‘Maximum Effort for

Maximum Achievement’

Friday 9th March 2018

Diary Dates for Next Week Lunch Menu - Week 1

Monday 12th March

3.30pm - 5.00pm - ‘Drop Ins’ with Maths Set teachers

Tuesday 13th March

Year 3 visit to South Weald Park

Year 5 Design Technology Day

Year 5 ‘Open Door’ event at 2.15pm Wednesday 14th March

Year 4 residential visit to Windmill Hill

Year 5/6 Choir rehearsal at Towngate Theatre

Music Festival at 7.00pm, Towngate Theatre Thursday 15th March

6A ‘Parents to Lunch’ event at 12.20pm

Music Festival at 7.00pm, Towngate Theatre Friday 16th March

Year 4 return from Windmill Hill (expected time of arrival is between 3.30pm and 4.00pm)

We’ve had a busy week but certainly much calmer than last week with less unplanned for distractions!

Next week, I will be accompanying the Year 4 children on their residential visit to Windmill Hill! I am really

looking forward to the opportunity of spending time with the children in a more relaxed environment. In my absence, Mrs Coughtrey will be responsible for the

day-to-day management of the school, supported by the Senior Leadership Team.

We also have the Year 5/6 choir performance at The Towngate Theatre on Wednesday and Thursday next

week. Having taken over leadership of the choir at Christmas, to say I am disappointed to not be able to

attend the performance due to Windmill Hill, is somewhat of an understatement - however I am sure the children will be absolutely amazing and I am looking forward to hearing

all about the festival! Have a super weekend!

Year 5 ‘Open Door’ Afternoon If you have a child in Year 5, you are very warmly invited to

join them in their classroom on Tuesday 13th March from 2.15pm - 3.00pm. You will have a chance to

experience life inside a Year 5 classroom and get a flavour of some of their recent activities - you may even

have the opportunity to join in! Please could we ask that you don’t bring pre-school children along as the

classrooms will be very full. Please could you come in via the front door and sign in upstairs.

Thank you and we hope you can join us!

Parents’ Evening It was lovely to see so many parents at our meetings last Monday and this Wednesday. I hope that you found the

meeting helpful and that the report was informative. If you have any questions at all, relating to Parents’

Evening or progress measures, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Don’t forget that we have our Maths ‘Drop-

In’ meetings on Monday 12th March too. Thank you.

‘Parents to Lunch’ We were joined at lunch time on Thursday by parents of

children in Class 6F who had been invited along to sample our delicious school lunches. The parents

thoroughly enjoyed their lunch and also the opportunity to experience a lunch break at school! Thank you to the Catering Staff and our Midday Assistants for being so

flexible and accommodating and to Mrs Risley for organising the financial aspects of the event.

Assembly Theme: How we live our lives Miss Carroll introduced this week’s theme on Monday by looking at the choices that we make - sometimes by chance, sometimes

we are able to plan them. She encouraged the children to try and make the right choice!

On Wednesday, our assembly was led by Ruth and Charlotte, from the Schools’ Ministry Billericay team. They helped the

children to recognise that we are all special on the inside regardless of what we look like on the outside. The children also enjoyed listening to Sue’s husband Julian play the piano on the

way in and out of assembly - always a lovely treat for them.

Out of School Success As I will be accompanying the children to Windmill Hill next week, please can any ‘Out of School’ successes for the newsletter be emailed to me by 5.00pm on Tuesday

13th March. Thank you.

‘Well Done’ to all the children who were awarded MERIT certificates this week.

Caitlyn De Kok Sophie Vaidya Maggie Warden Lucy Wiltshire Haolong Fangli Gracie Comitti Lennon Hartman Emily Hagland Louie Dennison Rose Limmer Alex Lodge Charlie Maggs Taylor McGinness Anya Mistry Grace Barker Jamie Cooper Katie Hoare Ben Perry Alfie Riches Brandon Burrett Sophie Bohle Ellen Hood Theo Kirby Oliver Coughtrey Anna Seeney Eadie Hatchard Aidan Dunbar Thomas Cavanagh Robyn Brass Holly Fox Jack Sawyer Shayan Agha

Girls’ Netball CVL Tournament On Wednesday morning our Year 6 girls took part in a cold and wet 3rd round of the CVL Netball tournament held at Billericay High School. Two teams entered the

competition and all the girls played some fantastic netball. We saw some excellent attacking, defending

and goals scored. Both teams played against local schools such as Quilters, Stock and Downham. We are

very pleased to announce that Burgundy Buttsbury finished in 1st place (winning on goal difference) and

Blue Buttsbury finished in 6th place. Therefore, I am very pleased to announce that overall, Burgundy

Buttsbsury will go through to the Partnership Final. Well done to our netball superstars! A big thank you to

Mrs Coughlan, Mrs Clarke and Ms Saunders for attending the event and supporting our girls with

transport. Thank you also to Miss Taylor, our netball coach and team manager.

This week’s ‘Writers of the Week’ are: Harry Fuller Abby Nicklin Lewie Tear

Joshua Cannon Yasmin King Shezan Mushabe Elizabeth Salvatore Sonny Bowerman

Well done to our writing super stars!

This week’s attendance figure is: 97.6%! (So close!)

This year’s attendance target is 97.7%. A special ‘Well Done’ to Classes 3D and 4T who had the highest attendance this week - 99.4%!

This week’s ‘Mathematicians of the Week’ are: Millie Worthington Katie Hoare Taitum Barnes Harry Martin Archie Walker Eadie Hatchard Shayan Agha Lorcan Curley-Sanchez Yahia Asfour

Well done to our magical mathematicians!

Key Stage 2 English Competition On Monday afternoon, four of our talented Year 6 children

competed in the heat of the Key Stage 2 English Competition. They took part in six rounds, including a

speed speller and noun swap task, where all the nouns form a text had been removed! One particularly interesting round was the Gobbledygook round. The team had to read the text and identify all the nonsense words, before then using their knowledge of sentences to decide whether the word was a

noun, verb, adjective or adverb. The team worked extremely well together and were closely pipped to a top three-place finish by only two points! Well

done to Archie Walker, Oscar Nugent, Alexa Mann and Mihaela Karapeneva for their superb effort and thank you

to Miss Carroll for accompanying the team.

Midday Assistant Vacancy

We are looking to recruit a Midday Assistant to join

our lunchtime team on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Hours are 12.00pm - 1.20pm.

If you are interested in this vacancy, please

contact Mrs Byfield, in the School Office for further

information.

Vacancy for Learning Support Assistants We are looking to appoint a reliable, flexible and

hardworking SEN Learning Support Assistant to join our friendly team. The role will consist of providing one to one

support for a Year 3 pupil who has a specific learning difficulty. Working hours: Monday – Friday (inclusive),

1.20pm – 3.15pm. We also have another vacancy for Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, 1.20pm - 3.15pm.

If you are interested in either vacancy, please contact Mrs Byfield in the School Office, for further details. Thank you.

Out of School Success

Well done to Philippa Warhurst (4H) who achieved her Level 4 award in swimming last weekend.

Congratulations to Megan Mecham (4P) who won a World Book Day WH Smith voucher in a colouring competition.

This week’s winning house: Leopards

Rainbow Awards Well done to the following children who all

received their VIOLET award this week: Jude Pearson, Ronnie Batchelor, Emma

Shelley, Tom Dodd, Haolong Fangli, Harry Atkinson, James Blyth-Tancock, Joshua

Cannon, Faith Holcombe, Archie Connolly-Cole, Shezan Mushabe, Nihal Koothoor,

Hayden Williams, Sophia Rekasheva, Kyle Rosenberg, Joshua Wagstaff, Erin Blake, Alexander Borg, Robert West and Ben

Mesnard. _____________________________________

Congratulations also to this week’s INDIGO award recipients:

Tayla James, Ryan Strain, Millie Brown, Harry Vail, Edward Taylor, Evie Plummer, Andrew Dmitriev, Harriet Rowe-Goodey,

Aisha Sarfraz, Austin Kelly, Louise Shepherd, Isabella Howlett, Jacob Kavanagh, Isabelle Carroll, Michael Wragg, Jessica Agg

Jaime Obery, Robyn Brass, Ella Patten, Sophie Farrow, Abigail Rivas, Amelie

Cunningham, Chloe Bogen, Harry Jones and Amelia Waters.

_____________________________________

A huge ‘Well Done’ to the following children who received their BLUE award this week: Tilly Walsh, Charlotte Hellings and Oliver

Chandra.

Top Table This week, the children chosen by the Midday Assistants to join me at the ‘Top Table’ were:

Ben Woolley Daisy Judd

Toby Lashmar Robyn Brass

Jessica Clarke Well done for being selected!

This week’s Top Table winners!

Afternoon Tea Yesterday, sixteen very excited children made their way to the staffroom to

enjoy the delights of Afternoon Tea, without the hot beverages! The children once again spoke very articulately about pieces of work they were proud of - very popular with Year 6 at present seems to be their current Art

project on Grayson Perry, whilst Year 5 seemed to be favouring their literacy work on historical stories.

New Computers Thank you very much to our Friends’ Association for providing the

funding to replace 8 of the computers in the ICT suite. Mrs Samuelson, our IT technician is excitedly configuring them and has four of them in

use already which will please the children and staff as the old computers were not very reliable, to say the least! We are hoping to be able to

replace the other four computers in the coming months too.

Film Night - Friday 23rd March ‘Paddington 2’ will be coming to

Buttsbury! 5.45pm - 8.00pm

Don’t forget to ‘save the date!’ Thank you

Year 3/4 Author Visit Today, Year 3 and 4 had a very special treat - they were visited by Sibel Beadle- author of ‘The Witchy Travel Tales’. She started her

visit by showing the children a trailer for her second book: Sleepless in Stonehenge. Sibel also read part of the story to the

classes. It was wonderful listening to her read her own work as she was able to use the voices to really bring her story alive.

The children also got the chance to become an author themselves! They created a new character who could go into one of her stories and meet one of the seven sisters. Of course a highlight for many of the children was the chance to buy a copy of one of her books

and have it signed by Sibel herself. It was a fantastic morning and all of the children loved hearing about how a story is created - from

the first imagined idea to the moment it hits the shelves.

Year 3 ‘Open Door’

Event Thank you very much

to the Year 3 parents who were able to join us for this Open

Door event - it looks like you had fun!

Year 5 Visit to the Synagogue and Belfairs Park At the beginning of the week, with the snow subsiding and the sun

shining, Year 5 had a very busy but interesting day investigating their Science topic of ‘Living Things,’ and their RE unit ‘Judaism’.

The classes visited Belfairs Woodland Centre to find out about life cycles of animals and plants. They all discovered eggs, larvae and

adult specimens of various insects in addition to identifying different birds and interestingly the difference between a bird’s nest and a

squirrel’s dray. Further into the woods the children learnt more about plant and tree pollination and fertilisation.

The children also had a fascinating visit to the Southend and Westcliff synagogue. Hosted by Jeffery and Leonard they learnt about Jewish worship, the synagogue and the Torah scrolls. Just being inside the

synagogue was amazing as its layout is very different to churches and places of worship that the children usually attend. The seats are all

around the sides facing a raised platform in the middle where the Rabbi would read from the Torah. The Torah scrolls were kept in the Ark

and covered in special velvet covers. The children loved seeing them and especially enjoyed seeing the Yad (pointer that the Rabbi uses

when reading) that was over 100 years old. It was a very successful day and the children came back to school with

a wealth of new knowledge. We are exceptionally grateful to the parents that came to help and the visit leaders at each venue.

Thank you! The Mothers’ Day sales were very popular this week with the

children literally spoilt for choice - I won’t say any more though as I’d hate to spoil the surprise! Thank you very much to the

members of our Friends’ Association who organised the sale and for their hard work with the purchasing, wrapping and selling of

gifts. We hope you like your present!