School Council

Hustings

The Autumn term has seen the start of a new Federation School Council. Children across the federation volunteered for the positions of class representative. Each class voted for their chosen candidate.

In years 6 and 2 the children took part in a separate School Council hustings process. From year 6 a Chairperson, Treasurer and Secretary needed to be elected to run the School Council for the coming year, and year 2 took part in voting for a Vice Chairperson.

Each of the candidates were asked to make a speech to their classmates and all the children were given the chance to vote in the election using ballot papers. During this process we discussed the importance of democracy, one of our British Values.

Congratulations to our elected members for their excellent public speaking. Our Chair Person spoke about how he has had lots of help from adults in school during his time here and he now wants to help other students and make it the best it can be. He wants to help others and make sure no one is left out. His qualities include being a good listener and will think things through for the best possible outcome.

During our first meeting the school council discussed the possible name for our new federation reward system. We have asked classes to vote from the shortlist below:

Toftwood Tokens, Excellence Points, Merit Tokens

All of the children were invited to submit ideas for the rewards, which they will get once they have received 10 ‘points’ or they can bank them to work for a 20 points reward. Points will be awarded for the above and beyond behaviours, or overcoming a particularly difficult challenge. Here are the ideas the children came up with:

Voting for Infant Lunchtime Clubs 2023-24

During the first half of autumn term the infant school council have been busy discussing lunchtime clubs. The teachers at Infants decided to let the children have the final say into the types of clubs that they would like to have over the coming year. As a council we looked through the list from last year and discussing the practicalities of each club. The children then voted for their preferred choices. Some of the clubs included in the final list were:

• Lego Club
• Film Club
• Dance Club
• Singing Club
• Nature Club
• Treasure Hunt Club
• Mindfulness Club
• Summer Sports club
• Art Club

The teachers will run these throughout the year alongside some of our existing clubs and various sports clubs that coincide with trips and events.

Recycling in our Federation

During the last meeting of Autumn 1 the children in the school council discussed ways to improve recycling within our Federation. The children talked about how our bins can be used properly and raising attention to this through creating new posters to go up around the classroom, along with conducting a special assembly for their peers.

The council took a feedback sheet back to their classes to discuss any other ideas with their class. Some classes have voted in a ‘Litter Monitor’ to check the bins at the end of the day. The council will report back in the first meeting of Autumn 2 on how this is going and whether we can role this idea out in every class.

Summer 2023 – Road Safety & End of Term Activities

Over the Summer term the Federation School Council have been busy discussing how safe the roads are around our schools, and what we can do to make people more aware of potential hazards. The children decided to make posters that could be laminated and displayed on the school fence for the general public to see as they parked.

The children discussed not parking on the yellow zig zags, reducing speed and crossing at the designated crossing. The final posters looked wonderful and will be displayed in the Autumn term.

The last job of the year for our Federation School Council was to create a list of ideas for end of year treats for their classes. The children took the list back to their own class and held a vote.

Below are the treats the year groups voted for. A lovely way to end a busy year.

Reception – Year group disco and classes voted for their favourite song

Year 1 – Year group disco

Year 2- Class film and year group art day

Year 3- Class film

Year 4- Class film and a sing along session

Year 5- Disco, film and an afternoon with the outside sport equipment

Year 6- Class film

On Wednesday 19^th April, school council hired equipment from Breckland Council to litter pick in and around our school. Before they started, the children discussed how to stay safe when collecting rubbish and had some great ideas! One child explained the importance of wearing gloves and washing their hands thoroughly once they had finished. Together, they collected a couple of bags of rubbish, which was mainly found in bushes close to the school.

Toftwood Infant and Junior School Federation were fortunate to have the book fair visit. Our Treasurer (Rose) kindly helped out after school and was in charge of taking cash payments for items purchased. Rose was excellent and was able to confidently use mental maths to calculate the price of books and give change.

During Autumn 2, the school council have been discussing how we could make positive changes in and around school. The children all made fabulous suggestions, where they explained how this would change our school. Once all of the ideas were collated, we invited Mrs Pedlow to our meeting, where the children discussed these with her. She was pleased with how well the children respected one another when contributing their ideas, as well as the ideas themselves.

The children’s suggestions:

• A whole federation playtime
• A federation lunch for the King’s Coronation
• More bins
• More equipment for lunchtimes
• Road safety talk
• Whole federation Art day

The Federation School Council have had a very busy start to Aut 2 half term preparing for our ‘Odd Socks Day’ as part of Anti-Bullying Week and the Children in Need non-school uniform day.

Both events take place annually within the Federation and the School Council take an active part in creating posters and collecting donations.

On the day of Children in Need each class council rep collected donations from their own classes and helped the adults to bag it up to take to the office. The Treasurer at Juniors and Vice Chairperson at Infants helped to count the total money raised.

A huge thank you to everyone for their generous donations. We raised an amazing £560!

Over the summer term the Federation School Council have been working hard on generating ideas for fundraising events. The council were asked to come up with some ideas to help raise money for an exciting new project for the school – an outside reading den! This den will be for the children to use as a quite reading area during break and lunchtimes. It will also be a lovely location for a class story.

The children gathered ideas during their class council feedback time and brought these to the meetings where we discussed them and considered the practicalities of each one. Over two meeting the council created quite an extensive list for future events but decided on holding a ‘Used Book Sale’ before the end of the summer term.

The children sent an email out asking for second hand book donations to come into school and then sorted them out into Infant and Junior books. All books were priced at 20p, 50p and £1.

We were overwhelmed by the generous donations we received and as a result were able to hold the book sale over three consecutive days! Some of the school council members helped to run the stalls.

A grand total of £291.81 was raised. Thank you to everyone who donated and bought a book!