Weekly Newsletter
Friday 20th October 2023
This week in school
Harvest services Thanks to everyone who came along and joined us at our Harvest services this week, to share the singing, readings and work from the children. All the donations have been collected today by Selby Food Bank and will be very much appreciated.
Reminder Friday 27 October This is a training day which means the school is not open for children on Friday next week. We will see them all again on Monday 6 November.
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/
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.
DEADLINE 31.10.2023 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 dipped a little again due to illness. Unless your child has a high temperature or has an upset stomach (sickness and/or diarrhoea) they really need to be in school. We are noticing a lot of absence with the reason being given as 'feeling unwell' but really children should only be absent if they have physical symptoms of illness.
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
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.....
Mason Mountain
Connie Lonsdale
Teddy Abdullah
Matthew Ward
Matthew Richardson
Penny Fenton
Ella Mundrill
Reuben Hick
Ella Larner
Jude Cooper
Harry Hardy
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
This week we have had great fun exploring colours and thinking about our favourites. We have used many different media to investigate, including coloured cellophane, paint and watercolours. Powder paint and coloured water were firm favourites. We have shared stories related to colours and we even created coloured toast for snack time which was great fun! In phonics we have added noises to a story to make a NOISY story, looking at what noises we might hear on each page. We have talked about the noises water can make and guessed what is in each jar by listening to the sounds it makes. All of these activities help to make us good listeners. In maths we have been playing matching games, trying to find things that are exactly the same and things that are different. We have also been singing lots of different number rhymes to help us with our counting.
Star of the Week: Harry Murphy
Reception - Moon and Mercury
We shared another new story in Drawing Club. We had lots of fun drawing the characters and the setting, then we innovate and play with the story, making up our own versions and deciding which way we want the story to go. This week we have been sharing The Little Red Hen. The hen has found a strange egg in her nest - we wondered what would hatch out of it and designed a creature. They had names and if we said their name, it changed colour! In maths, our focus has been the numbers 1, 2 and 3. We have talked about how to make each number and how we can represent each amount. We have enjoyed celebrating Baby Bears 3rd birthday and going on number hunts around the classroom. In phonics we introduced the new graphemes h, b, f, ff, l and ll. We have practised how to form the letters correctly using the mnemonics and we’ve been blending and segmenting words containing these sounds. On Thursday we welcomed Rev Phil into school for our first Harvest festival and he explained to the children how it is a time to celebrate God’s goodness and to help others. We were very proud; the children were fantastic at listening and thoroughly enjoyed singing ‘Big red combine harvester’. Thank you to everyone for sending in your donations for the Selby Foodbank.
Star of the week Moon: Nellie Mattinson
Mercury: Isaac Winn
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
We’ve had another fun-filled week of learning in Year 1 this week. It was such a treat on Monday to apply our collage skills (that we’ve spent all term developing) to our artwork that we were able to bring into Church with us on Tuesday. It was so lovely to see everyone working as a team and see how proud they were of our class collage, didn’t our artwork look fabulous! Thank you to everyone who was able to join us on our walk down to St Wilfs. The children were so engaged and excited to take part in the service.
This week, in Maths, we have continued developing our addition skills, we’ve explored fact families, how to represent addition questions pictorially and practically before ending with worded addition questions. On Thursday, we have continued to develop our football skills with the children making great effort to control the ball with their feet, including dribbling and stopping the ball. The children have made great progress with their ball skills as the term has gone on. Can you believe that next week is the last week of Autumn 1 already?! The children have already grown so much. We’re all looking forward to another fantastic week in Year 1!
Star of the week
Galaxy: Millie-Rose Scott
Venus: Esme Carter
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
This week we have completed our writing about Neil Armstrong using all the skills we have learnt through our sentence stacking lessons. We were impressed with all the information that the children have remembered. We have also learnt about Bessie Coleman, another ‘intrepid explorer’. We were able to link this to Black History Month following on from our learning about Matthew Lawson too. In Science we tested and evaluated the materials we used to make the boats we designed last week. We had great fun watching which materials were successful and which not! In RE we learnt more about the Muslim practice of Wudu. Our computing this week started a new topic of learning about digital animation. We really enjoyed creating sequences of moving pictures. Thank you so much for the harvest donations you sent in. We really enjoyed our service at church and it was lovely to see so many parents and grandparents there to share it with us.
Star of the Week
Earth: Eryn Carlton
Mars: Luna Marlewska and Jordan Smallman
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
The highlight of the week was attending the Harvest Festival service at Church on Tuesday morning. Our readers spoke clearly and confidently and the children sang beautifully - well done!
During our Monday afternoon PE session , we held a mini football tournament; the children thoroughly enjoyed themselves as they were given the opportunity to not only play against different children in the year group, but to showcase their dribbling and passing skills developed during our previous PE lessons. In English, we continued to write persuasive sentences to entice prospective Stone Age holiday-goers to stay at Skara Brae Holiday Village; this week we focused on producing alliterative phrases to describe the food on offer and learnt how to write testimonials.
Our main focus in Maths this week has been adding and subtracting ones across a ten, and then tens across a hundred, on a number line. In Science, we learnt that there are smooth, cardiac and skeletal muscles and these enable humans to perform a wide range of movements such as blinking, digesting and sitting still! We investigated how skeletal muscles work in pairs by flexing our biceps and triceps - when one muscle contracts (shortens), the other relaxes (lengthens). In History, we learnt about diets in the Stone Age, deducing the wild foods that would have been available to hunter-gather in the Mesolithic era. Another great week, Year 3s! One week to go!
Stars of the week:
Saturn: Ashleigh Bramhald
Jupiter: Anna Metcalfe
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
Wow, is it that time again? This week has been fantastic and the children have really been trying hard this week with all they have done. In English, we have been continuing with our sentence stacking and have just started our planning for our independent writing. In Maths, we have focussed on Addition and Subtraction and have really enjoyed looking at ‘Subtraction with more than one exchange’. We have looked at this over a few lessons and have really tried to consolidate our knowledge on this subject. In Art, we have applied our collage knowledge and have created a new collage of the ‘Tudor Rose’, using cuttings from a variety of magazines. Science has seen us classifying a variety of animals and creating our own classification tree in our books. In PE, we have had a little bit of a reward due to completing our ‘Hockey’ and ‘Football’ units. The children have been able to play ‘Benchball’ and have absolutely loved playing another new game! In Geography, we have focussed on our map reading skills and looked at four-figure grid references, consolidating our prior knowledge on the subject.
Another fantastic week, Year 4. We look forward to seeing you for the final week of the first half term!
Stars of the week:
Meteor: George Dunnington
Neptune: Nathan Younger
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
It has been a week of finishing off this week. We have completed all the lessons for hockey and football, so we have been mixing the classes together to play small games. This has been a great opportunity for all the students to show us what they have learnt, while we assess them on their knowledge of the rules and their ability. In History, the children had to compare how we used to view the Vikings 30 years ago, to how that opinion has changed slightly, as archeologists have discovered more about them. Yes they were brutal raiders, but in the end they did settle and help create the cities we now know. In Science, we learnt how to create new materials by mixing gases, liquids and solids. Of course, we had to end the unit by mixing mentos and coca cola to create a gas. Finally, the children have been working hard on their drafts for their innovative narratives. Three days worth of drafting has been a challenge, but the children are doing their best to keep at it and include all the objectives that are expected of them. Next week, we look forward to their write ups and showing us their joined up handwriting to achieve that objective as well. Well done Year 5, only four more days to go!
Stars of the week:
Asteroid - Maya Prosser
Pluto - Lily Cole
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
In our final week before the year 6 residential, we have continued to drive our children on in all that we have done, even with the impending excitement.
In maths, we have continued our work on different methods that can be used to calculate division. We have used these and our knowledge of multiplication to solve multi-step problems. The week culminated with work on the order of operations.
In English, we have presented our diary entries for the characters in Dangerous Waters, and moved on to our new topic of Newspapers, understanding the features and preparing for the quotes by eyewitnesses by covering dialogue (reported and direct).
In History, we have established how the Titanic disaster was a few short years too early for the changes in society and in law to take effect, which would have seen so many 3rd class passengers surviving, rather than perishing.
Our final plans for our Art Deco inspired buildings have also been created in our Art lessons. The designs created would have been a spectacle to see on the horizon if New York had actually been reached by Titanic.
A good, hard working week everybody, and for most, 3 days of fun to look forward to.
Star of the Week
Nebular: Rhys Knight
Constellation: Elliott Vernon