Byfleet Primary Newsletter

Dear Parents/Carers,

• It's been wonderful hearing our children rehearsing their Christmas carol concert songs this week, our enormous Christmas tree has been decorated, Santa's postbox is being filled with cards from the children and the Christmas disco was great fun last week. There's a real festive feel around school, which is lovely.

• An enormous thank you to the volunteers from our FRIENDS of Byfleet PTA who organised the Christmas Disco, helping us raise valuable funds. We will be using these funds towards wall murals (map of our local area Byfleet, world map and a historical timeline linked to the curriculum). We are truly grateful for all the volunteers who helped organise this event.

• With the weather getting milder and colds being more prevalent, plus an increase in self-isolating along with other factors, there has been an increase in staff absence over the past fortnight, yet we have managed to continue teaching with minimum staff available. This has required staff in school to go above and beyond to ensure we've been able to keep school open, provide safe adult-pupil ratios and offer Google Classroom remote learning for children who are Covid +. We are grateful for the gratitude shown towards our staff.

• Tuesday 14th December is Christmas dinner day and class parties - please remember to wear a Christmas jumper and/or hat for the occasion.

• Our club bookings for the Spring term have now gone live. We're excited to be offering 17 different clubs across the Spring term, such as Gym, Football, KS 2 Choir, Board Games, Lego Club, Book Club, Science Club and Jam Computer Coding. Please check your emails for more information.

• Our whole school target for attendance is 97% and unfortunately we are below this at 94.82%. We currently have 42 children who have 100% attendance so far.

• Attendance:

Reception: 95.29% Year 1: 94.48% Year 2: 94.94% Year3: 95.37%

Year 4: 94.47% Year 5 Indigo: 92.85% Year 5 Blue: 96.1% Year 6: 94.6%

• Inclusion Coffee Morning will be rescheduled for Thursday 20th January 2021 at 9am.

• Maths reminder: if you child uses Doodle Maths, there is a fun maths advent calendar competition currently running. Please take part for your child to earn a metal badge if they complete the competition.

• If you are interested in your child signing up for 1-1 or small group music tuition from Mr Gillani, our music teacher, please see the section below.

• At the end of term we say goodbye to Mrs Thomas, our Year 2 TA who is going to take some time to focus on her health. We look forward to welcoming her back when she is ready to return to us in the future. Mrs Berryman, our 1-1 SEN TA, will also be leaving us to enjoy her countdown to her retirement. She will continue as a 'reading volunteer' with us from the Spring term so we look forward to still seeing Mrs Berryman around school. We wish them both well and thank them for their commitment to our children.

• We are delighted that our Year 5/6 Science Quiz Club members (Monty, Lola, Kjaer, Amelia) have been invited to the National semi-finals at the end of January - they recently came 4th in their competition. We are really proud of them for representing Byfleet so well.

• During the week, we increased our contingency measures in Year 4 and consequently they became a 'bubble'. Due to us not being able to safely staff this year group, they moved to accessing remote learning this morning. Well done to the Year 4s (and Mr Ney, and Miss Forde for supporting him) for being so resilient and logging onto Google Classroom so proficiently to complete their home learning. Once we have an update on our staffing situation, we will make a decision regarding when our Year 4 can return to learning in school - thank you for your patience and understanding. Please see guidance below in this newsletter for an update from Surrey.

• VACANCY - We have a Midday Supervisor Vacancy available for 4 or 5 days a week, 11.30 - 1pm. Click here for more information regarding this role or speak to Mrs Creswick in the office if you are interested in applying.

The Winter Mini Challenge 2021; encouraging children to be a 'Wild World Hero' this winter

The Summer Reading Challenge saw thousands of children reading and exploring nature and action for the environment as part of this year's Wild World Heroes theme.

Now things have started to get chilly and the winter holidays are coming, children can join the Wild World Heroes as they embark on an Arctic adventure.

The Winter Mini Challenge encourages children to keep up their reading habits over the winter holidays, with a free-to-access website featuring rewards for reading and reviewing books. To take part in the Winter Mini Challenge, children simply read three or more books – these can be any books of their choice. Every time they finish a book, they add it to their Challenge website profile and leave a short book review. Reaching their online reading goal will unlock a limited-edition virtual badge and a special Winter Mini Challenge certificate to print off and keep.

How can a child take part?

Taking part in the Winter Mini Challenge is simple. A child needs to read at least three books between 1 December and 16 January and add them to their profile on the Reading Agency's - Winter Mini Challenge website, to earn fun digital rewards! They will find loads of other great stuff on the website too, including games, book reviews, reading activities and content from the best children’s authors and illustrators around.

Visit the Surrey Libraries website for more details and don't forget to let your teacher know if you took part!

Spelling Bee Competition for 2021!

Well done to all our children who participated in our spelling bee competition. Everyone was able to participate and score points for their house. It has been amazing seeing the progress everyone has made this term and the effort the children have made to improve their spelling knowledge.

The results so far are:

Eagles: 901 points

Hawks: 767 points

Kestrels: 920 points

Falcons: 810 points

This week, children took part in the final. All winners will be announced next week, along with the overall winning house.

Year 4 took part in a Music Workshop last week. Each child learned how to play a musical instrument with a difference including plungers, barrels, water bottles, brooms and dustbin lids. The children really enjoyed putting all of the elements together leading to a whole class performance at the end of the day. They were also fortunate enough to have some extra ukelele practice learning some new songs and actions - they had a great day and lots of fun!

On Wednesday 23rd March 2022 our Key Stage Two pupils have the opportunity to take part in a music event at the SSE Arena, Wembley.

We currently have 22 children who have registered to attend.

Now celebrating its 12th year, Voice in a Million presents an opportunity of a lifetime for school children from all backgrounds throughout the UK to come together united in song and perform in front of their own family and friends in what has been billed as ‘The World’s most spectacular school concert.’ Voice in a Million inspires pupils with an important message that raises awareness of the plight of children in care and the importance of Adoption and Fostering. For further information please follow this link Voice in a Million .

For pupils to attend the event there is a small registration fee plus a cost for transport to the arema. A parent/carer would need to attend the event and be responsible for transporting their child home. Tickets for family members are £26.50. T’shirts are also available for the children to buy at a cost of £12.99, purchase of these is optional.

Pupils who wish to take part would need to commit to rehearsing regularly leading up to the concert so sign up for the Spring Term Choir club as this will be the perfect opportunity to rehearse the songs.

If your child would like to participate but has not already registered please contact Mrs Sopp at info@byfleet.surrey.sch.uk

It's been a while since we've been able to invite you into school. We can't wait to invite you back into school to see your child's class assembly. We will continue to reduce the number of children we have together in the hall so will only move to 'whole school' assemblies once it is safe to do so. In the meanwhile, each class will host their class assembly to their parents and one or two other classes in the school hall. These will start at 8.55 - 9.20ish so please join us in the school hall on the day that your child's class assembly has been scheduled.

Reception - Wednesday 29th June Year 1 - Wednesday 16th March - London

Year 2 - Wednesday 23rd February Year 3 - Wednesday 30th March - Stone Age

Year 4 - Wednesday 22nd June Year 5 Indigo - Wednesday 2nd March - The Pharaohs

Year 5 Blue - Wednesday 25th May - Greeks Year 6 - Wednesday 9th March - The Heart

On Friday last week, Year 2 visited Windsor Castle and had a brilliant day/! Their behaviour was impeccable and they should be very proud of themselves. Year 2 already had a wealth of information at their fingertips, gained from the writing which they had created earlier in the term. They then increased their knowledge by learning more about the Royal Residence as they toured the castle.

We walked around The Royal State Apartments, St George's Chapel and the grounds of Windsor Castle and saw some wonderful artefacts and sights. We participated in a workshop which taught us about Queen Elizabeth II and learnt that she trained as a mechanic in World War II! It was hard to imagine that she would be looking under a car's bonnet and getting dirty, whilst repairing an engine,

The most exciting part of our visit was finding out that the Royal Standard was flying high. This meant that Queen Elizabeth II was in residence whilst we we there. The children also greatly enjoyed travelling by coach to Windsor!

A big thank you to all the adults who joined us on our visit-it was greatly appreciated.

Last week, Year 3 took a walk around Byfleet Village after learning all about the history of our local area in our previous topic 'Urban Pioneers'. On our walk, we went past the Old Fire Station, The War Memorial and Brooklands race track. The children were all very enthusiastic to see the race track after learning that it was first track built for car racing. Once we had reached Brooklands, we made a visit to the playground to explore how we use forces when playing in the playground after learning about this in our current topic 'Mighty Metals'. We discovered that lots of pushing and pulling forces are used when we play on the swings, slides, roundabouts and even on the climbing wall. We had so much fun and we can't wait for our next school trip during the Spring Term!