Weekly Newsletter
Friday 10th March 2023
This week in school
PE kit A reminder please that children should be wearing a plain white or royal blue T shirt and plain dark coloured hoodies...no logos, designer gear or football kits please. Thank you.
Easter services this year Usually we would all go to St Wilf's for our 2 Easter services in the last week of term. With Rev Pete being ill and not working, we will be having an Easter-focus worship in school, together with one of our 'Pause Days' on an Easter theme instead. Due to numbers and space, we will not be able to invite families along this time but we will be planning another 'book look' session soon.
Severe weather In the event of any unexpected school closures due to weather or utilities failure, we will let you know by a Teachers to Parents text and through Class Dojo.
Red Nose Day Friday 17th March We will be marking Red Nose Day in a simple way with a non uniform day next week as it is so soon after World Book Day. If your child has a red nose they are very welcome to bring this along and wear it. As we have moved to online payments for meals and visits, we are not accepting cash donations: we have moved with the times and have set up a JustGiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/page/bryaton-primary-1678441099945?utm_source=copyLink&utm_medium=one_page&utm_content=page/bryaton-primary-1678441099945&utm_campaign=pfp-share&utm_term=2e5279824617405189c93dfc4133c922 This means that if you forget on the day, you can still make a donation quickly and easily on your phone, from home or work.
Governor vacancy: can you help? The STAR Multi-Academy Trust is a thriving community trust based in the Selby area, with 11 schools in both primary and secondary phases serving nearly 4500 students. Our mission is simple: to deliver an outstanding education for every young person such as they can flourish and achieve their full potential.
Now, more than ever, community schools and community Trusts such as STAR need the skills, insight and knowledge that governors from the wider community can bring.
The Governors at Brayton Church of England Primary School are looking to recruit a new member of their Governing Body and would be delighted to hear from our wider community, most especially those who may have backgrounds in finance, education, or HR.
Support and training for the role is provided: no experience of governance is needed
For more information please visit: https://web.starmat.uk/governance/governor-information/ or contact our Co-Chairs, Anna Pearce and Wendy Thompson, at cofg@bp.starmat.uk to arrange an informal discussion.
Please do share this information with family, friends and community contacts—unfortunately, the Board are unable to accept any applications from parents/carers but wider family members are welcome to contact us for more information
Contractors on site Work continues over the school site while we are (still) waiting for the new fencing delivery. Access around the site has been challenging at times and we are doing our best to manage this so thank you for being patient.
Term dates 2023-24 The term dates for the next school year are now on the school website at https://brayton-cofe-primary-school.secure-primarysite.net/term-dates/
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. Earrings for school should be small stud types so they don't get caught and cause any injuries.
Free School Meals
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
Our excellent attendance trend keeps going, with a strong week of over 97% last week! Thank you again to all of you for supporting this: it is having a massive impact on the children's learning, progress and social and emotional wellbeing. We know that other local schools, particularly secondary, are struggling with attendance, so it is great for us to be in a positive place with this.
We monitor attendance regularly at individual level so that we can see where this is improving, which is a real positive. Because attendance is so important for learning and friendships, we monitor attendance every week so we can pick up any patterns and follow these up.
DIARY DATES
Friday 17 March - Red Nose Day non-uniform
Wednesday 29 March - Parents' evening (video calls)
Thursday 30 March - Parents' evening (in person appointments)
Friday 31 March - School closes for Easter
Monday 17 April - School opens
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns this week to.....
Monty Karslake
Ethan Lyons
Harrison Abbott
Lily Cole
Emilee Hawe
Emily Sharlotte
Alistair Howell
Lucas Armitage
Olivia Evans
Jack Priest
Alfie Penrose
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
This week we have been looking at Dinosaurs, a theme which has proved very popular! The children have enjoyed a dinosaur swamp in the water tray, a dinosaur small world with a volcano, a dinosaur hunt and lots of creative dinosaur activities. We even baked dinosaur biscuits and of course learnt lots of dinosaur songs.
In phonics we have been talking about the different sounds that we can make with our voices. We have talked about how we can use our voices to add sounds to stories. We also repeated some of our favourite rhymes in different voices such as whispering, shouting, squeaking. In maths we have been using the language to describe length and height - longer/shorter, taller/shorter and wider/narrower. The children have been finding objects that are longer and shorter than an object.
We have enjoyed planting plants and looking after our nursery garden too.
Star of the Week - Bea Horgan
Reception - Moon and Mercury
This week we have really enjoyed reading ‘The Tiny Seed’ by Eric Carle. This has inspired lots of art work, along with labelling the parts of a flower. The children have developed their vocabulary linked to plants and flowers and can use the new words correctly. There has also been some more planting - we are really hopeful of a good potato harvest!
In phonics this week we have continued to review the phase 2 and 3 sounds. The children are becoming increasingly independent during the practice tasks. They are really becoming experts at paired reading - it is a joy to observe their reading success.
Our maths has involved counting back from 10. We sang some of our favourite counting backwards songs to help us with this skill. We have also been comparing numbers within 10 and practising number bonds to 10. The children are really good at using tens frames to help them.
We all really enjoyed our R.E work this week, as we listened to the story of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem. We discovered that this is known as ‘Palm Sunday’ and made our own palm leaves to wave. There was also some fantastic writing, rehearsing our amazing phonics skills.
Star of the week:
Mercury - Freya Firth
Moon - Millie-Rose Scott
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
This week in Science, we have enjoyed learning about animal groups, and the classification of fish. We have identified what fish need to live and thrive, and have designed and built an animal habitat for fish. Ask us what a fish needs to survive!
Through English, we have studied ‘The Whale and the Snail’ by Julia Donaldson, and have been thinking about the thoughts and feelings of the characters and written retells. We have developed our vocabulary, retrieval, and prediction skills in reading.
In maths, we have been learning about measures, including length, height and mass. We have compared lengths, and measured the length and height of objects using non-standard units and centimetres. We have also compared the weight of objects and measured their mass. We have also been developing our problem solving skills.
In history, we have studied how the invention of the steam train, by George Stephenson, enabled people to visit the seaside for the first time. Through R.E., we have been looking at the main events of Jesus’ crucifixion and why Easter is important to Christians.
Stars of the week:
Galaxy - Katelyn Major
Venus - Lewis Yesil
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
This week we have continued to explore and research the Great Fire of London in 1666. In History we looked carefully at the diary of Samuel Pepys and discussed how valuable this evidence is to inform us about the events of The Great Fire! We have continued with our sentence stacking lessons in English to help us prepare to write our own diaries just like Samuel Pepys! In RE we have learnt about the ways Christians celebrate Easter and Holy week. We have practised our ball skills and how to aim the ball accurately in P.E and worked on our team building skills. In science we have used our scientific skills and carried out our planned experiments to find out which materials are waterproof. In Maths we have been exploring Mass - We have compared and measured mass in grams and kilograms and used the four operations to calculate the mass of objects. In Design Technology we have explored and made levers and sliders in readiness to add them to our Tudor house designs next week.
Star of the week
Earth- Alex Yesil
Mars- Alfie Longhurst
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
This week in English we have started our next Jane Considine unit of writing. The children have read an explanation text ‘How Does an iRobot Cat Move?’ and identified the key features which are included such as explanatory information and use of technical language. The children also re-read the text and placed it on a non-fiction map whilst thinking about the key question, Can we write an explanation for another robot pet?
In Maths the children have been counting in fractions on a number line as well as focusing on equivalent fractions on a number line and as bar models. The children were given the task of being researchers in Science this week and they used the laptops to investigate which foods different animals eat with some surprising results.
In RE we focused on the last supper and made links to the idea of sacrifice. Our famous inventor in History this week was Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the children created sketches of one of his famous designs as well as completing a mind map full of interesting facts about him.
Finally in computing we have begun to look at the 3D Design website ‘www.3dslash.net’. This week the children learnt how to rotate around and zoom into the grid then created some fantastic 3D tables. Also they learnt how to use the chisel to remove individual blocks of different sizes or rows/columns to improve their design.
Star of the Week
Jupiter - Aoife Brown
Saturn - Taylor Sheldon
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
The cold weather definitely hasn’t slowed down year 4! In maths, we have moved onto our next big unit of learning, fractions. Already we have come across key vocabulary such as equivalent, mixed numbers, improper fractions, unit and non-unit fractions. There’s lots to remember but the children are doing a really great job at reapplying their previous knowledge from year 3.
On Thursday, we launched our newest unit in ICT on data handling, we will be working closely with Microsoft Excel this term and what better way to familiarise ourselves with this program by colouring cells, reading different cell numbers and adding borders to cells by playing a game of battleships. It was great to hear a room full of clicking, cell names and “Yes I hit it!”.
This week in French we’ve been discussing clothing, children have familiarised themselves with a range of different clothes and even designed their ideal outfit labelling each article of clothing and some even went as far as to challenge themselves by describing the clothes colour.
Also this week, Year 4 have taken part in the maths and reading tests and the children really knuckled down and put their effort into doing their best, so well done everyone!
Stars of the week:
Meteor: Ellise Catton
Neptune: Rocco Lea
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
Year 5 have totally wowed adults in the year group this week with their narrative final draft. Year 5 have drafted and edited their writing over the past few weeks through practice of key writing skills in English lessons, editing conversations with a peer and the use of a success criteria and self assessment. We can see a huge improvement in writing skills and stamina since their last narrative piece in December, so well done all- your teachers are really looking forward to reading each and everyone and sharing with your adults at home in the following weeks. In maths, we have moved into three decimal places and explored thousandths in a place value chart, as fractions and then as decimals. We will now take our new learning of decimals into next week as we look to order and compare numbers with different numbers of decimal places. We have had double Science this week, continuing our learning on forces- resistant forces on Wednesday and how levers help smaller forces have a greater effect. We’ve had two very practical afternoons developing key working scientifically skills from observation and communication of our findings to prediction and carrying out an enquiry. In computing, we have started to programme our own maze game- with lots of steps required, it certainly kept us busy and having to assess whether we were programming correctly or not. A quick note to say well done to all the children on their effort and focus during the Reading and Maths assessments earlier on in the week!
Stars of the week
Asteroid: Jacob Whitby
Pluto: Elias Smart
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
Year 6 have had another excellent week with their learning in class. Alongside the most recent assessments, the children have begun to write their in depth instructions how to mummify a Pharaoh - the sheer gore of the process has delighted and disgusted the children in equal measure! In maths we have continued to understand and excel with all things ratio and proportion. In guided reading we have finally reached our desired destination - the Valley of the Kings. Will Lil, Tulip and Oz achieve their goal; can they reunite the friends in the the afterlife? In geography, we have completed our task to understand the many different features of a river - the Nile to be precise. They created accurate maps using water colour, and labelled the features that stretch some 6500km through Africa. Great effort all week every one - we are truly beginning to see that year 6 spirit and long may it continue.
Star of the Week
Nebular - Scarlett Southern
Constellation - Harry Longhurst