Weekly Newsflash! Friday 23rd June 2023
Go Jo!
Inspired by the river talk at school, Jo wanted to make a difference and took her mum litter picking. It is wonderful when children take their learning home and we are delighted that Jo is keen to look after the environment, in this case, our rivers!
Part-time Headship
After a number of years in the role of co-head alongside me, Mrs Harrison has made the decision to step down from this position. Don’t worry – she isn’t leaving us – just looking to step back from this particular role. On behalf of governors and staff, may I thank Mrs Harrison for her dedication and her significant contribution to the senior leadership of our schools.
Today we held interviews for the role and will let you know the outcome next week. The school council enjoyed taking part by interviewing the candidates too!
Teaching Assistant Vacancy
Why not take a look at our latest vacancy? We are looking for an enthusiastic and highly motivated individual, passionate about the curriculum and standards, who will join us in bringing learning alive for our children through inspirational and dedicated practice.
Click here to read all about the vacancy and to download an application pack.
If you are curious, why not come and talk to me about it?
Collective Worship Ambassadors
On Thursday, our new Collective Worship Ambassadors attending a training session with the Diocese. The children impressed with their knowledge of collective worship and its different components and planned and prepared collective worship for later in the term.
Chickenpox
Please can all parents keep a close eye on their children over the weekend as unfortunately chickenpox is still doing the rounds! Please see the NHS website here for advice.
PTFA Minutes
Please find the minutes for the latest PTFA meeting here.
Dales Dance Summer Showcase – 16th July
Lots of our pupils will be taking part in the Dales Dance Summer Showcase!! It’s set to be a fantastic afternoon so please come along to show your support! Tickets available here.
Askrigg Produce Show
We have been very lucky to have visitors from the Askrigg & District Produce Association Show come to each of our schools to help with the children’s entries! Please take a look at the schedule for this years show here – there is small prize for every entry and 1st , 2nd and 3rd receive a cash prize!
Get active with the Summer Reading Challenge 2023!
Children can once again sign up for the Summer Reading Challenge at their local library during the holidays. This year the theme is Ready Set Read! and is all about the power of play, sport, games and physical activity. The challenge for children is to read 6 library books of their choice and collect special stickers and other prizes along the way – everyone who finishes will receive a limited-edition Ready Set Read! medal and a certificate. Any child aged 4 to 11 can join in and the challenge runs from Sat 15th July until Sat 9th Sept.
Nursery Taster Sessions
Did you know that every 3 year old is entitled to 15 hours of free nursery funding?! Next month, we have a few taster sessions open for our fantastic nursery! Why not come along and get a ‘feel’ for what we offer – our nursery boasts a free-flow outdoor area together with the latest facilities and equipment indoors across two rooms.
Our open days are due to take place on the 4th and 5th July between 13:00 – 15:00, we hope to see you there! If you plan on coming along, please email or call the office with your details so we can be ready to welcome you.
Summer Sports Club!
Chris Bullock is holding a sports club at Bainbridge during the summer holidays – please find more information here.
Uniform Update
The link to our uniform website will go live on Monday – an email will go out to parents when it is available. It will also be posted on the Newsflash each week, and on the website here. Please note that sizing samples of the new uniform is currently available at Bainbridge, and we will have it available at West Burton celebration assembly next week.
Good Luck Beatrice!
This Saturday, 24th June, one of our fantastic pupils will be performing at The Forum Theatre in Northallerton with her dance school. The whole dance school has been working very hard on their production and we wish them the very best of luck!! There are tickets still available if you would like to attend, please find the link here.
Macmillan Coffee Morning
The Great North Author Tour, The Wonky Tree Bookshop
To celebrate Independent Bookshop Week, The Great North Author Tour 2023 comes to The Wonky Tree Bookshop, Leyburn on Saturday 24th June between 2.05pm and 2.50pm. 11 fantastic children’s authors arrive in a minibus! Do come and meet the authors, have a book signed and see if we manage to squeeze 11 authors into the shop! More details here.
Fire Station Open Day – Northallerton
All Creatures Great and Small!
Wensleydale Community Arts Festival FUN DAY!
Calendar
Did you know you can synchronise your calendar with our school calendar? 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.
Robins
We have observed the sheep skeleton and named some bones. Then we found the same bones on our bodies! We’ve also been making rockets! Off to Jupiter we go!!
Owls
We have started the tricky topic of money this week in Maths! We have looked at some coins and made small amounts with them. Mrs Park likes to sell a lot of food for 20p or less!
In RE, we have continued our work on sacred places. We discussed why a church is special to Christians and started a checklist of things we might see on our visit next week. We are very excited for our walk… and to see Rev Dave!
On Wednesday, some children out of the Swallow and Owl class went to Leyburn Primary School to do a fun orienteering event. Most of our children had never done orienteering before but they did an amazing job! The children worked very well with students from other schools and did everything with smiles on their faces!
Swallows
In RE we have continued our work on Judaism by thinking about why Jewish people celebrate Shabbat. The Swallows looked at a number of items used to celebrate Shabbat and items and pictures that represented Shabbat, drawing links between them. Next week we will look at how Shabbat is celebrated.
Our coastal work in geography continued through the researching of tide pools and the creatures you might find in them.
On Wednesday, some of the class represented us in the orienteering competition, whilst this was taking place the remainder of the swallows joined up with the Robins and did their own orienteering activity.
Kingfishers
The kingfishers used Digimaps (OS maps) for schools to plan their route from West Burton to Aysgarth and back. We used the key to locate A and B roads, footpaths and landmarks. The children behaved impeccably and it was lovely to hear their discussions about where we were and the next part of our route as we walked along.
They new when the steep climbs were coming due to the contours on the map, thank goodness we had an ice cream stop before walking back!
Thank you to the PTFA for funding our ice creams and thank you to Mr and Mrs Tooley for looking after us at the Falls Coffee Shop the ice creams were delicious.
Golden Eagles
On Wednesday, the Golden Eagles had the pleasure of watching ‘A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough’. We listened to David Attenborough’s ‘witness statement’ as he explained how he has watched humans destroy and manipulate our planet and the natural world throughout his life.
We were able to collect data through his statistics and concluded that from 1937 to 2020, the planet has lost over half of our wilderness leaving only 35% remaining, this number is only going to keep declining. We were shocked by these figures and are currently working on creating posters for endangered species to raise awareness and encourage people to take action to protect our animals and nurture our planet.
Merlins
This week the Merlins have had assessment week. All the Merlins have been working extremely hard and we are very proud of their efforts. After we had completed our tests we worked together to see if we could help each other pick up more marks. This is a really useful process and the Merlins really enjoyed it.
A few photos from PE this week where the Merlins worked on athletics skills and improving our own performance.
This Week’s Awards
| Pupil of the week | |
| Robins (nursery) | Grace D for enjoyment in school life! Grace has grown in confidence and independence recently. |
| Robins (reception) | Rosie for enjoyment of reading. Rosie has used some beautiful expression this week. |
| Owls (Y1) | Aimee for working well with children she didn’t know at orienteering. 2 teachers from other schools mentioned this to me about Aimee! |
| Swallows (Y2) | Lizzy for effort and enjoyment in all lessons. Evidenced by her thoughtful contributions to classroom discussions. |
| Kingfishers (Y3) | Fearne for her wonderful OS map skills during our geography walk. Fearne followed her map the entire route, referencing A and B roads as we crossed them and pointing out buildings and landmarks! |
| Golden Eagles (Y4) | Lily for consistently following all aspects of our respect code and having a positive and mature approach to learning. |
| Merlins (Y5) | Holly M for effort and enjoyment in her learning which has led to some good progress. |
| Merlins (Y6) | Henry for a positive attitude towards assessments this week. |
| Headteacher’s Awards | |
| Bainbridge | Douglas for his positive attitude to all learning, he is enthusiastic and always ready to learn. |
| Askrigg | Jo for effort and responsibility, taking action to look after her local environment, following the river talk in school. |
| West Burton | Toby for always helping others, from supporting younger children at the start of the day to reminding people to make good choices on shuttle buses, thank you! |
| Good Samaritan Awards | For courage, care, compassion (for the children, from the children) | Nominated by |
| Kingfishers | Isla and Matilda for helping her down the steep hills on our geography walk. | Maisie |
| Isla and Matilda for using their coats to shelter her from the rain on the way back from PE. | Louisa | |
| Golden Eagles | Arthur for trying to help him get over his fear of bees. | Oliver |
| Other Awards | |
| Best Learning Space (classroom) | Golden Eagles |
| Most Effective Learning Environment (school) | Askrigg |
| House point winning team | Otters and Red Squirrels |
| Best class attendance | Robins (99%) |
| Super Scientist Award (science club) | Eve Carlisle |
