School Newsletter : 24 February 2023

A series of devastating earthquakes have hit southern Turkey (now known as Türkiye) and north-west Syria killing over 24,000 people and injuring many more. Thousands of buildings, including hospitals and schools, have collapsed and infrastructure has been badly damaged.

People have been left without shelter in freezing winter conditions and desperately need blankets, emergency shelter, food and clean water. DEC charities and their local partners are among the first responders providing urgent help.

Immediate priorities are search and rescue, medical treatment for the injured, shelter for those who have lost their homes, heating in safe spaces, blankets, warm clothes, and ensuring people have food and clean water.

You can help people affected by the crisis by making a donation and helping to raise money for the DEC appeal. This will allow DEC charities and their local partners to scale up their response and reach more people.

• £10 could provide blankets to keep two people warm
• £25 could provide emergency food for a family for ten days
• £50 could provide emergency shelter for two families

If you are able to, please make a donation here at www.dec.org.uk >

Last Thursday, the Friends of Burdett-Coutts, our school’s Parent-Staff Association had another productive planning meeting for the upcoming Easter Fete!

Thank you to all the parents who attended – it was a really useful meeting, with so much discussed and decided. We discussed the plans established for the fete and have begun arranging for tables (to be borrowed), stall leaders rota as well as the various items required.

We would be very grateful to receive any ‘new’ unwanted items you may have and would like to donate. Please bring these in when you can and leave them at the school office, for the attention of the PSA.

If you are a parent, carer or a guardian of a child that attends the school, then you are automatically a member of the Friends of Burdett-Coutts. Being part of FoBC is a great chance to meet other parents, while supporting our school. Even if you only have a small amount of time, it’s an amazing opportunity to participate more in school life.

Please come along if you can to our next planning meeting, which will be at 9am on Thursday 2nd March in the Ground Floor Hall. EVERYONE is welcome and we would really value your input. 

If you’re unable to attend Thursday’s planning meeting but would like to help out, please speak to Miss Rachida in Nursery & Reception.

Please see below the range of Class Projects that are included in the Homework Overviews for Years 1 – 6 for this half term. These can be found in your child’s Google Classroom, including the outline for Maths and Spelling tasks.

Kindly be informed that all projects need to be submitted into school on Monday 27th March.

Good luck everyone 🙂

On Thursday 2nd of March we will be celebrating our love of reading on World Book Day. We have some lovely activities planned, including an assembly, guest readers and prizes for the most imaginative outfits in each class. We would really like all pupils to dress up as their favourite book characters as part of the festivities! We strongly encourage parents and carers not to spend money on these costumes and instead be creative with the pupils’ outfits. Ideas include coming as a favourite word from a book, the author of their favourite book or even the front cover of a book!

March (continued):

• Monday 20th March @ 19:00 – 21:00: Barbican Concert – Year 6 have been invited to perform alongside pupils from Westminster School in their concert. An amazing opportunity! More details to follow, including how parents can obtain tickets.
• Tuesday 21st March: Pimlico Music Foundation Singing Event at St. Gabriel’s Church – Year 5 to perform and parents are warmly welcomed (times TBC).
• Monday 27th March @ 14:30 – 16:30: Coronation Club (Year 4) Trip to the Royal Mews – separate letter will follow.

On Tuesday, Year 4 visited The West London Synagogue as part of our RE studies this half term. This is a liberal, reform synagogue based at Marble Arch, and we were made to feel very welcome. Our guide explained some of the Jewish traditions we have been learning about and we looked at the beautiful interior of the synagogue. We were lucky enough to be able to view the Torah Scrolls which are kept in The Ark, which was generously opened for us. Some of the scrolls are over 300 years old! It was interesting to learn about the links between Judaism, Christianity and Islam and the children undoubtedly benefited from the visit.

This week, Year 6 were fortunate enough to take part in an all day workshop run by The Thames Explorer organisation at the foreshore of the River Thames. We had the amazing opportunity to apply all our learning about rivers within a real-life context. With the help of our group leaders (Simon and Sam), we classified creatures living in the Thames: this included leeches, crabs, snails and flounder. We also learnt about the PH scale, and we were surprised to discover that the PH of the Thames was 7 (and therefore neutral)! As well as learning about the ecosystem of the river, we took on the role of archaeologists and collected a range of artefacts from animal bones to Victorian pottery, discussing how they may have ended up in the Thames. It was a day to remember and as we were so well behaved, Simon has invited us on another archaeological trip in the summer term!

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.

Wednesday saw us celebrating Ash Wednesday in Church, and Graham explained that lots of Christians burn their palm crosses from the previous Easter and use the ashes to make a cross on their foreheads. Did you see anyone walking around on Wednesday with a sooty mark on their forehead? Graham did his own, and the children told him it looked more like a T!

Ash Wednesday is always the day after Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day), marking the start of the holy season of Lent for Christians, and is a time of reflection and repentance in preparation for Easter. Graham explained that this 40 day period is a time of fasting and prayer, just like Ramadan for Muslims, and many Christians will give up something to test themselves.

What are you giving up? What would be the most difficult thing for you to forgo all the way up until Easter?

Year 6 were out on a trip on Wednesday, so Year 5 took the reins in Church, processing up the aisle with the cross and candles, singing solos (well done Sara and Ali!) and doing a great job with the rather long reading from the Book of Joel 1-2, 12-17 (well done Ella and Zion!). Miss Mattey couldn’t have been prouder of Year 5 – they did brilliantly!

Many of you may be aware from the national press that the National Education Union (NEU), has balloted for strike action on the following dates:

• Thursday 2 March 2023
• Wednesday 15 March 2023
• Thursday 16 March 2023

Kindly be informed that our school will be open on all the strike days listed above, with all classes and wrap around provision (Breakfast Club, Extended School Day and After School Clubs) operating as normal.

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 >

In this first week of our new half term, Nursery have been working on developing fine motor skills, learning about circles, working on tactile sensory stimulation and having a whole lot of fun and imagination. The children also learnt the recipe for creating their own play dough! By using their oral processing and comprehension skills to follow the recipe, they blended all the dry ingredients together, choosing their own colours to make a successful dough. The dough was perfect for the children to start working on their shape exploration of a circle – and of course, to make pancakes for Pancake Day.

This week we had lots of fun learning about, and celebrating, Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday). We made our own pancakes and enjoyed choosing the toppings. We had to write what we wanted on our pancake first, and then used our order forms to make the pancakes exactly how we wanted them. Finally, we had to spread the toppings on ourselves which was a bit tricky. The best part – which was much easier – was eating them!

In Music, Mr Carden and Year 1 have been using a variety of percussion instruments. The focus has been on ‘conducting‘, with different pupils having the opportunity to conduct the rest of the class. This has been a lot of fun! We have learnt how to stop and start when the conductor is playing, as well as playing loudly and softly. It has been great to play so many different instruments and also practicing playing them in time with the music.

In Jemison Class, we have become forensic scientists investigating an attempted crime here at Burdett-Coutts! We are replicating information about our foot sizes in a table and comparing this within our class to find the culprit. We also measured Miss Mattey, Mr Carden, Miss Sweeney and Ms Baker’s shoe sizes! Then we looked at our fingerprints and how they are all different. Are yours a loop, arch or whorl?  Did you know that even identical twins have different fingerprints?

This week, we have been linking our work as Geographers and relating this to the history of the River Thames. We have focused specifically on the Great Stink which took place in the summer of 1858. We were shocked to discover that it was caused by untreated human waste in the River Thames and its bank,  and an ageing and inadequate sewer system which emptied directly into the Thames. The bad air was thought to transmit contagious diseases. There were three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink was blamed on the problems with the river. A proposal from the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette for sewage treatment was finally accepted and thanks to this ingenious engineer, we still use this system today.