Dear Dorchester Families,

This week we were delighted to welcome a team from the Challenge Partners programme to our school. Challenge Partners is just one of the mechanisms we use to make sure we continue to improve all that we offer to our children. A team of senior leaders from other schools and trusts, led by an Ofsted trained Lead Reviewer, visit the school and work alongside the school's own leaders to observe practice, noting what is gong well and identifying things that might make our provision even better. The team visited lessons taking place in different curriculum areas, spent time in Early Years, spoke to lots of our middle leaders about their areas of responsibility, and most importantly, spoke to some of our children about their experiences at Dorchester. As ever, the children's pride in their school and their work shone through and our visitors were blown away by their responses. We will, of course, share their report with you as soon as we have a final version.

Could you be missing out on over £8500 worth of funding for your child?

Pupil Premium Funding is a government fund to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children. It is allocated to

children who are recorded as eligible for free school meals, or have been recorded as eligible in the past 6 years
children previously looked after by a local authority or other state care, including children adopted from state care or equivalent from outside England and Wales

Now that all of our children receive Free School Meals through the Mayor of London scheme, it might be that parents think there is no point in completing an application form for Means Tested Free School Meals - not knowing that the pupil premium payments are associated with this. If your child is eligible for Means Tested Free School Meals, you will also receive supermarket vouchers during school holidays - this has just been extended in the current budget up to and including this year's summer break.

To find out if you are eligible, visit https://www.sutton.gov.uk/w/apply-for-free-school-meals

If you are not sure, you can apply regardless - they will check and let you know whether or not you qualify. Even if you feel you will only qualify for a short period of time, still apply - one of the fantastic benefits is that your child still qualifies for pupil premium payments for 6 years after your eligibility for Means Tested Free School Meals runs out - so it is definitely worth it. Please make it a job for this weekend - it helps you, the school, and most importantly, your child.

Have a lovely weekend.

Cathy Bell
Headteacher

FODS

Thank you once again for all your generous donations to the Mother’s Day Shop, the shop went very well, and the children were excited to pick a gift. We hope you all enjoyed Mother’s Day last Sunday.

SAVE THE DATE – Saturday 29^th June will be our FODS Dorchester Primary School Summer Fair. We will once again be having external stalls. If you or someone you know would like to have a stall at the fair, please email us at dorchesterpta@gmail.com

Please don’t miss out on our eggtastic Easter Raffle, all prizes have been generously donated by Yippy! Tickets can be purchased every morning outside the office from Monday 18^th until Friday 22^nd March. Winners will be announced before the Easter break. Good luck!!

We’re so excited to be holding a sponsored reading challenge to encourage reading and help the school to provide more books. The project is being organised in conjunction with our local Usborne Partner, Mandy West, and all the money raised will go towards brand new books for our school. In addition to the sponsorship money, Usborne will also donate up to 60% of the total raised in Extra FREE BOOKS to the school. Please help us to enhance the school’s reading resources for pupils by encouraging your child to spend a small amount of time each day either reading to themselves, to others, or being read to. They can read books, comics, magazines, newspapers, menus, websites, recipes, poems, leaflets, instructions – anything with words! If you are able to support our sponsored read, please could you send donations in via your child’s class or by bank transfer into the FODS account, bank details are on the grid. All the children will be reading in school and we have attached a grid with some fun reading ideas to use for the sponsored reading challenge at home and a sponsorship form. There will also be a prize draw per key stage to win a £10 book voucher for all the children taking part and extra playtime for the classes with the highest scores and entries, plus all children taking part will receive a certificate of participation after the event. We look forward to lots more books for your child to read, share and enjoy. Don’t forget to email your grid to dorcesterpta@gmail.com or give it to your teacher to be included in the class reading totals, as the class with the most grids and the class with the highest number of squares ticked off will both get extra playtime.

We love to hear your feedback & suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at dorchesterpta@gmail.com

Do you know about Your School Lottery? Dorchester Primary School is part of this fantastic lottery. This lottery has been set up specifically to raise money and make a difference for our children! It's a fantastic way to bring parents, carers, teachers, and the wider community together, in partnership with our school, and at the same time give something back. There are lots of amazing prizes to be won, your support is greatly appreciated, and we wish you good luck! To sign up or find out more information, please visit the website via this link: https://www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/lottery/school/dorchester-primary-school?fbclid=IwAR2UqkYQ4Yf79s9ZZul-tgcgLtJp9McVlXXqWutUrjklVom85O1EppaUonM

If you aren’t already, please follow us on Facebook where we keep you up to date on all things FODS! Find us at: Friends Of Dorchester School PTA

How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Children to Be Media-Savvy)

Clickbait, hyper-partisan opinion, and completely false information are running wild across the internet.

This just in! Breaking news! You don't want to miss THIS!

If you get your news online or from social media, this type of headline sounds very familiar. What's real? What's fake? What's satire? Now that anyone with access to a phone or computer can publish information online, it's getting harder to tell. But as more people go to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and other online sources for their news and information, it's even more crucial that all of us -- especially children -- learn to decode what we read online. (Learn more about how children get their news and how they feel about it in Common Sense Media's report, News and America's Kids: How Young People Perceive and Are Impacted by the News.)

When fake news has threatened people's safety, tech companies have joined forces to crack down on the misinformation super-spreaders. But ad-supported networks are in somewhat of a bind, since they get money when users click on these stories -- so the crazier the headline, the more money they make. Most children and teens get their news from their feeds, so they need to learn how to view stories critically (and they should learn that skill anyway!). Even younger children can start to think about some key media-literacy questions. And as children get older, parents can help them become more sophisticated critical thinkers.

Here are a few basic questions to consider whenever you and your children encounter a piece of media:

Who made this?
Who is the target audience?
Who paid for this? Or, who gets paid if you click on this?
Who might benefit or be harmed by this message?
What is left out of this message that might be important?
Is this credible (and what makes you think that)?

Older children especially might enjoy learning tricks to spot fake news. Here are a few things to watch for:

Look for unusual URLs or site names, including those that end with ".co" -- these are often trying to appear like legitimate news sites, but they aren't.
Look for signs of low quality, such as words in all caps, headlines with glaring grammatical errors, bold claims with no sources, and sensationalist images. These are clues that you should be sceptical of the source.
Check a site's "About Us" section. Find out who supports the site or who is associated with it. If this information doesn't exist -- and if the site requires that you register before you can learn anything about its backers -- you have to wonder why they aren't being transparent.
Check Snopes, Wikipedia, and Google before trusting or sharing news that seems too good (or bad) to be true.
Consider whether other credible, mainstream news outlets are reporting the same news. If they're not, it doesn't mean it's not true, but it does mean you should dig deeper.
Check your emotions. Clickbait and fake news strive for extreme reactions. If the news you're reading makes you furious or super smug, it could be a sign that you're being tricked. Check multiple sources before trusting.

Newsletters

Dorchester News - 15th March 2024

Newsletter

15th March 2024

Could you be missing out on over £8500 worth of funding for your child?

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Safeguarding and Pastoral Care

How to Spot Fake News (and Teach Children to Be Media-Savvy)

Clickbait, hyper-partisan opinion, and completely false information are running wild across the internet.

Are you worried about a child?

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-is-child-abuse/spotting-signs-child-abuse/

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