Buckton Vale Primary School Newsletter No 36

Friday 12th June 2020

A message from Mrs Brown

Dear Parents and carers,

It has been a strange sort of a week in school as we were all disappointed that our Year 6 and Year 1/reception children were not returning on Monday as we had planned. We send them all much love and positive support as they too deal with conflicting emotions. I am yet to hear of any further guidance from Tameside regarding the scheduled phased return but I will be in touch as soon as possible. As you will be aware, the Government has now decided that a wider school opening for ALL children will not be possible before September. This will be disappointing news for many of our children. Please know that we are all thinking of you and can’t wait for the day we are back together at school.

Earlier this week, I sent a request to the teaching team to prepare for telephone calls again over the coming weeks. Do bear with us as staff are planning and preparing sessions for children both at home and at school so this might take a while.

The senior leadership team have been discussing plans for our Year 6 children. We understand how sad they might be feeling about their school year ending so abruptly. Next week, we plan to contact all our Year 6 children with news about their hoodies and t-shirts. We are also preparing other ideas to ensure they receive a suitable farewell from their teachers and visa versa. As soon as these plans are finalised we will be in touch with all Year 6 parents.

We thank you for continuing to provide us with your photographs and updates of all the learning you are doing at home. As always, do contact us to share your positive thoughts or concerns using our COVID email together@bucktonvale.tameside.sch.uk or via the office 01457 833102. There is always a member of staff here at school to answer your calls and offer suitable support.

Have a lovely weekend everyone,

Kindest regards Mrs Brown and the Buckton Vale team

Dolce School Meals The children who are currently attending school can order school meals as normal. This needs to be done by 8.45am each morning. These will be a Grab Bag meal but must be pre-ordered. All orders are placed in the normal way online, as you would if everything was back to normal. Meals can be ordered on a weekly/monthly basis. For children who are currently attending school and are in Reception, Yr1 or Yr2 they are entitled to free meals under UIFSM. Again, this must be ordered online in the usual way before 8.45am. For children who are not attending: some parents had already pre-ordered meals before COVID-19. Please log into your account and check that you have cancelled these, otherwise you will be charged for the meals. Please remember you may have ordered prior to last week before the new announcement that children were not to return to school last week as originally planned. It’s your responsibility to ensure you have cancelled meals, if you have any query with your account please contact school grid/Dolce direct.

Running Bee 7 mile challenge

Can everyone who did the Running Bee 7 mile challenge to email Mr Payne please? He is trying to

collate numbers to submit to the authority. Please use email together@bucktonvale.tameside.sch.uk

TT Rockstar Winners

Well done to everyone who participated in the TTRock Star challenges. Everyone tried extremley hard with the class battles. We are please to annoucnce the winners and runners up as follows: Year 3 1st Place Alfie W-E Year 4 1st Place Edward K 2nd Place Joseph H 2nd Place Joshua D 3rd Palce Tommy L-V 3rd Place Isis B Congratulations from all at Buckton Vale to our winners and runners up. We have had emails sent in for Mrs Blake, sharing their great attempts at TTRock Stars and sharing their highest scores. Mrs Blake is very proud of everyone who has taken time to keep up with their timestables.

Tameside Libraries Summer Reading Challenge Last year, 2999 children took part in the Summer Reading Challenge across Tameside. We are sure you can imagine, the challenge this year is going to look very different to previous challenges! The Reading Agency have been busy adapting the Summer Reading Challenge in response to the Covid-19 crisis, this has been challenging and fast paced. The theme for the challenge this year is ‘Silly Squad’ – a celebration of funny books, happiness and laughter. The Silly Squad are a team of animal friends who love to go on adventures and get stuck in to all different kinds of funny books. It’s fun, friendly and absolutely free! This year, for the first time ever, children can sign up to take part in Silly Squad online. All they have to do is read 6 books and collect rewards along the way with plenty of fun free activities to help. Children can sign up here www.sillysquad.org.uk. We appreciate that not every child in Tameside will be able to engage with the digital challenge and that some children will prefer the more traditional physical challenge. We are working on plans to re-open our libraries soon but this will depend on government guidelines and the appropriate safety measures being in place. We are optimistic that we will have a physical offer running over the summer holidays in a few of our libraries, details are being finalised and we will be in touch once these have been confirmed. To encourage and enable children to sign up to the physical challenge, we can offer to deliver some of the starter packs to your school for distribution. If this is something you would like to take advantage of, please contact me Stephanie.hogan@tameside.gov.uk. Please note that numbers will be limited and it will be ‘first come, first served’ basis. We would usually offer to visit your school in person to promote the challenge, but of course this year we are not able to do that unfortunately. Over the years Tameside Libraries have offered an excellent 4 week programme of free fun activities over the summer holidays. Sadly that will not be possible this year. However, we will be offering a Digital Activity Programme over the summer; details of the programme and full details of the challenge can be found here [www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/src]www.tameside.gov.uk/libraries/src

Sharing ‘In-school’ learning

Half term is over, so the children of key workers knuckled back down to their usual home learning packs in the morning. In the afternoons we were very creative and tried some new crafts, such as origami! Some of the KS1 children are reading, "Meerkat Mail" as their class book, so made and decorated some wonderful meerkats!

Sharing home learning

Emily enjoyed her day in school earlier this week and told her Mum how Mr Phoenix gave her the idea to make her own weighing scales using a coat hanger, cups and string. She chose to do this at home and really enjoyed it and wanted to share the idea with others. Here’s her maths learning…

Nyla’s completed some great work this week. She sent in some photos to share with you. Also she achieved a 16 and 17 on TT Rockstars which she is very proud of and so are we. Well done Nyla keep up the great work.

Emily H wanted to share the fun that her and Joseph have been having this week completing the #7daysofcycling challenges that Mr Booth set. She has completed a number of the challenges on her bike, made a cycling top out of her P.E t-shirt, made the cycling cookies and a bike safety poster. We hope you like the photos.

Isis enjoyed TTRockStars and wanted to

share with Mrs Blake that she got her

highest score of 81 earlier this week!

Well done to Isis!

Nikhil had a nice half term enjoying the sunny weather. He played in the garden in the paddling pool and went on long walks. He has enjoyed learning about Kenya and wanted to show you his poem. Hope you like it. He also wanted to share some other work he has done too. Nikhil is missing his teacher and all of his class mates too, and hopes to see you are very soon.

His sister, Nyla also enjoyed half term and loved spending lots of time in the sun. She has been working hard and

finished the picture work on 'our special people' topic. Nyla chose her dad and has special plans for it!

Nyla plays the cello and has been busy practising and doing some art work. Do you like her penguin picture? We think it is first class Nyla! Congratulations on such an amazing piece of work.

Megan got really into the South America topic! She did the map reading activity and then created a poster of facts. She has also enjoyed her Art project too. She has been finding out about Tarsila do Amaral this week and recreating her style in her own painting.

We are so proud of all your learning we have taken the time to display it up in the hall ready for when you return and to share everything you are doing with all the teachers and support staff as well as our key workers. We are so proud of you all. Thanks to Ms Harrison and Mrs Garrigan for their hard work putting it up and to Mrs Brooks for all the laminating of the photos you have sent in.