Weekly Newsletter
Friday 23rd September 2022
This week in school
Harvest collection NEXT WEEK We are supporting Selby Foodbank with our Harvest collection this year. Children can bring tinned or dried goods which they will take to the church when we walk over for the services, and everything will be collected for the foodbank from there. Please see below for more details about timings for different classes.
Book look session and parents' evenings this term We are having a book look/open classroom session this half term on Monday 17th October from 2:45pm. Come along and see your child's teacher, classroom and some of their work from the new school year! We are also planning our parents' evening meetings for after half term and would like your feedback on whether you would rather have a video call or an on site face to face meeting this time. Please use this Google Form to let us know (this has also been sent by email today) https://forms.gle/Qhnquhy55ivVWPYY8
Online safety for families STAR MAT have organised 3 NSPCC workshops on Online Safety which are open for all parents and carers to attend. These will take place on Tuesday 4 October at Sherburn High School, Monday 10 October at Monk Fryston Primary School and Monday 17 October at Tadcaster Grammar School. All sessions will run from 6-7pm. It is the same content for each session, we have just set 3 dates so that people can find one that fits them.
Christmas wreath making We are running a Christmas wreath making workshop (for adults!) on the evening of Thursday 1st December. An experienced florist will be leading the session, with refreshments available. There will be a limit of 30 places and we expect these to be taken quickly: see below for full details.
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.
Website Our new school website has been built and is live at www.braytonprimary.com We have got the key things in there for now and will be carrying on updating it over this half term. We hope you like the fresh look we have chosen, and have tried to make it easier to navigate than the old site! Most of the day to day information is on the 'Families' page. As always, if you need any help please contact the school office.
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.
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.
If you arrive after 9am, expect to ring the office bell and bring your child to the office. Once you have seen your child in, please make your way out of school before the gate is locked at nine. We really appreciate your co-operation with this.
Thank you for your continued support.
Allyson Buckton (Headteacher) & Mel Walmsley (Deputy Headteacher)
Whole School Attendance
We have noticed a lot of requests for leave during term time starting to come through, and would just like to remind you that leave requests for holiday are no longer considered as 'exceptional circumstances' unless there are significant additional reasons behind the request. Across the MAT and the LA, applications for Fixed Penalty Notices will be picked up more than in the past 2 years.
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.
DIARY DATES
Saturday 24 September - Brayton Academy open morning for Y6, 9am-1pm
Tuesday 27 September - Harvest Services at St Wilf's
Tuesday 4 October - NSPCC Online Safety workshop, Sherburn High School 6-7pm
Monday 10 October - NSPCC Online Safety workshop, Monk Fryston Primary School, 6-7pm
Tuesday 11 October - Open session for September 2023 admissions 1:30-2:30pm
Monday 17 October - Book look/open classrooms from 2:45pm
Monday 17 October - NSPCC Online Safety workshop, Tadcaster Grammar School, 6-7pm
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
Thursday 1 December - Christmas wreath making workshop (evening)
Tuesday 13 December - Christmas Services at St Wilf's
From St Wilf's...
It’s our Inspire service this Sunday 25 Sept 5pm in the St Wilfrid’s parish hall.
Very relaxed, Café style contemporary service for teens to adults.
If you fancy church that’s a bit different, this could be the thing for you!
Would be great to see you!
Rev Pete
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns this week to.....
Jessica Pearce
Elliot Kelly
Harry Wildon
Ethan Sowersby
Keeley Sharpe
Macy Adkin
Alex Robinson
Luca Cobbold
James Smith
Alex Holliday
Evelyn West
This week in classrooms
Our school values
Nursery - Stars
We have had such a busy week! We have really enjoyed sharing the story of ‘Leaf Man’ and have been on an Autumn walk around the school grounds. We have fished for leaves in the water tray, threaded leaves to make leaf necklaces and made pictures using leaves.
In phonics this week we have continued to focus on our listening skills and have been listening to the sounds around us. We have also continued to listen to lots of stories and sing lots of rhymes. In Maths we have been learning some Autumn number rhymes and sorting objects.
Star of the Week - Beau Wanless
Reception - Moon and Mercury
It has been so wonderful to have our Reception children full of excitement and curiosity once again.
The children have settled in very well and they are really getting stuck into Reception life. We have seen brilliant roleplay both in and out of the classroom, where the children have set up a cafe; full of waiters, customers and menus. Another firm favourite is the boxcraft area, where the resources are open-ended. These inspire creativity and imagination as the children have transformed and reinvented them into robots, castles and ships. Their ideas have been endless!
In phonics this week, the children have been taught ‘i, n, m, d’.
We are thrilled to have so many children reading decodable books in just their third week at school.
It has been an amazing week of playing and discovering, however, we are still mindful that the children are still familiarising themselves with the school rules and routines. Please remember to be kind to yourselves - we know that we will have some very tired children.
Star of the week
Moon: Leo Willis
Mercury: Blake Shaw
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
This week the children have been amazing, as they demonstrate their eagerness to learn through the provision and learning opportunities given.
Throughout the week we have celebrated the life and death of Queen Elizabeth II, creating beautiful artwork inspired by famous portraits throughout her reign. In English, we have studied texts by Steve Antony, ‘The Queen’s Hat’ and ‘The Queen’s Handbag’, exploring the vocabulary, developing comprehension, and composing retells and diary entries. In maths, we have been counting on and counting back, using number tracks and tens frames, finding 1 more and 1 less than a given number. Whilst in geography, we have travelled virtually on an open top bus to London, visiting famous landmarks, sights and attractions, and in R.E. we have explored parables and stories, to answer what God is like?
We look forward to our first school visit to St Wilfred’s on Tuesday, and we hope you can join us in celebrating the Harvest Festival.
Venus- Ronnie Spowage
Galaxy- Thea Platts
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
It’s been another busy week in year 2.. This week we have been continuing our topic of Where in the World by learning about the 5 oceans. In English we have been creating some super sentences for our non chronological report and in maths continuing our work on place value by partitioning large numbers in different ways. In PE we have been learning different shapes in gymnastics and using these to create sequences of movement. We are looking forward to our harvest services next week and have been thinking about how we can look after our world. Well done Year 2.
Star of the week:
Earth: Tyler Winn
Mars: Michael Knight
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
We can’t quite believe how we are still only in our third week back as we have done so much already. In English this week we have been thinking about how Lenny from ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ was feeling on the day he was evacuated to the countryside and wrote some excellent diary entries focusing on our choices of vocabulary. In maths we have been using our new Base 10 manipulatives to help us with the flexible partitioning of numbers to 1,000. We have also been investigating what it was like to be evacuated and thinking about the decisions children had to make about what to take with them in history.
Jupiter - Mason Snedker
Saturn - Emily Richardson
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
The time has flown by this week, we’re already 3 weeks in, can you believe it! We’ve managed to do so much this week. How could we not talk about our practical Science exploration. The children were so enthusiastic and engaged with our recreation of the human digestive system. In maths, we have been working with increasingly larger numbers and have spent plenty of time working with numbers up to 10,000 on a number line. It’s given us plenty of opportunities to use manipulatives and dust off those bus stop division skills to help us accurately place those larger numbers. In geography, we learned about the Vikings journey from Scandinavia all the way to the UK. We also learned about how many of the local towns and cities we know today actually have names that were influenced by these invaders.
Stars
Meteor - Ben Ingham
Neptune - Jessica Loose
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
Wow! Week 3 in Year 5 has flown by, this was probably because the children have been excited (and rightly so) for our history trip on Friday. The children have thoroughly enjoyed their day out at Ripon Workhouse Museum where Victorian punishments were brought to life in front of their very eyes. In school this week, we started to read our new class text ‘Street Child’. It’s great to see how engaged and hooked the children are with the text, notably heard on Thursday when there was a huge gasp let out by the children when the fate of the main character’s mother was revealed. In Maths, we have continued our place value work using number lines and models to represent and partition numbers within 1,000,000. In Science, we used post it note planning to gain a greater grasp on fair testing by discussing what we could change before deciding on our independent variable (I will change). A great week everyone, enjoy your weekend!
Stars
Pluto- Autumn Wray
Asteroid- Jacob Whitby
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
This week in year 6, the minutes, seconds and hours have flown by and we cannot believe it is Friday already! In maths we have completed our work on place value with the topic of negative numbers wrapping things up nicely. We then moved on to the operations of addition and subtraction. We have sunk our teeth into the missing number problems and reasoning questions with real gusto. In English, we have completed our persuasive texts. They are so convincing that the staff are disappointed that there isn’t a cruise like this available for them in the near future. In Science we have begun to understand how light travels and how it helps us to see. The scientific diagrams that have been created are technically perfect. In guided reading, our characters are almost all aboard the Titanic - but who actually is the stowaway in this tale? So far it could be two of them… or is there someone else it could be? A good week everyone - enjoy a restful weekend.
Stars:
Nebular - Sadie Scott
Constellation - Joe Possnett