School Newsletter : 04 November 2022

Due to the public transport strikes planned for Thursday 10th November, the Autumn Term Parents’ Evening will now take place on Thursday 17th November.

Parents can still sign up for their child’s meeting in the school office, if you have not already done so.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your kind understanding.

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

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 >

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

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.

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:

This week in church our readers read from Luke 6:20-31, a long reading about living in a saintly way. Graham talked about Biblical saints but also about modern day saints and what it means to live as God intended.

It was also lovely to have a visit from Kim, the church’s youth worker who’d moved away from London over the summer holidays. The children were delighted to see Kim again and to be able to say goodbye properly. One of the things Kim used to do was running the weekly Christian Club in school on Tuesday lunchtimes. We are very happy to announce that Helena will now be taking on the running of Christian Club and will be starting with her new group next week.

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.

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.

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.

Nursery had a wonderful pizza party this week! We made the dough from scratch, watching it grow and forming them into pizza circles. The children then topped their pizzas with a range of yummy toppings and best of all, were able to then enjoy them for their snack! Yum!

This week in Reception we began our new topic, Celebrations, starting with the Hindu celebration of Diwali. We read the story of Rama and Sita and explored why Diwali is celebrated. We then discussed the ways Hindu families celebrate and the different traditions carried out during Diwali. We had lots of fun creating our own Rangoli patterns using coloured rice.