primaryictsupportltd

Featured in Schools Week – 19 January 2021

Once again, Bramley Park Academy have risen to the challenge and we have ensured that our school community is cared for. Our staff have been out delivering food parcels to families. A total of 57 parcels to date and a further 20 by the end of the week. We have also distributed 93 devices to our children to support their online learning. Our staff are making twice weekly welfare calls to our families and our most vulnerable children are receiving daily calls or home visits from the pastoral team at school. I feel very humbled and proud to be part of Bramley Park Academy. Our staff are brilliant!

Bramley Park Academy are part of an outstanding community. Our school has an incredible partnership with Rethink Food, Pudsey. They are a ‘not for profit, CIC (Community Interest Company) and do a remarkable job for our local community. They have fed our children and young people in October half term and Christmas,
and are now delivering weekly food parcels for some of our families… amazing!

We are really proud to share that the Wellspring Academy Trust has been selected as the winner of the Best Education Establishment category.
The panel recognised “excellent examples of good practice particularly referring to the development and implementation of your trust wide health and wellbeing strategy and how you have built on staff engagement through the wellbeing champions across each site.”

This award is a great recognition of the Trust’s wellbeing journey over the past couple of years and a real testimony to the commitment and engagement of our
Wellbeing Champions, who are the driving force behind the Wellbeing Strategy.

Throughout the 12 days of Christmas, LaceyField delivered Christmas cheer across Louth.

After a year of uncertainty, we were not going to let COVID-19 stop us from celebrating, spreading kindness and creating Christmas memories.After all, it’s what our children, families and staff deserve! For each of the 12 days leading up to the Christmas break, we took part in an act of kindness for the local community. With one aim, to spread a little kindness! The 12 days added up to the most exciting and magical end of term for the LaceyField community.

Determined the pandemic was not going to stop charity efforts and festive sparkle, children, families and staff at LaceyField took part in a “12 Days of Christmas Kindness” campaign. Generosity from our LaceyField community enabled us to:

• Deliver eight Christmas hampers to local care homes
• Hand out more than 120 food parcels to LaceyField families
• Create Christmas cards for patients across Lincolnshire hospitals
• Delivered two Christmas hampers to EDAN Lincs (Women’s refuge)
• Create ‘hearts for homes’ – artwork and decorations for care homes
• Make ‘hearts for heroes’ – decorations for local emergency services
• Formed a new partnership with Trinity Centre Food Bank
• Virtual Christmas Concert shared with local care homes
• Raised over £800 for St Barnabas Hospice through Rudy’s Run.

As teachers, we all know that children benefit from exploring their learning in a variety of ways. At Bramley Park Academy, we always strive to provide our children with hands-on, engaging and purposeful learning experiences.

Despite the current lockdown restrictions, we are adamant that this will not stop for our children and their families. We have been working hard to find ways to encourage children to engage with the whole curriculum – as normal – even if that is from behind a computer screen (for now).

One of the ways that we have done this so far is with the introduction of a weekly STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) challenge. These challenges have been designed so that they can easily be carried out at home with the whole family. The challenges include building the tallest free-standing tower out of everyday objects; making your own musical instrument; creating a collage from 2D and 3D shapes and creating your own mini habitat. Rather than focusing on just subject knowledge, these challenges encourage children to develop their skill set by finding out about the world around them. Inquiry learning is made more
relevant throughout the real-life links and self-led problem-solving projects.

To encourage children and parents to take part a winner from each Key Stage will be chosen and prizes will be awarded when all children return to school. We have had an excellent response to the challenges so far, both on Google Classroom and on our schools Twitter page (@bramley_park).
.

The Great Outdoors

Taking the curriculum outdoors can have a considerably beneficial impact on the learning and development of our pupils. The pupils have had lots of fun in outdoor learning this term enhancing their problem solving skills as well as developing their communication and resilience. Outdoor learning provides our pupils with endless opportunities for exploration, experimentation and contextual learning.

Fundraising in Year 7

At Springwell Barnsley, the pupils and teaching staff in Year 7 have been completing a daily mile to raise money for Barnsley Hospital Charity during the second lockdown period. Starting on November 9th the pupils have been walking, running and jogging a mile every day, regardless of the weather.

Barnsley Hospital Charity will use the money raised by Year 7 to buy technology, which will enable patients to video call their friends and family while visitation is suspended. The fundraising has been a great success and we are extremely proud of Year 7 for all their dedication and hard work

Kindness Week

For Kindness Week 2020, pupils at Springwell Barnsley wanted to focus on helping families who may be less fortunate provide a good Christmas for their children. All classes collected toys and they were all donated to the Westfield Resource Centre in South Elmsall, where members of Just Homes Care boxed and prepared all the toys to be distributed to families struggling this Christmas. They were very touched by our generosity. We would like to thank all members of the school community for their generosity and for making our Kindness Week another great success.

A Oakwell Rise Pupil has used the lockdown to get creative and has started a budding business selling scrunchies – and has donated more than 30 to the hospital.

Maddie Hall created Mooscrunch in April, during the first national lockdown. She began making scrunchies with bits of leftover material from dance costumes made
by her mum, Katie. What started off as a lockdown pastime soon became a budding business for Maddie and she began selling her scrunchies to people across the country. “When she goes to school wearing one, all her friends and teachers put their orders in” said Katie, from Ardsley. “She also dances at Wendy Charles School of Dance, and has made scrunchies to match dance costumes – she has a good little enterprise going on.”

Maddie has also donated more than 30 rainbow scrunchies to the staff at Barnsley Hospital to thank them for their work during the pandemic. “I am really proud of her,” added Katie. “She comes home from school and will sit on an evening making lots of scrunchies. I think she really enjoys it. “We have transformed our conservatory to make her a little office where she makes the scrunchies. “She’s taken me on as her packing manager and almost every day we are sending orders out. I don’t know what designs she will make next but I don’t think she will give it up any time soon.”

Welcome to our January newsletter.

Our newsletter is a wonderful celebration of the great things that are going on throughout our community. You will see great ideas and new inspirations.

The idea is that we share and that we learn from one another. The best communities give freely. They learn from one another. They inspire one another to new levels of excellence. This is an important role that our newsletter fulfils. I warmly welcome your news, stories, ideas and examples.

We can be reassured from this month’s newsletter that we have opened a communications channel direct with the Prime Minister. My thanks to Andrada at Littlecoates for securing it. We will be channelling our helpful suggestions and feedback on the performance of his government to the Prime Minister via Andrada. I am looking forward to that opportunity.

Best wishes,

Mark