_____ Page 1 26 th January 2018 Wednesday 31 st January 2018 2:15pm U10 Netball v Brackenfield (A) Friday 2 nd February 2018 1:45pm U9 Netball A & B v Cundall Manor (A) 7:00pm PTA Quiz Night (see Letter Merge for information) Year 6 Ripon Museum Trip Page 11-12 Reception Transport Trip Page 13 Holiday Club Flyer and Booking Form Page 14-15 Crazy Hair Day Information Page 16 Junior Chess Championship Information Page 17 Eco Club Help Request Page 18 Next Week’s Menus Page 19-20 READY FOR ACTION Unfortunately the weather has hindered the schedule for the start of term. As a consequence some trips and fixtures have had to be cancelled. However, the positive aspect of this is that the children have had a great time playing in the snow. For those who have read our article on Outdoor Learning in the Nidderdale Mumbler you will recognise the value of taking learning outside the classroom and into our grounds. It is this aspect of our curriculum which secured the ‘Learning outside the Classroom’ Silver Award last summer. This week we appear to have been back on course with trips and fixtures, which is exciting news for both the staff and children. The staff look forward to enhancing the children’s learning by being able to bring the curriculum alive. On Monday Year Two enjoyed a great day out at the National Railway Museum in York. It was encouraging to see many of you at our Open Morning this week. I hope you enjoyed the ‘hands on’ practical experiences that many of you witnessed. The children love to share their learning with parents and are always proud to show you their work and achievements. I am in an extremely privileged position being able to go into lessons at any time and ‘live the moment’. I am currently undertaking formal lesson observations with the staff and I am amazed by the outcomes of the learning that takes place. The staff are always creative and inspirational in their approach to teaching, bringing the curriculum alive and making it relevant to their classes. The corridors of school are currently awash with samples of work from the children from many curriculum areas. The creativity and attention to detail is evident in every piece of work. Their work brightens up the school and reinforces the sense of purpose, being and pride which the children demonstrate. Building self-confidence, belief and self-esteem is part of the rich tapestry of learning. We are extremely blessed at BGS to have high quality staff who are enthusiastic and passionate about their subjects. They are able to offer a wealth of opportunity and experience as well as wanting the best for the children in their care. Meeting the children informally and being able to appreciate their perceptions of school life is always intuitive. This week I enjoyed lunch with Year 5 and spent a morning break with the new pupils discovering how they were settling in to their new school. It is imperative to ensure that BGS meet their expectations and be able to contemplate how we might make adjustments to the school to improve it further. Such meetings are usually an enjoyable experience as the children are generally honest in their perceptions. As another week draws to a close, with the evenings becoming lighter, we have a lot to look forward to in the forthcoming weeks. Mrs Jane Merriman
Transcript
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26th January 2018
Wednesday 31st January 2018 2:15pm U10 Netball v Brackenfield (A)
Friday 2nd February 2018 1:45pm U9 Netball A & B v Cundall Manor (A)
7:00pm PTA Quiz Night (see Letter Merge for information)
Year 6 Ripon Museum Trip Page 11-12
Reception Transport Trip Page 13
Holiday Club Flyer and Booking Form Page 14-15
Crazy Hair Day Information Page 16
Junior Chess Championship Information Page 17
Eco Club Help Request Page 18
Next Week’s Menus Page 19-20
READY FOR ACTION
Unfortunately the weather has hindered the schedule for the start of term. As a consequence some trips and fixtures have had to be cancelled. However, the positive aspect of this is that the children have had a great time playing in the snow. For those who have read our article on Outdoor Learning in the Nidderdale Mumbler you will recognise the value of taking learning outside the classroom and into our grounds. It is this aspect of our curriculum which secured the ‘Learning outside the Classroom’ Silver Award last summer. This week we appear to have been back on course with trips and fixtures, which is exciting news for both the staff and children. The staff look forward to enhancing the children’s learning by being able to bring the curriculum alive. On Monday Year Two enjoyed a great day out at the National Railway Museum in York. It was encouraging to see many of you at our Open Morning this week. I hope you enjoyed the ‘hands on’ practical experiences that many of you witnessed. The children love to share their learning with parents and are always proud to show you their work and achievements. I am in an extremely privileged position being able to go into lessons at any time and ‘live the moment’. I am currently undertaking formal lesson observations with the staff and I am amazed by the outcomes of the learning that takes place. The staff are always creative and inspirational in their approach to teaching, bringing the curriculum alive and making it relevant to their classes. The corridors of school are currently awash with samples of work from the children from many curriculum areas. The creativity and attention to detail is evident in every piece of work. Their work brightens up the school and reinforces the sense of purpose, being and pride which the children demonstrate. Building self-confidence, belief and self-esteem is part of the rich tapestry of learning. We are extremely blessed at BGS to have high quality staff who are enthusiastic and passionate about their subjects. They are able to offer a wealth of opportunity and experience as well as wanting the best for the children in their care. Meeting the children informally and being able to appreciate their perceptions of school life is always intuitive. This week I enjoyed lunch with Year 5 and spent a morning break with the new pupils discovering how they were settling in to their new school. It is imperative to ensure that BGS meet their expectations and be able to contemplate how we might make adjustments to the school to improve it further. Such meetings are usually an enjoyable experience as the children are generally honest in their perceptions. As another week draws to a close, with the evenings becoming lighter, we have a lot to look forward to in the forthcoming weeks.
Mrs Jane Merriman
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MAGIC TREE NURSERY We have still been carrying on with the theme of senses, concentrating on sight this week. We were able to go for a walk around the grounds in the snow and look for the different animals. The children especially enjoyed looking for the birds. On the veranda we had rice in the black tray with the cups and spoons and the children did lots of filling and pouring. Inside we made play-dough and the children chose to use green food colouring in it. They were all very good at mixing the ingredients together and afterwards they played with the flour, feeling the texture and seeing what happens when they added water. We have been singing songs all about ourselves. The most popular one is 'Head Shoulders Knees and Toes' and we have even been making our very own footprints using the different coloured paint. Have a brilliant weekend Arabelle Whitaker
TREE TOPS Tree Tops have continued to explore our half-term topic of transport. You may have spotted a large yellow school bus in our role-play corner, which the children have taken on many adventures including visiting museums, countries around the world and even to the shops. Using wheelbarrows and spades we have had lots of fun transporting the remaining snow from one end of the playground to the other. The children have been practising their number recognition skills with cars, parking numbered cars into the corresponding bays, helped to measure and weigh ingredients to make their own biscuits and learning basic first aid to look after the dolls. Have a nice weekend! Stef Flanigan-Banks
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PRE RECEPTION We had two fantastic bakers’ assistants at afternoon snack this week. Everyone had to come with a penny to buy one of the buns that a group of children had made in the morning. Of course we had to sing the rhyme as well! The children have also been making some wonderful patterns for our display boards in our second classroom. Please feel free to visit this classroom to see their wonderful work.
It was lovely to see so many parents visiting at Open Morning. I hope it was a valuable insight into your child’s learning experiences. Also if any parent would like to come into nursery and read to the children, either at the beginning or end of the day, you would be most welcome. Thank you to those parents that have already spoken to us and we will be starting from after half term. I have put a sign up sheet in nursery by the register. Letter sound next week: Rr
Mrs Regan
RECEPTION It has been another busy week in Reception.
In phonics, we have learnt a new sound: th. Reception have worked hard to read and write this sound in words as well as consolidate their knowledge of our other recent sounds: ch and sh. They particularly enjoyed sorting aliens with funny names and adding them to their home planets, either 'Planet shep', 'Planet chep' and 'Planet thep'! In Maths, we have been consolidating our understanding of addition and applied this to solve problems. As you will have seen on Open Morning, the children have developed a good understanding of addition and can confidently work out the answers to addition questions. In topic, the children have loved finding more out about vehicles that travel in the air including aeroplanes, helicopters, hot air balloons and rockets. We have spent some time answering their questions, most of which have been related to rockets and space. Reception have enjoyed learning more about space and creating the planets in our solar system as well as some wonderful space pictures using just coloured chalk. Next week in Topic, we will be focusing on vehicles in the water. You will have also noticed that a letter has been sent out about our school trip. Please do not hesitate to speak to me if you have any questions about this.
Have a lovely weekend.
Mrs Gray
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YEAR 1 It was lovely to see so many of you in school this week for Open Day. The children thoroughly enjoyed showing you the things that we do in lessons. We hope you enjoyed it too. So as you are aware the children have been testing materials this week to see if they can find a suitable material for the roof of Teddy's house. We used five different materials and dropped water on each waiting to see if it soaked in or stayed on top. There was a clear winner and the children chose the plastic bags to cover the roof with. We have also made Saxon shields this week and talked about the different parts of a castle and what they were used for. In English we started the week thinking about excuses and came up with some very inventive ways of staying up late. I'm sure they have tried some out on you. Sorry about that! Next we started to look at instructions and the children built models out of Lego and then tried to draw picture instructions to show a friend how to build the same model. Our spellings are going well so thank you for the continued support in this area. In Maths we have been looking at big numbers this week and we are trying really hard to write our numbers to 100 and beyond in the right order. The children have been listening carefully to how the number is said to help them know which digit comes first. We have also been thinking about mathematical language this week and have discussed many different ways of saying fewer, equal and more. The children tried to show lots of examples of this vocabulary to help reinforce their understanding.
We also had some very exciting news this week as Ethan now has a baby sister. Congratulations to the whole Shea family from year 1. We can't wait to meet her. Mrs Shillam
YEAR 2 Year 2 have had another busy week that started with a fantastic trip to The National Railway Museum.
In our English lessons we have used what we learnt from the start of term about stories from other cultures to plan our own. We had some exciting ideas and the children really enjoyed putting their plans into writing. They all produced an independent story that they were proud of. We looked at alphabetical order and we went on a hunt for words in the Forest School area. We then used our knowledge of the alphabet to complete some other activities including alphabet bingo, an alphabet relay against the clock and trying to sort words into alphabetical order.
Our Maths learning started by thinking about symmetry. We were very pleased to have so many grown-ups help us to make our symmetrical kites. We recapped how to add using bridging and how a number line and our number bonds to 10 can stop us relying on our fingers. We then thought about subtraction and all completed some sums with confidence. We then explored how using what we know if really important. We started with a simple sum 2+3 = 5 and thought about how that can be turned into lots of sums like 12+3= 15, 22+3 = 25. We have focused on forces this week in Topic. We went out to the playground to use a range of playground equipment to see how we use forces to play with them. We then went to the Science lab to investigate how different surfaces can slow a car down. We worked on writing predictions and recording our information in a table. We were creative when finding natural materials to make a print outline of a car. Miss Johnston
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YEAR 2 On Monday 2J travelled to York to The National Railway Museum to continue our learning about travel and transport. We started our day with a workshop called ‘A Victorian Seaside Trip’. This was all about how in Victorian times the families would get one day off a year and would use this to travel to the seaside on a train. We looked inside the trains, thought about how they had changed and then had a go at dressing up. We then walked around looking at all of the trains; we were really impressed by how big the trains were up close. We enjoyed seeing Tim Peake's space capsule and parachute and found it fascinating that this was the size of two tennis courts. The children then had lunch and followed this with a Punch and Judy show that they found extremely funny. We just had time to go and wave to some trains at York Station before we went to our last workshop to learn all about Stephenson's Rocket. We learnt many new things, had a really great time and we were exhausted on our journey back to school. What a lovely school trip. Miss Johnston
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SCIENCE HOMEWORK I have been delighted with the fabulous Science homework projects that pupils have been bringing to me. Here is a selection of some of them. Many thanks to all the pupils who have put so much effort into this and also, of course, to parents who have supported at home. Mrs Stansfield
LAMDA EXAMINATION RESULTS – DECEMBER 2017 Introductory Stage 2 Molly McDonnell Distinction Zavier Watson Distinction Wyatt Bach Distinction Camille Bolles Distinction Teresa Kempton Distinction Henry Smith Distinction Introductory Stage 3 Emma Callander Distinction* Isabel Badger Distinction Speaking of Verse and Prose – Entry Tilly Thompson Distinction* Maisie Richardson Distinction Charles Bolles Distinction Molly Porter Distinction Speaking of Verse and Prose – Grade 1 Annabel Wass Distinction* Elizabeth Tate Distinction Annabel Barlow Distinction Piper Golub Distinction Alice Baldwin Distinction Aria Bradley Distinction Holly Groves Distinction Lola-May Hardcastle Merit
* Denotes a pass with Distinction scoring an exceptional 90% or above
Speaking of Verse and Prose – Grade 2 Beatrice Palmer Distinction Isabelle Fryer Distinction Iris Johnson Distinction Zahra Watson Distinction Ben Kittle Distinction Tom Haggas Distinction Eddie Hurcomb Distinction Coco Richardson Distinction Annabel Hill Distinction Victor Johnson Distinction Javon Davis Distinction Emily Dennis Merit Joshua Hollock Merit Ted Huber Merit
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PLASTIC TUBS I would be very grateful if you could please save all of your plastic tubs (ie, margarine tubs) and bring them into school. Thank you for your help! Mrs Stansfield
This week Eco Club have been making bird houses. Mr Hawkyard and Mr Mosso-Zolezzi kindly created kits for us to put together. We are hoping to encourage more birds to our beautiful grounds and possibly install a camera in one of the boxes to watch the birds. Thank you so much for your help gentlemen.
Please note that there will be NO ECO CLUB on WEDNESDAY 7th FEBRUARY
Mrs Shillam
Congratulations to Emma and Justyn Shea on the arrival of their beautiful daughter Amber Molly on Monday afternoon. Ethan and Brody are stepping up to the mark brilliantly as wonderful big brothers.
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SUGGESTION BOX Just a reminder to parents that we have our suggestion box in the Front Hall if you have any ideas or suggestions you would like to put forward. Thank you
Mrs Dight
CRAZY HAIR DAY! On Friday 9th February we will be holding our very own Crazy Hair Day. This is one event that was requested by the pupils when they were asked how they wanted to raise money this year’s school charity, The Rainbow Fund. So here is your chance to don your craziest hairstyle and wear non uniform also bringing £1 into go toward raising money for The Rainbow Fund. Each charity event held by Belmont Grosvenor for the Rainbow Fund will help the children work towards a certificate our Crazy Hair Day will be our Bronze Charity Event, meaning all children who attend and donate will be getting a Bronze certificate. Many thanks Miss Parker
QUIZ NIGHT The annual PTA Quiz night is just around the corner so start getting your teams together! Forms can be collected from the School Office. Once again the event will be held in the school entrance hall, and you’re invited to bring your own drinks and snacks. We will be offering a selection of chilli and rice with desert and there will be a glass of something fizzy on arrival! The evening will start at 7:00pm. We look forward to seeing you all there. Don’t forget to go and see Belmont Bear in the office – they can be purchased for £8 each or £15 for two! The PTA
HALF TERM HOLIDAY CLUB If you are wanting to book your child/children into Holiday Club for the Half Term holidays (12th to 16th February 2018) please use the booking form attached. If we could have all forms returned by 2nd February 2018 please, we would be very grateful. Thank you Helen Green
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‘Pride’
‘If you paint over a window is it
still a window?’
Happy Birthday to the following Nursery and Pre Prep Children who are celebrating this week:
Lauchlan Haworth who was 4 on Monday and Harry McDonnell who was 5 yesterday.
We hope you had a wonderful time celebrating!
The Word of the Week for next week is Pride.
Everyone will be taking pride in their work, their appearance and everything they say and do.
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BGS v FORBELIAN – Swimming Gala On Monday 22nd of January BGS had a swimming gala at home against Froebelian School. We started off with back stroke and did very well then we went on to breast stroke and all of the age groups in this category made the swimming pool go mental with noise. After that we had butterfly and we had some very good performances, especially as it is supposedly the hardest stroke. As soon as we knew it was front crawl and we also did very well in that. Then we were on the relays and that was thrilling. At the end, the final score was 116 to BGS and 124 to Froebelian. Special mentions go to all of the team for doing really well and thank you to Mr Wield for organising it. By Iris Johnson
BGS V GIGGLESWICK On Wednesday 24th January the U11's played a netball match against Giggleswick. In the first quarter we scored 3 goals and they didn't score any. The second quarter was 7-0 to BGS. In the third quarter we scored 6 without them scoring. The final score was 14-0 to BGS. Special mentions go to the whole team for an amazing game.
By Maisy Lindley
RECORD BREAKERS For the first time at a swimming gala the winners of each race were being timed. Congratulations to Olivia Barley for breaking the Year 5 Butterfly record with a time of 11.56 seconds and to Aria Bradley for breaking the Year 5 Back stroke record with 13.62 seconds. Amazing swimming girls! Thanks to Mrs Kidd for timekeeping.
Mr Wield
BIATHLON NEWS After the success of our athletes at the Yorkshire Biathlon Championships held in October. A number of children have made it to the National Finals. The finals will once again be held at Crystal Palace Sports Centre, over the weekend of 17th/18th March. I am delighted to announce that nine children from BGS have qualified for this National competition. Under 10s Cameron Hostetler Under 11s Luca Snowball Ben Kittle Barney Porter Victor Johnson Olivia Barley Iris Johnson Bea Palmer Under 12s Maisy Lindley Congratulations to all our athletes and good luck for the forthcoming event. Mr Wield
