Grazebrook Primary School Bulletin
28th November 2022
Message from Mrs Beecroft
Dear Grazebrook families
With December just around the corner, we are heading into the festive part of the school year. Christmas always brings lots of opportunities for us to celebrate and come together as a community. This year is no exception with the return of our PSA Christmas Fair this Saturday; our Year 1 to Year 6 trip to the Hackney Empire to see Mother Goose (in our Christmas jumpers!); the Bigfoot Travelling panto performance of The Clumsiest Elf for Nursery and Reception; our Come Celebrate With Me events and our Christmas lunch.
I wanted to say a special thank you to those families who made donations to Hackney Foodbank, our gardening project and our PGL fund to ensure that every child has a fantastic and memorable week away in Dorset in February. Your support and generosity means a great deal to us. Thanks to the support from our families, we also took a record breaking £1,500 at the Book Fair earlier this month. This generated £790 worth of books for the reading corners in our classrooms.
With the cost-of-living rising, we are aware that many families in our local community are struggling with the cost of food and energy. With this is mind, we have added a page to our school website which can be found here with details of organisations that may be able to offer help and support if you are struggling with the demands of rising costs. Please get in touch with us if you feel we may be able to offer any assistance such as applying for free school meals or foodbank vouchers or secondary school uniform grants. We have a great deal of nearly new Grazebrook school uniform at school – please speak to the school office or get in touch with the PSA through their website link here if you require any pre-loved items. We would also like to reiterate that it is not necessary to buy staff Christmas gifts. If you would like to show your appreciation for the Grazebrook team, please do this by continuing to volunteer at or attend PSA fundraising events such as the Christmas Fair or make donations to us via ParentPay or donate to a local charity such as Hackney Foodbank or Hackney Night Shelter.
Key Dates
28/11 Y3 & Y4 Meet a Musician Workshop
01/12 Reception Come Dine With Me
02/12 Year 4 Reading Breakfast at 8.30am
02/12 Year 3 Sharing Assembly at 10am
02/12 New to Nursery Pupil Home Visits
03/12 PSA Christmas Fair 12pm-3pm
06/12 Year 2 Come Learn With Me at 9.00am
07/12 Nursery Come Celebrate With Me at 9.15am
07/12 Parent Consultation Meetings: 3.40pm-8.30pm
08/12 Christmas Jumper Day
08/12 Mother Goose at Hackney Empire Years 1-6
08/12 Nursery & Reception Clumsiest Elf Travelling Panto at school
09/12 Year 5 Reading Breakfast at 8.30am
09/12 Year 5 Portals to the Past Viking Workshops
09/12 Year 3 Come Celebrate With Me at 9.15am
13/12 Year 3 Hackney Museum Visit
13/12 Year 1 Come Celebrate With Me at 9.15am
13/12 Year 5 Come Celebrate With Me at 2.15pm
14/12 Christmas Lunch
14/12 Year 2 Come Celebrate With Me at 9.15am
14/12 Year 6 Come Celebrate With Me at 2.15pm
15/12 Year 4 Come Celebrate With Me at 9.15am
15/12 Reception Come Celebrate With Me at 2.15pm
16/12 End of Autumn Term - school finishes at 2pm
03/01 INSET Day - School Closed to Pupils
04/01 Children Return to School at 8.55am
09/01 Year 2 BBC Singers Workshop
12/01 Year 6 Come Learn With Me
13/01 Year 1 Learning Celebration Assembly
16/01-20/01 Year 5 Cycle Training
16/01 Reception Family Maths Workshop at 3.30pm
18/01 Year 6 Junior Citizen Workshops
20/01 Year 2 Learning Celebration Assembly
03/02 Nursery Family Friday
06/02-10/02 Year 6 PGL Trip
13/02-17/02 Half Term - School is Closed to Pupils
Family Events at Grazebrook
PSHE and anti-bullying at Grazebrook
The digital leaders gave a very informative assembly for Key Stage 2 children on cyber bullying and how to stay safe online.
This half term, the children have been learning about discrimination and anti-bullying in their PSHE lessons. They have learnt that bullying is behaviour that is repeated over a period of time that hurts someone else. It includes name calling, hitting, pushing, spreading rumours, and threatening or undermining someone. It can happen anywhere – at school, at home or online. The Learning Council worked with the company Play in a Day to create an assembly to remind children who they can talk to when they have worries. They also launched Pupil Wellbeing Boxes at Grazebrook which allow children to let the adults know if they need to talk.
Learning With Our Families
The school has been full of activity since our last bulletin with a wide range of trips, visitors and events taking place alongside lots of engaging and hands-on learning inside and outside our classrooms. Here is a selection of our learning so far this half term.
Year 6 wrote and performed their own assembly. We loved their instructional videos for how to tackle tricky maths.
Year 6 also showcased impressive geographical knowledge of climates, biomes and physical and human features.
Thank you to the Year 5 families who helped build Viking longboats at their Come Learn With Me and who joined us for their fantastic Viking assembly.
Year 1 and their families were very inspired by their class book The Snail and the Whale and made beautiful characters to help retell the story.
Our Year 4 children had great fun meeting three BBC musicians, listening to them play instruments such as the viola and learning how to conduct.
We were really impressed by our Year 3 families' creativity making Stone Age paintings. These will go on display later this term.
Reception children are loving their Family Friday events. They've especially loved sharing stories with their families.
Reception showed amazing creativity making models of their local area!
Thank you to our Reception families for showing their support at our Come Learn With Me.
Here are some of the buildings our Reception families made together.
Our weekly reading breakfasts have been a highlight of this term. We have loved seeing the children sharing their favourite books with you, each other and their siblings.
Learning Outside the Classroom
Our New Wave Federation Year 5 and 6 football team won all their games and scored 46 goals at the Hackney Schools' tournament. They will play in the finals at Leyton Orient Stadium in May.
Year 2 visited Hackney Museum to find out about some of the history of their local area. They loved dressing up and learning together through play.
Congratulations to the Year 6 children who took part in the Dot Dot Fire Money Wise Challenge. One of our teams even won the 'We Beat the Adults!' prize.
Our Year 5 and 6 girls' team showed amazing focus and collaboration at the Hackney Football tournament to progress to the next round.
Our superstar cricketers at the Hackney Schools' Competition where they performed brilliantly winning one of their two games.
Our junior gardeners have been busy planting saplings in the school grounds. We can't wait to see the trees growing. Thank you Ms Jean and Ms Khan for your hard work leading our gardening project.
Reception explored their community and identified local landmarks on their trip to Clissold Park.
Year 4 at the London Mithraeum exploring the ruins of a Roman temple.
Learning across the Curriculum
Reception were visited by Pollock's Toy Museum to learn about and handle toys from the past.
Year 4 have worked in partnership with Output Arts and See You In Stokey to create festive star lanterns, which will be paraded around Stoke Newington this Saturday from 4pm to 6pm.
Key Stage 2 were treated to a spectacular performance of The English Touring Opera's Tutankhamun's Shoes.
Year 6 have been devising tests to prove that light travels in straight lines and that light is needed to see.
Year 4 created Roman shields to re-enact the invasion of Britain in their classrooms and sharing assembly.
In science, Year 3 have learnt that magnets have two poles; that like poles attract and opposite poles repel.
Our Year 5 and 6 Eco Warriors carried out a litter pick of the school grounds while the Year 3 and 4 warriors conducted a food waste audit to help us be more sustainable.
Year 4 scientists have been learning how to build electrical circuits and debug and rebuild circuits when they don't work.
Year 1 scientists were visited by Animals UK. They met a tarantula, a fox and a chameleon!
Our History Home Learning
We have been so impressed by the children's creativity in their history home learning projects this term. Their work is currently on display in classrooms. The deadline for projects is Wednesday 14th December, when Our Learning Council will select items for our Grazebrook museum.
Admissions - September 2023
If your child is currently in Nursery with a birthday between 01/09/2018 and 31/08/2019 you should apply for a Reception place by the 15th January 2023. Details of how to apply can be found here on Hackney Education's website. If you would like support with making your application, please contact the school office on 020 8802 4051 or email gboffice@newwavefederation.co.uk.
Key Contacts
If you have any queries regarding you child's learning, the first point of contact is your child's class teacher. You can speak to them at the end of the day or contact our school office to arrange a phone call or face-to-face meeting with them. At times, you may wish to contact the member of staff in charge of your child's year group. At Grazebrook, these are:
Nursery and Reception: Ms Hasina Khan (Deputy Headteacher)
Year 1 and Year 2: Ms Niamh McLaughlin (Lead Teacher)
Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6: Mr Joshua Middleton (Assistant Headteacher)
SEND: Ms Hasina Khan (Deputy Headteacher)
All email queries including those for the attention of Mrs Beecroft or Mrs Reid should be sent to gboffice@newwavefederation.co.uk in the first instance with the addressee and/or topic in the subject line. These will be forwarded to the relevant member of staff.