Weekly Newsletter
Friday 5th May 2023
This week in school
Access to school A reminder that as the owners of the road, the Parish Council are installing a barrier on the road within the next few weeks. This barrier will be one which can be opened and locked by the residents and the school. It will be in position at the times when vehicle access is restricted (8:30-9:15 and 2:45-3:30). We hope that this will put a stop to incidents where drivers have been causing a risk to pedestrians going to and from 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.
St Wilf's spring fair Our Spring Fair for 2023 will soon be here with all the usual stalls and entertainment laid on.
The fair is a very important fundraiser for our church.
We hope it is a great success and you can help us by;
- Sharing the attached poster with your friends, neighbours and family and on your Facebook/Instagram page.
- Donating things for our stalls - We need:
- Nearly new children's toys and games, Books, Plants, Tombola and Raffle Prizes (please leave in the back of church or bring on the morning)
- Cakes and savouries for our cafe (please bring on the morning from 9.30am)
- Helping on a stall (please contact Lis Middup fair organiser for details lismiddup@aol.com )
- Visiting local places to seek prizes for our raffle (please contact Lis for details if you can do this)
- But most of all tell your friends and come along!
Thankyou
We look forward to seeing you there.
Best wishes
Lis (Fair Organiser)
Pat (Churchwarden)
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
Updated figures for attendance show a big dip for us for the first week since November. Last week we noticed a significant drop in attendance on Thursday and Friday. We know the secondary schools were closed due to industrial action but we remained fully open and would be expecting children to attend as normal.
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. Taking your child out of school has a significant impact on their learning, especially where we have seen requests for leave at the very start of the new school year. At this time, children need to be settling into their new classes and routines, and getting to know their new teachers.
DIARY DATES
Monday 8 May- Coronation Bank Holiday (school closed)
Tuesday 9 May - Friday 12 May - Y6 test week
Thursday 25 May - School closes for half term
Friday 26 May - Training day (school closed to children)
Monday 5 June - School opens
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.....
Roma Tate
Emilie Knight
Charlie Corbally
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
This week we learned about the Coronation of King Charles III and shared the books ‘The King’s Pants’ and ‘Colourful Coronation’. The children have loved learning about the crown and the golden coach as well as listening to the National Anthem and singing other Coronation songs. We have made our own bunting and decorated biscuits in red, white and blue. The children have enjoyed scooping up red, white and blue rice in the tuff tray and counting jewels on crowns in the maths area. They have also decorated their own crowns to wear. We have even had royal tea parties in the water and home corner.
In Phonics, we have continued to listen to sounds at the beginning of words. We have made ‘silly soup’ where all the ingredients start with the same sound, collected objects with the same sounds for our sound bag and made up silly sentences using the children’s names. In maths, we have worked hard at learning about ‘1 more’ using both objects and a number line as well as singing number rhymes. We have even thought about ‘1 more’ using our fruit at snack time.
Star of the week: Mina Fash-Hill
Reception - Moon and Mercury
This week has been about making special memories to mark the historic event and celebrate King Charles III Coronation. We began by reading ‘The King’s Pants’ by Nicholas Allan. It was very amusing and the children loved the story. We discovered the King cannot rule without his Royal Pants. Did you know he has a pair of coronation pants and he can't be crowned without them? But in a boxer-shorts blunder at the Royal Mail, the King's undies went wandering. We then showed the children an image of King Charles III and some of them knew who he was, there were some interesting answers too. The children then verbalised sentences to share information they have learnt about King Charles and completed some amazing writing.
On Friday we had Royal Garden party with sandwiches and homemade Welsh cakes. We played traditional party games like musical statues and musical chairs. In phonics we have continued learning the suffix /ed in words like burned, joined and growled. There was also an emphasis on the harder to read and spell words when, what and they. Please could you continue to read and spell these words together with your child. In maths we have focussed on grouping and sharing equally, through lots of hands on activities with teddies and cookies. We definitely know how to share! The children looked amazing today and lunch was a 'Feast fit for a King' prepared by our amazing school kitchen staff. What a great way to end our week of celebrations.
Star of the Week -
Moon - Eleanor Watson
Mercury - Jasmine Whitby
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
It has been a brilliant week in Year 1, where we have continued to look at our topic ‘Nature Rocks’ and have specifically focused on a text called ‘The Sky Garden’. The children have produced some fantastic language and adjectives to describe what the main character may be seeing.
We continue to work hard with our letters and sounds to develop our decoding, fluency, and in turn comprehension, whilst in maths we have investigated fractions and specifically finding half of an object or an amount.
In PE, the children have continued to build their stamina by doing some fitness and have also developed key hand-eye coordination skills through cricket.
We have also started to look at DT and have focused on healthy foods. The children have explored the 5 different food groups and even had some tastings to try from a few of them. With this knowledge, the children planned their own fruit kebab and created them in preparation of the KS1 Coronation party. They were delicious!
Star of the week:
Galaxy - Zacaria Briggs
Venus - Alex Holliday
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
Year 2 have worked very hard again this week.
In maths we have been looking at time. We have continued with our sentence stacking lessons based on the story of Little Red Reading Hood. In science we have been observing our sunflower plants that we planted last week and learning about what plants need to survive. In RE we have been learning about why some places are sacred and designing a stained glass window for a synagogue. In Music we have been listening to ‘Zadok the Priest’ a Coronation piece, talking about what it makes us feel like and identifying why the music is used at a Coronation. In DT we designed and made jam sandwiches and iced biscuits for our Coronation picnic and then enjoyed eating these with our friends on our picnic rugs! We’ve had a fantastic week celebrating and learning new things. Well done year 2 - enjoy the rest of your celebrations this weekend!
Earth - Connie Lonsdale
Mars - Michael Knight
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
Although this week has been slightly shorter than usual we’ve been as busy as ever in Year 3!
In English we have finished our plot points focusing on Repetition for effect, Personification and our use of Inner thoughts. We also had an experience day on Thursday which made us think about how we can incorporate our sensations in our writing.
This week in maths we have moved onto money. The children have been converting pounds and pence as well as using their addition and subtraction skills to add and subtract money.
Finally in computing we have moved onto our next unit of work ‘Documenting editing and creation’ . This week the children learnt how to copy a piece of text by either clicking and dragging over it to highlight it and then copy and paste it into a word document or using a keyboard shortcut.
Stars of the week -
Jupiter - Oscar O’Driscoll
Saturn - Harry Grey
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
Well, for a four day week we have done plenty! In R.E this week the children have taken last week's lesson, how Jesus treated others and applied it to a modern day setting. In groups we explored the St. Wilf’s website and saw just how well modern Christian’s can put Jesus’ words into actions and care for any member of the community. There wasn’t a single age range that wouldn’t have anything to do. The children were whispering away in their teams to get as many notes and ideas down as possible. In Science we continue to prepare for The Great Science Share and have started an experiment to see how effective soap can be at preventing the spread of germs and mould and while rubbing bread around the classroom might have seemed slightly strange at the time we will hopefully have a very visual reminder of just how important soap and hand washing really is. In Maths the children have been able to apply their excellent place value skills from earlier in the year by dividing one and two digit numbers by 10. This useful skill will help further secure their knowledge of decimals. How can I not mention the Greek Gods fact hunt in history? I was blown away by how efficient and excited the children were to find each of the 12 Greek God and Goddesses.
Meteor -Alyssa Mitchell
Neptune - Alfie Yesil
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
This week in Maths they have learnt how to use protractors. A new skill for all the children, and for some it was quite challenging. Key vocabulary like origin, vertex and baseline have been taught and discussed. The children have also been using their knowledge of classifying angles to decide whether they should be using the inner or outer scale on the protractor. The main key skill was precision. Safe to say that next week is going to be just as challenging, as the children are going to learn how to draw angles using a protractor. Again, precision will be key! In English, we have been building on our grammar and content skills, and connecting it to Holes. The use of causal conjunctions has been really fun. The children worked together in pairs to generate their own sentences. Therefore, when it comes to writing their own, they can be really creative. Finally, in Guided Reading, we have been working our way through Holes. Stanley finds himself “in the wrong place, at the wrong time” again. We have also discovered who Kissing Kate Barlow is and why she was the most feared outlaw in Texas.
Asteroid- Beau Stubbs
Pluto - Cameron Younger and Finlay Donaldson
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
Wow, we are at that point in the year already - the ‘dreaded’ SATs are next week! But, do you know what, you are ready! You have worked hard to make progress; to revise and tweak things that you already know, and you have grown into little adults who we are so proud of, regardless of how well you do next week. We have seen you grow from teeny, tiny year 5s to wonderful year 6 role models.
Remember, you are more than a test score, we know that, your parents know that; we just want you to ‘let your light shine’ so everyone else knows just how good you are.
Enjoy your long weekend everybody: rest, do a little revision, rest some more, then come in at 8:30am on Tuesday for a hearty breakfast and get ready to absolutely smash it!
Constellation: Joshua Cole
Nebular: Keeley Sharpe