School Newsletter : 10 March 2023

Red Nose Day is back!

Support us in this important fundraising event on Friday 17th March, when we will be joining thousands of people up and down the country by getting involved.

All our donations will go towards helping Comic Relief to support amazing projects and organisations who are making a difference for people across the UK and around the world.

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 🙂

6th March: Year 6 Citizenship Trip to the London Transport Museum

Year 6 visited the London Transport Museum to take part in a Junior Citizenship workshop. We worked well as a group and were presented with a class certificate at the end to recognise our thoughtful and reflective responses.

As part of the workshop, we met a number of key-workers who work hard to help keep our communities safe. This included members of the Ambulance Service, London Fire Brigade, Police and Bus Service. As we are becoming more independent and will soon be making the transition to secondary school, this scheme helped us to learn about some of the dangers and situations we may face such as:

• safely using public transport,
• how to help someone in danger,
• how to escape from a fire,
• keeping safe online and awareness of peer pressure and the impact that this may have on our decision making.

7th March: Year 4 trip to The National Gallery at Trafalgar Square

This was a wonderful opportunity to see beautiful works of art at a world famous venue. We were given a guided walk and talk by an expert from The Education Centre.  As we have been studying the art of Henri Rousseau, we first looked at his painting of a crouching tiger, ‘Surprise!‘ We then had the opportunity to study in detail, an intriguing painting with hidden messages, by JWM Turner. We finally looked at some of the works by Dutch artists. This trip was educational, beneficial and fun. The children will hopefully have gained much from it.

7th March: Year 5 trip to the Khalsa Jatha Central Gurdwara (near Shepherd’s Bush)

We enjoyed the bus journey and spotted famous London landmarks, including Hyde Park Corner and Marble Arch, on our way to the Khalsa Jatha Central Gurdwara. When we arrived, we covered our head as a mark of respect to enter the Gurdwara. Mandip was our guide and we learnt a lot of fascinating facts about the origins and traditions that Sikhs observe. We were also lucky enough to share Langar (a delicious, healthy vegetarian meal of dahl and vegetable curry) which is part of a Sikh’s belief in helping others and that everyone is equal. Our food was wonderfully prepared and cooked by refugees from Afghanistan! We learnt a lot from this experience and  asked and answered lots of questions.  Miss Mattey and her mum were very proud of us.

8th March: Year 4 Coronation Club in-school session

We are very lucky to be taking part in the Coronation Club project which is being run by Westminster Abbey. As part of the project, pupils will learn all about the coronations that have taken place at Westminster Abbey and the forthcoming coronation of King Charles III. The Coronation Club is running four workshops, which includes a trip to the Royal Mews and a visit to Westminster Abbey to see exactly what will be happening on the day. Needless to say, we are very excited! During our first workshop this week, we looked at some artefacts which the children could handle and had fun doing a quiz about coronation music. Most exciting of all, we are going to be making our own robes which we started designing, and began by creating our own coat of arms. We are keen to get started on adding to our designs at next week’s workshop!

9th March: Year 6 Coronation Project with Peter Daniels

Year 6 took part in a exciting project which was run by Peter Daniels from the Westminster Archives. The project was based around true stories that took place in Westminster 375 years ago during the English Civil War. Through puppets and drama, we were introduced to the predecessors of King Charles III as the country approaches his coronation in May this year. We were transported to the Ministry of Defence Theatre and then to Somerset House, home of Queen Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s French Catholic wife to learn of the consequences of religious intolerance. We also learnt all about the fascinating story of an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Westminster in 1646, as a comparison to Covid 19. Applying all of the information we had learnt during the morning, we then performed all of these stories to the rest of the school at the end of the day. We all throughly enjoyed our day and had a lot of fun learning further about the history of the area we live in.

9th March: Years 4 & 5 Battle of Britain Concert at Cadogan Hall

A wonderful afternoon of music was thoroughly enjoyed by all at Cadogan Hall on Thursday, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and two actors taking us on a journey through World War II and The Battle of Britain. Mr Carden had prepared the children well by teaching them some of the songs, so they were active participants in the concert and really enjoyed it. The teachers accompanying the trip were extremely proud of all pupils. They were engaged, polite, calm and enthusiastic – all ingredients of what makes great audience members  and they really did us proud!

March (continued):

• 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.

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.

In church on Wednesday, Graham spoke of the reading from John 3:1-17, about Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a Jewish religious leader, and he would visit Jesus in secret at night to ask lots of questions about the Hebrew scriptures. He struggled with his faith and didn’t always feel he understood what the important messages were.

Jesus told Nicodemus about an event when the Jews were in the wilderness when Moses held aloft a bronze snake and anyone who was sick who looked at it was healed. In the same way, all who look in faith towards Jesus lifted on the cross, are promised salvation.

Graham showed the children pictures of celebrities as babies or children for us to guess who they were – one of them was him! Graham talked about the idea of being ‘born again‘, not in the sense that you go back to being an unknowing baby, but that you are saved by the love of Jesus. Faith is such a personal journey and people often have many questions. Jesus wanted us to know that having questions is ok!

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:

• 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 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	Friday	02 December 2022
Teaching & Learning: Curriculum Map Autumn/Spring	Tuesday	03 January 2023
Assessment & Pupil Progress	Friday	07 July 2023
BANK HOLIDAYS (school closed)
May Bank Holiday	Monday	01 May 2023
Coronation Bank Holiday	Monday	08 May 2023

The Mathematicians in Nursery have been creating some wonderful stories around their counting. Our unit of inquiry this half term is Animals and they were a brilliant help when we were working on our one to one correspondence this week.

We had so much fun last week as we celebrated World Book Day. We enjoyed sharing our favourite stories and talking about the characters we had dressed up as. In the afternoon we designed and created our own book marks. We are so excited to use them in our reading books and made sure to put our names on them in bright colours so we don’t lose them.

Year 1 has been focusing on all the wonderful books written by Julia Donaldson for literacy, in particular, The Gruffalo, which is our favourite. We have been retelling the story, looking at rhyming and rhythm when we read it out loud, and practicing fluency and expression. In our Art lessons we painted some Gruffalo pictures to match our stories, which we worked hard to publish in our best handwriting.

Our Art topic this half term is Portraits, and we have been using photos of ourselves to draw our self-portrait. We are starting to look and explore with shading and are developing our skills well. Later in the half term we will be visiting the National Gallery to look at the many wonderful portraits displayed there. In the meantime, however, can you guess who each of these pictures is of?

This week as Scientists, we have continued to learn about the human body and, how nutrients are transported around our bodies. To help us to understand this concept fully, we consolidated our learning on the different parts and functions of the digestive system and circulatory system first. We discovered that nutrients and water are absorbed in the stomach, small and large intestines. They enter the blood stream via the capillaries where they are passed through to the arteries. The blood is then circulated throughout the body, including being oxygenated in the lungs and the heart. To support our learning, we drew diagrams to show how the three main food groups – fats, carbohydrates and proteins – are broken down, ready to be absorbed by our bodies.