William Barcroft Junior School
'Success and happiness for all'
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Message from the Principal:
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this week’s newsletter. It has been a really busy fortnight and we have lots to share with you. As part of our work on our value ambition, last week we heard from Ben Heason who told the children about his adventures being part of the first team to free-climb Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world. Next week we will end the term with our special Careers Day to again help build the children’s aspirations and ambition.
Our Pupil Governors have now been elected and have started some really important work with me on improving our rewards systems across school. They came up with some great ideas which we have now shared in assembly and will be implemented after the half term holidays. These include new class and team rewards as well as individual rewards for obtaining 25, 50 and 75 golden tickets. Please ask your children about these!
We have also had some important visitors in school to talk about safeguarding, with PC Gladstone presenting to our year 5 and 6 pupils about online safety and cyberbullying. Next week we have the police and fire safety team talking to the whole school about bonfire and Halloween safety, and GTFC completing some workshops about anti-racism.
After the retirement of two members of staff (Mrs Regan and Mr Dean) next week we will be welcoming Mrs Hamad to complete our learning mentor team and Mr Linden, our new caretaker. Please say hello if you see them!
Just a reminder that next week we have our parents’ afternoons. Please book on Arbor if you would like an appointment and have not done so already.
Enjoy looking through the newsletter and have a lovely weekend everyone.
S Sargent
Principal
Attendance
Autumn Term 1 - Week 5
Congratulations to 3L and 6M for achieving 98% this week!
Autumn Term 1 - Week 6
Congratulations to 3S and 5D for achieving 99% attendance this week! An amazing effort by all!
School/ Class X accounts
School/ Class X accounts
Please check out the following links to our X (Twitter) accounts and see what each class have been up to this week in real-time!
Autumn Term 1
Tuesday 15th October - Halloween/ Bonfire night safety assembly by PC Mickleborough
Wednesday 16th October - No Room For Racism assembly with GTFC
Friday 18th October - Careers Day
Friday 18th October - Last day of term - Autumn 1
Autumn Parents Evenings
Monday 14th October - Year 6 Parents Evening
Tuesday 15th October - Year 5 Parents Evening
Thursday 17th October - Year 3 Parents Evening
Friday 18th October - Year 4 Parents Evening
Autumn Term 2
Monday 28th October - Return to school for Autumn 2
Tuesday 5th November - Image Theatre visit
Friday 15th November - Flu Vaccines
Friday 15th November - Children In Need
Friday 13th December - Year 3 Learning Showcase AM
Monday 16th December - Year 4 Learning Showcase AM
Tuesday 17th December - Year 5 Learning Showcase AM
Wednesday 18th December - Year 6 Learning Showcase AM
Wednesday 18th December - Talent show PM
General Information
Please do not ride bikes and scooters on the school grounds, this is for children and adults. This is for the safety of our children, thank you.
Please note, electric scooters are not allowed on the school site due to health and safety regulations and not having the facilities to store them in school.
Please do not bring pets onto the school site due to health and safety regulations.
PE kit MUST be brought to school on your child's PE days,
Year 3 and Year 5 will have PE Tuesday and Thursday
Year 4 and Year 6 will have PE Monday and Wednesday
WBJS Newsround
YEAR 3
In Year 3 we have finished our science study on rocks and we truly are experts on identifying, classifying and naming the 3 main rock types - sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. Please ask us questions at home! This week we have been learning about fossils and how they are created over thousands of years. Interesting Fact - We didn’t realise that a fossil has to be over 10,000 years old to be classified as a fossil. We observed fossils closely using magnifying glasses and identified the different types.
This week we have also had our final lesson on the Stone Age. We have compared similarities and differences between the Mesolithic Period (Middle Stone Age) and the Neolithic Period ( New Stone Age) and we have looked at Primary sources of evidence including Skara Brae in Scotland and Stonehenge in Wiltshire. These famous places/sites provide us with so much evidence about life in Prehistoric Britain.
YEAR 4
Year 4 have been working had on securing their addition skills this week using manipulatives and challenging themselves with tricky reasoning questions. In English, they are starting to write their own dragon tales which is showcasing their creativity and imaginations!
During the afternoons we have been developing our sketching skills in Art, investigating conductors and insulators in Science and learning how the Ancient Greeks lived many years ago in History. In PSHCE we have been discussing how we can create positive friendships and how we can manage disagreements in a postive way.
YEAR 5
The past 2 weeks in year 5 have been super busy and the children are proud of the progress they are making. We are coming to the end of ‘The Haunting of Aveline Jones’ (our first book of year 5) and we have LOVED it - the spooky vibes have been perfect for this time of year. Using this book as inspiration, we have been working on writing some setting descriptions to create atmosphere. We have explored some new vocabulary from our whole class reading sessions that we have implemented in our writing. In our art sessions, we have been working on our sketching skills practising how to add value to an observational drawing using known techniques. Have a look at some of our examples!
YEAR 6
In year 6 we have been working incredibly hard; all the staff in year 6 are extremely proud of how hard we have worked during our first test week. Not only have we made an excellent start to our year 6 journey, but we have shown determination and resilience.
In maths we have been learning about factors, multiples, prime numbers, squares and cubes- ask us to explain what these are with examples.
We have completed our first big write in English- a diary entry on our book Aveline Jones-we loved writing this and putting ourselves in her shoes. We can’t wait to continue reading though an find out what secrets are going to be revealed.
In Science we have nearly completed our unit on ‘Evolution’ ask us to explain Darwin’s theory on natural selection and what the survival of the fittest means. We have also had our fist ‘Fab Friday’ as a reward for our efforts: we either enjoyed football outside, arts and crafts, chrome books or games.
Barcroft Stars
Every Friday, we celebrate the fantastic work and attitudes of our children during our Star of the Week assembly. Each teacher presents their Star of the Week, Reader of the Week and TTRS of the Week whilst our Learning Mentors award fastasic behaviour and kindess on the playground. We also celebrate our birthdays in style with a whole school sing-song and give out spot prizes for fantastic work and home reading.
If your child is chosen for this assembly, you will receive a message no later than Thursday. If you wish to attend, the assembly times are as follows:
Year 3 and Year 4 - 8.55am
Year 5 and Year 6 - 9.55am
Ambition
Ambition
Our school values are embedded throughout our daily routines in school.
D - Delight and joy
A - Ambition
N - Nurture
C - Community
E - Empowerment
This term we are focusing on how we can inspire and prepare our children for their futures. As part of this, we are working with IntoUniversity who are an education charity. They provide learning workshops in school and at their local centres which aim to inspire young children to achieve.
We would like to make parents aware of some after school sessions which the centre offer also - please see the leaflet to the left.
Home Reading
Home Reading
Please can we remind all parents that children are required to read 3 times a week at home and their reading record is expected in school every day. There are a multitude of beneficial reasons why children should read at home: comfort and reassurance, confidence and security, relaxation, happiness and fun. It is essential that we are providing children with the time to explore stories, giving them time and full attention when reading them a story, asking questions to support comprehension and clear routines. Reading at home builds self-esteem, vocabulary, feeds imagination and even improves their sleeping patterns. Not to mention that it supports all areas of the curriculum and increases progress, development and understanding. We offer a well-stocked library and purple area which provides reading books to take home and children are rewarded when completing 3 home reads.
Here are the percentages for home reads per class over the last two weeks. Our school expectation is 3 weekly reads per week and this is taken on a Thursday. Please ensure your child has their reading record every day to be checked.
Thank you for your support with this.
Maths
Maths
Take a look at what topics your child will be covering in maths this term!
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6
White Rose maths are providing free downloadable work books to support parents with maths at home these can be downloaded here: https://whiteroseeducation.com/parent-pupil-resources/maths/free-downloads
Black History Month
Black History Month
October is Black History Month in the UK. This month, the theme is ‘reclaiming narratives’. Inaccurate representations of the past are being rewritten and people who were once written out of events and history are finally being celebrated for the amazing contributions they made in the world. Below is a link to a child-friendly source of information to support your discussions with your children on this topic.
Online Safety
Online Safety
For Parents - My Family's Digital Toolkit
For Parents - My Family's Digital Toolkit
There are so many really good resources out there for parents/carers about how to help keeping children safe online, but it can quickly become really overwhelming.
Internet Matters has a really great resource for parents called My Family's Digital Toolkit. This is a personalised resource which gives age-specific advice, advice to deal with specific concerns, recommendations for digital tools to support children's interests and more.
The toolkit is free and you can find more details HERE.
Tuesday 15th October 2024 at 9am.
PC Mickelburgh will be delivering a HALLOWEEN/BONFIRE NIGHT safety assembly to all pupils to ensure they are all reminded on how to stay safe over this period of time.
Follow this link to visit the safeguarding section of our website, and for a copy of our Safeguarding and Child Protection policy. https://wba.harbourlearningtrust.com/our-academy/safeguarding/
School dinner menu
W/C 14/10/24
Community events and information
Community events and information
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