Weekly Newsflash! 18th October 2024
Coming up next week…
Monday | – N/R/Y1 Sports Club @ Bainbridge |
Tuesday | – EYFS Balance Bike Sessions – Forest Skills Club @ Askrigg |
Wednesday | Singing Club @ Askrigg – Y2- 6 Sports Club @ Askrigg |
Thursday | – Purple for Polio Day – Clarinet Lessons – Cycle Club @ Bainbridge |
Friday | – Celebration Assembly @ Askrigg – 2:30pm – Science Club @ Askrigg |
Calendar
Headteacher’s Message
Dear families,
As I write, our children at Bainbridge are preparing for their new-style Celebration Assembly this afternoon, in which they will be working collaboratively to show off all the amazing work they have done this term, as well as singing some songs. I’m really looking forward to seeing them perform in the ‘real thing’ this afternoon – I hope you all enjoy it as much as I have! The children at Askrigg are also practising and are looking forward to their assembly next Friday.
This week we said goodbye to our lovely teaching assistant, Abbey Teasdale, who is venturing into a new career. Abbey worked with a wide range of children during her time with us; from our very youngest nursery children all the way up to our Year 6 pupils. She was always very organised, a whizz with technology and kind to the children. We are going to miss her greatly!
You may have heard that the Department for Education (DfE) has updated its guidance for schools around attendance. This guidance raises expectations of what schools must do to promote good attendance, including added restrictions on the absences headteachers are allowed to authorise. As part of these changes, we will now be sending out attendance information for your children every half term, starting on Monday 21st October. A letter summarising the changes will accompany this data; you can view an online copy of this letter HERE.
After half term, we are also going to be using a new method of applying for authorisation of an absence. This will now be done via a Microsoft Form that will be available on the website. Paper forms can be still be downloaded and returned to the office via email/in person if that is your preference – more information about this will be sent next week.
If you would like any more information about attendance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Have a lovely weekend!
Purple4Polio
We are asking the children to wear purple and bring in a 20p donation to raise awareness of polio on Thursday 24th October.
The purple crocus is a symbol of Rotary’s worldwide campaign to eradicate polio, with its colour representing the purple dye used to mark the finger of a child to indicate they have received their life saving oral polio vaccine. Children will be given a corm to plant at home, with the purple flower serving as a poignant reminder come Spring.
Purple4Polio_Factsheet_The_Basics-2021-1PTFA Pumpkin Disco
Volunteers are needed, and are much appreciated. Please get in touch if you are available 🙂 Please also find the minutes from the latest PTFA meeting HERE.
Primary School Tutoring
HT-Tutoring-PDFRobins
We have been learning more about Harvest in Robins. We talked about being thankful to God, farmers and fisherman at Harvest time. We sampled some fruit and did some vegetable printing. You can see how excited the children were to have watermelon… and less so about pineapple!
We’ve made playdough!
We reached 25 tokens this week in Robins so we had our time on the bike track! We had lots of fun on the bike track and climbing too!
We went on a walk to look at the signs of autumn! Our smiling faces show what a great time we had!
Owls
In science we have had the final lesson on senses……..smell. The children were very good at guessing what was inside the smelling pots. They have really enjoyed exploring the 5 senses.
In PSHE the children received “I am proud of…” tickets as part of our Jigsaw lesson, they also talked to a partner about the things they are proud of.
We were excited to receive the Children’s Book Award books last week and listen to them before voting for our favourite.
Swallows
This week the weather has been very changeable, on Monday the Swallows were out in the sunshine practising their football skills and on Wednesday we were hiding from the rain indoors working on routines that linked different jumps together!
In science we have started looking at materials, sorting them in different ways and thinking about their uses and why they would be suitable for those uses.
Wednesday was a very busy day, not only was it wear a wooly day but we also earned our second reward of extra breaktime – can the Swallows reach their third reward of bring a teddy into school by the end of the half term?
Golden Eagles
The Golden Eagles have had another great week of learning! In Maths we have been solving problems using our reasoning and calculating skills. We particularly enjoyed playing a game called ‘Strike it Out’.
We now know how to put our clarinets together and to fix the reed in place independently. We have been practising playing notes in unison and improving our technique so there are less squeaks!
In science we collected leaves from the school field and created our own classification keys using branching diagrams.
Herons
Our Herons have been very busy this week, using their best team-working skills to create towers from different objects!
Merlins
In the Merlins, we have thoroughly enjoyed reading our class book ‘Skellig’. We practised reading a chapter of Almond’s work that contained dialogue – in pairs, we took on the role of Michael, the main protagonist, and Mina, his mysterious friend. We have finished writing our own chapters, predicting the next part of the story, following Almond’s style.
In Maths this week, we moved onto our new topic ‘Fractions’. We have been exploring equivalent fractions and learning how to simply them – we are very enthusiastic about our new maths focus!