Head’s desk

As another exciting term draws to a close we can reflect on the wonderful learning

opportunities the children have participated in and the personal achievements that these so

often represent.

Christmas Play – Eddie and Edie Save the World

Our Y4 class headed up an inspiring and hugely imaginative eco themed Christmas production

which they helped write and definitely made their own in creative and unexpected ways.

Drawing on the traditions of physical theatre, mime, music hall, slap stick and pantomime the

Y4’s lead us on a whirl wind tour of our planet on a mission to save it from the evil clutches of

pollution personified in the dastardly guise of The Sheriff of Nottingham; not the only

character to be regenerated for our enjoyment. Read all about it in class pages!

December 2017

The venue for our annual reception year Nativity, relocated to Layston from St Peter’s due to

snow, was as wistful and wonderful as ever and provided us all with that special moment of

reflection and reverence amidst our busy schedules. A very warm thank you to all involved.

St Peter’s Christmas Poster Competition

There were some excellent entries this year and winners were announced for each class as

follows:

YR – Bonny Page, Y1- Chloe Murphy, Y2 and overall winner Ava Sleath, Y3- Laura Hill and Y4-

Oliver Malyon

Runners up were: YR- Chloe Evans, Y1- Tomasin Adebajo, Y2- Imogen Ivison, Y3- Isabella

Wilson and Y4- Kyson Man and Maddie Tyndall- Emms (joint)

Posters are on display in our entrance hall and Ava’s entry has been printed as a poster with

Christmas service information for Buntingford and Aspenden for 2017.

Prizes were presented by governor Margaret Lawrence and the Rev Ian Hill and winners

received an inscribed copy of The International Children’s Bible. All children who entered

received an advent activity booklet.

Charitable Giving

This half term we raised £185.52 for Children in Need and made a profit of £150 on

collection at the Christmas play. The latter will be divided equally between FOLS and the

Hertfordshire diabetes Association. Next term the Collective Worship Group (2 children

from each class), Rev Ian Hill and myself will be planning our charitable giving for the coming

year to encompass the range of worthy causes. It is often our children who bring areas of

need to our attention and one such cause has a fundraiser already planned by some Y4

children in the spring term to support The World Wide Life Fund and their endangered

species programme. Also a huge well done to James in Y4 who has nearly met this 3K

sponsorship target through his channel equivalent swim, a third of which will be donated to

the school and FOLS. Finally the Co-op donate scheme raised an incredible £4810 for FOLS

and I would particularly like to thank Lauren Ivison joint Chair of FOLS for her lead on this.

Clubs

We are now in the happy position of being able to coordinate an increasing number of clubs

both at lunch time and after school. We hire our facilities to Super Star Sports who use our

venue to deliver after school sports clubs which are booked directly with them and payment

made online to their company. We have come to an arrangement with Super Star Sports that

they will provide us with a list of children so that participating pupils can be dismissed from

class directly into the hall.

In addition we are organising clubs ourselves. The latest to be added to the list is the rugby

coaching which is now virtually full and we are in negotiation with the Hertfordshire Chess

Association to run a lunchtime chess club. Both will be offered free of charge or at

substantially reduced cost and funded through our Sports Premium Funding. In addition for

the coming term, staff are providing Fit for Life(Y4), and Latin lunch time clubs and Speed

Stacking will continue after school until the championships. When evenings are lighter

football club will resume and we will maintain our allotment lunchtime club as weather

permits.

Attendance

We continue to prioritise attendance and are delighted to list all the children who have achieved 100% attendance over the Autumn Term (up to 13th December). Reception –Bailey, Harry, Chloe, Eden, Jacob, Noah, Finlay, Maisie-Rae, Jason, Clara, Joe, Sophie and Charlie. Year 1 –Kira, Darcy, Chloe, Tristan, Frayah, Felix. Year 2 –Freya C, Phoebe E, Harry, Elizabeth, Daniel, Poppy. Year 3-Ted, Lucas H, Thomas, Cushaun, Annie, Izzie, Olly, Skye, Poppy, Brayden, Mickey and Isabella. Year 4-Kate, Sebastian C, James H, Oliver M, Jack, Johnny, Elliott, Ewan, Freya, Troy and Oliver T.

Certificates have been awarded as follows:

48 total Gold (100%)

30 total Silver (98%)

30 total Bronze (96%)

In total there are 108 awards for 96% attendance and above.

Overall percentage for children across whole school is 96.68%. Well done all!

Thank you to all

Finally a huge thank you to you all our families who provide us with your support and

encouragement and ensure we have such lovely children with whom it is an absolute pleasure

to work. From the whole staff team at Layston wishing you a joyous and peaceful Christmas

and New Year and see you back at school on Wed 3rd January 2018.

Kind regards

Mrs Bloomfield

Reception

We celebrated Divali by learning about

Rama and Sita. We were all a little

scared of the wicked Ravana who kidnaped

Sita but by following the row of lights

they found their way home.

We have also been on a shape hunt

around the school finding lots of 2D

shapes.

We are really enjoying cooking new things

and finding out how things change when

they are mixed or heated. The children

loved making their own flatbread and

pizza. They were allowed to add toppings

to their pizza from a selection and then

gave their opinion after tasting it in

class. ‘Yummy’ and ‘Mmmmm’ were 2

comments that spring to mind.

For Friendship week we made a friendship

hand garland and friendship

bracelets/tokens which we exchanged and

took home.

The children really worked hard and

understood they were making a

friendship gift to give to someone else.

We have also enjoyed making scent and

leaf crowns in Forest School.

This group of children

really enjoy learning outside.

Lastly the children worked really hard to

learn all our songs for Reception

Nativity. We talked about the Christmas

Story and understand we are celebrating

Jesus’ birthday. Don’t worry though we

still believe in ‘Santa Claus’ or ‘Father

Christmas’ and that he brings us all

presents.

We hope you enjoyed our performance.

As their teacher

I am very proud

of all the children

and their

achievement.

Have a very Happy Christmas.

Year 1

In science this half term we have looked

at the weather and how it affects

animals. We talked about hibernation and

made shelters for animals to use.

In history, we have thoroughly enjoyed

exploring toys, old and new. ‘History Off

the Page’ allowed the children to get up

close and also to make their own toys.

Thank you so much to all those parents

who came and helped with this wonderful

day.

We also loved being funky penguins and

groovy polar bears in Layston’s annual

Christmas play! Thank you again parents,

for the support with costumes, and we

hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Finally, we wish you all a very merry and

peaceful Christmas and look forward to

continuing our partnership with you all

next year.

Well done Year 1 for being fabulous in

your first term!

Year 2

Over the last few weeks the children have been working hard in class (and at home)

perfecting their dance moves. I can only apologise if, like me, you have become sick of

hearing some of these songs on repeat! However, it was all worth it in the end as the

children put on a great performance during the Christmas play.

Also, in art, the children experimented using a variety of techniques including

straight lines, dots, zig-zags and cross hatching to create a range of tones. We then

applied these skills to create colourful landscape pictures.

The children have been working really hard on their writing this half term. They have

written fireworks poems, reports about a dragon, reports on the Great Fire of

London and, this week, they retold the Nativity story.

In short, Year 2 have been absolutely fabulous this term, and I have really enjoyed

teaching them (hopefully they have enjoyed some of it too!).

Have a lovely Christmas,

Mr Strahan

Year 3

We have continued to be incredibly busy in Year 3.

A lot of our time has been rehearsing for the Christmas play. We have enjoyed

perfecting our dance moves to the sounds of the 60s and Bollywood. Mr Whittet

even had the moves as well. We’re sure you will agree it was quite the show with

many smooth moves gracing the stage.

During our literacy lessons we became computer game experts. Using headings and

sub-headings, we wrote a review of Bloons Tower Defense 3. We came to the

conclusion that it was a highly addictive game and hours could be spent playing it. We

were also quite competitive seeing who could complete it first.

We would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year when the time

comes. Have a relaxing holiday and take it easy on the Brussels sprouts.

Year 4

This half term has really whizzed by and we can’t believe we have already finished our

first term in Year 4.

As is tradition, Year 4 took on the school play, which if you hadn’t heard, was called

Eddie and Edie the Penguins Save the World! This half term has been full steam

ahead auditioning, rehearsing, learning all our lines (including adding some of our own!)

and making costumes and props.

The children then delivered outstanding performances and we are very proud of

them. We hope you are too and had a great evening! Here are some photos as a

reminder of the fantastic performances.

Alongside all of the play madness, there has been some fantastic learning going on

too. Year 4 have been consolidating their knowledge of column addition and

subtraction and have been revising when you would need to regroup.

Not forgetting Literacy, Year 4 have been working really hard on learning to spell

(and know the meanings of) the Y3 and 4 statutory spellings. The children also used

the school play as a stimulus for some independent writing where they produced some

fantastic ideas and were applying some of the grammar rules they had learned very

well.

From all of the Year 4 team, we hope you have a peaceful and safe Christmas!

Governors

As parents will be aware, the Autumn Term is an exceptionally busy term! The

Governors have delighted in the many achievements of Layston children this term, we

are immensely proud of the school and I'm sure that you will all join the Governors in

offering a huge thank you to the whole school staff for their hard-work this term. In

particular, we offer a huge thanks to everyone for organising yet another fantastic

Christmas Play and Nativity.

Parents recall that a vacancy arose for a new parent governor at the beginning of

term. We are delighted that this has been filled by Michelle Sleath. 5 of our

Governors are parents, the largest representative group. Our 5 elected parent

Governors are: Claire Shearn, Leigh Barnett, Wayne Edwards, Katy Mitchell and

Michelle Sleath.

A number of our Governors recently attended the Joint Annual Review with our Herts

for Learning School Improvement Partner. This session was a great opportunity for

our Governors to ensure that they thoroughly understand the performance data of

the school in order that we can continue to hold the school to account effectively.

We are delighted that the performance data at Layston remains strong and the

school is considered by both Herts for Learning and the Governing Board to be

Outstanding. Of course we never stand still at Layston and School Improvement Plan

is produced annually that will guide next steps.

FOLS

Wow! Where did the year go?

Over the previous term, FOLS have hosted a Family Disco which raised an amazing

£580 and proved to be a fun and well attended event. We also had a stall at the

Buntingford late night shopping and held the Christmas fair in the same weekend.

Together, these raised close to £2000!! As you can imagine, we were thrilled and can

only thank all of the volunteers who helped at both events and all of the parents and

families who helped by attending and donating to the cause.

As a result, FOLS immediately donated £250 for the purchase of stage lights for

the school to own. These were put to good use during the excellent performance this

year. FOLS have also organised a surprise end of term treat for all of the children.

Dates for your diary

Pamper evening 9th February 2018

Quiz night 3rd March 2018

Finally, FOLS would like to say a huge thank you to all of the team at Layston School

who teach, support and encourage our children every day. We hope you all have a

wonderful and well-deserved Christmas break.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.