Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you have had a lovely week. We have had a good week despite all the rain. Year 3 enjoyed a wonderful trip to the Petrie Museum. The children thoroughly enjoyed exploring thousands of fascinating artefacts related to their topic, Ancient Egyptians, and were excited to see real historical objects up close. They participated in a treasure hunt around the museum and carefully examined a range of items, even noting down reference numbers so they could research them further at school. It was a fantastic morning of learning, curiosity, and discovery.  

We’re delighted to share that Betty’s Refillery, our eco-refill pop-up shop, will return next Thursday after school in the playground. To join in, simply bring along empty 500ml plastic bottles and refill your essentials without additional packaging. It’s a small yet meaningful way for everyone to contribute to reusing and reducing waste together.

Please can I remind you to pay for the trips if you are able to, and ensure your Arbor account is up to date. We are still heavily subsidising trips, and if this continues, we will eventually need to reduce the number of trips. We really do not want to do this, so please help us by supporting this.

We are currently introducing children to a new spelling scheme called Active Spelling. Active Spelling is a progressive, research-based approach to spelling that gives pupils a thorough understanding of spelling and vocabulary, which they can then apply in their independent writing. It is a whole-school approach, beginning after the phonics phase and centred around core key skills that help children become lifelong spellers. We support children in understanding spelling by learning about sounds, letter patterns, and how words are formed. They will utilise a variety of spelling strategies to help them apply this knowledge in their writing.

Our aims are:

• To ensure whole-school progression by teaching spelling rules in a structured manner, revisiting, building upon, and retaining them, and fully embedding them into all our lessons. This provides pupils with opportunities to develop the skills needed for secondary school.
• To establish a consistent, rigorous approach that facilitates the transition from phonics to spelling.
• For children to understand and be familiar with the language related to spelling, including morphology, phonology, orthography, and graphology, and to be equipped with a range of spelling strategies to help them apply this knowledge.
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We are only just beginning to implement this, so it is very new to our children. We will organise a parent workshop soon, so you can become familiar with how this will work with your child and what the teaching of spelling will look like at Betty Layward.  

Unfortunately, there have been some incidents in the park and on local buses involving phone theft. This is one of the reasons we do not allow smartphones at school, and we ask you to discuss with your child the importance of staying safe and being vigilant. We also want to inform you that similar incidents are occurring on buses in the area, so please stay aware. I am sorry to deliver bad news, but I want everyone to be aware of what is happening. These incidents are also occurring during the daytime, so please remind your child to stay safe when walking home alone. Thank you.

Have a lovely weekend,

Jessica

Headteacher