Dear Parents and Carers,

We are writing to inform you of the school’s plans to hold a Reading Café for each Y1 and Y2 class.

A Reading Café is a chance to get children, parents and teachers together to promote a love of reading. During each session teachers will read books to their class children and parents can talk about their favourite books and read with their children. If parents are unable to attend, a grandparent or other family member would be very welcome. Refreshments will be provided.

The dates for each Reading Café will be as follows;

2 Oak          Tuesday 30^th April 2.00pm

2 Holly         Tuesday 7^th May 2.00pm         

2 Beech       Friday 10^th May 2.00pm

1 Oak          Monday 13^th May 2.00pm

1 Holly         Wednesday 15^th May 2.00pm

1 Beech       Monday 20^th May 2.00pm

Children and parents may bring their own books in to share on this day. We really want all of our families to take part in these events.

If you have any questions about the Reading Café, please do not hesitate to contact the school.

World Book Day takes place on Thursday 7^th March, and we would like to invite you to join us in helping your child to make the most of this special occasion. World Book Day celebrates the joy and value of books and reading.

Reception to Year 6 will celebrate World Book Day on Thursday 7^th March.

Nursery will celebrate World Book Day on Monday 4^th March.

We are inviting the children to come to school dressed up as any character from their favourite book. We are not following a particular theme so this can be anything you would like it to be! Please don’t feel the need to go out and buy an outfit for this – if you have a look on the World Book Day website, there are lots of ideas for creative costumes that make use of what you may already have at home.  https://www.worldbookday.com/resource/dressing-up-ideas-for-parents/

Nurseries, schools and libraries across the UK celebrate World Book Day with a huge range of events and activities. Your child will also receive a £1 book token – sponsored by National Book Tokens. You can join us in building your child’s enthusiasm for books well beyond World Book Day by reading together regularly and joining your local library if you are not yet members. For more information about World Book Day and ideas on sharing books at home, visit worldbookday.com. Children are never too young to start their journey with books, and the benefits of reading are enormous - so we hope, like us, you will use World Book Day to celebrate it with your child.

Please join us for our Reading Workshop.

We are really pleased to announce that we are holding a Reading Workshop for all parents and carers on:

Wednesday 6^th March starting at 2.30pm – 3:00pm in the Junior hall.

We would really like as many of our carers to attend as possible, so we can share our vision of how important it is for children to become great readers – for pleasure and as a future life skill. We want to explore with our parents and carers the important role you play in your children being successful readers.

We are delighted that Sarah Tipler will lead the meeting. Sarah is the Development Officer with the Local Authority and is part of the North Lincolnshire ‘Words Count’ project. She always reflects on current research and trends and will use this to discuss how you can support your children. She has delivered workshops in over 90% of schools across North Lincolnshire and is extremely knowledgeable so we are sure that you will enjoy listening to her and will gain much from this meeting.

Sarah has, earlier this academic year, delivered a well-attended workshop around Reading for Pleasure and phonics in KS1, which parents and carers found very informative. This workshop will focus more solely on Reading for Pleasure and the importance of fostering life-long readers, but all who attended the first are more than welcome to attend again.

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 6^th March at 2:30pm. Refreshments will be provided.

Children's Mental Health Week

    5^th Feb- Non-uniform day

To launch Children's mental health week, we are having a Non-uniform day on Monday 5^th February. The theme is 'Dress to express'. The idea is to use colour to express yourself by wearing a colourful outfit/ non-uniform.

Friday 9^th Feb- Wear a scarf day

On Friday 9^th February children can come to school wearing a scarf if they wish. This links in with SCARF mental health.

Children will also be taking part in various activities during the week.

Mental wellbeing describes your mental state – how you are feeling and how well you can cope with day-to-day life. There are lots of things you can do to support your mental wellbeing such as being active, seeing family and friends or challenging yourself to try something new.

At Berkeley Primary we aim to promote positive mental health for every child, parent/carer and staff member. We pursue this aim using both universal, whole school approaches and specialised, targeted approaches aimed at identified vulnerable children and families.

We are working collaboratively with ‘With Me in Mind’, who last year supported Year 6  children with workshops regarding worries around SATs. This will happen again this year. They will also be supporting the year 6 children with a transition workshop. They will be at the parents meeting on Wednesday 7th February for parents to ask any questions.

There is an after school club called Peaceful Pals, that runs for 6 sessions to work on understanding feelings and learning a range of coping strategies to support your child to become a more mindful individual.

Useful Websites to support mental wellbeing:

https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/supporting-others/childrens-mental-health/

https://www.youngminds.org.uk/

Best wishes

Faye Marshall & Teresa Suddaby

PSHE Lead          SENDCO & Mental Wellbeing Lead

We are lucky enough to be having the poet Ian Bland coming into school to lead poetry workshops with the children on the 30th and 31st of January. Throughout the day, he will lead whole school assemblies as well as workshops with the classes.

Book Sale

After each day, Ian shall be having a book sale, where he shall be selling signed copies of his poetry books (£6.99 each), as well as a poetry writing kit (£7.99). Please see the attached sheet for the list of books available to buy. The books are suitable for both KS1 and KS2 but 'A Bug In My Hair' is more aimed at KS1. If your child would like to purchase any of these books, Ian will have a stall set up at home time on:

• Tuesday 30th January from 3.15pm at the Infant building entrance
• Wednesday 31st January from 3.15pm at the Junior building entrance

Payments can be made with cash or contactless card.  

We know that children having a book by a writer that they've met, means that they will keep going back and reading it - children love to keep coming back to poetry books to read again and again.  Ian's books are just brilliant - the children love them and they are a worthy addition to your bookshelf.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Parent and Teacher Consultations have been organised for Nursery, Reception and Year 1 to Year 6 on Wednesday 7^th and Thursday 8^th February  (3.30 – 6.30pm), apart from a few changes to Nursery:

• Nursery will be on Wednesday 7^th February only (1.30-6.30pm). Each appointment will be a 10-minute slot. The booking system will send you two email invites so you can choose to book either an early afternoon (1.30-3.00pm) or late afternoon appointment (3.30-6.30pm). Please note, the booking system will show 5-minute slots for the 3.30-6.30pm appointments 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 Tuesday 30^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 5^th February 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 7^th and Thursday 8^th February.

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.

The Big Garden Birdwatch falls on the last weekend of January every year and this year, we’re trying to encourage as many of our Berkeley families to take part. On the weekend of the Big Garden Birdwatch itself, taking part couldn't be simpler.

Choose an hour between 26th and 28th January and watch the birds in your garden, from your balcony or in your local park and tell us what you've seen. Count how many birds land there (not fly over). If you see very few birds or none at all, that's also really useful information, so please do let us know.

The following week, children can hand in their recorded sheets to their class teachers. The children can either fill in the sheet (attached to this email) or draw their own tally chart on a separate piece of paper.  

Why is it important?

The Big Garden Birdwatch provides a vital snapshot of how the UK’s garden birds are faring, taken over one weekend. This gives a good general impression of the birds that are doing well and the ones that are struggling. As the first Birdwatch took place more than 40 years ago, there is now a wealth of data to look back on. 

Shockingly, 38 million birds have been lost from the UK’s skies in the last 50 years, so it’s crucial to look after our bird life. The Big Garden Birdwatch helps to monitor how garden birds are faring. Also, people taking part in the Big Garden Birdwatch for the first time often find it sparks a passion for nature. 

Here is the website link if you would like to look into it in more detail:

https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch

I look forward to seeing your results!

Thank you once again for your continued support, Mrs Burnett

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 15^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.

All clubs will start from Monday 22^nd January and will run until Friday 22^nd March. Clubs will not run on the following dates:

All Clubs not on- Wednesday 7^th & Thursday 8^th February- Parents Evening

Judo Club not on- Wednesday 21^st February- Judo Coach away

Gooch Judo will continue their sessions on a Wednesday in the Junior Hall. There is a £3 charge for this 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.

Dance Showcase- This club is for invitees only and will be in preparation for a dance event at The Baths Hall, places will be allocated after an audition. Please look out on Class Dojo for more information.

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.

Our Nursery children, parents and staff have had a wonderful morning at our Christmas workshop.  It was great to see so many parents and grandparents coming to support their children's learning and see what we do in school.  The children had a go at making a Christmas hat, bauble, reading, playdough, small parts to make a picture, and so much more.

It was such a success that we have now planned another workshop for Easter!

We all had such an amazing time in JLC today! We’ve had a tour of college, designed and made Christmas trees using clay, played games and had snacks and drinks. The children didn’t want to go back to school!

It was sooo good to see the shy ones coming out of their shell and making their things. The children were also SO polite and helpful that it made us all very proud. 

Emma Lattimore and JLC staff were so impressed with our children they said they’ll have us back for more projects in future! Well done everyone.