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Community News Chinese dragon roars its way through Brighton!

On Saturday 3rd May the children, with parents and friends, proudly

walked through the streets of Brighton displaying Brackenbury

Primary’s creativity at the 2014 Children’s Parade. It was truly an

amazing community event which was orchestrated by Jo Brumby, who

led our drummers. One parent commented that “I have never been to

this event before, it’s been brilliant and I won’t ever miss it again!”

Wig Wednesday, 21st May 2014

Are you ready to get your wig on? This is a big

day when schools across the UK unite to show

their support and raise vital funds for children

and young people with cancer. We would like to

ask your child to wear a wig to school and make

a small donation to raise money for this charity.

Year 3 Oscar night, Thursday 22nd May

Our Year 3 children have worked extensively

on creating their own films and would like to

celebrate these with their parents and carers

from 6.30 to 7.30 pm. Refreshments will be

available, formal dress essential.

Film night, Friday 23rd May

Children can join their friends in watching the

film Sing-Along Frozen after school on the

last day of this half term. 100 tickets are

available at £2.00 per ticket, you just need to

return the slip from the flyer that went home

recently.

Save the Date!

Title Page

Annexe extension 2

Improving school grounds 3

Extra curricular news, Feeling musical? and

Governors update

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School improvement work and Attendance 5

Mrs Furnell, Sad news and Health & Safety 6

Achievements and Opportunities in the community 7

Carry on baking 8

The

Brackenbury Buzz

01273 418850

www.brackenburyprimary.co.uk

May 2014 Issue

Brackenbury Primary School Locks Hill, Portslade, Brighton BN41 2LA

Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome to the May 2014 issue of the Brackenbury Buzz. The

Easter holiday seems a distant memory, although we’ve only

been back for 3 weeks. It was lovely to have a break with some

bright weather, and I hope that it gave you the opportunity to get

out and about after such a miserably wet winter. The whole

school is enjoying its learning experience together and have had

some wonderful opportunities meeting an author, a story teller

and be inspired by a dragon dance! This newsletter is full of

updates and opportunities so please read carefully and keep

yourselves informed.

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Annexe Extension

The extension to our Annexe building, which includes two classrooms

and a studio, is to be handed over to the school on Monday 2nd June

2014. We will be showcasing these facilities at our Summer Fair on

Saturday 5th July. The building works have been going on since July

2013 and have at times been disruptive; we would like to thank you all

for your patience, however we know that the new facilities will be

more than worth it!

The Annexe building next year will be used for our new Reception

classes as we are pleased to announce that we have 60 children

joining our school in September. They will be joined by our Year 1

children (currently Reception) who will have the opportunity to be

the first children to use our new classrooms. The studio will be used

by the whole school for drama, dance and music.

Further improvements to the school

We have been successful in our bid to get our final set of toilets

upgraded in the main building. This work will be carried out during

the Summer Holiday. Negotiations are still ongoing to finalise the extension to Rooms 1 through to 4 of the main building and this is also

scheduled to be completed in the Summer.

Extension nearly completed!

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Please keep bringing your empty plastic bottles in!

We hope to rebuild our greenhouse on these days

Our old benches need sanding down

and re-varnishing

The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Improving school grounds As you are aware from previous newsletters all of our fundraising is being allocated to converting and improving our playgrounds, but

unfortunately our funds will not cover everything we wish for. So far, we have plans for both playgrounds.

Playground 1—main building:

We plan to create a fenced court area where high-five netball can be played. We also plan for markings for 3 smaller courts with flexible

netting within the larger fenced court area. This will allow children to safely develop their ball and teamwork skills. To meet the needs of

all of the children we would like to also provide:

a quiet area with seating where children can enjoy board games, reading and generally relaxing

a creative area where children can paint, draw, make music, create sculptures, do woodwork etc

Playground 2—Annexe building:

We plan to:

create a gardening area on an artificial grass surface with a storytelling and camp fire area

to provide opportunities for children to explore sand and water play

a creative area with outdoor musical instruments and art resources

a mini fenced court area where children can develop their ball and teamwork skills

The children’s bikes and trikes are looking a little battered; we

need to rub down, prime and paint so that they look new and

ready for use in September

It would be nice for our fences to look like this!

Many hands make light work!

We would be grateful if we could work as a community together to renovate our existing resources to complement our planned

improvements. We would like to ask you all for some support in renovating some ‘well used’ resources, and plan to hold two ‘paint and ‘paint and ‘paint and

picnic’ picnic’ picnic’ weekends, the first being the 14th and 15th of June and the second the 23rd and 24th August. Please see the website for further

details shortly.

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Extra curricular news All of our current clubs are well attended and enjoyed by all the children across the school. The school has the opportunity of running two

further clubs:

Yoga Club

Children’s yoga is a fun, imaginative way to support the emotional and physical growth of the whole child.

When I mention yoga, many parents say to me that their child will not be able to stay still for an hour, to

which I reply they won’t need to! Children’s sessions are a blend of activity and movement, with quiet

times weaving in elements of mindfulness and meditation. Of course, the child just experiences the

sessions as fun. We use stories, music, poses, breathing exercises and colourful prompts to exercise and

nurture the whole child. Sessions generally follow a theme with group time at the beginning and end.

Connecting with ourselves and each other children learn kindness, compassion and respect for each other

through games and partner poses.

This is being offered at an introductory rate of £5 per child per week. We would like to offer this as a club in our school but need to ensure

there is enough demand for the club to be viable. Can you please complete the form available below if your child is interested in joining

this club, specifying which day of the week would suit you best.

Please click here to complete the form

Writing Club

As part of the schools improvement programme we want to raise the profile of writing and to give children further

opportunities to write for a purpose. An opportunity for our junior children is to create a page each month for our

Brackenbury Buzz newsletter. As this evolves we hope to incorporate a photography club. Mrs Langfield will be

running this club on either a Tuesday or Thursday after school from 3.00 until 4.00pm. We ask that you complete the

form below if you are interested in joining this club

Please click here to complete the form

Feeling musical? Guitar Lessons

Children who attend the guitar lessons will learn how to play the guitar in small groups for weekly half-hour sessions. The children will learn chords, rhythms, songs and TAB. The sessions will be fun and suitable for beginners and children with some experience. Children will learn current and classic pop songs and practice playing together in groups. As well as a fun and affordable way to learn guitar, joining a guitar club will be a great way for children to learn more about working together and make new friends too.

If you do not already have a guitar, you can buy a starter guitar for around £30 from Argos. The sessions will be £6 each and fees will be collated in half-termly chunks, so usually it will amount to no more than about £30 each half term. The guitar lessons will be run and organised at the school, so there will be nothing for you to do, apart from source a guitar for your child. The tutor will supply all other materials used and is aiming to begin the lessons as soon as possible and run them until the end of the Summer term, potentially beginning again in the Autumn.

Governors update The Governors would like to contribute to the Brackenbury Buzz to keep you up to date with their work. The school website already

includes a Governors page where minutes of their meetings are available so that you can see what role Governors play in the leadership of

our school. This page is due to be updated with a schedule of meetings and reports on the monitoring of Brackenbury Primary that

Governors have carried out.

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

School improvement work THRASS update

Alan Davies, the man that created THRASS, visited our school and filmed the teaching of

THRASS. We invited Alan to ascertain how close we are to obtaining flagship status which

would give us national and international recognition for providing high quality THRASS teaching

and learning. He was very impressed with the standard of teaching, grading it as at least ‘Good’

across the whole school. Our next steps include:

Implementing his new ‘Yellow’ resources which will be duly shared with you as parents

and carers. We will implement these as soon as we have received them

The children experiencing the THRASS drill for 10 minutes each day in their class, as well

as the differentiated teaching they receive in their designated THRASS group

Reviewing our handwriting policy, so our approach complements the teaching of THRASS for all children

Enabling environments

The children have embraced moving to different areas of the school to receive their

teaching in THRASS. A group of teachers are currently creating a protocol for a model

classroom that would support the teaching and learning of literacy, maths and other

areas of the curriculum. In September the teachers will work as a team creating

different quality environments and the children will move to these areas when

necessary. Mr Heatley and Miss Oliver have visited Community Play, a Quaker

Community, to explore how the design of learning spaces can support and extend

children’s learning.

Writing projects

After several meetings with Peter Gladwin

the school is ready to embark on a project

to improve the attainment of boys

writing. For this project the school will

initially carry out an attitudinal survey to

ascertain the differences between how

girls and boys feel about learning, and learn how to write successfully. We will

link the results of this survey to some research carried out on how boys prefer to

learn. We will update you on our findings and inform you of our next steps.

Attendance on track!

With a target of 95%, our current attendance for the whole school is 95.15%. The Bear Class is still leading the whole school with

attendance of 97.92%. If the whole school followed their example we would be deemed as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted for this criteria.

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Although smoking e-cigarettes in public places is not illegal, the school is a place where we try

to encourage young children and people to make healthy choices. We have been informed that

some parents and carers are smoking e-cigarettes on school premises. We would like to ask you

to refrain from doing so as we are role models to the children and fear that e-cigarettes

renormalize the habit of smoking.

Parents and carers are generally on the school premises for a short period of time whilst they

drop off or collect their children, so we don’t deem this to be an unreasonable request.

Health & Safety

School gates officially open at 8.30am for Key Stage 2 children (Juniors) and

8.45am for Reception and Key Stage 1 children (Infants). You are not allowed to

leave your child unattended before these times unless you have made

arrangements with school staff, or attend a Breakfast Club. This is a serious

safeguarding issue as the school cannot take responsibility for children before

these times without prior arrangements.

Safeguarding

Message from Mrs Furnell Dear Parents, Carers and Children,

The last few weeks of the Spring term were a whirlwind of activities in school, so may I now take this opportunity to thank those of you who stopped by the office to say goodbye with your jolly messages of “Have a happy retirement” and “We’ll miss you.” Thank you too for your wonderful cards and gifts which I opened with my family. I was very touched by your kind expressions of goodwill.

It has been a pleasure to be a part of Portslade Infant School since 1988 firstly as a mum, a classroom helper, member of the PTA and then school secretary, a role which I carried through during the transition to Brackenbury Primary last September. I shall miss seeing all of you every day and of course watching the children grow from little “tinys” to confident young people.

I am very much looking forward to my retirement and will no doubt see many of you when I am out and about in Portslade.

May I wish you all continued happiness at Brackenbury Primary. It’s a school that goes from strength to strength, always with your children at its heart; it’s been a privilege to have met so many mums, dads and children and to have been a part of our school family for 26 years.

Have a happy Summer term and enjoy your summer holiday!!

Yours sincerely,

Alison Furnell.

Many of you may already be aware of the sad passing of Mrs Joanna Thompson (formerly Miss Edmonds), who was a special teacher at St.

Nicolas Primary school. As a school we have sent our condolences to the staff and children of St. Nicolas as Mrs Thompson touched so

many hearts as an amazing teacher and individual. Some of you have asked about making a contribution to either flowers or a charity. We

have communicated with Mr Richbell and he has suggested that any donations can be taken to the office staff at St. Nicolas, and when the

community feel ready they will announce how these donations can best be used to honour the memory of Mrs Thompson.

Very sad news

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Brilliant Brighton Banner

Our children entered the Brilliant Brighton banner competition, and we are very proud to

announce that four of our children’s designs were winners, and their work is being displayed

around Brighton, so please keep your eyes out for Ethan Picknell , Taska Kemp-Green,

Archie Holmes and Daisy Howson’s brilliant work!

Other Achievements

We are encouraging children to celebrate and inspire others with their interests and achievements outside of school. Megan Curd has been awarded the Puffin Ward from the Kellogg's ASA Rainbow Swimming Award Scheme, and Ben Noun has won a trophy from Patcham United FC for playing some fantastic football!

Achievements don’t just happen in school!

Opportunities in the community

Brighton Sand Sculpture festival The school has been asked to inform you that Brighton Sand Sculpture festival is now open, and will be until 28th September. They welcome all visitors and groups to come and enjoy the sculptures and workshops, and have many events and packages to cater for all needs. For further information see their website www.brightonsandsculpture.co.uk .

Free summer outings! Brighton & Hove Parents and Children’s Group are organising free summer outings to the Bluebell Railway on Wednesday 13th August and Bentley Wildfowl Farm on Friday 20th August. This is only available to those parents in receipt of state benefits including Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credits, as well as Income Support and Job Seekers Allowance. Booking forms are available from the school office.

Talks for parents of children under 12 Raising confident, competent children When: 9th June 2014 at 7.30pm until 9.00pm. Where: Cornerstone Community Centre, Church Road, Hove, BN3 2FL How do we help to build our children’s confidence and skills? Come and get some practical ideas that have been proven to work for other parents. The talk lasts 90 minutes and there is time at the end for questions. All welcome. For more information call 01273 294108 Helping Children to Deal with their Emotions When: 14th July 2014 at 7.30pm until 9.00pm. Where: Cornerstone Community Centre, Church Road, Hove, BN3 2FL How do we support our children through the ups and downs of life? How do we encourage optimistic and curious children? Come and get some practical ideas that have been proven to work for other parents. The talk lasts 90 minutes and there is time at the end for questions. All welcome. For more information call 01273 294108

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The Brackenbury Buzz May 2014

Carry on baking! Following on from our wonderful bake off, Mr Heatley and Miss Oliver visited Community Play to work with them on developing the design

of our classrooms. Whilst there they had the pleasure of trying some of their amazing cookies. They have kindly forwarded to the school

their recipes. We would like to share these with you, but before we do we need to explain some of the abbreviations below:

C = cup, as to the size of the cup I suggest that you just use the same cup all through the recipe!

t = teaspoon