Weekly Newsletter
Friday 24th February 2023
This week in school
STAR Eats update Huge thanks to all the families who have been using the new system to book meals in advance: this links straight into Parentpay and into the kitchen systems so it should make lunches run even more smoothly.
As part of this we have a new online form for allergens & special dietary requirements which can be completed here https://forms.gle/9We58ui97TqSbLXm6 and should be updated every half term. Please note this is NOT for likes/dislikes...it is for medical information and requirements such as gluten-free, which should all be supported by copies of information from medical professionals that have been shared with school.
World Book Day Thursday 2 March We hope you are all thinking about your inventive home-made creations ready for next week! Mr Close sent out links to lots of ideas for easy costumes on our Roald Dahl theme but if you have any questions please get in touch with your child's teacher. As ever, if your child would prefer to attend in their usual school uniform this is completely fine.
World Thinking Day Wednesday 22 February It was lovely to see so many of the children in all or part of their uniforms from the scouting and guiding groups, especially when we usually just see badges that have been earned or neckers from being invested/enrolled. Thank you for supporting your children with their uniforms: they really enjoyed being able to share them in school.
Potential strike action 28.2.2023 The next day of proposed industrial action by the National Education Union is next Tuesday. We are expecting the school to operate as usual that day, but in case of any last-minute changes please make sure you have a back-up plan in place.
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 wait 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.
Job vacancies We are looking for a teaching assistant to join our team and will be advertising after half term. If you know anyone who may be interested, please ask them to get in touch.
Winter illnesses update from the DFE UKHSA advice remains clear that children can continue to attend as normal unless they are unwell and have a high temperature. Further information on when a child is too ill for school or nursery is available. There is no requirement to be absent from school on a precautionary basis. Schools should continue to maintain their high expectations for face-to-face attendance.
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 strong attendance this year continues, as we finished the half term keeping school figures above the national group! 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 this week about attendance figures nationally being low, so it is a real strength for us that this trend is not reflected here.
The legal duties around attendance for both schools and local authorities are being strengthened, and North Yorkshire have assigned us a designated Attendance Enforcement Officer who will be liaising with us where we have concerns around this area.
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
Thursday 2 March - World Book Day (Roald Dahl character theme)
Friday 31 March - School closes for Easter
Monday 17 April - School opens
Happy Birthdays!
Many many many many happy returns this week to.....
Eryn Mansell
Ramsey Snedker
Jan Szafranski
George Richmond
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
The jungle has been our main focus this week. We have enjoyed reading lots of jungle stories, including ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ by Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz and ‘Monkey Puzzle’ by Julia Donaldson. We looked at some of the animals and plants we might find there. In our mark making area we have enjoyed adding patterns to the jungle animals and in our maths area we have been matching animals to their patterns. We have also practised moving like different jungle animals. In the creative area we have made animal masks and butterflies.
In phonics this week we have continued to look at rhyme. We have made rhyming silly soup and matched rhyming pairs. In maths we have been looking at the number 3. We have counted to 3, found 3 objects and represented 3 on a 5 frame. We have also looked at triangles.
We have also celebrated Shrove Tuesday by making and eating pancakes.
It has been a very busy first week back.
Star of the Week - Gracie Alderman
Reception - Moon and Mercury
It was wonderful to see everyone after the half term break. We were all excited to begin our new theme ‘Come outside’. This began with reading the book ‘Oliver’s Vegetables’ written by Vivian French. We named all of the vegetables in the story and discussed which ones we liked. We talked about how Grandpa grows his own vegetables in the story and decided to try and grow our own! It will be fascinating to observe our seedlings sprout and we can then plant them outdoors.
In Maths we have been using the correct vocabulary to describe height and length of objects. We have compared the height and length of a range of different items and we have measured using connecting cubes. We have also been developing our knowledge of the days of the week, starting with the story of ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’.
In phonics we have continued to review the graphemes that we have already learnt. It is wonderful to observe how the children are becoming so independent in using their grapheme and phoneme knowledge.
In R.E we have concluded our topic ‘Where do we belong?’ by looking at the Christian Baptism ceremony and the Muslim Aqiqah ceremony.
Our worship time has been focussed on Shrove Tuesday and the start of Lent. The children were all very keen to talk about their favourite pancake toppings!
Star of the week:
Moon – Priscilla-Valentina Knight
Mercury – Jensen Woods
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
We hope you have had a lovely half term holiday.
This week, we have enjoyed starting our new topic of ‘Beyond the Sea’. We have discussed the book Flotsam by David Weisner and based our writing on it. In geography we have been reading maps. We have been finding the closest beaches and identifying geographical features. In history, over the next few weeks, we will be finding out what holidays were like in the past and how they were different, and sometimes similar, to the holidays we have today.
In maths we are working with numbers to 50, and making and understanding groups of 10 and partitioning numbers into tens and ones. In RE, we have been thinking about Lent and thinking why Easter matters to Christians.
Stars of the week:
Venus- Jordan Smallman
Galaxy- Charlie Penistone
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
Year 2 have launched their new topic of ‘The Great Fire of London’ with a bang. The children were intrigued to be invited by ticket to the Brayton Primary School art gallery on Monday afternoon. During their visit, they became history detectives by finding clues in the paintings and answering questions along the way. On Thursday, they were immersed in a 1666 day by dressing up in clothes from the period and taking part in activities from this time; they baked bread, made their own herbal remedies, created clay candle holders and had a go at weaving. In English, we have begun learning about diary writing like Samuel Pepys by reading a non-fiction book about ‘The Great fire of London’. We found out further information through our guided reading text. In Music, we learnt two songs connected with our topic and found out about 17th century instruments.
The Easter story was our theme in RE this week and the children impressed us with how much they remembered from previous years. In PSHE, the children learnt how to tell the difference between good and bad secrets and who to tell if they needed help. In Maths, we have continued with multiplication and division, realising that if you know your times tables you can easily use this information to work out division calculations.
Stars of the Week
Earth- Harper Lea
Mars- William Cooper
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
We’ve been really impressed with how the children have returned to school after half term this week. In English we have moved onto our next Write Stuff unit which focuses on poetry. We have read the poem ‘I Asked the Little Boy Who Cannot See’ and discussed the different senses the boy uses as well as investigating the rhythm of the poem and how the writer achieves rhyme by playing around with the order of the sentences. On Wednesday morning we have our ‘Experience Day’ and the children were provided with a range of experiences for each colour which helped them focus on the senses of touch, smell, taste, sound and feeling. The children created some fantastic mind maps for each colour and then similies to show these associations using their senses.
In maths we have moved onto fractions. The children have been understanding the denominators of unit fractions as well as comparing and ordering unit fractions.
In computing we have also started a new project which is all about 3D design. The children really enjoyed using the Don’t Flood the Fidgets website to design a city that protects homes from flooding, using tools and working within a budget
This half term in PE the children are learning the skills and rules of basketball and really enjoyed their first lesson on Monday. Mr Pooley was also really happy at how well the children worked collaboratively on Thursday when they had their first Orienteering lesson.
Star of the Week
Jupiter - Alfie Butler
Saturn - Ella Maundrill
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
What a fantastic first week back. In English we have dived into our newest book, The Whale by Ethan and Vita Murrow. This lovely black and white picture book tells the tale of two children who previously disagreed working together to help prove the existence of the Great Spotted Whale. The children were excited to spend some time on the laptops to research different species of Whales before applying our inference skills to see what we could infer about the owner of a mysterious backpack.
Following on with the theme of exploration in English we then did a much needed recap naming the 7 continents and 5 oceans of the world before taking a closer look at Europe. Many of the children were able to tell us of different landmarks that they’d seen across the continent.
It’s also been an important week in the Christian calendar. We’ve spent our time exploring Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday not only in R.E by reflecting on what your Lent promise would be but we also looked at fact files in Guided Reading. All in all a productive and busy start to the second part of the Spring Term!
Star of the week.
Meteor - Emilee Hawe
Neptune - Joseph Wilford
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
Year 5 has got straight back into the swing of it after the half term break. We started English where we usually finish, by drafting a narrative- our very own version of how Cosmic ends. This first draft will be edited and improved over the next couple of weeks to make sure our final draft has a range of Year 5 writing skills. Although we are at the start of our writing process, Mr Fash-Hill and Miss Goddard are already excited by the plots you have imagined and can’t wait to read the final draft, enhanced with description, speech and much more! In Guided Reading, we have got back into Cosmic, comparing the change in Liam from beginning to now. In Maths, we are nearing the end of fractions, having tackled finding fractions of quantities and the whole this week. Multiplication recall is essential and we are urging those of you still having to count on or use classroom resources to practise, practise, practise! In Science, we have learnt about the force, gravity. Children have created some rather funny but factual comics detailing the event that led up to the hypothesis of gravity- did the apple fall on Newton’s head? In R.E, we have started our new unit of learning, People of God, and we have started to learn about Moses and his journey as a special Person of God. Our learning in R.E this half term will have a great link to our school’s half term value of forgiveness, which children will discover in the coming weeks as we continue Moses’ story. A positive start to the new half term, which we know will continue!
Star of the week:
Asteroid: Bradley Spowage
Pluto: Amelia Scott
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
Well we’re straight back into action in Year 6 this week - we’ve started as we mean to go on! Tuesday evening saw the first SATs club session of this spring term, it was fantastic to see so many there, giving quite an atmosphere, a ‘buzz’ in fact. In English we have been drafting, editing and improving our Howard Carter news blog - can you imagine what the scene would be like now if Tutankhamun's tomb was being unveiled in 2023 rather than a hundred years ago? I’m sure once these pieces of extended writing are completed it will feel just like it’s happening ‘live’. In maths we have completed our look at measurements and started a new topic of ratio. In science we have been continuing to consider the finer workings of the human circulatory system with this week a closer look at blood. In guided reading we have continued, quite literally, on our journey towards Egypt with Lil, Tulip and Oz on their once in a lifetime experience to unlock the secrets of the young pharaoh Kyky.
With worship times having a focus on Lent, we have certainly enjoyed our start to the new half term including taking up the 40 day challenges so look out for some random acts of kindness being seen at home and for those who have declared to give up chocolate for lent, we wish you every success.
Stars:
Constellation - Lorenzo Briggs
Nebular - Jessica Pearce