Weekly Newsflash! Friday 19th May 2023
Mystery Garden Fairies
Overnight on Tuesday some mystery garden fairies came to West Burton and planted a range of herbs and vegetables in our planters at the front, complete with a painted wooden sign: Mrs Chapman’s Pixie Kitchen Garden. Whoever is responsible for this has gone to some considerable effort to prepare the plants/planters and do the planting itself; the garden is absolutely fantastic and Mrs Chapman is completely thrilled. If any of you know who did this, please tell them that we are truly grateful and that Mrs Chapman couldn’t be happier.
Thank you Mr Manock – our Bradford trip can go ahead!
Huge thanks to Neil Manock who responded to our plea for help regarding buses for the Bradford Interfaith trip. His son Jake works for a company called SMC Coach Hire who have been able to supply enough coaches for us to take all the children we wanted to take – Y2 to Y6 – and we are thrilled! Mr Scrafton is now busy planning the trip which will be on Thursday 8th June. More details to follow.
Thank you to all the parents who responded with suggestions to help us out, especially Mr Manock!
HUGE thanks to our PTFA – Transport for the Bradford trip is paid for!
Thanks to the amazing generosity of our PTFA , the school trip for Swallows, Kingfishers, Golden Eagles and Merlins to Bradford to visit a Mosque, Hindu Temple, and the Bombay Stores is able to go ahead (8th June). This will be a fantastic cultural experience, really enriching the children’s learning in RE.
We could not be more grateful to the PTFA. Due to their agreeing to fully fund the transport, we do not have to approach parents for financial contributions and we hope this is appreciated in these difficult times. I encourage you all to get on board with PTFA fundraising events in the future and do your best to support their work – this is an example of how truly valuable they are. Thanks PTFA, from us all!
Please be careful about what your children are watching online
It has been brought to our attention that some of our youngest children are accessing online games and videos that are not recommended for their age group. Examples include ‘Rainbow Friends’ and ‘Poppy Playtime’ (Huggy Wuggy character). Both of these fall into the ‘horror adventure’ genre and are described as containing moderate violence and horror by online ratings boards who do not recommend them for under 12s. Serious concern surrounds related content created on TikTok and YouTube that features the game characters in unsettling scenarios.
We strongly recommend that you reconsider allowing your children to view this kind of material – it can be frightening, unsettling, and confusing for young children. Please take regular opportunities to check what your children are viewing online; it is so easy to click through to inappropriate material from something you have checked and given permission for. Thank you.
SATs
Our Y2 pupils have been brilliant this week, many of them battling illness during their SATs week. Every one of the amazing Swallows (apart from those too poorly to make it) applied a positive, confident, and determined attitude during the tests and we are very proud of them!
Who is teaching your child next year?
Thank you for your patience while we have been having discussions about which teachers and support staff will be placed in which year groups next year. The classes are as follows:
| Teacher(s) | Support Staff | |
| EYFS at Bainbridge | Mrs Johnston Mrs Middleton | Mrs Iveson Mrs Pickard-Sparne Mrs Teasdale |
| Y1 at Bainbridge | Mrs Harrison* | Mrs Baldwin |
| Y2 at West Burton | Mrs Park | Mrs Donno-Fuller |
| Y3 at West Burton | Mr Greenway* | Mrs Donno-Fuller |
| Y4 at Askrigg | Mr Scrafton | Mrs Fawcett** |
| Y5 at Askrigg | Miss Collins* | Mrs Gamble** |
| Y6 at Askrigg | Miss Telford | Mr Stokes** Mrs Alderson (or cover)** |
*Base-leaders
**Please note that support staff based at Askrigg will be more fluidly distributed between the classes based on need, pupil interventions, etc. This will be determined over the coming weeks.
Instruments
As our concert is coming up, please encourage your children to take home their instruments so they can practise! We are very much looking forward to hearing them play and want them to be at their very best.
Preloved Uniform
Do you have any uniform you’d like to donate? If so, please drop it off at any of the three schools so we can add it to our collection for the upcoming uniform stall at the West Burton May Fair. Any donations are greatly appreciated, as always.
Design a Lorry Competition
Mr Stokes has organised for our federation to take part in Aldi’s in Get Set to Eat Fresh’s Design a Lorry Competition! By taking part in the competition, our children have the chance to see their designs come to life – with the three winning designs each used on their own Aldi lorry, ready to deliver produce to Aldi stores around the country. The winning student will also receive an exclusive Team GB and ParalympicsGB goody bag, plus a £100 Aldi voucher, and the school will win a £1,000 prize too! Find out more info here about this fab competition.
Robins
Our reception children have been making some fab labels using their phonics skills. We love these labels they decided to make for our opticians and for our potato bags!
This week, we have also been baking! We planned our designs first and then decorated our biscuits – don’t they look yummy?!
In other news, we are so proud of Sidney and Bunny coming FIRST in their first ever show!! Congratulations Sidney!!
Owls
In maths over the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about fractions- in particular, halves and quarters. Last week we cut (and ate!!) cookies and cucumbers to help us learn about halving. This week, we cut toast into quarters and ate it with butter and jam! We loved this lesson very much and hope more food is involved in Maths soon!
Swallows
The Swallows have had a very varied week this week! This week has been SAT’s week for the Swallows and Mr Scrafton and Miss Harper have been very impressed with the Swallows’ behaviour and attitude to the SATs. After working very hard in their SATs the Swallows relaxed with a bit of yoga. In Art the Swallows continued their work on found objects by making masks out of found objects.
The highlight of the week has been the history trip to the Dales Countryside Museum where the Swallows experienced a replica mine, learnt about the tools used in mining and interacted with artefacts belonging to a local mining family, identifying their uses and the type of person who would have used them. The Swallows finished off their day by making their own butter and sampling a miner’s lunch.
Kingfishers
In PE the kingfishers have been improving their badminton skills this week! In English the children have been writing their own version of the story ‘A Pebble in my pocket’. Once completed they shared them in small groups, discussing effective vocabulary choices.
The Kingfishers also enjoyed a wonderful visit to the Dales Countryside Museum this week. We learnt about the history of the Anglo Saxons and Vikings in the Dales and discovered that many more villages and key geographical features have Viking names in this area than Anglo Saxon ones. We then had great fun trying on Anglo Saxon & Viking clothing, jewellery and armour and looking at the tools and implements they would have used in their daily lives. As always, a huge thanks to the staff at the museum who always go out of their way to support our history learning.
Golden Eagles
In art, the Golden Eagles have been exploring artists and sculptors that use food as their inspiration. Each child chose their own image of inspiration and tried to re-create it. We explored the texture, shadow and detail of our images using a range of different materials such as sketch pencils, charcoal and oil pastels.
Merlins
This week some of the Merlin’s children took part in the cluster rounders competition at the Wensleydale School. It really was a fantastic morning with some amazing skills on show from superb diving catches to huge shots leading to rounders. One of our teams performed so well that they managed to win the whole competition by narrowly beating Leyburn in the final by half a rounder!
This Week’s Awards:
| Pupil of the week | |||||
| Robins (Nursery) | Brodie for taking the time to make sure that when icing his Teddy Bear biscuit, it matched his fantastic design. | ||||
| Robins (Reception) | Ceci for persevering with learning to ride her bike and showing great pride now that she can do it! | ||||
| Owls (Y1) | Jemima for fantastic independent writing in History about Rossa Parks! | ||||
| Swallows (Y2) | Aidan is the pupil of the week for his outstanding effort and perseverance during SATs. | ||||
| Kingfishers (Y3) | Riley for his effort and enjoyment during the history visit to the Dales Countryside Museum. | ||||
| Golden Eagles (Y4) | James for enthusiasm and effort in science. Our very own David Attenborough! | ||||
| Merlins (Y5) | Eve for politeness and enjoyment since joining our school. | ||||
| Merlins (Y6) | Dec for effort in art this week resulting in pride in his work. |
| Headteacher’s Awards | |
| BAWB | Aidan, Myles, Ben, Archie, Sammy, Joey, Rosie, Olivia, Martha, and Theodore for approaching their Y2 SATs with a great attitude: confident, determined, and positive. |
Other Awards
| Rounders (Y5&6) | Overall cluster winners, beating leyburn by half a rounder! |
| Cricket (Y4) | Overall cluster winners |
| Anna | Certificate of participation in bumblebee identification training |
| Rewarding Reading | 10 books: Florence, Anna, Isla, Ellie, Aaron, Matilda, Maciek |
| Good Samaritan Awards | For courage, care, compassion (for the children, from the children). | Nominated by |
| Owls | Annie for being a good friend and playing with him in the big playground. | Otta |
| Ada for being really kind to her when she joined a new phonics group. Ada said to Jemima: “You did really good in blue group!” | Jemima | |
| Rocco for looking after him when he was upset. | Arthur | |
| Swallows | Myles – when Joey lost his pencil from the museum, Myles gave him his pencil (luckily Mr Scrafton had a spare pencil to give Myles the next day but Myles did not know this). | Joey |
| Kingfishers | Ellie and Isla for helping to look after her since hurting her ankle. | Rene |
| Golden Eagles | William for complementing his artwork. | Hugo |
| Harry for cheering him up and Harry nominated Theo for always being there for him. | Theo | |
| Theo for always being there for him. | Harry | |
| William and Harry for allowing him to be part of their group and looking out for him. | James | |
| Merlins | Holly M for helping her carry her things when she had a sore arm. | Katie |
| Jo for helping him tidy up the Lego. | Archie | |
| Layla for being a good friend | Jo |
| Other | |
| Best Learning Space (classroom) | Robins |
| Most Effective learning Environment (school) | Bainbridge |
| House Point Winning Team | Dormice |
| Best Class Attendance | Merlins and Swallows (100%) |
