Another busy week in Oldcastle. The week ended today with an assembly for pupils in reception to year 6 in the main hall. We believe it is important to come together as a school and will be holding an assembly every Friday morning to celebrate success, talk about the week, school events and sing songs. We will have assemblies on school values, welsh activities and singing.

Today Mrs Littlewood talked about this month's school value - community. Children were really engaging and helped us gain an understanding on what community means to us as individuals and as a school. Mrs Littlewood tasked the children to focus on doing something nice for someone elese in our school community over the next week. We look forward to hearing how children have been kind and respectful to each other and members of staff at next weeks assembly.

We also heard from year 2 and year 5 how their token collection has been going and what they have been learning throughout the week. We always love to hear what the children have been learning - year 2 have started their new concept learning about day and night. This topic sounds really interesting and the children have learnt how the sun shines at different times of the year. Year 5 have also been super busy learning about fractions, their new Percy Jackson book and learning about how rivers can impact us.

We finished off the assembly with some lovely whole school singing.

Welsh Week

We are looking forward to celebrating Welsh Weej during week beginning 13th February. Our Welsh Week was hugely successful last year and we know children will be preparing entries, learning welsh songs and dancing in readiness for our Eisteddfod on 1st March. Children will be working hard throughout the week producing some amazing artwork, writing poetry, learning welsh songs, and taking part in folk dancing to name a few of the activities! They will also be dragon feeding which is always great fun!

We will be launching Welsh Week with children on Friday 11th February.

Eisteddfod

We are looking forward to our Eisteddfod on Wednesday 1st March when we will celebrate all the hard work that the pupils and staff have put into Welsh Week.

The day will start with an assembly and we will learn who will be crowned this year's Bard. This traditional ceremony has taken place in Oldcastle for a number of years and the Bard is awarded to a year 6 pupil who has won the poetry competition. During the ceremony, the Bard is 'robed' by her fellow classmates. Once the ceremony is completed the Bard will read their winning poem to the rest of the school via the online assembly. All children will be able to celebrate the achievement to congratulate the Bard. We look forward to sharing photos with you.

Throughout the day, all pupils will be showcasing their Welsh week performances in singing, poetry and folk dancing within their house colour groups and staff will judge and award points to the winning house. Our house captains will be busy on the day announcing the winning house after each performance. We will also be announcing the art and poetry writing competition winners.

Finally, at the end of the school day, we will also be announcing the winning 'house' in an online assembly. All points accumulated from children's participation in Welsh week and the Eisteddfod will be totalled and the winning house will receive our Eisteddfod trophy!

Children may wear house colours or welsh costume to school on 1st March.

Radio Station

The radio station is coming up to one year old! We are delgihted to learn that year 6 have a series of radio shows planned over the next few months so we look forward to sharing these with parents via our website. The radio station is a fantastic tool for developing so many skills.

Facebook and Twitter

We regularly use our Facebook and Twitter social media accounts to showcase activities in school so please make sure you like and follow our pages. Facebook - Oldcastle Primary School and Twitter @OldcastleSchool

School Savings Club

School savings club started back again this week and it was lovely to see our children savings their money. Don't forget the club runs every Wednesday in school.

School Start Time

Please can we remind parents that school starts at 8.55am - we are noticing a number of children arriving late through main reception and this creates a huge amount of disruption.

Nut Free School

Please can we remind parents that we strive to be a nut free school as we have a number of pupils who have a severe allergy to nuts. This includes nut products such as peanut butter and nutella.

Children's Drinks

Please can we remind parents that children should only be bringing water to school to drink throughout the day. Energy drinks and squash are not permitted.

Amazing Authors Competition

Blue Peter has launched its latest competition today - 'Amazing Authors' which children may be interested in. The winning story will be brought to life and read by mega popstar and author Tom Fletcher as a CBeebies Bedtime Story!

All you'll need to do is come up a short story or poem with an amazing adventure for an equally as brilliant main character. For more information please follow the link below:

Blue Peter Amazing Authors Competition

Admissions to school

Please refer to the Bridgend Council website for details of applications to school, currently applications are open for children moving to secondary school and children moving from nursery to reception.

Applications are open from 9th January for admission to nursery with a start date from September 2023

BCBC School Admissions

Thank You

Thank you to our local Homebase store who have donated some gardening resources, including compost, seeds and bulbs. We are very grateful for the support. If parents have any gardening equipment/ plant pots/ bulbs or seeds that you no longer use, please could you consider donating it to our gardening enrichment

Contact details

We regularly email and send App messages to parents - please ensure we have up to date contact details for you to ensure you keep up to date with school news. You can either email us with change of details (ask@oldcastlprimary.co.uk) or complete the change of details form.

Barney

Nursery

Year 1

Year 1 learnt how to send messages this week with the help of our year 5 children. A lovely bit of collaborative work between the year groups.

Year 1 are trying to encourage more birds to visit our playground by making hearts.

Enrichment

So lovely to see such lovely activities taking place throughout the school and beyond for our Friday afternoon enrichment programme. This term we have such a variety of activities taking place including line dancing, cooking, gardening, lego, science experiments, fitness, tennis, fencing, felt, digital skills, textiles to name a few!

Inset Days 2022 / 23

Inset days for the remainder of the school year

• Friday 31st March 2023

• Friday 26th May 2023

• Monday 24th July 2023

Term Dates - all term dates are available to view on our website

• February Half Term - Monday 20th February to Friday 24th February

• Easter Holidays - Monday 3rd April to Friday 14th April

• May Half Term - Monday 29th May to Friday 2nd June

• School year finishes on Friday 21st July

Sony Workshop

Years 5 and 6 have been invited to attend a coding workshop in Sony, Pencoed, in February and March. An email has been sent to parents today with more details of the free event.

• 5I will attend on 7th February

• 6Y will attend on 13th February

• 5M will attend on 14th February

• 6H will attend on 13th March

In the event that you have a concern regarding a child please follow this procedure:

• During school hours please contact Mrs Ceri Littlewood, safeguarding lead at Oldcastle Primary School.

• Out of school hours please contact the out of hours Emergency Duty Team Tel No 01443743665

More information on Safeguarding at Oldcastle can be found on our website.

At Oldcastle, we are proud of each other and ourselves. We nurture all of our community so that we grow as confident, responsible and happy people. Oldcastle school is more than just learning.

• We try hard for each other

• We act responsibly

• We treat people how we’d like to be treated

• We work as a team

• We trust and respect each other

• We listen and learn together

• We share knowledge and experience

Together we make the difference

Together we shape innovative experiences

More information on our values and visions can be found on our website. Visions and Values