School Newsletter : 21 October 2022

| Issue 7 | Autumn 1 | Week 7 |

Autumn Term Parents’ Evening

A reminder that the Autumn Term Parents’ Evening will be taking place on Thursday 10th November. Parents will be able to sign up for their child’s meeting from Monday 31st October in the school office.

PE Days

Classes will have PE lessons on the following days for the Autumn Term.

Monday: Year 1 (PM)
Tuesday: Year 4 (PM)
Wednesday: Year 5 (AM)* and Year 2 (PM)
Thursday: Year 6 (PM)
Friday: Reception & Nursery (AM) and Year 3 (PM)

*Kindly note that ONLY Year 5 pupils will need to come to school in their school uniform and bring their PE kit to change into after attending Church, on their designated PE day (Wednesday).

Please ensure that your child is wearing the correct PE uniform to school on their designated PE day. If you have any questions about school uniforms, please call, email or pop in to the school office

Correct PE uniform:

Navy PE t-shirt (with school logo)
Navy sweatshirt (with school logo)
Navy jogging bottoms, leggings, skirt or shorts
Trainers or plimsolls (black)

Trips and Visits

Year 4 Trip: The Museum of London

This trip was amazing opportunity for us to consolidate our studies this term on ‘The Romans’, and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Roman galleries. It was a great opportunity to see real historical artefacts first hand and we discovered lots of new things about the Roman way of life. We especially enjoyed looking at the homes of wealthy and ordinary people and comparing their lifestyles. Many of us were also intrigued by the reconstruction work carried out on the remains of a young adult female. We were surprised to see how skilled, sophisticated and talented these people were, almost 2000 years ago and how they changed London forever.

Year 5 Trip to The Museum of London

On Thursday 20th October, Jemison Class went on an adventure to the Museum of London. We have been learning about the Anglo Saxons in History but also about the jobs of archaeologists and historians. Archaeologists dig up artefacts from different time periods and Historians draw conclusion about life in the past and share these with others. In the Museum of London, there an many artefacts found in and around London, particularly from the Roman and Anglo Saxon periods. We spent time in these galleries sketching artefacts and thinking about what we learn from them. We had a really fun day, despite the rain and some children even said it was their best trip!

Events for the Autumn Term

November:

Thursday 10th: Parents’ Evening – please sign up at the school office from Monday 31st October 2022.
Friday 11th: Remembrance Day Service in school. All parents and carers are warmly invited to join.

December:

Friday 2nd: INSET Day – School closed to pupils.
Friday 9th: Christingle Service at St. John Smith Square. Parents are warmly invited.
Friday 16th: Last day of the Autumn Term. School finishes for all pupils at 13:45.

Term Dates 2022-2023

Please find here the agreed term dates set by our school’s Governing Body for the upcoming academic year, starting September 2022.

Please remember that holidays will not be authorised during the school term, and that all children should be in school (on time) every day.

Please refer to the table below for the term dates, including INSET days and Bank Holidays when the school will be closed to pupils.

Alternatively, you can click on the image thumbnail on the right to view the PDF (please note this will open in a new window) or you can click on the link below:

Burdett-Coutts & Townshend Foundation CE Primary School Term Dates 2022-2023 >

AUTUMN TERM 2022
Start of Term (for Years 1-6)	Monday	05 September 2022
To	Friday	21 October 2022
Half Term	Monday	24 October 2022
	Friday	28 October 2022
Return on	Monday	31 October 2022
End of Term	Friday	16 December 2022

SPRING TERM 2023
Start of Term	Wednesday	04 January 2023
To	Friday	10 February 2023
Half Term	Monday	13 February 2023
	Friday	17 February 2023
Return on	Monday	20 February 2023
End of Term	Friday	31 March 2023

SUMMER TERM 2023
Start of Term	Monday	17 April 2023
To	Friday	26 May 2023
Half Term	Monday	29 May 2023
	Friday	02 June 2023
Return on	Monday	05 June 2023
End of Term	Friday	21 July 2023

INSET DAYS
Teaching & Learning: Curriculum Map Autumn/Spring	Thursday	01 September 2022
Teaching & Learning: Phonics	Friday	02 September 2022
Assessment & Pupil Progress
Teaching & Learning: Curriculum Map Autumn/Spring	Tuesday	03 January 2023
Assessment & Pupil Progress

BANK HOLIDAYS (school closed)
May Bank Holiday	Monday	01 May 2023

Amazon Smile Account

By setting up a Smile Amazon account, every time you shop there, you can make a ‘free’ donation to our PTFA Friends of Burdett-Coutts!

By linking your existing Amazon account to a charitable cause, Amazon will donate a small amount to our PTFA each time you buy something, at no extra cost to you.

To do this, go to www.smile.amazon.co.uk
Click ‘Get started’
Sign into your Amazon account (or create one if you haven’t got one)
Pick your charity by searching for ‘Friends of Burdett-Coutts’
Then click ‘Select’
Tick the box that says ‘Yes, I understand that I must always start at smile.amazon.co.uk to support Friends of Burdett-Coutts’
Start shopping and remember to always go to www.smile.amazon.co.uk for all your Amazon shopping to make that vital donation to the Friends of Burdett-Coutts.

For a visual description of these instructions, please click the image on the right >

Community Corner

Class Assemblies:

We are delighted to welcome parents to school this term for Friday morning class sharing assemblies on the following dates:

18th November: Year 2
25th November: Year 1
2nd December: Reception & Nursery

When attending your child’s class assembly, please come to the main school office by 8:55am at the latest. You will be shown upstairs to the First Floor Hall and seated by 9am.

DreamArts

Over the years many of our children have attended drama clubs with DreamArts, a performing arts organisation for children and young people based in Westminster. Their Experiment project is for children aged 7-12 and is held on Saturdays 10:00-1:30 at The Abbey Centre, Great Smith Street SW1P 3BU.

Every child who signs up to the Experiment project will be taken to see The Lion King on Thursday 17th November. The cost is £35 per term but there are bursaries available for families who would need help. Please click here for further information >

Collective Worship

The whole school attends acts of Collective Worship every day.

Mondays and Tuesdays: key stage singing assemblies led by Mr Carden.
Wednesdays: Church service led by Graham or Helena, the clergy at St Stephens with St John on Rochester Row. These services are very child-friendly, and Year 6 take a leading role by processing, singing in the choir and reading the Bible readings and prayers.
Thursdays: We focus on celebrating achievements, led by a member of SLT, School Council or a class teacher with their class. When a class teacher leads the assembly, their class also recite a piece of poetry they have been learning. We would be very grateful if parents could support their children in learning these poems when it is their turn.
Friday: Opportunities for classes to share what they have been learning with their families and the rest of the school.

Theme of the Week:

During the final week of the Autumn 1st half term, Graham demonstrated the concept of perseverance by attempting to juggle with oranges. He kept dropping the oranges but tried and tried again – and he succeeded!

Sometimes we feel like giving up, especially when things are difficult, but with God’s help we get there in the end. Helena reminded us that sometimes it is hard to keep faith in God but if we persevere the rewards are incredible. Thank you to our brilliant Year 6 readers who brought two stories from the Bible to life in church this week: Genesis 32:22-31 and Luke 18:1-8

Over the course of the year we will focus on our school’s three Christian Values: Friendship, Compassion and Service.

Throughout the Autumn Term we will be concentrating on Friendship, and this ties in beautifully with the start of a new school year, new class teachers, new friends and making a fresh start.

Community Questions:

Have you ever found something difficult but kept going until you had done it or become skilled in it?
What happened?
How did you feel in the struggle and when you had succeeded?

September 2022: Nursery & Reception places available

If you are looking for a Nursery Place, we have a one full-time space and one part-time afternoon space still available to start immediately or in January 2023.

We have four places available in our Reception class, with availablity to start immediately or in January 2023.

We’d be delighted for you to join us for a 30-minute EYFS tour, where you will have the chance explore our Early Years setting, speak to key staff and ask any questions regarding admissions and your child starting with us at Burdett-Coutts.

Please contact us to register for our tours which take place every Thursday morning @ 09:30 – 10:30 during term time.

To book your tour place, please call 0207 828 6790
For further information about starting Reception at Burdett-Coutts, please click here >

Funding eligibility letter for Pupil Premium, Early Years Funding & Free School Meals

Due to changes in the eligibility criteria for Pupil Premium, Free School Meals and qualifying for 30 hours of funding for Nursery provision, many pupils currently enrolled at our school may now be entitled to one of these funding allocations.

We will be issuing letters to families who are currently not in receipt of the above, asking you to complete the registration for the identified funding option your child/ren maybe eligible for. Thank you so much in advance for your help in completing this.

This funding allows us to increase additional staffing hours to run booster groups, and an exciting range of extended day activities, that benefit our school and your child, and your cooperation is greatly appreciated at this difficult time for school budgets.

If you should have any queries with regards to the letter sent to you, please contact Mrs Deary or the school office.

Nursery:

Nursery have spent a lot of time thinking about how leaves lose their colours in Autumn. They decided to cheer the leaves up by painting them using beautiful colours that represent themselves! We also found time to enjoy an Autumnal afternoon teatime in the playground!

Reception:

We have been very busy in Reception! During RE we have been exploring our Big Question: ‘What Makes People Special?’. We have thought about what makes a person special and the special people we have in our lives. We then discussed that Christians believe Jesus is a special person and that he is a role model. We read stories about the miracles Jesus performed and acted out the key parts of the stories.

We have also been continuing to learn all about our senses. Each day we explored a different sense by carrying out different experiments. When putting our smelling sense to the test, we had to smell the mystery contents of a cup and see if we could guess what it was! We guessed banana and chocolate easily but found it more difficult to guess vinegar or tomato ketchup. We had lots of fun and really enjoyed each experiment.

Year 1:

Wow, what a busy half term we have had! In Art, we explored lines in an ‘expressive’ form, inspired by water and the artwork of Zaria Forman. We listened to different types of music and practiced ‘scribble art’ to create these pieces. We have been learning about different sections within a piece of art and colouring within the lines.

In History we have been learning all about Victorian Toys and the differences and similarities with the toys we play with now. It was interesting for us to distinguish and think about life a long time ago and what our grandparents and great-grandparents would have played with. We learnt all about the different materials that toys would have been made from then and those used now.

Year 2:

Year 2 have had an incredibly busy half term, and we are really looking forward to all our new learning next half term. We read the story ‘The Lonely Beast‘ by Chris Judge, and wrote diary entries, assuming the role of ‘The Lonely Beast‘. We then looked at a variety of diary entries in order to build up our understanding of what a diary is and identified the key features of a diary entry. Next, we created a plan with the key ideas we wanted to include in our writing keeping in mind our grammar focus – past tense and time connectives.

During RE, we have been learning about Christianity and focusing especially on our Big Question: ‘Is it possible to be kind to everyone all of the time?’ We learnt about Jesus’ teaching ‘Love your neighbour as yourself‘ by retelling Bible stories that show kindness, ‘The Good Samaritan and The Paralysed Man’ and explored how this makes Christians behave towards other people.

We also read the story Be Kind by Pat Zietlow Miller. The story shows that kindness does not always come easy and can sometimes be misunderstood too. We discussed how to be aware of people’s feelings and thought about how to react. And while being kind can sometimes feel difficult and that acts of kindness may be small, they can make a big difference. Finally, we looked at ways in which we can show kindness through giving and that giving does not always have to be a gift – it can be time, company, bringing breakfast to your friend or leaving a note on their desk wishing them a fabulous day and a smiley face.

Year 3:

At the end of busy first half term we have been diving deeper into our topic on the Stone Age and looking at key events that happened during that period of time. We have been studying the timeline of events that took place and learning the meaning of BC and AD. The children were fascinated to learn just how old our world is!

We shared and celebrated the learning from our history unit with the school and our families during our class assembly. The children were dedicated to learning their lines and participated with enthusiasm and excitement. Everyone learnt a lot about the Stone Age and were fascinated by all the interesting facts we shared. We even sang a special Stone Age song! Thank you to the parents who helped their children with their lines and came along to support them on the day!

Year 4:

Year 4 has been a hive of activity over the first half term. During our reading lessons, we have been focusing on poetry and have been looking at poems that link to themes in our class text. We looked at the poet’s use of language, especially metaphors, similes and alliteration. We thought about the overall mood of the poems and whether we understood and liked them. We realised that there are many different styles of poetry with differing structures – they don’t always need to rhyme! In future Writing lessons we will be creating our own poems, thinking about how they entertain the reader.

Our focus in Maths has been the area of shapes. We know that area is the space taken up inside a 2D shape or surface. At this point, we are finding area by counting squares and have discovered that these squares must all be the same size for this method to work. We have also drawn our own shapes of a specified area. We can recognise rows and columns and are beginning to understand that by multiplying these, we can find areas of larger shapes more effectively.

Year 5:

Year 5 have had a very busy first half term and have been working incredibly hard in all their lessons. We are very proud of the front cover we have made for our RE floor book. We each decorated a cross with things that are important to us. We chose a cross as the symbol of Christianity and then we made them all fit together to show how we are all part of our class community and that we all work together.

We have also been writing our own chapters of the Beowulf story, our current class text. First, we created our own monster, and used ambitious language to describe it. Next, we thought about the setting and described it. Finally, we thought about the battle. We made story boards to help us be able to remember the story when we wrote it. Miss Mattey is going to make a book from all our chapters.

Year 6:

Wow! What a busy half term for Year 6. In Art we have been exploring art with a message, and our topic has been, ‘Making my Voice Heard‘. This included viewing the emotive works of Kathe Kowitz, where we drew our own portraits using a series of lines and experimented with ‘halo‘ and ‘chiaroscuro‘ techniques. We also expressed our personalities – turning our names into graffiti tags, using block lettering and contrasting colours & shadows.

In Literacy, we have been working hard to memorise Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, ‘The Raven‘ (1845) and perform it to the class. The poem is centred around the unnamed narrator’s journey into madness after realising he will never forget his lost Lenore. Poe uses symbols such as a talking raven, a bust of Pallas and the narrator’s chamber to share the story while representing his narrator’s struggle with grief. We focused on our intonation, use of action, projection of our voices and use of repetition to express the poet’s melancholy.