General Announcements

Please see the latest edition of Governor News

Newsletter Summer Term 2019 (3)

As part of Sainsbury’s 150th Birthday, incorporating all Sainsbury’s brands such as Argos and Habitat, they are celebrating the community roots from which they started by each supporting local areas with 150 days of work with the community.

Last week, we were lucky enough to have a great team of people from our local Argos Distribution Centre, who chose our school to come and work with, carrying out some well needed maintenance across the grounds.

We cannot thank them enough for their incredible hard work, in all weathers, whilst keeping a smile on their faces all the while – they were definitely the A-Team!

As part of their last day with us, they even joined in our School Sports Day by running the ‘Egg & Spoon’ race, cheered on by the children – it certainly made our day!

The team worked hard in repairing and treating all the wooden benches and structures around the school, repairing and painting the Pirate Ship in our early years area and also applying new felt on the PE shed so it doesn’t leak!  There were repairs to the gardening beds in early years as well as some much needed weeding!

 

 

 

From the whole of the school we wish to say a huge thank you to the team from Argos for making such a difference.

Our school KS2 performance of Annie is getting ever closer now, as it all starts to come together.  We are incredibly proud of all of the children; the improvement in their confidence is overwhelming and we know you will be incredibly proud too!

Just a reminder of the arrangements for the two days:

Monday, 8 July during the day:
We will be holding both a dress rehearsal and a technical rehearsal during the day at the Brewhouse Arts Centre in Burton. We would kindly ask that Key Stage 2 children be dropped off at the Brewhouse in the morning between 9:15 and 9:30am, enabling children with siblings in Key Stage 1 to be dropped off at School beforehand. If you are struggling to drop your child off, it may be you could speak with a relative or another parent to help out. Children will need a packed lunch and should wear comfortable clothes instead of their uniform. The children will need to be picked up from the Brewhouse at 4:00pm, this will give parents with Key Stage 1 siblings the chance to pick them up from school beforehand. Note on the 9 July, the children will come into school as normal during the day time.

On the evening of the performances:
The performances will take place on Monday 8 July and Tuesday 9 July at The Brewhouse Arts Centre in Burton (7pm start).
The children will need to wear their school black/grey trousers or black/grey school skirt, black school socks (no tights) and their black school shoes for the performances, together with their Annie t-shirt – don’t forget to put your order in if you haven’t already.
On the evening of each performance, the children will need to arrive at the Brewhouse at 6:15pm and wait in the bar area. Class teachers will then register the children and take them to get ready in the dressing rooms backstage.
The production will finish at around 9.00pm and the children will be taken to sit back onto the stage once all of their class is changed. Parents will be invited into the auditorium to wait for their child.
We will dismiss the children a class at a time from the auditorium, making sure that they go home with the correct person. The usual designated pick-up list will apply unless specific arrangements have been advised beforehand.

At Popcorn Club this Wednesday, the children will be able to enjoy the wonderful Disney film, Mary Poppins Returns.

If you wish to book your child into this club, please do so in the usual way via SchoolMoney.

Thank you

Our Curious Caterpillars and Busy Bees were given an insight into software design by John, a software architect from the British Library.

For those who haven’t heard of this role before, a software architect is a software developer expert who makes high-level design choices and dictates technical standards, including software coding standards, tools, and platforms.

As well as explaining about his work, John also did some computer coding with the children on a package we use in school called Scratch, which you may have heard the children talking about.

It was great for the children to see where their coding skills can possibly take them in the future, whether it be in software design or game design.

 

As part of our World of Work Week activities taking place, we were fortunate to have a Forensic Scientist come in to school to work with some of the children.

Their task was to collect all the forensic evidence from a ‘crime scene’ across several locations in the school grounds using a variety of methods.  Once dressed in their protective clothing, then the forensic investigation could begin.

  

 

 

   

  

 

As you can see from the photographs, the investigation was very thorough; from taking moulds of footprints, to finger printing etc, all whilst documenting the process and gathering photographic evidence.

   

 

As if the forensic science wasn’t exciting enough, we even had a reporter from BBC East Midlands Today filming for the local news as part of our World of Work week!

 

 

We are pleased to announce that we have now secured the services of Clubs Complete for wrap-around provision for our school from September.

On Thursday, 4th July 2019, between 3.30pm and 4.30pm, representatives from Clubs Complete will be available in the school hall to talk to.  This is not a formal sit-down presentation, so just pop in to school at any point between the above times and they’ll aim to answer your questions.

It is worth noting that if any of you use childcare vouchers, Clubs Complete will accept these, ultimately helping you save on the cost.

It’s always good to put Maths into perspective as to where it’s used in every day life and that’s exactly what Peter did, a local accountant, as part of our World of Work Week last week.

As it was coming up to our School Summer  Fayre, the children had to imagine that they were running the sweet stall.  Throughout the activity, they looked at stock, cost, selling price and profit etc. building up their spreadsheet data as they went along, also adding some formulas to make the calculations.  The children really embraced the activity as it was something which was relatable to them.

 

 

From September, we are introducing a software package called  ‘Times Table Rockstars’.  The Curious Caterpillars have been taking part in the pilot Year 4 multiplication test over the last few weeks and they are pretty good at their times tables.  With this in mind, Peter challenged the children to see if they could beat him – this caused much excitement amongst the children.  The outcome was incredibly close but Peter just pipped them to the post by 3 questions!

 

As part of our World of Work Week activities, we were very pleased to welcome Wayne from Burton Albion Community Trust in to school.

Working with the Curious Caterpillars and the Busy Bees, Wayne discussed with the children about ‘Enterprise’, explaining how important it is to work as a team and build up resilience in whatever you do.  It doesn’t matter how many different ideas you have or even how many failures you have, as long as you learn from the things that went wrong and persevere.

The children talked about the modern day entrepreneurs that they knew about; Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg for example, as well as discussing historical people like Thomas Edison; a prime example of perseverance, self belief and resilience.