Weekly Newsletter
Friday 9th September 2022
This week in school
Welcome To all our children, families and staff at the start of this school year. As well as the Reception and Nursery children joining us for the first time, we have also welcomed children who have joined other year groups and our new staff: Miss Lyons (Y2 Mars), Mrs Wilson (Y2 Earth), Miss Taylor (Y4 Neptune) and Mrs Mooney (Reception Mercury).
Goodbye To Mrs Dawn Griffin, who is moving to a new role at Selby College next week. Mrs Griffin has worked here since 2008, and has supported so many of our children in class and through her ELSA work. We wish her all the very best in her new role.
Uniform Thank you for your support this week with uniform and the changes around this. When visitors from the Trust were in school today, they noted how smart children were looking across all the classes. It has also been much better for the children to be able to change in and out of kit with the very changeable weather we have had this week: they have not had to stay in PE kit that has been either sweaty or damp from a rain shower!
The full uniform list is at https://www.smore.com/e93qda and below.
Jewellery No necklaces, bracelets, rings or other jewellery should be worn to school. If your child has earrings, these must be removed for PE sessions, or earrings can be left at home on PE days.
Clubs Our after school sports clubs will start again after October half term.
Website We are just waiting for the final update from our website builders, then we can share the new web address with you all.
Job vacancies We need a new kitchen assistant to work with Kim and Vicky: for more details please click here Advert-for-Relief-Catering-Assistants-July-2022-3.pdf (starmat.uk)
We also have 2 teaching assistant vacancies which we will be advertising in the next 2 weeks: one to work in Early Years, and the other for Upper Key Stage 2.
Leave of absence during term time & attendance We are getting more and more requests for leave of absence during term time due to families having booked holidays. Please can we gently remind you that, unless the circumstances are genuinely exceptional, these will not be authorised. Lower prices are not an exceptional circumstance, and the guidance is very clear that Headteachers would not be expected to class any term time holiday as exceptional.
The government is currently consulting on approaches to improving school attendance with updated guidance and new legislation coming with effect from September 2023. This is likely to lead to much quicker involvement from the Local Authority where a child's attendance is showing their education to be at risk. Currently if a child's attendance is below 90% we send an initial warning letter, which can be followed by more formal processes if attendance does not improve.
Under this consultation, as many of you will have seen, 1 single session of unauthorised absence will generate a Fixed Penalty Notice, and this shows how seriously the Government is taking attendance as a key part of education recovery.
If your child's attendance is below 90% they will have missed at least 20 days over the year: this is like missing a whole month of school. On the annual reports we will be adding how many days of school your child has missed, as well as their % attendance.
Free school meals: save up to £450 a year With so much in the news about the cost of living and now energy prices going up, you can check whether your child could be eligible for a free school meal, whatever school year they are in. All the information is on the NYCC website at https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/free-school-meals Some of this information may be out of date, especially around eligibility, so please get in touch if you are unsure.
If you would like any advice or support with this, please contact the school office. We treat these matters with complete confidentiality and are always happy to help if needed.
Thank you for your continued support.
Allyson Buckton (Headteacher) & Mel Walmsley (Deputy Headteacher)
Whole School Attendance
Please support your child's learning and friendships by keeping their attendance as high as possible. We understand the pressures on families but when school is open for 190 days out of 365 over the year, children need to make the most of that time, and it still leaves 175 other days for breaks, holidays and days out.
The graph below shows our school attendance over the whole school year compared to other schools (we are the pink line).
DIARY DATES
Thursday 22 September - Selby High open evening for Y6, 4-8:30pm
Tuesday 27 September - Harvest Services at St Wilf's (am)
Tuesday 11 October - Open session for September 2023 admissions 1:30-2:30pm
Thursday 20 October - School closes for half term
Friday 21 October - Training day
Monday 31 October - Deadline for secondary school applications
Tuesday 22 November - Open session for September 2023 admissions 1:30-2:30pm
Tuesday 13 December - Christmas Services at St Wilf's (am)
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns this week to.....
Evelyn Hare
Taylor Sheldon
Bettie-Rae Hanson
Scarlett Mead
George Watson
Ruby Corbally
This week in classrooms
Our school values
Nursery - Stars
What a fantastic first week we have had; we are so proud of the children, they have walked in with smiles on their faces and settled into their new setting brilliantly. Well done Stars!
This week, the children have explored their nursery environment, both indoors and outdoors, and have enjoyed accessing all the different provision available. We are very lucky to have a new outdoor area and the children have enjoyed exploring this new space. Throughout the course of the week, we have focused on settling in and getting to know each other, learning nursery routines and structures, for instance story times and phonics.
Star of the Week
Logan Firth
Reception - Moon and Mercury
It has been a real pleasure to meet all of your children at last and and to welcome them into our school.
The children have had a fantastic first week at school. They all look so smart and grown up in their new uniforms and have made a super start to settling into Reception. They were so excited to see their old friends from Nursery as well as meeting new friends who have just joined our school this academic year.
We have been getting to know your children and finding out what their interests are. They have explored the provision and are learning how to access it independently. The children have baked biscuits and they made afternoon snack much more tasty. They have even done an amazing job of tidying up and putting all of the resources away at the end of the morning / afternoon.
We can’t wait to have lots more fun this half term in our new learning environment. We are looking forward to another brilliant week next week - Thank You Reception - you are superstars!
Star of the week
Moon - Olivia Deakin
Mercury - Logan Chalmers
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
What a fantastic start we have had to Year 1! The children have immensely impressed us with their wonderful enthusiasm, bright smiles, and eagerness to learn.
This week, we have created our own class charter, deciding on the best ‘ingredients’ for a happy class and exploring the expectations of a Year 1 teacher and learner. In English, we have launched our topic of ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, through exploration of ‘The Detective Dog’ by Julia Donaldson- thinking about how the main character is described and retelling the story in our own words. Whilst in maths, we have sorted and counted a variety of objects and shapes. The children were fantastic in their P.E. lessons, and enjoyed the launch of NumBots. Throughout scientific enquiry, we have explored the features of a pet, and how to take care of them and their needs.
Thank you for your support this week, and a big well done to all the children, they are amazing!
Stars:
Venus- Albie O’Neil
Galaxy- Olivia Evans
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
What a brilliant start the children have had to Year 2! We have been so impressed with the way they have settled into their new classrooms and demonstrated great learning behaviours.
This week we have written recounts of our holidays as well as of our ideal holidays and we have launched our topic of 'Where in the World’ by flying on a virtual aeroplane. We all made sure we followed the safety announcements and had our passports stamped! In maths we have been looking at place value and recapping the value of different digits in a number. The children have been looking at the work of Eric Carle in art and we began our RE topic by thinking about who and what is important to us.
Stars of the week:
Mars: Amos Barker
Earth: Sam Coltman
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
What a wonderful and busy first week we’ve had in Year 3. We have started reading our class novel ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ written and illustrated by Shirley Hughes which ties in with our topic for this term World War 2. The children have produced some great letters responding to a letter we received from one of the characters in the book. In Maths we have been representing and partition numbers to 100 as well as identifying numbers on a number line. We have also started our first computing project creating our own comic strips using a variety of software. All the staff in year 3 have been really impressed at how the children have taken this week in their stride and how independent they are now becoming.
Superstars:
Saturn: Scarlett Mead
Jupiter: Nathan Younger
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
What a first week we’ve had to Year 4. The children were so excited to see their new classrooms and catch up with friends. In maths, we’ve launched right into our first unit of Place Value and the children have explored working with larger numbers by partitioning them or placing them on number lines. In English we’ve been looking into some mouth watering inspiration, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! It’s been so great watching the children be enthralled in the tales of Charlie Bucket. It will be lovely to see how this helps them develop some fabulous writing in the next week or so. This week we also have been able to show off our ICT skills by creating a simple animation using Powerpoint! Keep your eyes peeled on Dojo to see our animation.
Stars
Meteor - Isabel Harris
Neptune - Savannah Swift-Lampitt
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
We have been really happy with how the children have started. In Maths, we have been revising and learning new elements of Roman Numerals and Place Value. Who would have thought D means 500 and M means 1000?! In Guided Reading and English, we have been reading the graphic novel version of Oliver Twist. After Mr Bumble had shouted, “MORE?”, the children were asked to write descriptive paragraphs using expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials. Can’t wait to see what happens to Oliver after he is taken to meet Fagin by the Artful Dodger. We have spent time in the afternoon creating artwork from our class worship on diversity and our value for this half term, thankfulness. Well done on a brilliant return to school everyone!
Stars:
Asteroid - Alex Robinson
Pluto - Rhys Knight
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
The year 6 team could not have asked for a better start to a new year. The children have all worked with focus and a willingness to learn. We have successfully ‘launched’ (pun intended) our Dangerous Waters topic, learning about the RMS Titanic and why it was so important for Britain at the time, the range of passengers it carried, and also many numerical facts relating to the vessel (Who knew that it carried 40,000 fresh hen’s eggs!) In maths, the children have been learning about all things place value, and we have begun to delve into our class text - a thief, a mysterious old book, and an as yet unknown millionnaire; where could this possibly be going?
Our first English topic will be persuasive writing, so we used modal verbs to affect degrees of possibility.
Keep doing what you are doing everyone, and you will have two very happy teachers.
Stars:
Constellation - Lucy Harper
Nebular - Keeley Sharpe