William Barcroft Junior School

'Success and happiness for every child'

We are very proud of our school, the children, staff and environment and of course the great support we receive from our parents.

For more information, please visit our full website by clicking here.

In a recent parent questionnaire, parents said the following:

99% of parents say their child is happy at William Barcroft Junior School

98% parents say the school have high expectations

99% of parents said their child does well at school

100% of parents say their child felt safe in our school.

Message from the Principal:

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this week’s newsletter. I will try to keep this brief today as I

have an end of term letter coming out to you on Monday. Alongside this, you will receive an end of

term update for your child with key information such as their current assessments, targets, attendance

and behaviour . This is a new document to ensure you have up to date information during the year, not

just in July when you receive the full written reports. Please look out for both letters on Monday.

My main message this week is to say a huge thank you for your wonderful support this week. The hall

has been packed every day for our learning showcases and it has been lovely to see the children so

proud to show off their books and learning. Thank you also to those who attended ‘Barcroft Does

Nativity’ and a massive well done to production club for their efforts in making this a fantastic end of

term show.

I have had further complaints this week about parking in Barnett Place. Please ensure that you do not

park over residents’ driveways when dropping off/collecting children, and ensure that you drive slowly

around the entrance to school for the safety of everyone.

Just a reminder that the church visits are next Tuesday so please ensure the children are well

wrapped up for this day; warm coats, hats and scarves if needed and sensible shoes please.

On Wednesday we will be finishing at 2pm, and you are invited to come into

the playground at 1.30 where we will finish the term with some Christmas Carols and free hot

chocolates! Children are allowed to wear their Christmas jumpers with school trousers/skirts on this

day.

Enjoy reading the newsletter and seeing what the children have been up to and have a lovely

weekend everyone.

S Sargent

Principal

Take a look at the weekly round-up of our fantastic learning...

YEAR 3

What a busy first term Year 3 have had! We wrapped it up by sharing our learning with parents in our learning showcase. We enjoyed showing our achievements in in English, Maths, History and Art lessons.

Last week the children participated in a PE festival at Clee Academy, trying out a range of different sporting activities. We were so proud of their enthusiasm and fantastic behaviour.

Year 3 have been finishing ‘The Nothing to See Here Hotel’ book and writing our own fantasy story opening discovering a secret room and being given a quest!

We have continued to learn our times tables and making connections between the 2, 4 and 8 times-tables. We can link multiplying by 2 to doubling then doubling again.

In Science we have had fun learning about magnets, magnetic materials, magnetic force and investigating the strength of different magnets. Remember to look for all the ways magnets are used in your home too please.

Year 3 have had a festive end to the term, wearing Christmas jumpers, dancing at the party, eating Christmas dinner, creating Christmas cards, sculpting decorations for the tree and enjoying the panto!

YEAR 4

Year 4 have had a very busy final 2 weeks of term! In English, we are still reading ‘The Land of Roar’ by Jenny McLachlan. We are using this to write our very own Dragon Tale! We have written setting descriptions based on our own version of the ‘Tangled Forest’. We learnt how important a setting description is to help a reader picture the story. We were very careful with our vocabulary choices as we needed to decide whether our Tangled Forest was on the ‘good’ or the ‘bad’ side of Roar. We then created our own dragon to use in our Dragon tales. Again, we worked very carefully to make sure the reader could picture our dragon exactly how we wanted it to look.

In maths we have been continuing to learn our times tables. The focus has been on our 11’s and 12’s. We have now covered all of the times tables in lesson so can have a go at all of them on TT Rockstars!

We have completed our final art pieces which we loved showing in the Learning Showcase on Tuesday! Our art pieces were inspired by Ancient Egyptian death masks. We chose whether we wanted ours to look more ‘modern’ in the style of Tracey Emin, or more like it would be found in a tomb in Egypt, like the famous death mask of Tutankhamun. We are now moving on to our DT week. Our goal is to use our skills of measuring, sawing and gluing to create a Shaduf. This is a structure that was used in Ancient Egypt to get water from the River Nile. We have really enjoyed working as a team to refine our skills, design and create our own Shaduf! We even got the chance to test some of them out!

YEAR 5

Over the last two weeks we have finished reading our book, ‘The Haunting of Aveline Jones’. It has been fantastic and we have really enjoyed reading it! We have written our own spooky story and have really enjoyed writing these. In maths we have been learning how to add and subtract fractions with different denominators.

In our history topic, we have finished learning about the reign of Elizabeth I and have learnt about the ‘Gun Powder Plot’ and why we celebrate Bonfire night. We looked at key figures during this time, such as King James I and Guy Fawkes. In Design and Technology, we are currently making our own Tudor Rose, representing our house/ family and have been using different sewing techniques to create this.

YEAR 6

Year 6 have been busy in the last two weeks - we have been working hard in Maths on fractions, decimals and percentages, which we will continue when we return to school in January. In English, we’re coming to the end of our book, The Bewitching of Aveline Jones, and we’ve written our own versions of one of the most exciting scenes in the book but we won’t give it away for the Year 5’s! We are looking forward to our DT project, which we will complete in the final week of term - look out for what we will bring home!

Art: In year 6, we have come to the end of our topic about WW1 and WW2 and, having investigated the atrocities of the Holocaust, we have created some art work to express the hardships felt by the Jews at this time. We think it is important that people don’t forget what happened and to commemorate their pain.

William Barcroft does Nativity!

This week our production club put on their own version of Barcroft does Nativity. The club have worked extremely hard- staying late after school to put on a hilarious musical. These children have a real talent for theatre and had many of their parents (and teachers!) in tears at their excellent performance. The play was about a grumpy teacher, fed up with Christmas, and forced to put on the school's annual nativity play. His love of Christmas is reignited when Hollywood come to see his play! He is supported by the slightly unprofessional and bubbly teaching assistant, Mr Poppy. Children learnt songs such as Nazareth and Sparkle and Shine and even brought the Christmas magic when singing "One Night, One Moment" under candlelight. Children even developed their improvisation skills with each other too.

A huge well done to our production club who, year on year, make us extremely proud and impress us with their unbelievable talents. A big thank you to our parents who attended too and for supporting your children learn their lines and songs!

What could our summer term production be?

Festive fun!

On Friday 8th December, we enjoyed our Christmas party day! The children looked fantastic in their jumpers, there were lots of sparkles! Staff and children then celebrated with a delicious Christmas dinner, made by our fabulous Mellors' staff. This was definitely our best Christmas dinner yet! The festive fun didn't stop there! The afternoon was filled with a Christmas disco! The children enjoyed party games, dancing and singing with their friends. We saw lots of great dance moves - from the children and staff too! We then played party games in our classes with pass the parcel, musical chairs and musical statues! It was a fabulous day all round, we certainly celebrated!

Meet our pupil governors!

Our pupil governors have lots of different responsibilities in school.

They help organize key events in school, support Mrs Baggott with setting up and preparations and discuss key matters as our pupil representatives!

They are also currently helping Mrs Baggott with our in-school food bank - please ask at reception for more details.

Attendance

This year in school, we aim to improve attendance and punctuality as a key priority.

Here are the attendance figures per year group:

Week beginning 4/12/2023

Year 3 - 95.33%

Year 4 - 95.42%

Year 5 - 95.28%

Year 6 - 97.18%

Week beginning 11/12/2023

Year 3 - 93.79%

Year 4 - 94.79%

Year 5 - 98.15%

Year 6 - 89.5%

Here are the attendance figures per class:

Attendance treat

All children who had 98%+ attendance were rewarded with an attendance treat in the hall. The children brought their pj's and received a goodie bag, hot chocolate and a cookie made by our wonderful cook Mrs. Munson! A very well deserved treat for all their hard efforts of getting into school even when they might not have felt amazing! Well done everyone.

The next attendance treat will be at the end of Easter half term.

Welcome to the William Barcroft Library!

Home Reading

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.

Let's have a really big push in home reading in the new year, a score of 90% plus is what we're aiming for!

Reading rewards

The ultimate reading prize!

Miss Stewart has been collecting the purple reading tokens for the children's home reads from September. Remember, for every 3 reads, the children receive 1 purple reading token. These were all put into a raffle, one per year group, to win a £20 voucher for Waterstones! Here are our lucky winners!

These children will be taking a trip to Waterstones next week to pick out their very own books to take home - how exciting!

Miss Stewart will be rerunning the ultimate reading prize from January-March. Remember, you've got to be in it to win it!

Year 3 are currently reading The Nothing To See Here Hotel in their English lessons.

Year 4 are currently reading The Land of Roar in their English lessons.

Year 5 are currently reading The Haunting of Aveline Jones in their English lessons.

Year 6 are currently reading The Bewitching of Aveline Jones - the sequel to Year 5's The Haunting!

Drop everything and read!

Here are our current class readers. These are books that have been chosen by the children. Please ask your child what is happening in their current class read!

3A - The Wreck of Zanzibar - Michael Morpurgo

3C- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

3S - The Christmasaurus - Tom Fletcher

4B - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

4LB - The Witches - Roald Dahl

4V - The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me - Roald Dahl

5D - Matilda by Roald Dahl

5HS - Zombie Cows from Outer Space - Luke Temple

5S - The Executioner's Daughter - Jane Hardstaff

6B- The Whitby Witches - Robin Jarvis

6F- Gangsta Granny - David Walliams

6S - Crater Lake - Jennifer Killick

Maths

There has been some fabulous work going on in maths this term, the children have worked really hard. As always though, here at William Barcroft we still strive to get even better. Remember to log onto Rockstars over the holidays, Mr Ferrier will be running a competition between all the classes in the new year.

For now, here’s a quick sneak peek at what each year group will be covering in the spring term:

Science

Next term science club will be a series of STEM challenges, which will result in the children achieving a Super Star Award. If your child is excited by science, inventions, problem solving, investigations, then please encourage them to sign up to science club when the clubs are released in the new year.

Attendance and Punctuality

Does 5 minutes late really matter?

5 minutes late every day = 3 days lost over a year

10 minutes late every day = 6.5 days lost over a year

15 minutes late every day = 10 days lost over a year

20 minutes late every day = 13 days lost over a year

Registration at William Barcroft Junior School is 8.45am, and we will be allowing children in from 8.35am for some warm up activities. Please do not leave your children on the playground unattended before 08:35am. Doors close at 08:45am. Our finish time is 3.15pm for all pupils.

Reminder to all parents/carers that penalties and fines may be issued for any unauthorised holidays taken during term time or persistent absences.

We have many incentives for your children regarding attendance at our school-ask your child about our 100% attendance trolley!

Please contact the school office if you have any questions. Thank you.

#wbjspraiseculture #wbjsattendance #wbjsperfectpunctuality

General Information

We have a new information rack in our school office with helpful information and advice for our parents.
At William Barcroft Junior School we pride ourselves on having high expectations about the school uniform. Recently we have noticed that a number of children have not been wearing appropriate school shoes. If your child arrives at school without the correct footwear they will be provided with a pair of plimsolls to wear for the day. Thank you in advance for your support
Uniform Direct are our uniform provider for our school and provide a wide range of William Barcroft Junior School uniform available to purchase from the Grimsby store, at 54 Victoria Street (opposite Marks and Spencer Food Hall).
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.

PE kit MUST be brought to school on your child's PE days,

Year 3 will have PE Monday and Wednesday

Year 4 will have PE Tuesday and Thursday

Year 5 will have PE Monday and Wednesday

Year 6 will have PE Tuesday and Thursday

Can you take photographs in school?

Please ensure if you do take a photograph of your child on school site, that this is ONLY when you are told to do so by a member of staff and that the picture is of only your child. For example: After our Star of the Week assemblies.

Monday 18th December - Y4 & Y6 Panto PM.

Tuesday 19th December - Church visit PM.

Wednesday 20th December - Carols in the playground at 1:30pm. Break up for Christmas at 2pm.

Wednesday 3rd January - Return to school.

Menu week commencing 18/12/23

Please see attached an informative wall poster that serves as a reminder of the key steps to ensure children's safety in the digital world. This poster is displayed around school to reinforce online safety practices but also encourages open conversations among parents, caregivers, and staff.

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/

SEND Support Coffee Morning

SEND

Thank you to parents and carers who attended our SEND coffee morning. We were joined by Abi Fleming our parent champion who discussed services available and signposting to local events. Please look at the school website for further SEND support.

t: 01472326363 e: ask@nelsendiass.org.uk w: www.nelsendiass.org.uk /SENDIASSNEL

For Parents - Roblox Checklist 2023

Roblox and SWGfL have collaborated together and created a checklist for parents which includes:

· How to report abuse.

· How to block users.

· Setting up a parent control pin.

· And more.

The resource can be downloaded here.

https://swgfl.org.uk/assets/documents/roblox-checklist-2023.pdf?_=1691587832

For Parents - Updated Supervision Features for FB Messenger and Instagram
In June 2023 Meta rolled out some new parental features for FB Messenger and Instagram. As of 30th August these updates are now available globally.
Specific updates for Messenger:

· View how much time the child spends on the app.

· Updates on their contact list.

· Notification if the child reports someone.

· View who can message their child.

· View who can see their child's stories.

Specific updates for Instagram:

· Before being able to message someone who doesn't follow them, people must now send a text only invite to connect (in other words, no more unwanted explicit photos from people you don't follow). No further interaction can take place unless the recipient accepts the invite.

Please click here to see more support and information.

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/06/parental-supervision-and-teen-time-management-on-metas-apps/