Weekly Newsletter
Friday 28th April 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.
Coronation celebrations Next Friday (5 May) as well as our Coronation Tea Party lunch we will also be having a non-uniform day: children can come along dressed in red, white and blue (but no football kits please) or be super-creative and dress along a theme of royalty!
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.
Brayton Parish Council would like to than everyone who took part in the litter pick last weekend: there was a great turnout and they are hoping to arrange another one next month.
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information is on the NYCC website at https://www.northyorks.gov.uk/free-school-meals Some of this information may be out of date, especially around eligibility, so please get in touch if you are unsure.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 locally and nationally are out again, and showing us staying above the national trend and almost at our whole-school target of 95%. We know that other local schools, particularly secondary, are struggling with attendance, so it is great for us to be in a positive place with this: thank you again for your support which is really making the difference for the children.
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!
DIARY DATES
Monday 1 May - May Day Bank Holiday (school closed)
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.....
Conor Young
Oliver Beaumont
Georgia Legg
Finnley Swift-Lampitt
Arthur O'Driscoll
Charlie Winn
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
This week we have looked at the story ‘Supertato’ and lots of other ‘Supertato’ stories too. The children have loved hearing about the characters and particularly the ‘Evil Pea’. The children have been keen to hear what mischief the ‘Evil Pea’ has been up to in each of the stories. We have made our own Supertatoes, printed with fruit and vegetables, tried to catch evil peas with tweezers and tried to untangle the superheroes. We even used a potato masher like Evil Pea to print with.
We have each drawn a self portrait to go on our individual boards and the older Stars have enjoyed looking at how much their self portraits have changed with each term in Stars.
In Phonics, we have listened to sounds at the beginning of words. We have played Musical Corners, moving to the corner with the same initial sound as the object, and we have collected objects in our sound bag with the same initial sound as well as playing eye spy.
In maths we have been subitising small numbers and beginning to recognise and select the correct numeral to represent 1-5. The children worked hard at learning to form the number 5.
Star of the Week: Noah Littlewood
Reception - Moon and Mercury
Amelia Earhart inspired our learning this week. A girl who longed to fly like a bird and was a world-famous pilot. Her remarkable accomplishments made her an ideal role model for our children. They know that determination and preparation can help them achieve any aspiration. This book has inspired them to embrace Amelia’s idea that “if you want to do something, do it. It led to some fantastic independent writing and we made aeroplanes from boxcraft materials. We then followed instructions to create paper aeroplanes and had a fantastic time flying them on the field. We are expecting a visit from a real pilot in the next few weeks! In phonics we have continued with the suffix ed/t in words such as camped, checked and picked. It was a little tricky and any practice you can do at home would be greatly appreciated. Maths has been a week of doubles. The children have explored different ways to build doubles using real objects and practical equipment. In RE we looked at pictures of a range of churches and spotted similarities and differences between the buildings. Next, we asked the question 'Who works in a church?' And we had some very interesting answers indeed!
Moon - Jude Cooper
Mercury - Jacob Howley
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
Year 1 has had another fantastic week continuing with our new project ‘Nature Rocks’. In our Writing, we have been looking at writing a newspaper report surrounding a tiger being spotted in our gardens. The children have been fantastic using lots of beautiful imaginative language and have blown us away with their final articles. In Maths, we have continued to look at Multiplication and Division and have looked at groupings this week, with a specific focus on making equal groups. In Art, we have been at one with nature, specifically focusing on sketching the designs for our prints of flowers for next week. In Music, we have continued to focus on Graphic Notation and have started to experiment with using instruments to explore how the notations would sound played. In RE, we are looking at the creation story and have looked at what happened on each of the specific days when God created our world.
Well done Year 1 for another fantastic week. Mr Warner, Mrs Stubbs and Mrs Berzins are extremely proud of you all!
Stars of the week:
Galaxy - Jamison Morgan
Venus - Beatrice Robson
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
Year 2 have worked super hard this week. We completed our maths work on fractions and began our next topic of time. We have continued with our sentence stacking lessons based on the story of Little Red Reading Hood and have been reviewing lots of the learning we have covered already this year. In science we have been learning about the life cycle of a plant and our DT focussed on learning about where some of our food comes from. A highlight of the week was our trip to St Wilf’s Church as part of our RE topic learning about different places of worship. We were incredibly proud of how the children behaved and it was lovely to explore this special place with them. Everyone especially enjoyed finding their own spot to sit and draw whilst listening to some peaceful music. Well done year 2!
Star of the week:
Earth- Roan Catton
Mars - Isabella Leadbeater
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
We’ve had another jam-packed week of fun and learning in Year 3. In English, ‘The Happy Prince’ continues to be our narrative focus, this week stepping into the desperate shoes of a little match girl in order to inspire and refine our vocabulary choices. We are reading and analysing The Happy Prince in our whole class guided reading lessons, which the children are thoroughly enjoying, and also helps them to feel immersed from both a reading and writing perspective. In Maths, we revisited fractions of amounts, initially finding the value of a unit fraction, and then the value of a non-unit fraction. The latter requires a further step of multiplication – remembering the additional calculation has certainly challenged most of the children! Dominic from Yorkshire Cricket Board led another fun-filled cricket session on Tuesday, this time focusing on catching and teamwork. In Computing, the children finished our current computing project by creating an infographic in the form of a poster about our school Christian Values. Our week ended with a highly creative and relaxing art session, putting into practice the sketching skills we learnt last week by producing a tonal drawing with shading and texture.
Star of the week:
Saturn: Emily Westwood
Jupiter: Esta Heslop
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
This week Year 4 have really sunk their teeth into their learning. This is especially true with our English, we have continued writing out Sicilian holiday brochures using a range of year 4 writing features. However, you can’t write a holiday brochure and talk about the local cuisine without sampling some of it. So, of course that means we need to taste delicious treats such as mozzarella, pasta dishes and ice cream. In maths, we have started our newest unit, decimals. This has allowed everyone to use and show off their fabulous fractions knowledge and make a great start to noticing links between tenths as a fraction and tenths as a decimal. At the beginning of the week the children began working on their Fact files on Ebook Creator. Here the children have their own logins which will allow them to create their own Greek God fact file. As the children continue throughout the term they will add photos, key facts, websites links, edit their background and fonts about their chosen God.
Stars:
Meteor: Jack Major
Neptune: Lily Cole
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
This has been another great week in Year 5. All children have come in with a positive attitude towards and cracked on, which the teachers want to continue for the remainder of the term. We are thoroughly enjoying our class read, Holes and have spent time over the week looking at the characters, inferring what they are like through show and not tell and comparing their changes in behaviour as developments happen. In English this week, children have drafted, edited and typed up their instructions for digging a hole at Camp Green Lake. Teachers are pleased with the range of grammar skills demonstrated in this piece of writing- well done all! In Maths, we have moved onto a new unit of learning, Shape, and have worked through turns and angles so far this week. After last week’s Science, where children learnt about the stages of a human’s life cycle, this week, children have looked at other living things and their life cycles. They carried out research using a secondary source of information and presented the life cycle of a chosen living thing and compared it with another living thing’s life cycle.
Stars of the Week:
Pluto: Lewis Huthart-Smith
Asteroid: Ava Wells
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
Year 6 have continued to throw their all into their learning this week. We have been completing our Fractions, Decimals and Percentage work and moved successfully to our area and perimeter learning. Maths revision has also seen different elements being covered: shape, co-ordinates and formal calculation! The children again showed their skills in tackling whatever was thrown at them (not literally!) In English, we have again covered many areas of grammar revision as part of our English work, as well as a stand alone session to look at test style questions that cover a multitude of areas. The teachers have been so impressed by the knowledge they have retained. We completed our narrative poetry unit - Daughter of a River, in which we wrote about the struggles of living in a hot country that also suffers from a wet season that is equally as taxing. We started our new topic - a recount of a Pyramid builder who took 40 years to complete his task with thousands of other workers.
Throughout this year, each and every child has given their all, aiming to be the best they can be. With one week to go before they can truly show how much they have grown, we know that they will continue to impress and add to their knowledge in the coming week.
Stars of the Week:
Constellation: Arthur O’Driscoll
Nebular: Millie Mansell