Let's get swimming!

We have finally had children from Reception and Key Stage 1 swimming in our own pool! Two teaching assistants are now trained swimming instructors and each class has had their first lesson this week. There were some nervous children but also lots of excitement.

I loved going with my class.

I have never been swimming but I liked it.

I can already swim but liked going and being active with my friends.

Barwick Maypole celebration - dancers wanted

The Barwick Maypole Committee (barwickmaypolecommittee@hotmail.com) are looking for primary school aged children to dance at the maypole celebration this year. Please contact the committee on the email address above and they will let you know about rehearsals and how to join in the fun!

Give rugby a try?

This week’s message (Friday 07 January 2022)

Happy new year! We hope 2022 has started well for you. Our first message of the year has three parts: an attendance update; some information about books we’re sending home for children in Reception and Key Stage 1; and some information about forthcoming workshops.

Attendance matters

It’s difficult deciding whether your child should attend school if they’re poorly. It’s even more difficult in these Covid times. Children have missed out on so many days of learning in school because of lockdowns and isolating, and yet we know you’re careful that your child isn’t attending school if they’re displaying any Covid symptoms.

• Thank you for taking care to look after your own child – and everyone around them, too.
• Equally, thank you for making sure that your child gets to school as much as possible, and on time, when it’s been safe to do so.

Despite Covid, our whole-school attendance figure for the Autumn term was 95.7%. A quarter of children in school have 100% attendance – that’s brilliant! Here’s an update on the attendance for each class:

• Sunshine class: 95.0%
• Rainbow class: 95.2%
• Class 1A: 96.7% – a close second, so well done!
• Class 1,2B: 96.2%
• Class 2C: 96.0%
• Class 3,4A: 96.1%
• Class 3,4B: 97.0% – great stuff!
• Class 3,4C: 92.1% – we can see the impact of a high number of Covid cases here
• Class 5,6A: 94.3%
• Class 5,6B: 94.3%
• Class 5,6C: 94.1%

Reading at home

This section is for parents and carers of children in Early Years and Year 1. Something similar may be happening for Year 2 children – check with your child’s class teacher.

Earlier this week, we sent some information home about a change to what books we’ll send home. Since then, a few parents have asked for a bit more information about why we’re now asking you to read e-books at home.

It might help to be clear that there are two types of book.

The practice books are short books with simple words that your child will be able to ‘decode’ (to read). In school, these are physical books; at home, it’s the same text as an e-book. Your child will have read this book at least three times in school across the week. They’re for children to practise the phonics that they’ve learnt in school – matching letters to sounds. They’re also for you to celebrate your child’s increasing phonics skills. Reading the book won’t take more than about 10-15 minutes.

The sharing books are physical books (not e-books), typically chosen by your child. They’re likely to be longer. These books are to read together and enjoy. Your child is unlikely to be able to read all of the text independently. You’ll probably spend more time over a few days reading together the sharing books than the practice books.

Here are some of the reasons we’ve chosen to use a web-based approach for the practice books at home:

Workshops

Coming up next week is a Zoom session for parents and carers of children in Year 6, although others are welcome to attend, too. It’s to provide you with information about the end of Key Stage 2 assessments (the ‘SATs’) that will take place in the week beginning Monday 09 May.

The session is on Thursday 13 January and starts at 6pm. It’ll last around 30 minutes, and there’ll be opportunities to ask any questions that you might have.

We’ll send to Year 6 parents and carers the Zoom link. For other parents and carers, if you’re interested in attending, please either send us a message on the School Gateway app or email the school office. We’ll then email the Zoom joining details out to all those who have expressed an interest.

Talking of workshops, there are also some coming up about special education needs and disabilities (SEND). These come from Leeds Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information and Advice Support Service (not us) – read more about the workshops here.

Next week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who leads on Science and topics across Sphere Federation. He’ll provide an overview of the History learning that’s happening in Key Stage 1 and 2, and how you might help at home. In the meantime, have a great weekend.

This week’s message (Friday 17 December 2021)

The last message of 2021 comes from Miss Hague, the Head of School…

So here we are at the end of a long term. As always, our children have shown themselves to be resilient (one of our Rs for learning!) and happy and healthy learners. Standing at the gate each morning and being greeted by lots of smiling faces is a lovely way to start the day – whatever the weather throws our way!

Autumn term is always a special time in school as we welcome new families to our school community. Our Nursery and Reception children have once again settled so well despite having some restrictions around their transition.  Thanks to all our families for working with us on this.

This term, we’ve managed to run several school trips – something we haven’t been able to do for quite a while. Our Year 5 and 6 children enjoyed a day at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park whilst the rest of the school went to Leeds Art Gallery.  Getting on a coach is always exciting, especially if it’s your first school trip.

In exciting news, we’ve trained up two of our Teaching Assistants to be swimming teachers. This means that early in the Spring term (possibly week two), we’ll be able to get our Reception and KS1 children back in our own pool!  We’ve really struggled to recruit swimming teachers so this is amazing news. Details will follow after Christmas. Our Year 4 children will swim for another half term at Wetherby Leisure Centre and then we’ll swap to the Year 3 children.

I promise I didn’t have a crystal ball when I made the difficult decision to move our KS1 and Early Years Nativity plays to a recorded version! I, like you, had never heard of Omicron at that point. Yet here we are with the Covid gift that keeps on giving! Seriously, I hope the recorded version of these little treasures added some sparkle and shine to your Christmas. I certainly enjoyed watching them.

As things continue to change around us, here’s to a brighter 2022.

This week’s message (Friday 10 December 2021)

This week’s message has a couple of reminders, but we start with a ‘Plan B’ update on Covid precautions…

Since the early days of the pandemic, the Department for Education has been sending regular emails to schools. Yesterday’s came with an introductory sentence: ‘Today’s email includes an urgent update for all education and childcare settings on implementing Plan B of the COVID-19 Response: Autumn and Winter Plan’. Here are some extracts:

school attendance remains mandatory and all the usual rules continue to apply

settings are strongly encouraged to ask parents, guardians and other visitors to take a lateral flow device (LFD) test before entering the setting

all staff and students should test over the holidays in line with national guidance. This means that they should test if they will be in a high-risk situation that day and before visiting people who are at higher risk of severe illness if they get COVID-19

We were also asked to ‘revisit…existing outbreak plans to ensure [we] are well prepared for any future changes’ – let’s hope we don’t get to the same situation as we were in last January.

Next, a couple of reminders…

Next Tuesday, learning updates will be sent home. These are short reports that we send home at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms; they complement the parent-teacher meetings which take place earlier in the same terms. We started doing these a few years ago following your feedback in our annual surveys.

Also coming up is a non-uniform day at the end of the term on Friday 17 December. Our Uniform Policy contains the following:

Pupils should dress appropriately and respectfully for school, even on non-uniform days. Clothes are inappropriate if they, for example, glorify violence, feature bad language, are very short (eg crop tops), or relate to age-inappropriate topics (eg computer games)… Make-up (other than face paints as part of a specific costume) is not allowed. Flip-flops or high-heeled shoes are not allowed, even on non-uniform days, because they’re dangerous when running.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Christmas fun in the hall

A massive thank you to Mrs Pennock and all the lunchtime staff who created a fabulous atmosphere for Christmas dinner day today. The children and staff had a lovely time!

Wake Up Shake Up (WUSU) Club

WUSU Club have had a successful series of sessions after school this half term. They have made two new dances for you to enjoy and learn:

Dance Monkey and and Christmas Special, One More Sleep

WUSU club will be continuing after Christmas. Keep an eye out for letters about after school clubs so you can decide if you’d like to join in with any.

This week’s message (Friday 03 December 2021)

This week’s message is a short one. The main part is an important reminder about Covid, and we end – less seriously – with a link in case you’d like some stocking filler ideas…

Two weeks ago, we told you about a website with up-to-date Covid information for Leeds. The heatmap (the second graphic) shows that there’s still a high number of positive cases of Covid for children of primary school age – in fact, if you scroll across the second row up (children aged 5-9), you can see numbers are rising. We’re noticing this, too – in fact, we’ve had to return to remote learning for one class in Sphere Federation.

Please be alert to the signs and symptoms of COVID-19 infection:

• a high temperature
• a new continuous cough
• a loss of change to your sense of taste or smell

If your child has any of these main symptoms, even if they’re mild:

1. Get a PCR test (test that is sent to a lab) as soon as possible.
2. Keep your child at home and not have visitors until you get the test result – they can only leave home to have the test.

We’re seeing children showing various other symptoms such as sickness, colds and headaches, too. Please keep you child at home if they’re not feeling right for whatever reason.

Thank you for continuing to support us to keep our school as safe from Covid as we can.

On a lighter note, if we’re all being as cautious as we can right now, Christmas should be a better one for many this year. If you’re on the look out for some ideas for pressies, check out this Christmas book guide. Giving a book at Christmas is a great way to keep children reading!

This week’s message (Friday 26 November 2021)

This week’s message comes from Paula Allaway, who’s the Maths Leader across Sphere Federation…

Is your child engaging with the number fact fluency homework?

Number fact fluency – the quick recall of addition and subtraction facts, and multiplication and division facts (times tables), is really important for all children. The ability to recall these facts quickly (rather than taking too long working them out) helps children to answer questions in lots of areas of Maths much more easily.

If these facts are learnt and stored, rather than being calculated or counted, they require less activity from the brain. Essentially, memorisation frees up working memory space to allow children to focus on learning new mathematical ideas and applying mathematics to solve problems, and not the facts themselves.

Addition and subtraction facts

For younger children, the crucial numbers facts are simple addition and subtraction facts. We want children to know facts like bonds of ten (eg 3+7 and 4+6) without having to count on or back using their fingers. How fluent are your child’s number facts? Regularly accessing NumBots will help with this.

Multiplication and division facts

For older children, number facts also includes times tables up to 12 x 12. By the end of Year 4, children should know their times tables without having to count through to reach the answer. Times Tables Rock Stars will help with this. In June 2022, Y4 children will take part in a statutory national assessment – the Multiplication Tables Check. They’ll be tested on 25 randomly selected facts.

Without secure knowledge of times tables facts, many future Maths topics are more difficult to learn. In Y5,6, for example, progress in column methods, fractions, area, ratio and proportion can all be hampered because they involve recall of facts.

Children who do well in our assessments are the children who are spending more time practising on NumBots and Rock Stars. Likewise, the children who need to learn these facts more aren’t using this resource at home.

We know that being fluent with number facts leads to high confidence in maths generally. To support this, we’ve slimmed back what we ask for homework to help make sure our children’s Maths (and also Reading) skills are strong. Your child should spend about 10 minutes practising number facts each day. Look out for the focus on the homework sheet we send home.

If you need help accessing these, please contact your child’s class teacher.