Welcome to our new style news-release

Thank you for all your feedback about the way we present news to our most important stakeholders – our families. We have listened. Each week, all of our news will be presented all on one page, and you will be sent a link via email.

News will include pictures and updates from all classes; there will no longer be separate news items on each class page so you will not have to navigate to different pages to see our weekly news. Please note however, that this will mean in a reduction in the number of photos posted otherwise the weekly news would be extremely long.

All this week’s awards are also included at the bottom of the page.

We look forward to gathering your views about this after a few weeks of trying it out.

Parent Forum

Thanks you to those of you who came to our first post-covid parent forum this week. We really value your feedback. Please click here to read detailed feedback from your suggestions/queries/issues raised.

Welcome Mrs Teasdale

We are delighted to welcome Mrs Teasdale to our EYFS support staff team from next week. We are certain that she will settle in quickly and will be welcomed by our wonderful team of staff and children. Special thanks to Miss Peacock who has stepped in to support us while we had a vacancy – her help has been invaluable.

Christmas Services

We are thrilled that all of our families can come together for Christmas worship and celebration on Tuesday next week, especially after the past two years.

Children in years 2 – 6 are encouraged to bring Christmas jumpers to wear, for both the afternoon and evening performances.

If your child is able to attend the 6:00pm service, please can they arrive at St. Andrew’s for 5:45pm. EYFS and Y1 children should come in their costumes (which we will send home after the afternoon performance). There will be drinks and mince pies afterwards courtesy of our hardworking and supportive PTFA. There will also be a collection for church and PTFA on leaving.

After the service, while refreshments are being served, we will hand responsibility for your children back over to you!

Please bring your best singing voices and Christmas spirit. We are so excited to see you!

Calendar

Feedback about our online calendar’s new feature (enabling it to synchronise with your phones / devices) has been really positive. Click here to visit the calendar and click the link at the bottom of the page that says ‘subscribe to calendar’ – this will enable you to push events out to your personal calendars.

Upper Wensleydale Newsletter Writing Competition 2022

WOW! Congratulations to the following children:

Years 3-4 – School Trophy and school prize of £100 book token:

Winner: Otis M. who will receive a £50 book token and a trophy to keep. The story will be published in February edition of the newsletter. A great story -well done!  You’re in control of your story, its plot and weird, wonderful characters.  Good touches of humour and a range of well-chosen words. Successful writing.  An impressive piece of work.

Runner Up: Rene O. who will receive a £25 book token and a framed certificate. The story will be published in March edition of the newsletter. This was fun to read!  It’s clever to make the dragon egg hatching and the dragon seem so real, especially the painting catching fire and Draggy’s breath keeping you warm in winter.  A real success.  Well done.

Years 5-6: Although the winners in this age group were from another school the judge felt the 2 entries below deserved a special Highly Commended award and they will receive a £10 book token each.

Tommy S – This worked well!  Although your characters are fruit, you give them personalities and the attack on the castle is handled convincingly.  Your writing flows and is very accurate with a good range of vocabulary.  A very successful and entertaining story by a confident writer.

Georgie B – There’s some really good writing in this story.  The strong opening paragraph sets the scene, the dialogue is realistic and the topic for History cleverly matches the situation. The second part is trickier to handle, but your imagination and good word choices carry the story through. A promising writer.

Assessment Week

Your child may have told you about some assessments they have been sitting this week. Every term we assess pupils in maths, grammar, and reading. When the assessments have been marked and processed, we will send home your child’s assessment papers for your information, along with information about what their standardised scores mean. This may be after Christmas.

School Lunches

Just a friendly reminder that if you haven’t already completed your lunch form, please do so as soon as you can. If you have any issues or queries, please contact the school office. The form can be found here. Thank you in advance.

Robins

The Robins have had a wonderful time frolicking in the mud this week! Unfortunately over-trousers were forgotten this time, oops! During the rest of the week, coloured chalk was used to create some elf faces in the emotion corner! A range of emotions were shown – happy, angry, sad – but after chatting and sharing ideas all the elves were happy! In Reception, the children were getting into the Christmas spirit by making their own Advent calendar to count down the days until Christmas!!

Owls

This week the Owls have been on fire with their phonics! They have also been hard at work for DT day – making Christmas related sliders! Don’t they all look fantastic?!

Swallows

This week the Swallows have been very busy in Music, exploring ‘dot notation’, composing and playing their own simple musical phrases! In Art, they have been making monoprints using carbon paper – this is inspired by the work of Xgaoc’o Xare. And finally, in History the Swallows debated whether it was right for the Plotters to try and blow up the Houses of Parliament.

Kingfishers

In Science, the Kingfishers have been exploring whether gravity has a greater pull than magnetic force and whether all forces need contact. Next week they will be exploring why magnets attract and repel. In the reading shed, both the Swallows and the Kingfishers are enjoying reading and sharing the books together. The reading shed was initially set up by Mrs Fawcett last year with the help of funding from the PTFA – thank you so much to everyone involved.

At West Burton a big thank you is required to Mrs Alderson and the eco warriors for making the advent wreath for West Burton School. It is now on the worship table in the hall where the first candle (hope) has been lit during collective worship this week.

Golden Eagles

In Art, the Golden Eagles have been looking at tessellations and what makes them effective. They have been enjoying creating their own. The Golden Eagles and Merlins also thoroughly enjoyed their collective worship led by Rev Dave – learning new songs and analysing the lyrics.

Merlins

In PE, the Merlins have been further developing their tactics for tchoukball . They are becoming more confident at applying the rules of this game as time goes on! The Merlins have also been busy bees preparing for their DT day – they are looking at building playground shelters and have considered some design prototypes using matchsticks. 

The Merlins have also been exploring a new web app called TinkerCAD. This app allows the children to design and make their own 3D shapes – they’ve been having lots of fun with this and are invited to use it at home if they wish! If pupils do decide to give it a whirl at home, they just need to login with their usual RMUnify credentials.

This Week’s Awards:

Pupil of the week
Robins (Nursery)					George for being fabulously polite and sharing his ideas confidently.
Robins (Reception)					Ceci for showing good manners and improving listening skills.
Owls (Y1)					Libby for effort and enjoyment on DT day- making her own slider during independent learning time!
Swallows (Y2)					Rosie for consistent effort in maths leading to significant progress in assessments.
Kingfishers (Y3)					Matilda for her positive approach to all learning.
Golden Eagles (Y4)					Abe for his mature and positive approach throughout assessment week and always following all aspects of our respect code.
Merlins (Y5)					Amelie for effort and diligence in her assessments this week.
Merlins (Y6)					Kirsty for consistent effort and good choices during assessment week.

Headteacher’s Awards
Bainbridge	Maisie M for her enthusiasm and enjoyment of reading. Maisie came to ask me if she could share a book with me in my special reading area. What enjoyment we had from reading together!
Askrigg	Connie O for working hard on ways to manage her own emotions and feeling much more positive as a result!
West Burton	Florence G for talking openly with us in assembly to challenge stereotypes about physical appearance. She was really open-minded to embracing other views.

Good Samaritan Awards	For courage, care, compassion (for the children, from the children).	Nominated by
Robins	Dexter for being incredibly helpful whenever anything needs doing.	All of Robins
Owls	Emma for helping Faye.	Rocco
	Rose for helping Jonathan when he couldn’t get his helmet off.	Charlie
	Aimee for making her smile by being nice to her.	Jemima
Kingfishers	Florence for sharing resources with her.	Maisie
Golden Eagles	Harry because he makes her happy and he makes her smile when she is sad.	Lydia
	Abe because he helped him to improve his maths assessment by supporting him to understand a question.	William
Merlins	Jo for being a caring friend and asking her to play with her when she was alone.	Lily

Other
Best Learning Space (classroom)	Swallows
Most Effective learning Environment (school)	Not awarded this week!
House Point Winning Team	Dormice
Best Class Attendance	Swallows and Kingfishers (100%)