Byfleet Primary Newsletter
Twitter: @Byfleetprimary
Dear Parents/Carers,
We hope you had a good rest over the half term. Despite the blustery weather, we have had a settled start to this half term. National Football Week, Children's Mental Health Week and Safer Internet Day activities in the ultimate week of last half term were successful and we are pleased to hear the positive feedback from our families.
Spring 2 Curriculum Overviews, homework matrices and spelling lists have been sent out for this term. These have also been added to Google Classroom and our school website.
A warm welcome to Mrs Scott who is our new admin PA in our Byfleet office. Mrs Scott will take receipt of all emails sent to info@byfleet.surrey.sch.uk.
This week is a busy week:
World Book Day - Thursday 3rd March is World Book Day. We look forward to many exciting reading-themed activities throughout next week. Please don't forget to wear a book-themed costume and bring in your Shoe Box Stories on Thursday 3rd March. Parents and carers are invited to view our children's Shoe Box Stories in the school hall on Friday 4th March: Reception and KS 1 parents from 2.30 and KS 2 parents from 2.45. The letter sent out is here as a reminder. Year 5 will continue to have their PE lesson on this day but no need for PE kits please.
Please note the link at the end of the newsletter to our School Term Dates for 2022/23. We have rescheduled Miss Forde's Parent Reading Workshop for Friday 18th March 8.50.
A big thank you to Year 2 Orange Class for hosting our first class assembly of the year. It was wonderful to see our families back in school supporting their children.
Our Year 6 Residential Trip parents' meeting will take place on Tuesday 3rd May at 6pm in our school hall.
We are delighted that our trips are now officially up and running with every year groups having had at least one trip off site (except for Reception) as we continue to offer great opportunities for our children's Personal Development. Please may we ask that you are familiar with our Educational Visits Policy, which can be viewed here.
We have noticed a lot of children wearing black trainers as part of their school uniform - please can black leather shoes (not boots or sports trainers) be worn on non PE days.
Miss Mills will be hosting her General Knowledge Quiz Club from next week, every child from Year 3 - 6 will take part to find the top 4 children (1 from each year group) to form our General Knowledge Team. Their national round will be on the 14th March. We hope to increase our children's Science and General Knowledge through the process. Good luck KS 2.
Stars of the Week
Reception Rainbow All of Reception Ralph
Year 1 Red Sienna Teddie
Year 2 Orange Zainab Isabelle
Year 3 Yellow Matylda Harrison
Year 4 Green Jed Oliver
Year 5 Indigo Callum Connie
Year 5 Blue Lacie Anaya
Year 6 Violet Verity Henry
National Football Week
During the final week before half term, we celebrated National Football Week. Along with our football shirt mufti on Friday, the children were given the opportunity to play matches in their school houses one afternoon and took part in a penalty shootout against members of staff.
Throughout the week, the teachers were asked to keep a look out for children who showed fantastic teamwork and commendable sportsmanship. These children will be announced during the celebration assembly this week.
As massive thank you to Miss Lloyd who organised the week for us and to Ultimate Coaching who helped us celebrate the week with football session during PE.
Year 5 & 6 Football at American School Cobham
Year 5 and 6 pupils attended a football tournament this week and were awarded medals and certificates for their great games. Football-mad Miss Lloyd loved meeting Jimmy Bullard.
Coram Scarf - Children's Mental Health Week
Wear your scarf to school day
In the last week before half term, the school participated in mental health week. At the start of the week, the children took part in 'wear your scarf to school day' and had a great day sharing the reasons behind their scarf choices. Each class discussed the meaning behind SCARF and talked about the key values of:
Safety
Caring
Achievement
Resilience
Friendship
Year 3 decorated their own scarves to display in the classroom, helping them to remember our key values.
Covid Updates
As you will be aware the government announced their plans for Living with COVID-19 last week, (all of the changes can be found on page 22 of the guidance) and the DfE emailed schools and settings with an outline of these. I’ve tried to outline the changes and as you’ll imagine, the guidance is not as clear as we would hope, and there are still many questions so thank you in advance for your understanding and support – as always.
Masks
Whilst these are no longer required, we’d recommend parents wear them in crowded spaces. Staff will no longer be required to wear them in communal spaces unless they choose to do so. Visitors and parents will no longer be required to wear masks indoors unless they choose to do so.
Testing
Primary age children have only been recommended to test when there is a positive case in their class or if parents needed/chose to. We have always followed this advice, and while ever tests are freely available, we will continue to recommend this approach to protect children, staff and wider families linked to our school. For staff, the guidance changed on Monday afternoon, removing the recommendation for staff to routinely test. However, we will continue to recommend staff test at least once a week. Most of our staff (if not all) are keen to keep this for their own peace of mind.
Isolation
From 24th February, the law changes and it is no longer a legal obligation to isolate. Instead, everyone should follow the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) advice. As we understand it, the UKHSA advice remains to isolate for five full days if an individual is showing symptoms. They should then have two negative tests before ending isolation after day 5 (testing on day 5 and day 6). There is therefore no expected change in the advice, just to the law enforcing that advice.
For schools, this places COVID on the same level as the current policy in place for when children have other infectious or potentially infectious illnesses – such as Chicken Pox or vomiting/diarrhoea. These require children to be clear of symptoms for a fixed period of time before returning to school (for example, for vomiting/diarrhoea this is 48hours clear).
At this point, and until the official UKHSA guidance is confirmed, I am unable to say what this policy will be definitively. However, we anticipate the period of time will be similar or the same as was required by law. School policy will be in line with UKHSA advice.
For the time being, we will not change our existing procedure for children with COVID symptoms (high temperature, new continuous cough, change of taste/smell) or testing positive to remain at home for five full days. If you wish to return them sooner, you will need a symptomatic PCR (not Lateral Flow) to confirm it is not COVID. This is to ensure the continued safety of other pupils, staff and their families.
If your child has no symptoms, but tests positive on a Lateral Flow test, we recommend they remain off school for five full days as well. Although your child may be symptom free, others might not be so lucky and continued attendance while knowingly positive poses a significant risk to others. Several families have household members or children with medical conditions that mean COVID could be life threatening – we’d hope families would make the right choice and keep their child off school if they test positive. Thank you.
Please do continue to provide us with a copy of the email/text message after reporting test results to confirm the absence reason. We will also continue to provide remote learning for COVID absence periods, as we have done.
As the guidance is made clearer, we will update our policy to match. Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Other illnesses?
As before, children do not learn well if they are unwell in themselves. Please avoid spreading illness to others and keep your child at home if they are unwell. This website may be helpful: Is my child too ill for school? - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
What is not changing
We will continue to ventilate all spaces used by children and staff in school. Hygiene measures (hand washing and cleaning routines) will also remain in place. We will continue to monitor and report cases as required, and offer advice for families with positive cases.
I appreciate that the current changes may bring more questions than answers. Some families will be pleased to see the changes, while others will be extremely worried about what it means for them. As always, we will take a balanced approach, that aims to enable children to have all the opportunities we can provide, while keeping them as safe as we can.
I am proud of the way our school community, children, staff and parents - but particularly the children – have navigated the difficulties and challenges of the last two years, and I’m confident that whatever comes next, we will continue to show our school values in all we do to get through it all together.
Thank you for your understanding and support. As ever, if you have any specific concerns, please do get in touch and I will do my best to support you with them.
Kind regards,
Mrs Meyrick
Headteacher
Byfleet Children help Violet Lee turn 100!
It was wonderful to see our Byfleet children support King's Lodge Nursing Home last week to celebrate a resident, Violet Lee turning 100!
Our children made 100 cards to help her celebrate. #communitymatters
Top Doodler of the Week
This term we are focusing on times tables so don't forget to click the X on Doodle so you can practise your fluency. Remember to log on for 15 - 20 minutes each day and complete as many questions as you can!
Year 2 Orange Charlotte 200 Darren 387
Year 3 Yellow Jack 749
Year 4 Green Katherine 898 Mason 1093
Year 5 Zarif 315 Fin 200 Matilda 690
Our top spot winner is Darren (Year 2) with 1027 stars!
Year 2 Assembly
Year 2 hosted a terrrific assembly this week - well done for the excellent job Year 2s! It was lovely to see the many learning opportunities they have had in their Spring term.
Great instruments, singing and sharing of excellent work!
Safer Internet Day
Our Safeguarding Governor enjoyed visiting Byfleet Primary at the end of term and visited some of the classrooms to ask the children about their learning. Whilst speaking to Year 2s, she was really impressed with how sensible their answers were relating to them knowing how to keep themselves safe online and in real life.
We have sent out this letter this week to all parents to further support our collective approach to keeping our children safe.
Inclusion
It has been great having children back in this week. On Monday we held a Safeguarding assembly for pupils. In this assembly we thought about what we would do if we were worried about someone and considered who we would talk to about any concerns. We also discussed bullying and how to keep safe online. All the children participated really well - please speak to them about this and see what they can tell you about keeping themselves and others around them safe.
Special Educational Needs and Inclusion: At Byfleet we follow the graduated approach of assess, plan, do review to support all the children who are on the SEND register and have been identified as requiring additional support to develop their learning and progress. Each child on the SEND register has an SSA (Send Support Arrangement Plan) and these are shared with parents three times a year at parents evenings. If you would like any information or a discussion on your child's support in-between parent's evenings, please do not hesitate to contact either your child's class teacher or the Inclusion Lead Mrs Sharkey-Yun . Please call the school or email info@byfleet.surrey.sch.uk if you would like to book an appointment.
Children's Leadership Roles
School Council
The School Council will be looking at ways we can be a greener school, how we can tackle rubbish on the playground and the types of snacks and wrappers we bring into school.
They will also have a key role on Red Nose day!
Plea for Small World Resources
We would be extremely grateful if you could donate any unwanted small world resources which will be used to support the children during their phonics sessions. There is a box at the office for you to put your donations in.
We've already received some resources so a big thanks for these.
Thank you!
Multiplication Table Challenge for Spring 2
All year 4 children complete a statutory online Multiplication Table Check (MTC) in June. It is important that we adequately prepare our children for this assessment by proving daily opportunities to master their 12 x 12 tables through maths lessons, 144 Club, Doodle Maths and interventions.
To find out more about the MTC for Year 4, click here.
Children need to know a select number of tables by the end of each year. They are as follows:
Year 1 - Count in multiples of two, fives and tens
Year 2 - Recall and use multiplication and division facts from the 2, 5 and 10 multiplication tables
Year 3 - Recall and use multiplication and division facts from the 3, 4 and 8 multiplication tables
Year 4 - Recall and use multiplication and division facts for multiplication tables up the 12 x 12
Year 5 and 6 - To become confident in multiplying larger numbers and deal with multiplying decimal numbers
Class Assemblies
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 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
Diary Dates
Thursday 3rd March - World Book Day. Parents/Carers to view Shoe Box Stories on Friday 4th March from 2.30pm in the hall.
Wednesday 2nd March - Year 5 Indigo Class Assembly
Thursday 3rd March - Year 5 Visit to Wisley Gardens
Wednesday 9th March - Year 6 Class Assembly
Wednesday 16th March - Year 1 Class Assembly
Thursday 17th March - Year 3 Cake Sale
Friday 25th March - VIP Lady Day 8.45 - 9.45
Tuesday 29th March - Spring Parents' Evening (1pm - 5pm)
Wednesday 30th March - Year 3 Class Assembly
Thursday 31st March - Spring Parents' Evening (3.15 - 6pm)
Friday 1st April - End of Spring Term & Break the Rules Mufti Day
Tuesday 19th April - INSET 4
Wednesday 20th April - Start of Summer term
Thursday 28th April - Class & Y6 Leavers Photos
Tuesday 3rd May - Year 6 residential Parents' info meeting 6pm in school hall
w/c Monday 9th May - Year 6 SATs
Wednesday 25th May - Year 5 Blue Class Assembly
Friday 27th May - Half Term
Monday 6th June - INSET 5
Friday 17th June - VIP Man Day
Wednesday 22nd June - Year 4 Class Assembly
Thursday 23rd June - Reception and KS1 Sports' Day
Friday 24th June - KS2 Sports' Day
Tuesday 28th & Wednesday 29th June - Year 6 Secondary Transition Days
Wednesday 29th June - Reception Class Assembly
Friday 8th July - Reports out to parents
Monday 18th July - Wednesday 20th July 2022 - Y6 Residential
Friday 22nd July - Year 6 Leavers' Celebration Assembly
A bit thank you to the parents and carers who volunteered to help out at the Year 2 Wisley class trips this week.
Kind regards,
Mrs Meyrick - Headteacher
Term Dates 2021-22.pdf