Norwich Road Academy

Did you know at Norwich Road Academy we are officially a Kind School?

We are very proud to share that today Hudson was awarded with a kindness award for being constantly polite and helpful. He is always the first to help someone who is worried or upset and is an excellent role model to others. Amazing work Hudson, well done! 🌟🌟🌟

52 Lives 52 Lives - School of Kindness

Our final Golden Book winners of this term 🤩

Well done to these ; we are very proud of you all.

We look forward to seeing you all back in 2023 to earn more certificates!

Wishing all of our pupils, their families, our staff and friends of the academy a wonderful Christmas and a successful New Year.

We thank you for your hard work and incredible support over the last few months. We look forward to working with you all again on the 4th January when the children return to school ❤️️

Please use this link to access our end of term newsletter:

https://sway.office.com/wckyrSXaEMGoAlIc?ref=Link

Happy Christmas! 🎄

A big thank you to Reverend Matt from Cloverfield Community Church for coming into school today to lead an assembly. We learnt a lot about the Christingle and what each part of it represents.

Our in KS1 even had a go at making their own to take home 🍊🕯️🍬

We are really getting into the festive spirit this week. Here we are in our Christmas jumpers eating our delicious Christmas dinner! 🎅🏻🍽️🎄

A big shout out to the Year 6 House Captains for being wonderful helpers and serving all the staff their Christmas dinner after having their own! 🤩

: What Parents Need to Know about Setting Up Apps, Games and Software

In Britain, more than half a million games consoles were given as gifts last Christmas. In the US, the figure was closer to three million. Add in the rest of the world’s major consumer economies – along with the multitudes of phones, tablets and so on which find their way into our Christmas stockings – and you have a lot of people unwrapping a lot of digital tech.

Given that many of the lucky recipients will be children, it’s important that parents and carers take some time to configure any new devices – and the games, apps and software they run – so that they’re safer for young eyes and ears. Our guide has some practical tips to give you extra peace of mind while the kids are excitedly enjoying their new gadgets.

Read on to access your free guide ...

Our are featured in today’s Eastern Daily Press school report 🤩

The Christmas hampers are looking amazing! 🎄🎅🏻🌟⛄️

These are just some of the ones you can win in our raffle on Thursday. You have until Wednesday to purchase some tickets. Don’t miss out on these amazing prizes! 🤩

Today’s Golden Book winners!

Well done to all of these for impressing their teachers this week with their hard work! 🥳🌟🤩

Festive Crafternoons

It was wonderful to see so many of you at our festive Crafternoons this week!

Have a lovely weekend 🎄❤️️

A big thank you to Shadwell Stud for donating some hay bales for our Early Years Nativity. They looked excellent on the stage, perfect for a stable setting!

Thank you also to Franek in Year 6, pictured here amongst some of our Early Years . He was in charge of the music for the performance and did an amazing job! Well done Franek 🤩

Welcome to this weeks guide

What Parents Need to Know about HiPal

A recent study by the Co-Op Foundation reported that 95% of children and young people admitted to occasionally feeling lonely. So it’s easy to understand how networking apps like HiPal – with the tempting lure of bucket loads of cool new people to befriend and interact with online – become hugely successful very quickly if they’re delivered well.

HiPal is indeed a competently assembled app in terms of usability and features – but (with no age verification system and an ineffective reporting tool) it does also sport some glaring omissions from a safeguarding perspective. Trusted adults should check out this week’s guide for our full profile of this up-and-coming chat app

Well done to our Katie and Seyma! We are very proud of you 🎅🏻🎄❄️✨

Season’s Greetings to all! 🎄🎅🏻

We had our first Early Years Nativity performance for parents today. It was wonderful for the children to perform to a REAL audience and for so many adults to attend.

The children were amazing (as usual) and looked wonderful. Thank you to all of our families and NRA staff for their support. ❤️

🌟 These recently received the Dorothy Amery Reading Award 🌟

They were nominated by members of staff for their dedication to reading. They received a £50 voucher each to spend on their choice of books at Bookbugs and Dragon Tales.

We are so proud of them and can’t wait to see which books they have chosen! 📚❤️

Here are some of our who have recently been awarded a values certificate. They have done an amazing job making connections in their learning this half term 🤩

It's another

What Parents Need to Know about Social Media and Mental Health

Using social media has plenty of potential benefits for young people: it helps them stay connected to their friends, hear contrasting views on the world, find reassurance or support, and ease social anxiety. It also brings, however, a corresponding number of negative possibilities – including compulsive use, unhealthy comparisons with others online and exposure to harmful content.

Ironically – for a medium designed to enable engagement with other people – social platforms can actually lead to children feeling increasingly isolated and lonely, taking an obvious toll on their mental wellbeing. This week’s guide has our top tips on how trusted adults can support healthier social media habits in young people.

Our even work hard on a Sunday! Well done to the members of our Eco Committee who were involved with this 🌳

On Sunday, we had the privilege of serving Norwich Road Academy as we met to help plant A LOT of trees. 🌲🌳🌴

Great conversation and great hot chocolate!!!

Stay tuned for another opportunity to serve schools with us!
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THETFORD VINEYARD CHURCH is a Church *IN* Thetford and *FOR* Thetford. We want to love our communities in very practical ways – always inviting others to join us on the journey.

SERVE SCHOOLS is a project of Thetford Vineyard Church that aims to support local primary schools. We believe teachers are key people who bring life and hope to the children of the town. With school budgets under pressure and teachers’ workloads increasing, we want to be a Church that is available to encourage.

In the past we have renovated school gardens, decorated staff & wellbeing rooms, built wild play areas and packed hampers for staff. We’ve had fun as we get to know one another side-by-side as we paint, clean, or dig!

If you'd like to join in email [email protected] or DM us, we'd love to meet you!

Our House Captains recently had the pleasure of meeting Mr Shanks, the CEO of EMAT. They did us really proud with how welcoming they were and asked really insightful questions. We found out lots of interesting facts about Mr Shanks! We look forward to him visiting again soon.

Here are our lovely choir pictured at Thetford Garden Centre for their ‘Sing for you tree’ event. These did us proud with some wonderful singing and have hopefully earned us a tree that we can decorate at school! 🤩🎄🌟

Good afternoon for another Guide

What Parents Need to Know about TikTok

Around an eighth of the world’s population use TikTok. Consider the scale of that reach, and that the app’s demographic is heavily skewed towards younger people – with almost half (41%) of those users aged 16–24. TikTok itself advises a minimum age of 13 to access the platform (with certain features for over-18s only), but reports suggest that some children as young as 10 use it.

Given the youthfulness of its user-base, TikTok has faced numerous age-related challenges such as inappropriate content in videos, in-app purchasing and children being contacted by strangers on the platform. Updated for 2022, this week’s guide tells trusted adults everything they need to know to help young people stay safe on TikTok.

Help us keep children safe from button batteries this Christmas

This Christmas, homes will be filled with light-up decorations, festive tea lights, singing Santas and flashing Christmas wands. But these – and many cheap toys – are powered by button batteries that can badly hurt or kill a child if swallowed.

A reminder that we have our EYFS open event on Wednesday 23rd November between 0915 - 1115.

We look forward to meeting all those who can make it - please call the school office on 01842 753279 to join us.

We also have spaces in our nursery provision Little Caterpillars so please contact us and make an appointment to meet our staff and see what we offer.

This week’s guide has all the details of what Parents Need to Know about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II

Modern Warfare II is the 19th instalment in the relentless Call of Duty series, which shows no sign of shedding popularity. In fact, this latest release has reportedly broken lucrative new ground for the franchise – almost unbelievably garnering $1 billion in sales in its first ten days of availability (according to the publishers, Activision), making it the fastest-selling Call of Duty title yet.

It seems young gamers can’t get enough of the high-octane gunplay that CoD offers. Their eager engagement with the game, however, can lead to hours of compulsive playing; hostile audio chat exchanges with other gamers; and a willingness to make in-game purchases to level up their character. Our guide has all the intel on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.

Read the attached free guide for all you need to know.

Today we kicked off with odd socks day. We love to celebrate all of our differences and how unique we all are. Our classes will be taking part in various different activities this week to support their learning around understanding bullying.

Today we took part in the virtual World Kindness Day assembly by 52 Lives. The children engaged really well answering questions and taking part in the reaching out activity. We love being recognised as a Kind School ❤️

Is your child starting school or nursery in September 2023? If so, come and see us at Norwich Road Academy! We are offering a parent information session and an open classroom morning so you can meet our staff and visit our Early Years facilities.

Check out our fancy new recycling bins! ♻️

Our team of Eco Councillors, led by Mr Miles, have been out in full force recently. They have the responsibility of making sure all classes recycle what they can and ensure the bins get emptied regularly. Well done to these 🤩

We are proud to introduce our Year 6 Peer Mediators. To achieve this role, these have completed six weeks training in listening and reflective skills. They are now able to help other children resolve any issues in conflict. Well done to all of them 🤩🌟

Next week is Anti Bullying Week (14th-18th November) and to kick off the week, children are welcome to come into school on Monday wearing odd socks.

starting school

Is your child is starting school in September 2023? We would love your child to join our academy and take advantage of our wonderful facilities.

We have a parent's information session on Thursday 17th November at 4pm.

We also have open sessions on the following day: Thursday 24th November 9.30 - 11:00 a.m. Parents are invited to visit our academy, meet our supportive staff team and ask any questions that they may have.

If you would like to attend any of the above sessions, receive further information or make an appointment at an alternative time, please contact the academy office on 01842 753279

Please also follow this link for more information on our website:

starting school At Norwich Road Academy, we believe that the Early Years are critical in children’s development and that a good start in Reception builds a firm basis for future learning, development and independence.

Norwich Road Academy - October 2022 Newsletter

October's newsletter has recently been published. Why not take a read by following the link and find out what is going on here at Norwich Road Academy!

Please use this link to access our October newsletter.

Norwich Road Academy - October 2022 Newsletter Welcome to our Academy Newsletter - October 2022

Each week National Online Safety release a weekly guide for parents - this week it is focused on Amigo.

What Parents Need to Know about Amigo

Amigo is a communication platform with (according to its marketing blurb) “the most intelligent algorithm”: capable of matching users with potential chat partners who could live anywhere from the other side of the world to within the same postcode. Once paired, users are rewarded for interacting with each other frequently by additional features being made available to them.

These unlockable extras include private video calling. This is an app for mature audiences. There is the flimsiest of barriers to children using it. If (as we imagine) the potential correlation between these three facts has set alarm bells ringing for you we’d like to direct you towards this week’s guide for the whole enchilada about Amigo.

https://nationalonlinesafety.com/hub/view/guide/amigo?product=

As part of our Harvest Festival celebrations, we collected food generously donated to us by our school community. Here are our School Council representatives pictured with just some of the food collected. This will be making its way to Thetford Foodbank later today. Thank you to everyone who was able to contribute 🤩

We are proud to share with you our certificate winners from last week. They have all made positive contributions to our academy. Well done ! 💫🤩

Here are this week’s certificate winners! We are so proud of all of them for their hard work and positive attitude. What a fabulous bunch of 🤩💫

We are collecting for Thetford Foodbank as part of our Harvest Festival celebrations. If you are able to, please bring in some donations towards this and support our local community ❤️

Please see attached an invitation to an art exhibition, held at Kings Lynn Academy, on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th October 2022.

We are really excited to share that some of our Year 6's artwork will be on display.

We hope you can make it!

As part of their learning in English, linking to their class text ‘The Hodgeheg’, our in Hares and Kestrels were visited by Jan from Ryston Rachel's Hedgehog Hotel.

She spoke to them about hedgehogs, told them some interesting facts, showed them some of their rescue equipment and told them what to do if they find an injured hedgehog. 🦔🍂

Our certificate winners from this week 🤩

A huge well down to all of these . We are very proud of you! 🌟🌟🌟