Baking Bread with the Caterpillars
As part of our topic ‘The Great Fire of London’, we have been learning how to bake bread like Thomas Farriner in 1666. We even had a taste test and sent a slice home to our families!
Headteacher’s Welcome Message
We wish you a very warm welcome to the Birkwood Primary School website and hope that by using this site you will get a picture of our vision, aims and the values we uphold.
It is quite possible, that the last year has been the most stressful many of us have ever experienced in our lives. I am immensely proud of the way we have come together as a community during this time. The relationships with our children and their families has really shone through and the number of positive comments has been quite overwhelming.
We are excited to welcome all of our children back on Monday, 8th March ~ the priority remains to keep our children, staff and community safe. Therefore, we have undertaken a thorough Risk Assessment in order to minimise risk, which is regularly updated
Birkwood Return to school Risk Assessment 13 05 21
To reassure our families, we will be prioritising children’s social, emotional and mental well-being. It will be a big thing for the children who have been in school welcoming their classmates back and also those children who have been at home for a long time. We will spend time reintegrating them all together again and make sure that they have lots of fun together as a priority. We will be doing lots of creative Maths and English activities in the mornings. When everyone is happy and settled, we can resume more formal learning.
Safe Return to School Plan 03 21
Our school will continue to be a caring, supportive and family orientated community where we encourage our children to ‘be the best that they can be’. This is achieved by us having an exciting and relevant curriculum that meets our children’s needs and is underpinned by our School Logo ‘Inspire, Cherish and Achieve Together.’
Our high quality learning environments include a Trim Trail on the large playing field, a purpose built children's kitchen, so that they can cook as part of their learning in Science, Maths and Literacy. Thanks to Big Lottery Grant and Tesco ‘Bags for Help’ funding, we also have a community and sensory garden area where children grow vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs. In addition, we have a potting shed and poly tunnel, thanks to Community First Grant funding.
Our strong and committed Governing Body have made the decision to keep class sizes as small as possible in Foundation Stage in order to ensure high quality support for our youngest children.
We also have outstanding provision in our Early Years Foundation Stage Unit with 2 mini-ICT suite areas and excellent outdoor provision.
Due to the demand for places at our school, we had to convert our Library into a classroom, so we bought and converted a Double Decker Reading Bus into an exciting Library resource which the children love, although there is limited use at present.
We are very proud of our school community; if you would like further information please do not hesitate to contact us.
With best wishes,
Mrs Julie Allen MBE
Headteacher
Super Sea Creatures
In Year 2, we have been getting creative by making some amazing sea creatures out of paper plates.
Impacts on the Body
The Leopards have worked in pairs to recognise the impact of drugs and alcohol on the body. The children found that the brain is the most common organ to suffer from damage along with the heart, lungs and liver.
Newsletter 29: Friday, 14th May 2021
Summer 1 Week 5
Hard Work Pays Off!
She was in school early for her lesson this morning! Mr Dodd is impressed with her hard work!
Exam Time
She’s preparing for her first ever tuba exam and sounding great! Good luck 😊
Finding Factors
The Year 3 Foxes have enjoyed finding factors using arrays. Have they found them all? How do you know?
The life cycle of a chick
The children have loved learning about the life cycle of a chick ever since our chick eggs arrived on Monday. They were so enthusiastic that they wanted to be just like them! In PE we created our own dance, representing the life cycle. How special!
The Sunflowers and Daffodils are AMAZING at Adding!
Look at this super, practical addition in EYFS. The children have been exploring addition and combining two groups to find a total. They used the language ‘add’ and ‘equals’ and could even read and complete an addition sentence all by themselves. What super stars!
Teamwork
We enjoying working with a partner to build on our dictionary skills.
Powers of Ten
The Leopards learnt all about powers of ten and sharing them into equal parts. The children played games, linked to scales, to apply their knowledge. Well done.
Emotional Sentences
Our Year 6 Leopards have been learning all about cohesive devices. They have linked this to a horror genre by opening their sentences with an ‘emotion word’. Their sentences were amazing (if not a little eerie).
Meeting Woody – the South Yorkshire Police Horse
What a wonderful afternoon we had meeting Woody and Sally from South Yorkshire Police. Sally told all of our FS2 children about police horses and even modelled different commands. The children couldn’t believe their eyes! They were so inspired that they came back to class buzzing with excitement! We then learnt all about how Police horses train and the children wrote letters and drew pictures for Woody. Thank you so much to Sally and South Yorkshire Police for such an amazing experience for our youngest children.
Welcome to the world!
We are so excited in FS2 – our chick eggs have arrived, and five chicks have hatched already. We are learning how to look after them and how to handle them. We decided to write names for them and put them in a little name jar so that we could pick them out as a surprise. We then made ‘chirp certificates’ (birth certificates) for them! Take a look at our wonderful writing and meet Cobi, Lexi, Rainbow, Stacey and Apple.
Let’s go camping!
The children had a wonderful time at their camping experience, after planning and organising it all by themselves! They loved toasting marshmallows over the campfire, role-playing in the tent, playing games of football and using the parachute. It was lovely to share a hot chocolate at the end of the day, whilst singing songs and playing guitar. What a magical day, following our children’s interests ‘In The Moment’!
Imagination Location
This is a button tin with a hint of magic! We are creative writers, our imaginations are running wild!
Den Building
Thank you to The Conservation Volunteers for working with our Year 6 children today. The children thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this outdoor activity, working in teams to build dens and decorate them with the items they found on their scavenger hunts.
Art Attack, Clickety- Clack!
We worked in our sketch books. Subject: the Hogwart’s Express. Skills: perspective and watercolour pencils.
Working Hard
The Year 2 Butterflies have been using tens frames to solve a range of addition sums. They have been working super hard!
She’s Got Rhythm
This Year 3 percussionist is very proud of herself and rightly so! Thanks Mr Ramskill – you inspire us to work hard!
