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A new primary school forced to shut just months after opening has been keeping its recently forged community alive in lockdown.
Springhead Park Primary School in Northfleet only opened its doors for the first time in September.
The new free school, which also serves a cohort of young pupils from families at Ebbsfleet's new Garden City, has experienced its fair share of disruption.
In-person attendance has been largely limited to vulnerable and key worker children with many of the new intake restricted to online learning.
Despite this, staff and parents have worked together to ensure this does not get in the way of youngsters forming life-long bonds and friendships as part of their new school community.
Keen to cheer everyone up during the latest lockdown, staff created a video for pupils, featuring staff performing to the Elton John classic “I’m Still Standing”, led by head teacher Wayne Clayton, himself in dressing gown and sunglasses.
Parents and children were delighted, and mums and dads from the reception class reciprocated the gesture with a surprise video of the children performing to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy”.
The school has also hosted "superhero parties" with pupils dressing up as their favourite caped crusader or role model, with one little girl donning her scrubs as a nurse.
Another triumph has been the school's lockdown community storytelling project.
Together pupils, parents and staff illustrated, narrated, and told line by line, their story, The Monsters, which is now live online.
The school says pupils have really engaged with their remote learning with parents helping to ensure high attendance rates, and teachers presenting live lessons through Microsoft Teams.
It's not all work and no play either as teachers have also found a way to help keep pupils in touch via social channels on teams to create "breakout room playgrounds", so smaller groups of children can meet and chat, supervised by staff.
This has proved especially vital for nursery and reception children, whose school journeys have only just begun.
Mr Clayton said: “Building a school community from scratch has been an absolute joy, and as much as we’ve been disappointed by the disruption caused by the pandemic, we haven’t let it stop us.
“I am so proud of our pupils, staff and parents for really pulling together through all of this.
"We will be welcoming all our children back soon, and before we know it, come September, we’ll be welcoming even more new pupils to our growing school community.”
