Weekly Newsletter
Friday 9th June 2023
This week in school
SAVE THE DATE Summer Fair Our Summer Fair will be on Thursday 6 July, running straight after school from 3:30-5:30pm. We are planning for lots of stalls and activities, with each class taking charge of a stall, as well as visiting stalls, refreshments, bouncy castle/inflatable and the ice cream van.
Drinks in school As the weather is finally getting warmer, please remember to send your child with a water bottle to school. We do ask that children only have water to drink during the day, as this is the best way to stay hydrated as well as saving their teeth! We also don't want anything that may be sticky or coloured being spilt on any books or equipment.
OMG Healthy Start Scheme for families This is a scheme to support families who are expecting a baby or have a child aged under 4. It includes financial support to help with buying healthy foods and milk. You can find out more at https://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/what-youll-get-and-how-to-shop/
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information is on the NYCC website at https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/free-school-meals Some of this information may be out of date, especially around eligibility, so please get in touch if you are unsure.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
Attendance figures dropped again just before half term, mainly due to holiday-related absence which reflects the national picture.
The DfE's attendance target for schools is 96%, and as a school we need to be working towards this. With your help there have been massive improvements in attendance over this year and this is now better across school than it has been in a very long time!
As we get into the summer term there has also been an increase in requests for leave due to holidays: we will be putting a much higher number of these forward for Fixed Penalty Notices in May and June than any months so far. We would also remind you that, according to the new guidance for schools, ANY leave for holidays should be unauthorised: there is no longer the 'up to 5 days/10 sessions' which can be authorised at the Headteacher's discretion.
DIARY DATES
Wednesday 28 June - Sports Day (details and timings TBC)
Thursday 6 July - School Summer Fair, 3:30-5:30pm
Tuesday 25 July - School closes for summer holiday
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns next week to.....
Lacey Mae Booth
Rhys Knight
George Bramhald
Tilly Tonks
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
The children have loved learning more about the jungle this week. We have enjoyed lots of jungle stories and rhymes and looked at some of the animals and plants we would find in the jungle. We have made a jungle scene in the tuff tray. We have made butterflies, snakes and animal masks and practised moving like different animals in the outside area. We have used the coloured elephants to help us with our subitising and counting.
In phonics we have looked at initial sounds. We have had fun thinking of names for the animals that start with the same sound as their animal name. The N2 children have also been very excited to take home their first reading book. In maths the children have talked about night and day and ordered key events in their daily routine, such as waking up, coming to school, dinner and bedtime. We have shared the story ‘ Day Monkey, Night Monkey’ by Julia Donaldson to help us talk about the difference between day and night
It has been a very busy first week back.
Star of the Week: Harper Prince-lles
Reception - Moon and Mercury
It was wonderful to be back at school with all our friends! It’s hard to believe that we are in the final half term of this year! This week we have introduced our new topic ‘Fun at the beach’. We shared the book ‘At the Beach’ by Rowland Harvey, through amusing postcards which tell a story of families visiting Crabby Spit. It was full of humour and definitely had us giggling! The children enjoyed writing lists of what they would take to the seaside and we recorded words linked to their five senses describing what they could see, smell, taste, touch and hear at the beach. In maths we have been using the words ‘first then now’ to describe addition number stories. The children are becoming experts at recording these as addition calculations, using the correct symbols.
We had to keep our fingers crossed all week, for a visit from Selby Fire Service. It was so exciting when they turned up to see us! Unfortunately they had to cut their visit short, due to an actual emergency. We are sure they will be back.
In R.E we have been thinking about which times are special and why, beginning by looking through a selection of objects and pictures to discuss why they are special and at what times they are significant.
Mercury - Oscar-James Rushton Moon - Jack Priest
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
Welcome back! We have had a super first week with the launch of our new topic - A Knight’s Tale! On Monday, the children attended Knight School, where they had a carousel of activities to complete. These included, their own coat of arms, shield making, castle building and writing a recount of their experience at Knight School. In Maths, the children have looked at place value (within 100) and have focussed on sequencing these numbers up to 100, as well as looking at grouping tens and ones together. In Music the children have focussed on tempo and have really tried hard to differentiate the difference between a fast and a slow tempo. They even had a little quiz, where they had to decide whether different songs had a fast or slow tempo. They aced this! In Phonics, we have really been pushing split digraphs ready for the Phonic Screening Check next week and have had lots of fun quizzes with fantastic rewards for the children! In RE, the children have started to look at ‘belonging’ and how it feels to be a part of a community and the different communities they are already part of.
We are so proud of the fantastic start the children have made coming back and we cannot wait for this to continue. Well done!
Star of the week:
Venus- Georgia Legg
Galaxy- Livvy Evans
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
Welcome back! We’ve had a really busy first week back and the children have got straight back into their learning showing an excellent attitude. Well done Year 2! We’ve had fun reading The True Story of the Three Little Pigs this week and using it to learn about points of view and discuss villains in stories. We all had different opinions as to which villain is the worst! We’ve been honing our writing skills, focussing on handwriting and using conjunctions this week. We’ve written fabulous recounts of our half term holidays using all the skills we have been working on. We started our new topic of ‘I do Like to be beside the Seaside’ identifying where some of the UK’s seaside places are and comparing Brayton and Filey. In RE we discussed how many religions and world views see everyone as unique and valuable and we wrote letters to remind someone of that fact. Our maths has been on statistics, practising creating and interpreting tables, tallies and pictograms. We’ve started our topics of netball skills and athletics in PE and have enjoyed being out in the sunshine.
Stars of the week -
Earth: Kobi Irving
Mars: Amos Barker
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
We can’t believe we are in our final term of the year. The year has literally flown by. This week in English we have continued our sentence stacking lessons related to the book ‘Flood’ . The children have used repetition for effect, feelings & inner thoughts. On Wednesday we also had an experience day focusing on the devastation of a flood.
In maths we have come to the end of our unit of work ‘Time’ and this week we have been looking at hours and minutes - using durations; units of time and solving problems involving time. In Science we have planned an investigation to understand ways that shadows can change size. Unfortunately the sun hasn’t been on our side this week but as soon as it is we’ll be straight outside to measure the shadows.
On Wednesday we combined music and computing and started our next iLearn2 unit ‘Music Creation’. We had lots of fun creating ascending and descending scales creating our own compositions using scales, chords, melody and rhythm/beats. Finally on Friday we started our new DT project designing and then sewing a Binca bookmark.
Star of the Week:
Jupiter: Everly Dos Santos
Saturn: Alex Beaumont
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
Wow! This week has flown by - Can you believe we’re into the last term of Year 4 already? On Wednesday, we had the official multiplication check, which the children have worked incredibly hard for. We’re so impressed with how mature they were and how well they just got on with it. It’s fair to say there was a great sigh of relief in the classrooms when it finished! In maths, we have finished the unit ‘Money’ and this week the children have been calculating amounts of money, comparing amounts as well as giving some money problem solving questions a go! In English, we have started our sentence stacking lessons inspired by Valerie Bloom’s poem, The River. The main focus this week has been metaphors and rhyming. We had some very keen geographers in Year 4 this week, we looked at the 8 points of a compass and the children used this knowledge to help them write directions. We even challenged the children to come up with their own way to remember the points. And of course we couldn’t miss all the amazing preparation we have been doing for the greatest science share! The creativity that has gone into the work for the display is fantastic, it’s all coming together and we can’t wait for Tuesday!
Well done for all your hard work this week Year 4 - What a great start to the term!
Stars of the week:
Meteor: Isla Dockray
Neptune: Lily Cole
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
Five half terms down, and one to go. We have made an absolutely brilliant flying start to our new decimals lessons in Maths. The children have gained confidence very quickly, most of them are working their way through the textbooks. They know the rules of adding and subtracting, but this time there has been an exciting enhancement to our learning, and that is the decimal point. Not as scary as it sounds, providing the children remember to line them up before they complete the questions. There has been quite a bit of crossover between English and Guided Reading. We have started a new book called “Arabian Nights”. We have learnt that Scheherazade volunteered to marry the Sultan, knowing that she would be killed the next day. However, we quickly learnt that she was going to tell the Sultan thousands of stories hoping to evade death. We are finishing all week off with writing character descriptions of the two main characters using expanded noun phrases, relative clause and figurative language. Finally, who would have thought the majority of Year 5 were so interested and intrigued about famous walls around the world? There were lots of discussions and debates about what are the main purposes of city walls, and are they always used for positive reasons. One week down, only six left of Year 5.
Stars
Asteroid - Daisy Bispham
Pluto- Amelia Scott
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
Welcome to the Jungle - no, that’s not how year 6 have returned this week to their final term but our new topic title. We have spent some time this week doing some research about the rainforests of the world as we prepare to write an information text or non-chronological report to give it its full title. We have found plenty of interesting facts, not least that while the rainforests are affectionately known as ‘The Lungs of the Earth’, they actually only cover approximately 6% of the land mass. We have started to read the first few chapters of our new book for guided reading (The Explorer by Katherine Rundell) - keeping with the rainforest theme, we find a group of children trying to survive their first night in the Amazon rainforest following a dramatic plane crash. In maths we have continued to investigate angles in a triangle, quadrilateral and a polygon. Our science has been ‘all things health’ as we discuss how to ensure we have a healthy lifestyle both now and in the future. So, all in all, a ‘full on’ busy week as usual.
Stars:
Constellation: Harley Robinson
Nebular: Sadie Scott