William Barcroft Junior School

'Success and happiness for all'

Message from the Principal:

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to this week’s newsletter. We finished our last half term with a fantastic Careers Day, focusing on our value of ambition where children really enjoyed meeting people from a range of careers and then focused on where their own skills might take them. This term we will be focusing on our value empower. We have been busy recruiting teams of children who will have a strong voice in steering our work in key areas, for example reading champions, science ambassadors, digital leaders and our green committee.

Can I say a huge thank you for your support with the Asda schools’ initiative; at the point of writing we have an amazing £343 to spend on our children! Please continue to support for the final push as this finishes on 30th November.

As always, we have a packed half term planned for the children, and have already had our first trip where the year 3s made me incredibly proud on their visit to the Heritage Centre in Brigg. The children were highly engaged in their learning and incredibly well behaved; well done year 3! Next week we have our theatre company coming to visit who will perform the Selfish Giant to the children in school on Tuesday morning. The following week year 6 will visit IntoUniversity as part of our work on preparing children for life beyond school. Also, please look out for a letter regarding our pantomime visit which will be emailed next week.

Enjoy looking at what the children have been learning and have a lovely weekend everyone.

S Sargent

Principal

Attendance

Autumn Term 1 - Week 7

Congratulations to 4N who achieved 100% attendance this week and 3L who reached a whopping 95.5%! This is an amazing achievement and has been celebrated in school and assembly!

We're having a fantastic start to the Autumn 2 term with some full green light days for attendance. On Thursday 31st October something spooktastic happened and we managed to get 8 classes with a 100% gold star! What an fantastic achievement! Well done to all the superstars who got themselves into school and helped us achieve 98% attendance for the whole school that day.

Autumn Term 2 - Week 1

Congratulations to 3L who achieved 99.5% attendance this week and 4B with 98.3%. We have 8 Classes this week with 95% and above, this is amazing! Whole school attendance this week was at 95.8% overall, well done everyone!

Autumn Term 2

Tuesday 5th November - Image Theatre visit

Monday 11th - Wednesday 12th November - Y6 IntoUniversity (1 day per class)

Friday 15th November - Flu Vaccines

Friday 15th November - Children In Need

Wednesday 20th November - SEND and Pastoral Parent Coffee Morning with visiting external agencies

Wednesday 4th December - Y5 Lego Workshop

Tuesday 10th December - 'Cinderella' Production

Friday 13th December - Year 3 Learning Showcase AM

Friday 13th December - Christmas church visit

Monday 16th December - Year 4 Learning Showcase AM

Monday 16th December - Christmas dinner day

Monday 16th December - Christmas Disco! PM

Tuesday 17th December - Year 5 Learning Showcase AM

Tuesday 17th December - Y3 and Y5 Healing Panto

Wednesday 18th December - Year 6 Learning Showcase AM

Wednesday 18th December - Y4 and Y6 Healing Panto

Thursday 19th December - Talent show AM

Thursday 19th December - Community Sing PM

Thursday 19th December - Last day of term - 2pm finish

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Friday 3rd January 2025 - Teacher training day

Monday 6th December 2025 - Children return for Spring 1 term

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 from the Pupil Governors

YEAR 3

In our whole class reading lessons we have been reading about how King Harold died in 1066.

In English, we have been reporting on events from our school trip and perfecting our handwriting!

On Monday, we went to Brigg Heritage Centre to learn all about the Bronze Age. My favourite part of the day was when we learned how to weave using different materials. We used string and wool to thread our practise masterpieces.

Baillie, Year 3.

YEAR 4

During the morning, we have been reading about 'The Black Death' in whole class reading. We have been reading Samuel Pepys diary to understand what it was like at the time.

This week, maths has been a little tricky but we have managed to do some reasoning and problem solving with estimating and rounding. We are also learning our 3x tables!

This week is our art week and this is my favourite subject! We are sketching a drawing of an Ancient Greek Goddess.

Annabelle, Year 4.

YEAR 5

Year 5 have been learning how to divide decimals by using the bus stop method.

We have started a new book called Escape Room by Christopher Edge. It is about solving clues whilst in an escape room.

In art this week, we have been learning how to draw portraits using different sketch methods and we have used these skills to help us draw Aveline Jones from our English book this term.

Sofia, Year 5.

YEAR 6

This week in year 6 we have been learning about long division and how to work out the multiples of larger numbers.

In our English lessons, we have re-written our own version of the chapter 'Shadows of the Past' taken from Aveline Jones: The Bewitching.

During the afternoons, we have been learning new facts about the Tudors. One gory fact is that Henry VIII had six wives and he beheaded two of them!

Joseph C, Year 6.

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

Pupil Governor meeting with St. andrews Hospice

On Wednesday 30th October, some of the pupil governors met with Helena from St Andrew's Hospice. We discussed how we could raise money for their charity this year. We had lots of ideas to discuss how we could fundraise such as throwing sponges at Mr Dawes and Mr Ferrier. However, we eventually decided after a long discussion that we are going to carry out a charity car wash this term. Please check future newsletters for more information around this.

Thank you,

Nevaeh-taya, Year 5.

Careers Day - AMBition

On the final day of the half term we hosted our annual careers day. There always seems to be such a buzz at this particular event and this year was no different! It was great to see so many activities going on in classrooms, from mock job interviews, role plays and research into different career pathways.

Our school hall was full of visitors too! Ranging from Electricians, Renewable wind energy to the Police and Fire service. The children asked some very thought-provoking questions and seemed to really enjoy speaking to the different professions who came in to visit.

We would like to thank all of the attendees who volunteered to come into school and support us with the event.

Year 3 Trip

Y3 had a fantastic trip to Brigg Heritage Centre, learning more about our Stone Age to Iron Age topic. We were able to see genuine artefacts from Prehistory, including a bronze spear head, Beaker pots and a Bronze Age boat! We experienced being archaeologists digging for buried historical treasures, grinding grain to make flour, using special tools to work stone and weaving our own cloth. We also made model roundhouses, ceremonial masks and iron age jewellery. What a busy and exciting day of time travelling!

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.

Thank you for your support with this.

Maths

Some exciting news regarding Times Tables Rockstars is on the horizon. Mrs Vince, who once worked with us here at Barcroft, has challenged us to a Top Of The Rocks competition all the way from Doha, Qatar! I am sure that children at Barcroft will be up for the challenge! We will let you know how we get on in the next newsletter!

Keeping on the Rockstars front, we have signed up to participate in England Rocks, details of which are shown here.

Mr Ferrier

Black History Month

Today we celebrated Black History Month as it comes to an end in the UK. Throughout October, our children have had class discussions, listened to music and learnt about Harriet Tubman in assembly and today they spent the whole day learning even more about why Black History Day is so important. This year, the theme is 'Reclaiming Narratives' so we have explored people from the past who were once not included in the story of the human race and our achievements but now their stories are being shouted from the rooftops as we uncover the truth behind their amazing contributions to the world. Some examples of the important figures we have learnt about today include: Mary Jackson, a scientist who worked for NASA in the 60s; Bejamin Zephaniah, whose parents emigrated here during Windrush on the promise of better opportunities only to be faced with adversity. The children have gained a lot of insight into the key figures they have studied and also shown us the empathy we know they are so wonderful for as they have contemplated how it must have felt to be treated the way these people were treated in their lives. Today, we have celebrated all the amazing things these people did for us and for others and given them the recognition they have always deserved.

Online Safety

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.

www.internetmatters.org/digital-family-toolkit/

We are getting involved with BBC Children in Need day on Friday 15th November 2024. The theme this year is to challenge yourself. As a school we have decided to support this worthy cause by asking our children to 'challenge yourself to dress up' by wearing spotty clothing for a 'SPOTACULAR' look.

In addition to this, the lovely Mrs Munson (Mellors) will be baking CIN inspired cookies along with her team. Our WBJS pupil governors will hand these out at breaktime on the day.

Our office will be setting up a donation page for parents on Arbor for you to access and support if you are able too.

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/

New initiative for those waiting for an ADHD assessment

Navigo’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (Young Minds Matter) are launching a new waiting list initiative for those who are currently awaiting an ADHD assessment. The Workshop for Integrated Neurodiversity Group Support, fondly called WINGS, will give parents the skills and knowledge to support their child at home and school.

WINGS will run six face-to-face two-hour sessions where up to 20 parents can learn these skills, better understand neurodivergent needs and build a support network of like-minded parents who understand how it feels.

The aim is to allow parents to start adapting to their children’s unique abilities and difficulties, and to allow them to understand why some of the behaviours are being presented.

Learn more:

Neurodevelopmental Service: Workshop for Integrated Neurodiversity Group Support (WINGS): Navigo (navigocare.co.uk)