Weekly Newsletter
Friday 13th October 2023
This week in school
NEXT WEEK! Harvest services at St Wilf's These will be happening on Tuesday 17 October, with details about the timings for the different classes below. The children in Nursery and Reception will be having their own in-school celebration so they will not be joining us in church.
If you would like to donate a Harvest gift of tinned or dried food, please send this with your child and we will make sure it goes down to the church. All the goods collected will be going to the Selby Food Bank.
If you are able to help with the classes walking down and back, please meet us on the Green at 9:15 or 10:30, depending on which service your child's class is joining (see below). If you have a pram or pushchair with you we will see you at the church, as the paths are too narrow for big groups of children and prams to walk together.
Job vacancies We are currently looking for 2 new part time members of staff: an Administrative Assistant to work from the school office, and a Teaching Assistant within Early Years. Further details are on our website https://www.braytonprimary.com/vacancies/
Building works You may have noticed some works on the Victoria yard, including scaffolding and various equipment in place. This is for some roofing works across both buildings where there have been leaks! There is also a small digger on site ready for the replacement of a small and very worn area of astroturf. All the work is being managed safely and all access should be open as normal.
Medicines in school We have had a few instances over the past couple of weeks of over-the-counter medicines being brought into school, sometimes by the children. In school we will only administer medicines that have been prescibed by a health professional, and the consent form must be completed and signed by a parent or carer.
Starting school in September 2024 Applications are now open. If your child is due to start school in September 2024 (if they will have their 5th birthday btween 1.9.2024 and 31.8.2025) then you need to apply for a primary school place for September 2024. Applications should be made online at https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/education-and-learning/school-admissions and the deadline is 15 January. You can still apply after this, but your application will be dealt with after all the others and you may not get your first choice school.
Even if your child already comes to our nursery, you still need to apply for a place in Reception.
Y6 applications for secondary school September 2024 Information has been coming out about applying for secondary school places, and the local schools are having their open afternoons and evenings. We would definitely recommend that you go along to these with your child so that you can make your decision. The deadline for applications is 31 October 2023: applications after this date are treated as 'late' after all the others, and may mean that you don not get a place at your first choice of school.
Term dates 2023-24 The term dates for this school year are on the school website at https://brayton-cofe-primary-school.secure-primarysite.net/term-dates/
We have had to make a slight change to the training days in 2024: children are now expected back in school on Monday 8 January 2024 after the Christmas break, and there will be a training day on Friday 24 May 2024 instead of this.
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 last week picked up again to the 96% target: thanks again for your support and trust with this. We have also noticed a huge improvement in punctuality, with far fewer children arriving late to school than in September. Being at school on time means that the children can setlle quickly into their routines and are not missing any of their learning time.
The poster shared on Dojo has sound advice about whether your child should be absent, and how long for (in the case of illnessed such as chicken pox). Please remember, we will always contact you if your child is unwell during the day, so please make sure they are here as much as possible. With your help we made massive improvements in attendance over last year and this is now better across school than it has been in a very long time!
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. Last year we put forward 38 requests for Fixed Penalty Notices to be issued, which the Local Authority have advised us that they have actioned.
DIARY DATES
Tuesday 17 October - Harvest at St Wilf's (am)
Thursday 26 October - School closes for half term
Friday 27 October - Training day (school closed to children)
Tuesday 31 October - Closing date for secondary school applications
Monday 6 November - School opens
Friday 22 December - School closes for Christmas
Monday 8 January - School opens
Friday 9 February - School closes for half term
Thursday 21 March - School closes for Easter
Friday 22 March - STAR MAT training day (schools closed to children)
Monday 8 April - School opens
Monday 6 May - May Day Bank Holiday
Thursday 23 May - School closes for half term
Friday 24 May - Training day (school closed to children)
Monday 3 June - School opens
Friday 19 July - School closes for summer
Monday 22 July - Training day (school closed to children)
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns next week to.....
Poppy Berridge
Leo Willis
Evie Priest
Reggie Russell
Emily Westwood
Melody Wildon
From St Wilf's
As autumn rapidly approaches it is time to think about the Autumn Fair.
The date has been set for Saturday 11th November between 10am and 1pm.
There will be time to set up late Friday afternoon or earlier in the morning.
The format will be very similar to last year.
If you are able to help in any way please let Pat Jarvis or Lis Middup know.
We will need volunteers for all the usual stalls; tombola, raffle, toiletries, nearly new children's things, along with a cafe.
If you have a new stall you'd like to introduce please let us know!
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
If anybody needed a doctor or a firefighter this week, nursery was the place to be! We have had great fun exploring the emergency services and people who help us. In the enhanced provision, we have used police equipment to capture fingerprints, squirted water at the pretend fire in our outdoor area and treated many poorly dollies (and teachers!!). We have talked about the importance of cleaning our teeth.
In maths we have practised showing different amounts to 5 on our fingers and making repeating patterns. Our favourite phonics activity this week was picking sounds we like. We are becoming great listeners.
Star of the Week: Edward Ransome
Reception - Moon and Mercury
This week we shared a new story in our first ever Drawing Club. We read the story of ‘The Leaf Thief’. In this story a squirrel worries that someone is stealing his leaves. His friend, Bird, helps him to realise that this happens every autumn and it is the wind that blows his leaves off the tree. The children were excited to draw the characters and the setting, then we innovated and played with the story, making up our own versions, deciding which way we wanted the story to go. Please do ask your children about the amazing vocabulary we have focussed on this week. We had fun outside collecting leaves and we even had a leaf cafe one day! In phonics we introduced the new grapheme ‘ss’ and the harder to read and spell word ‘pull’. We then assessed and reviewed to help identify any gaps in learning. In maths we began by identifying patterns, copied and continued patterns and acted out patterns with our friends. Finally, we have celebrated Black History Month and it’s been a great opportunity for the children to develop their awareness of all ethnicities and a range of different cultures through stories. Hair Love by Matthew A Cherry was definitely one of our favourites. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sz3xfxdirE
Star of the week
Moon: Riley Smith
Mercury: Ned Brant
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
What an incredible week we have had in Year 1! The children have continued to immerse themselves in their topic ‘Incredible Me!’, discussing why they are incredible, and the incredible jobs they would like to do when they grow up. We have aspiring footballers, teachers, vets, and even some doctors and palaeontologists! Across English, we have studied the text ‘A Superhero like you!’ by Dr Ranj, developing our vocabulary and inference skills, whilst continuing to decode using our phonics. In maths, we have developed our knowledge of fact families and number sentences, whilst continuing to use the concept of the part whole model. Within art and design, the children have studied environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, and have been inspired to create collages themselves using natural materials. We have studied seasonal changes, beginning our topic on ‘Autumn’ in science, whilst in R.E. we have explored Jonah and The Whale.
Star of the week
Galaxy: Eleanor Watson
Venus: Oscar Rushton
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
It’s been another very busy week in year 2. In maths we have been working on our addition and subtraction skills, using different techniques such as counting on and using number bonds. Our English has continued to focus on Neil Armstrong and we have been sentence stacking using adjectives, complex sentences and even commas in a list. We have learnt about Neil Armstrong as a boy and what led him to becoming an astronaut. In History we learnt about Christopher Columbus and we discussed what made him a good or a bad explorer. In PE we have been learning bench ball and we had great fun playing some games as well as learning skills of teamwork, passing and defending. In music this week, we listened to some of Elgar’s Enigma Variations and had fun thinking about what kind of person they described. Our art work is continuing to focus on the style of David Hockney and we created some wonderful pictures using his colour palette. We have been working on digital art in computing and have been learning the skills of creating and filling shapes. Fantastic work, year 2! Keep it up!
Star of the Week
Earth: Zacaria Briggs
Mars: Harry Corbally
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
In Year 3 we think the temperature is the only thing that has dropped this week because the effort and attainment has continued to rise and rise.
In English the children have started sentence stacking this week using a range of features such as rhetorical questions, complex sentences and our favourite one puns and rhymes which has involved us having lots of fun creating headings and subheadings.
We’ve been racing through our new unit ‘Addition and Subtraction’ this week focusing on adding 1s across a 10, adding 10s across a 100 and spotting patterns.
In Art this week the children have been showing they can mix a variety of colours and understand the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary colours. They have also shown great teamwork helping each other with the aprons that we are really glad we used!
The children have really enjoyed learning the colours in French this week and applying their knowledge to create European Flags using atlases to help them and finally on Friday the children continued their ‘Digital Art’ project in computing using shapes, fill, copy/paste, zoom and flip to create reflective symmetry effects.
Stars of the week
Saturn: Max Willis
Jupiter: Leo Richmond
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
The children have been exceptionally busy this week. We have continued in English with our sentence stacking and the children have been fantastic integrating all the key skills in their writing. In Maths, we have continued focussing on Addition and Subtraction and have mainly spent this week becoming very confident on adding with more than one exchange, before ending the week starting to look at subtraction. In Music, we have continued to look at the different instrument sections of the orchestra and have finally got onto our last instrument family, ‘Strings’. The children have looked at the different instruments that form this family and have completed a matching exercise, where they have had to decide which instrument belongs to which name. In Art, the children have finished their ‘Matisse’ style collages and have loved utilising the different layers of their work, as well as all the different colours. PE has seen the children excel in Hockey and Football, so much so, we played a game in each of the sports. This meant that the children were really able to showcase their amazing skills!
It has been another fantastic week in Year 4. We are all really proud of you and can’t wait to get started with another week!
Stars of the week:
Meteor: Ethan Prosser
Neptune: Amelia Rowley
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
Our English plans have really taken shape this week. Three days of planning was unheard of for these children, but they have really gotten into it. We have asked the children to plan six different sections of part of the story - in this case it is Gunnar trying to get to Iceland. As it is an innovative narrative, the children have changed what the magical item is and what animal is carved onto the boat. For each section, the children have had to draw a snapshot and then write some examples of the objectives that they are going to use. In Maths, we have moved onto multiples and factors. Learning those times tables at home is going to be really important, especially for the next couple of weeks. The children have started to realise that we are using their times tables knowledge in almost every Maths lesson. In History, we learnt about the four men, who felt they were the rightful heir to the throne once Alfred the Great died. The children had to learn about each of them, and then write a paragraph explaining who they would have chosen to be King. Finally, in Science, the children learnt how to separate materials and why we have different methods in real life situations. Nine more days to go Year 5!
Stars of the week:
Asteroid - Brody Pascoe
Pluto - Rocco Lea
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
What? Friday again? The weeks are just flying by and there is only one more full week left until we have our residential. English this week has been focussed on recounts, in the form of diary entries. The children chose a character to write as in first person. They chronicled their exploits over 3 key events in the Dangerous Waters story. It’s great to see them applying all of the grammar terminology that we have learned in the previous week.
We have continued our work using the operation of division - and met our greatest nemesis so far this year, long division! We have delved into the artistic form of Art Deco in our Art lessons this week. First identifying what makes a painting, image or object, Art Deco, and then exploring the form ourselves in preparation for next week’s planning and creating. Guided reading has brought together our many characters and the pot is beginning to thicken. What will happen next, we will soon find out, and I’m not talking about the inevitable!
A wonderful week again everyone!
Star of the Week
Nebular: Alex Auker
Constellation: Aaron Hartley