Latest News

Y2 Curriculum Meeting for Parents- Monday 3rd March 9.00am

Thu 06 Feb 2025

Reading Stars 2024-2025

Tue 04 Feb 2025 Mrs Harling

Over the past couple of months, fifteen of our Year 5 pupils have had some excellent experiences as part of Study United's Reading Stars programme. So far, they have met a real, live author - the terrific Tom Palmer - and rapped along with renowned rap artist, Breis. Lucky Frankie was the delighted winner of one of his books, for writing the best rap of the morning, and Charlie astounded all of the other schools present with his rapping skills.

Yesterday, however, was the highlight of the programme when the children had the opportunity to interview four (Yes, four!) of Scunthorpe United's players. Although all of the children were quite nervous to start with, they performed amazingly, asking some quite tricky and probing questions, several of which really stumped some of the players. The children's confidence and oracy skills were a delight to see and really impressed all the adults at Study United.

The children absolutely loved seeing themselves on the television screen during their interviews with the players, reading from the autocue and even performing a Chris Kamara style match report afterwards. We will hopefully be able to upload their interviews to the website soon - watch this space!

Berkeley accredited as a V21 Oracy Centre of Excellence

Mon 03 Feb 2025 Anna Cvijetic

Dear Parents and Carers,

We have been accredited as a Voice 21 Oracy Centre of Excellence 2024!

We are proud to have our achievement in developing students' oracy (speaking and listening) skills recognised and celebrated by the leading oracy education charity, Voice 21. We have been a Voice 21 Oracy School since 2022 and this award is a milestone in our oracy journey. This achievement is a testament to the hard work, dedication and commitment each member of staff has shown in implementing our Oracy strategies. Their efforts have truly embodied our vision that “Every child will find their voice.”

Being accredited as a Voice 21 Centre of Excellence certifies and celebrates that we are leading the way in providing a high-quality oracy education for students and acting as a beacon of good practice for over 1000 schools nationwide. We are one of only ten new schools to receive this prestigious recognition, joining a select group of just 54 schools across the country.

To secure this accreditation, we needed to demonstrate the quality of oracy education being provided across five areas of school life: our school’s vision, culture, curriculum, learning and impact on students. I encourage you all to read the report on the Oracy page, which highlights our journey and the impact of our initiatives.

By putting oracy at the heart of our teaching and learning across all subject areas, we have enabled our children to become articulate communicators who are able to present themselves confidently across a range of settings and contexts, from group discussions to formal presentations.

Best wishes

Anna Cvijetic

Headteacher

New Little Wandle Phonics scheme introduced after Feb half term

Wed 29 Jan 2025 Anna Cvijetic and Jayne Elsagood

We are writing to inform you about our new phonics and early reading program that we will introduce after February half term and how you can support it at home. We are very excited about this change for our school to ensure our children’s reading becomes even better than it currently is. In order to maximise the opportunities for all our EYFS and Year 1 children we have purchased beautiful new resources for teaching phonics, received training for the whole school staff and purchased hundreds of brand new books!

Phonics Programme

Our school has chosen to move over to Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised as our systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programme to teach early reading and spelling. Little Wandle is a complete teaching programme, which is fully resourced and sets expectations of progression that are aspirational yet achievable.

We will work through the entire Little Wandle Programme until your child can successfully use their phonic knowledge and blending skills to read fluently. Children need to learn to read as quickly as reasonably possible, so they can move from learning to read, to reading to learn, giving them access to the treasure house of reading.

What’s happening in school?

Phonics in Nursery

In our Nursery we prepare our children by teaching them the foundations of phonics. We use engaging games to teach oral blending and phonemic awareness. We support language development and a love of books through: sharing high-quality stories and poems, learning a range of nursery rhymes and action rhymes, activities that develop focused listening and attention and pay attention to high-quality language with children.

Phonics in Reception, Year 1 and beyond

As usual, children in Reception and Year 1 will continue to have daily phonics lessons. They will be taught 4 new grapheme phoneme correspondences (GPCs) per week, plus a review lesson on a Friday. Knowing a GPC means being able to match a phoneme (sound) to a grapheme (written representation) and vice versa.

The children will also learn a series of ‘tricky words’. Tricky words are those words which cannot be sounded out using their phonemes. We will build into the timetable some weeks for the children to consolidate what has been taught so far. We assess your child every six weeks to check progress. Any child who needs extra support will have keep-up sessions planned for them.

Some Year 2 children and Key Stage 2 children need extra support on their phonics journey and will be using the Little Wandle resources, including Little Wandle Rapid.

Reading practice

Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 will also take part in Reading Practice Sessions. We will be using our gorgeous brand new books published by HarperCollins for Little Wandle. In the Reading Practice sessions throughout the week, we work on decoding (sounding out the words), prosody (reading with expression) and then look at comprehension (understanding what the book is about). We will be developing reading fluency. The more our children see the words and practice, the more they begin to read them automatically without having to sound them out.

The book will then be sent home the following week for you to share and continue this practice. By then, the children should be reading 95% of the book fluently with ease. The children will also continue to bring home a ‘reading for pleasure’ book for you to read and share with your child.

Supporting phonics at home

We will be sending a phonics meeting date for parents and further information about how you can support your child’s reading journey shortly – it is really important you work with us on this as it is essential we have your help.

The Little Wandle website is amazing, and you will be able to watch videos made for parents so you are saying the right sounds – forming and pronouncing them correctly. Take a look at;

https://www.littlewandlelettersandsounds.org.uk/resources/for-parents/

We are very excited about this lovely new scheme and look forward to you joining us in helping your children read.

Berkeley Primary Flu Vaccination Award 2024/2025

Fri 17 Jan 2025

Parent's Evening Spring Term 2025

Wed 15 Jan 2025

Parent and Teacher Consultations have been organised for Nursery, Reception and Year 1 to Year 6 on Wednesday 29^th and Thursday 30^th January (3.30 – 6.30pm), apart from a few changes to Nursery:

Nursery will be on Wednesday 29^th January only (3.20-6.30pm). Each appointment will be a 10-minute slot. Please note, the booking system will show 5-minute slots due to both Mrs Bennett and Mrs Waters leading these appointments.

We will be using the online booking system again for booking appointments. You will shortly receive an email inviting you to book an appointment with your child’s class teacher. Once you have received the email, please select the date and time you wish to book for. Only available time slots will be displayed. Once you have selected your time and confirmed your booking, you will receive an on-screen reminder of the booking followed by an email confirmation.

Please note, the system will only send an email to the person who is listed on our records as contact number one. Parents who have more than one child at our school, will receive a separate email for each child. If you have not received an email by Friday 17^th January, please contact the school office by phone (01724 867065) or email (admin.berkeleyprimary@northlincs.gov.uk) to ensure we have your current email address. The online booking system will close on Monday 27^th January at 6.00pm.

Parent’s Evening is an opportunity for you to have a look at your child’s work and speak to your child’s class teacher about progress and targets. I will also be available during the evening if you would like to speak to me. We expect 100% attendance and need to see all parents. There will be no after school clubs on Wednesday 29^th & Thursday 30^th January.

Meetings will be held in classrooms, there will be a waiting area in each school hall and you will be able to look at your child’s work. Please could all visitors use the main entrance for the infants and juniors and come to the appropriate building for each appointment. Nursery and Reception meetings will be held in the main infant building.

We look forward to seeing you here at the school, having an opportunity to share some of the lovely work the children have been doing and discuss their progress and attitude to learning.

After School Clubs Spring Term 2025

Mon 13 Jan 2025

We have been organising our extra curricular activities for this term. We are offering a variety of enrichment activities for the children, trying to cater for a range of interests and age groups. I am sure that you will join me in thanking our great team for giving up their own time to volunteer to run these clubs for our children. The list of clubs available this term are on the reverse of this letter.

If your child would like to join a club then please log on to your ParentPay account where the clubs available for this term will be listed for you to select. To make this process fair you MUST ONLY select ONE club for your child. If you select more than one your child will be cancelled from all clubs selected.

Booking opens from Monday 13^th January at 4.00pm where you will then be able to view and book your child onto a club. As there are limited places at each club, places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. If a club is full then the ParentPay system will not let you book onto a club. If you have yet to use ParentPay and need your login details, then please call in at the school office.

Clubs (apart from Judo) will start from Monday 20^th January and will run until Friday 28^th March. If your child is attending an ‘invitees only’ club then please refer to your letter for exact running dates for that club. Please note, there will be no clubs running on Wednesday 29^th & Thursday 30^th January due to Parent’s Evening.

The Judo Club will not start until after February Half Term due to the Gooch Judo Coach, Tina being away. Judo will start on Thursday 27^th Feb. The club will continue to run on Thursdays in the Junior Hall at a charge of £3.00 per week. There will also be a charge for some of the other clubs that support staff run, as we need to cover the cost of their extra working hours. Please see the reverse of the letter for the cost per term for each club. Payment for the full term must be made via ParentPay at the point of booking. Please note, once payment is made, this is non-refundable so should your child be absent from school or no longer wants to go to the club, we are unable to refund this back.

Once a child has signed up for a session, we do ask that children stay committed to their activity for a term and attend each week. If for any reason they are not able to attend, please can you ensure the school office is made aware.

As always, Infant children will need to be collected at the end of their after school activity. We recommend that Junior children are also picked up from their activity, but this is parental choice. Please indicate whether your Junior child will be collected or allowed to walk home on the ParentPay system when booking onto a club. Please ensure you are punctual when collecting your child at the end of the club. Should you be late on more than one occasion then your child will unfortunately not be able to attend the club.

CLUB	YEAR	DAY AND TIME	WHO	Cost
Peaceful Pals *Invitees only	Y1/2/3/4/5/6	Monday 3.15-4.15pm	Mrs Suddaby
Dance Showcase *Invitees only	Y5/6	Monday 3.15-4.15pm Wednesday 3.15-4.15pm	Mrs C Jones
Reading Ambassadors *Invitees only	Y5	Tuesday Lunchtime	Mrs Marsh
Craft	Y3	Tuesday 3.15-4.15pm	Miss Wislowska	£18.00 for the term (9 weeks)
Dodgeball	Y4/5/6	Tuesday 3.15-4.15pm	Mr Jones	£18.00 for the term (9 weeks)
Indoor Football	Y3/4/5	Wednesday 3.15-4.15pm	Mr Jones	£16.00 for the term (8 weeks)
Judo	Y1/2/3/4/5/6	Thursday 3.15-4.30pm Starting 27^th Feb	Gooch Judo	£15.00 for the term (5 weeks)
Tournament Football Indoor/ Outdoor	Y5	Thursday 3.15-4.15pm	Mr Jones	£16.00 for the term (8 weeks)
Art	Y5	Thursday 3.15-4.15pm	Miss Visockyte	£16.00 for the term (8 weeks)

Inspire Afternoon Schedule Spring Term 2025

Wed 08 Jan 2025

Infant Hall

When – 13:40-15:00	Teacher	Class
Thursday 6^th February 2025	Mrs Jones	Y2 Oak
Thursday 13^th February 2025	Mrs Nunes	Y2 Holly
Thursday 27^th February 2025	Mr Fell	Y2 Beech
Thursday 6^th March 2025	Mrs Elsagood	Y1 Oak
Thursday 13^th March 2025	Mrs Drury	Y1 Holly
Thursday 20^th March 2025	Mrs Bielby / Suddaby	Y1 Beech

Junior Hall

When- 13:40-15:00	Teacher	Class
Tuesday 14^th January 2025	Mrs Marsh	Y6 Oak
Tuesday 21^st January 2025	Mr Leek	Y6 Holly
Tuesday 28^th January 2025	Mrs Burnett	Y6 Beech
Tuesday 4^th February 2025	Mr Dalgleish	Y4 Oak
Tuesday 11^th February 2025	Mrs Humphrey	Y4 Holly
Tuesday 25^th February 2025	Miss Benstead	Y4 Beech
Tuesday 4^th March 2025	Mrs Harling	Y5 Oak
Tuesday 11^th March 2025	Mrs Grinhaff	Y5 Holly
Tuesday 18^th March 2025	Mr Newsome	Y5 Beech
Tuesday 25^th March 2025	Mr Goodall	Y3 Oak
Tuesday 1^st April 2025	Miss Marshall	Y3 Beech
Thursday 3^rd April 2025	Miss Woods	Y3 Holly

Attendance Newsletter

Thu 05 Dec 2024 Anna Cvijetic

I am pleased to report that our current attendance rate stands at 95.30%. This is a positive figure, but we know there is always room for improvement – we’re aiming for 97%. Evidence shows that the pupils with the highest attainment at the end of each school year are those with the highest rates of attendance.

Unfortunately, most children will have some absence from school, usually due to illness. It is important, however, to remember that not all illnesses mean your child cannot attend school unless obviously unwell, and that your child should return to school as soon as they are able. The longer children are away from school, the harder it may be to fit back into school life, and the more school work they miss, the harder it will be to catch up. Even though written work can be caught up, the lesson itself cannot be re-taught, and valuable explanation or group activities can be lost.

PUNCTUALITY

It is also crucial that children are punctual. We start teaching at 8.45am, as soon as the children enter the classroom, so it is important they're not missing any of their learning. The aim is to get to school for 8.40am, so they have 5 minutes to get settled into their classroom. This makes for a great start to their day.

INFORMING US

We need to hear from you every day that your child is absent from school. Contact must be made by 8:45 am. Please ring us on 01724 867065, we have a message service if you want to ring early and leave a message. If school has not heard from the parents, the school will follow up any absences to ascertain the reason, ensure proper safeguarding action is taken where necessary, identify whether the absence is authorised or not and identify the correct attendance code to use.

MONITORING

The school attendance officer, the school's inclusion team and I, alongside the Governors, local authority's school attendance support officer and the department for education regularly monitor our attendance data. Parents will be informed promptly of any concerns which may arise over a child's attendance. This usually happens when your child's attendance drops below 93%. This will be done via phone call or in writing. Schools have a legal duty to give parents regular updates where their child's attendance may be of a concern. If no improvements are made or where attendance levels are an ongoing concern, parents will be invited into school for a meeting to agree ways to improve levels of attendance. Attendance is discussed at all early help meetings as part of the set agenda.

When pupil absence escalates and they miss 10% or more of school (equivalent to one day or more a fortnight) schools and local authorities will work together to put in additional support. Children missing more than 10% of their time at school are classed as persistent absentees.

HOLIDAYS DURING TERM TIME

Taking holidays during term time can significantly disrupt children’s learning and development. The school calendar is carefully planned to ensure that all children receive the full educational experience they deserve. Please note that any absence taken without prior authorisation may result in a fixed penalty notice, which can lead to a fine. Following Government guidelines, we do not authorise holidays. We urge you to plan family holidays during school breaks to avoid these penalties and to support your child's education.

We support parents to perform their legal duty to ensure their children of compulsory school age attend regularly, and will promote and support punctuality in attending school on time.

I hope this letter has provided you with a clear understanding of the importance of attendance and punctuality at Berkeley Primary School. We need to ensure that every child has every chance to succeed every day. If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Art club

Tue 19 Nov 2024 Anna Cvijetic

We have had a great time in our Art club this term. The Year 6 children have worked really hard, learning about a great artist called Beatriz Milhazes - we love her work. The children have learnt some new drawing, printing and collaging techniques over the last few weeks to make a piece of art work in her style. Well done everyone.

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