primary friends at the Yorkshire Dance festival at York University. The children performed their routine today in assembly and it was fantastic! We wish you lots of luck! Thank you to Liz for the costumes, James for the visual effects, Mrs Connolly in HMP for the chorography/management and finally the backstage team—Nicky, Laura, Sarah, Aimee from HMO and a team from HMP.

We have received a great take up for the Makaton Level 1 parents training, there will be a new date out for an additional session to avoid disappointment.

https://www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/lottery/school/hob-moor-oaks-academy to buy your tickets and help raise funds for school. If you have grandparents or friends of the school who would also like to support this, please send them the link. You’ve got to be in it to win it!

This week we welcomed a number of visitors into school. Rebound Therapy held their annual training course at Hob Moor Oaks using our trampoline and facilities. This was well attended by three of our Teaching Assistants, Andy, Jayne Marie and Abby. We also welcomed a very special theatre production called Bamboozle to perform four shows to 22 of our pupils. It was a magical experience of intensive interaction, drama and creativity. We look forward to welcoming the company back for more! Enjoy the photographs of the interactions between children and performers!

This week as a staff team we have discussed our plans for Christmas festivities and celebrations at HMO! We are looking for parent helpers to work with us for our Christmas Fair on 2nd December, whether that be your time, creativity or donations. We will share more details next week but for now, if you have a connection with a local organisation who would like a stall or you would like to donate bottles, toys or books for our other stalls please start collecting! If you know of any companies that would like to donate items or vouchers for our raffle, again please send these in. Gemma Scoreby will collect these items. Our choir will begin preparations for carol singing in the community in the upcoming weeks.

You will receive the booking forms for our Father Christmas personalised video messages next week. All families are invited to join us for our Christingle service on Monday 12th December. Which then brings me onto our annual whole school performance, last year we showcased this in January, we have voted as a team and feel that January is a much better time of year for our pupils to showcase their talents without the added pressures of changes to routines and excitement surrounding Christmas, it also gives us all something to look forward to when we have January blues! All pupils will participate in our live production, but as I say, it will be in January rather than a traditional Christmas production.

Parents Evening will take place week commencing Monday 28th November, individual teachers will send letters of time allocations next week. Parents Evening is a 15 minute face to face meeting between you and the teacher/class team.

For now, we will enjoy the fireworks and November!

Emma Smith welcomed baby Anabelle (left) into the world in September and Katie Harrison has had her baby son (right),
Noah in October. Laura Birch is getting married tomorrow and we are excited to welcome her back after half term as Mrs Moyse! Oak Trees made a lovely themed pumpkin to wish her love and happiness! The admin team have named it ‘Laura’s Love Lantern!’.

Janet, Julie and Hayley had the difficult task of choosing the winners of this years Halloween competition. They are pleased to announce the winners. The best pupil fancy dress: Evan P – Seedlings, Poppy W – Trunks and Harry C—Branches. Best dressed adult -Nina Melrose and best tuff tray display for the pumpkin trial went to Sickly Swamp, made by Trunks class!

Thank you for all your support during this busy half term, enjoy your holiday and we look forward to all things Guy Fawkes and Christmas on our return!

We are eagerly awaiting the feedback following our inspection, after many stages of quality assurance, the report will be published and shared to all. Thank you to those who gave us smiles of encouragement last week!

As you know, we try to provide a range of parent workshops to help support strategies used in school into the home. I am pleased to anounce our Spring term offer is a Makaton Level 1 parents course. This course will be lead by a Makaton tutor.  We wanted to give you plenty of notice to book time off work or save up for the manual costs. Bookings via Parent Pay will be sent to you next week to secure your place.

The preparations for Harvest Festival are in full swing as well as our Pumpkin trail to finish what has been a very busy but exciting half term!