Weekly Newsletter
Friday 3rd March 2023
This week in school
World Book Day Thursday 2 March Amazing costumes this week for World Book Day, with lots of creativity from home! We had a fantastic day celebrating books and reading as well as admiring each other. Thank you for all your support with this from home.
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.
Job vacancies We are looking for 2 teaching assistants to join our team, with the closing date on Monday. Please see the STAR website for more info https://web.starmat.uk/vacancies/
WhatsApp Y5/6 If you have a child in Year 5 or Year 6, please check your emails for an important message about WhatsApp use. Many thanks.
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.
Leave of absence during term time & attendance Please can we gently remind you that, unless the circumstances are genuinely exceptional, holidays in term time 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.
Where our replies to requests for holidays have included reference to Fixed Penalty Notices, the paperwork for these can only be sent through when you have returned from the holiday and after a certain number of weeks have passed. We send through summaries to North Yorkshire County Council who then make the decision around proceeding with fines.
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 has continued with the return after half term! 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. There has been a lot in the media again about attendance figures nationally being low, so it is a real strength for us that this trend is not reflected here.
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 31 March - School closes for Easter
Monday 17 April - School opens
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns this week to.....
Kai Dougan
Zack Mangham
Freddie Simmonds
Isaac Tweddle
Billy Carmody
Fearne Colley
Jack Carmody
Ellis Lee
Isla Sheldon
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
This week we have continued with our theme ‘All Creatures Great and Small’. The children have looked at farm animals and life on the farm. Our main texts this week have been ‘Farmer Duck’ and ‘Pig in the Pond’ both by Martin Waddell. We have had a small world farm in the tuff tray and some very muddy animals to wash in the water tray. We have learnt lots of farm songs, our favourites were definitely ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ and ‘Dingle Dangle Scarecrow’.
In phonics we have focused on rhythm and rhyme. We have enjoyed finding pairs of objects that rhyme and spotting the object that doesn't rhyme in a group of objects. In maths we have looked at number 3. We have used the parachute this week and have been learning some new games.
On Thursday we enjoyed celebrating World Book Day and dressing up as characters from the Roald Dahl stories and other stories too. We have enjoyed talking about our favourite stories.
Star of the Week - Ella Broadhead
Reception - Moon and Mercury
This week we have thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘The Enormous Crocodile’ by Roald Dahl. The children have been fascinated by each of the animal characters in the story and have been using the refrains from the story in their play. We also took the opportunity to learn about crocodiles and have found out some amazing facts, for example, a mother crocodile carries her new babies in her mouth! This caused a lot of shocked faces in the classroom.
In phonics we have continued to review the graphemes and phonemes taught so far. The children are now experts at ‘paired reading’ which is really helping to develop their fluency. We hope that you have enjoyed helping your child to read through the lists of harder to read and spell words that we sent home last week. Isn’t it amazing how many they have learnt?
During maths we have been working with the numbers 9 and 10. We have explored filling a tens frame with 9 or 10 counters and we have also practised making number lines to 10.
The highlight of the week was most certainly ‘World Book Day’. Everyone had such brilliant costumes and really enjoyed telling each other who they were dressed as. Thank you for participating in our crocodile competition, the creativity was excellent. Mrs Buckton had a tough job picking the winners!
Star of the week:
Mercury: Sienna Craft
Moon: Samuel Collins
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
We have had a go getting type of week this week in school, exploring the seven continents and five oceans, and completing a European study on France and its capital city of Paris.
Through English, we have studied ‘Boo! A Fishy Mystery’ by Kate Read, we have developed our vocabulary, retrieval, and inference skills in reading, whilst in writing we have created our own fact files on sea creatures. In maths, we have been learning about number lines, estimating where numbers belong, and we have started exploring measures, including length and height. In history, we have studied changes within living memory- thank you for all your holiday pictures, we’ve loved sharing them in class with each other. Through R.E., we have continued developing our understanding around the Christian celebration of Easter through drama and song. We have enjoyed World Book Day, and celebrating our favourite stories and characters- the children looked amazing!
The children continue to impress us with their learning attitudes, and are making fantastic progress with their phonics. Thank you for your continued support.
Stars of the week:
Venus- Oliver Beaumont
Galaxy- George Bramhald
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
This week we have continued to immerse ourselves in 1666 by becoming history detectives looking for evidence from a wide variety of sources of how the Great Fire of London started. We have studied art work, information books, songs and drama as well as an original newspaper article from 2nd September 1666. In English, we have begun writing a diary of the events from the point of view of a London rat and we have used our retrieval and vocabulary vipers in Guided Reading to continue with our book ‘The Great Fire of London’. We are excited by our DT design brief which is to design and make a Tudor house with moving parts. This week we have begun designing the houses using neat straight lines like a real architect and labelling the important features.
We have had a fun practical week in maths by measuring using centimetres and metres. We have also compared lengths and heights as well as using the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division within our work. In RE we thought about how Jesus acts like a bridge between humans and God.
We were really proud of the efforts made by Year 2 for World Book Day; not only did they come in amazing costumes, but they worked hard at thinking about feelings relating to our school book ‘The Invisible’ as well as learning about the blurb on the back of a book.
Star of the Week
Mars- Anna Metcalf
Earth- Ellis Dyson
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
This week in maths, the children used diagrams and other representations to develop their understanding that when the numerator of a fraction is equal to its denominator, then the fraction is equivalent to 1 whole. Also, they used their knowledge of numerators and
denominators to determine how many equal parts a scale has been split into, and then what fraction is shown.
In English, the children really enjoyed planning and writing their own version of the poem ‘The Boy Who Cannot See’, creating similes and metaphors that provide colour imagery through the senses of taste, touch, hearing and smell.
A healthy, balanced diet was our theme in Science this week, with the children recapping their knowledge of key food groups and identifying the foods from each category. The children extended their understanding of a healthy plate by designing a balanced, vegetarian meal.
The inventor of the world wide web, Tim Berners Lee, was our focus in History this week - the children were fascinated by the fact that in college, he built a computer out of an old television set!
Without a doubt, the highlight of the week was World Book Day! The children were so excited to reveal their costumes to the rest of the class, and share their favourite stories and characters. All the children’s costumes looked fantastic, and they did a great job of bringing the literary characters to life!
Well done Year 3, yet another jam packed week!
Star of the week:
Saturn - Aurora Anderson
Jupiter - Monty Waugh
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
In Maths we’ve found that those addition and subtraction skills and from earlier in the year and last year's knowledge of shapes is being tested as we move on from finding the perimeter of a rectangle and rectilinear shape to finding the perimeter of regular and irregular polygons.
In Science, we have moved beyond working safely with electricity to how simple circuits work. Children are becoming increasingly familiar with technical terms such as cells and circuits. On Thursday, we were given the challenge to light a bulb. That certainly got them thinking about what pieces of equipment they would need as they worked in teams to see who could make the bulb light first.
I can’t not mention Year 4s fabulous effort in the battle of the Bands. Meteor are moving for double victory and Neptune have certainly challenged their opponents this week. Lots of victory for Year 4. Let’s keep it going for the rest of the term to see if we can continue with this winning streak. World book day this week was another great effort by Year 4. Well done to everyone who put the effort in to dressing up, bringing a book in and taking part in all of the fun learning opportunities we had on that day. Thank you to all of the adults who helped make the day as fun and fantastic as it was.
Stars
Meteor - Joshua Lane
Neptune - Sadie Smethurst
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
This week in Maths, we have been looking at the connection between fractions and decimals. We started off learning about decimal places, and that one tenth is one decimal place and two tenths is two decimal places. Most of the children have picked this up quickly. Also, well done to all the children who have been participating in the TT Rockstars competition- the year 5 classrooms were full of children at lunchtime during the end of the week. This is still ongoing and it will be amazing if they keep it up. In English, we started to plan our own endings to Cosmic. The ideas have been fantastic and we can not wait to read their ideas. We have continued our use of expanded noun phrases with a preposition, as well as adding extra information in sentences (using either relative clauses or parenthesis). Everyone, who dressed up, looked amazing on World Book Day and all the children enjoyed the activities. Finally, well done to Asteroid for their whole school worship, that they planned and delivered. You did Year 5 proud by speaking clearly and loudly.
Stars of the week:
Asteroid: Elliott Vernon
Pluto: Theo Hutchinson
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
What a wonderful week we have had in year 6. The new topic of ratio has been taught in maths and the children have approached it magnificently! Their understanding of what can be a difficult topic has been superb, with many children being able to challenge themselves to the reasoning problems, each and every day. In English, we have completed our in-depth news blog of the Tutenkhamun discovery, and shown our understanding of many different grammar conventions in a carousel activity that offered lots of revision and new learning. Our science lessons on the role of blood have allowed the children to build on their knowledge and understanding of the different cells contained within it and their functions within the body. In guided reading, the children took control of the sessions, and used the VIPER strands; they were the teachers, scribes, clarifiers, and question posers : addressing vocabulary and understanding of the text within their groups. Well done everyone for showing such maturity in your roles. Thursday brought us World Book Day! The children looked fantastic in their costumes and embraced their love of reading when covering a new text with multiple themes of current issues in society today. After yet another week of hard work, you all deserve another rest. See you Monday for another brilliant week!
Stars:
Nebular: Aiden Workman
Constellation: Alfie Jessop