Weekly Newsletter
Friday 1st December 2023
This week in school
Nursery mornings From Monday the Nursery doors will be open from 8:50am so the children's day can start at 9am like the rest of school. This is part of our work on improving punctuality and means that families will not have to wait around after dropping off older children. We would also ask that you leave as soon as your child has gone into Nursery so we can keep the school site safe and secure. Thank you.
Parents evenings December 2023 The links for parent's evenings should have arrived by text and email. so that you can book a slot. A reminder will be sent by email 1 day before your appointment. If you have a video appointment and there is a technical hitch, please just send the class teacher a message through Dojo and it can be rearranged: please do not call the office as there will be no-one to take your call!
Brayton Christmas Lights The PTA are working with the Parish Council on the Christmas Light Switch On/Christmas Market event.
This will be on Friday 1st December 5.30pm-7.30pm on the Green, with some stalls and refreshments in the Victoria Hall.
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.
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 keps on getting better and better: thanks for this! The lowest attendance in the school is in Reception and we would ask families in that year group to be especially aware of the amount of absence your child has had, especially if you have had a holiday in term time. We will be contacting families directly to follow up concerns.
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
Friday 1 December - Brayton Christmas lights switch-on (evening)
Wednesday 6 & Thursday 7 December - Parents evenings
Tuesday 12 December - Christmas services at church (am, classes and timings TBC)
Wednesday 13 December - Chrismas lunch and jumper day
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 (school 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 over the next week to.....
Benjamin Turner
Roan Catton
Alexander Auker
Katelyn Major
Georgia Hick
Teagan Dos Santos
This week in classrooms
Nursery - Stars
What a festive start to December and the beginning of Advent! We have started our own Advent calendar and begun our countdown to Christmas, exploring the theme of stars through the stories of How to Draw a Star, and How to Catch a Star. We have fished for stars in the water, played with starry playdough, made starry calendars and tried to melt the frozen stars. We have enjoyed making nursery all Christmassy and we even have a Christmas tree in our home corner to decorate! We have also had fun in our ‘dark den’, using torches to help us see.
We have been learning our Christmas songs ready to share with you at our Christmas sing-a-long. In phonics we have continued learning about instrumental sounds. We have added sounds to stories, playing our instruments in different ways. We have also played ‘Hidden Instruments’, where we have to find all the instruments hiding around nursery and then make our own orchestra. In maths we have continued to make repeating patterns and also spotting where there are mistakes in a pattern.
Star of the Week: Willow Bray
Reception - Moon and Mercury
In Reception we have focussed our learning on yet another traditional story of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’. Again, we have enjoyed learning the repeated refrains, such as ‘Who’s that trip trapping over my bridge?’ We have also seen some very interesting bridge designs from our budding architects! During Drawing Club, the children have created some very imaginative pictures of the Troll, with special codes to make something exciting happen!
In maths, we have explored the composition of numbers 1-5. Identified and named shapes which have four sides and then provided the children with a selection of paper shapes. We noticed that when we folded a shape we could see other shapes inside!
In phonics we introduced the new sounds ai, ee, igh and oa. We have continued to form the letters correctly for each of these digraphs, using the mnemonics and we have been blending and segmenting words containing these sounds. It was exciting to learn that a sound containing 3 letters is called a trigraph.
In Jigsaw we have been thinking about homes. We had to build homes for 2 teddy bears and then talked about if they were the same and if it is ok if they are different. We then talked about our own homes and celebrated that they are all different but special to us.
This afternoon we performed the nativity dress rehearsal for Key Stage One. Your children have all worked incredibly hard and we are extremely proud. Let the festivities begin!
Star of the week Moon: Elkie Ferguson
Mercury: Zaine Hartnell
Year 1 - Galaxy and Venus
This week in Year 1, we have continued to work hard developing our English skills through applying our phonics knowledge to reading fluently and writing for purpose, across the curriculum. In our Reading Response lessons we have explored ‘The Wright Brothers’ by Mini Movers and Shakers, developing our comprehension skills, as well as retrieving lots of facts through historical enquiry about the lives of these significant individuals and inventors. The children have amazed us by comparing the similarities and differences between aircrafts from the past and present, their design, construction, and travel. Whilst in science, we have continued to explore materials and their properties, conducting scientific investigations, and in maths we have focused on numbers from 10 to 20 and their place value; we are beginning to develop wonderful fluency and reasoning skills! We have also begun our exploration, design, and construction of a textile design product- keep an eye out for our amazing sewing skills.
We continue to be beyond proud of the children's work ethic and effective learning attitudes. Keep it up Superstars!
Galaxy: Reggie Russell
Venus: Ryder Varley
Year 2 - Earth and Mars
In Maths this week, we have been working hard on our knowledge of the properties of shapes. We have learnt about vertical and horizontal lines and using these to identify lines of symmetry. In Geography we learnt about map symbols and used these to create our own maps. In English, we began our new unit writing a narrative. We enjoyed finding exciting vocabulary for our sentence stacking, especially exciting adjectives. In Science we’ve been comparing the suitability of glass and plastic for particular uses. Our new RE topic is ‘Why is Christmas important for Christians?' and we began by recapping the story of the first Christmas. We have started Chrrsitmas thoughts in DT too as we have designed Christmas cards ready to include a lever or a slider. Well done Year 2! Another excellent week!
Star of the Week
Earth: Oscar Johnston
Mars: Jenson Riley
Year 3 - Jupiter and Saturn
This week in English the children have completed their own independent versions of the story ‘Flood’. We have again been really impressed at how the children have created their own detailed sentences that included the grammar features covered during our sentence stacking lessons in previous weeks. It’s great to see how confident they are now becoming.
In Maths we have completed our final steps in our addition and subtraction unit focusing on complements to 100, estimating answers and inverse operations.
In Geography the children have been learning how they can use four figure grid references to locate different places on a map. The children really enjoyed this and showed they have a good understanding of how to read an ordnance survey map.
On Tuesday in Science the children answered this week's big question ‘What is soil?’ by researching using secondary sources. We were all quite surprised to find out how many different layers soil has and how long it takes for new soil to form.
Finally on Friday we moved onto our third project in our Digital Art unit which involves the children learning how to design a level for a platform game using stamps and copying and pasting to build up the different graphics, then adding layers and animating it with multiple frames.
Well done Year 3. :)
Star of the Week:
Jupiter: Jemma Richmond
Saturn: Sam Coltman
Year 4 - Neptune and Meteor
This week we have been busy learning our 9s and 7s times tables in Maths- we even learnt a trick to help us remember our 9 times tables! In English, we started the week by editing our letters to chosen authors. We have now moved onto our new unit - creative narrative and we are focusing on the book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. We can already tell this book will inspire some lovely pieces of independent creative writing. In Science, we have learnt all about the journey food takes as it travels through our digestive system. In History, we discovered just how cruel the Tudors could be as we learnt all about Tudor crime and punishment! The classroom became a Tudor courtroom as the children role-played some characters and the ‘jury’ had to decide what punishments they should be given as a result of their crimes! We learnt about the act of ‘treason’ and made links with our class novel where the character Will is discovering how King Henry VIII punished people for their acts of treason. The children have continued to develop their computing skills on scratch this week as they have learnt how to debug a variety of programs. Another great week Year 4, well done!
Stars of the Week:
Meteor: Alex Beaumont
Neptune: Imogen Herring
Year 5 - Asteroid and Pluto
The children have been working on coordinating and subordinating clauses in English. They have been using the information they found about Victorian punishments last week to create sentences. On Thursday, they learnt something new - parenthesis. We were very happy to see that the children have started to think more independently about their writing. They are coming up with their own ideas, writing sentences and then trying to challenge themselves more to improve their writing. It is a great attitude to have, as they are now aware that every piece of big writing is being assessed against the Year 5 writing standards. In Guided Reading, we are making our way through Street Child, and the life of Jim. He’s had it tough recently. He has been sold to Grimy Nick, works all day and night, barely gets fed and now always lives in fear of Nick’s dog Snipe. The children are showing a great understanding of the text by answering a range of different styled questions every day. In History, the children were given the task of comparing Victorian punishments between 1500 and 1750. The children have been very surprised and shocked with how harsh the punishments have been, and how some people were punished even if they were innocent. Science was a bit tougher this week, as the children had to come up with their own investigation to answer the enquiry question. A strange concept as they have been used to teachers telling them what to do. However, they worked hard and it was great to see them proud of themselves.
Asteroid: Lacey Mae Booth
Pluto: Esmae Winterburn
Year 6 - Nebular and Constellation
A week well done in Year 6! The week started off with our final round of Autumn assessments. Information from these will be shared to parents and carers during parents’ evening next week. In Maths, children have learnt how to multiply fractions by integers and by fractions. We move onto division with fractions next week. For our final Titanic themed writing piece, children have used historical skills to infer and gather evidence from primary and secondary sources to debate the question of who was most to blame for loss of life on Titanic. From our historical skill, moving into next week, children will debate before writing a balanced argument. In Art, we started our sequence of learning on sketching and drawing by experimenting with mark making. Children used both dry and wet media to mark make. Children learnt about techniques such as hatching, cross-hatching, splitting and scumbling. In RE, continuing with our learning on the Kingdom of God, children listened to a number of parables and made inferences about how the Kingdom of God could be interpreted. As part of our local history and geography study, we again explored a number of sources and inferred what could be learnt about Selby at the turn of the 20th century. In Computing, children were adding colour elements to a black and white image using an editing tool with some striking outcomes produced. A busy, busy week as always in Year 6, but great efforts and behaviours for learning noted.
Nebular: Zachary Foulger
Constellation: Lewis Herring