Primary News

It has been a busy week in Primary with an Open Day featuring our wonderful Year 6s, a non-uniform day to raise money for the furry and feathered victims of the Australian wildfires and some handwriting training for all of our teachers and teaching assistants. There has been plenty of time for lovely learning in class too.

Y5 Teme have started their Greek Mythology topic in English. Please see the gallery for pictures of the children familiarising themselves with the sequence of Theseus and the Minotaur through drama.

Y5 Thames used shading techniques to draw Greek mythology characters. They also used their artwork and Mr Phillips (!) to help their character descriptions of these characters. Please see the gallery for pictures.

The play leaders have been leading some games on the playground, but our lovely cooperative children spontaneously made a ‘playground train’ this week, where anyone can hop in and join. Please see the laughter captured in the gallery.

Y3 Stour combined Maths hats and Australia day in some lovely group shots. Please see the gallery.

Y3 Stour also explored different magnets - horseshoe, bar and round magnets - while learning about the South and North Poles, repelling and attracting while exploring properties of magnetic materials.

In Y1 Avon, the children have been working extra hard to write their first piece of extended writing. They are working on dinosaur adventure stories and considering the problems a dinosaur might face if one were to visit Budapest!

Would you like to help your early readers more at home, but feel you don’t understand how to support their phonics and reading? Is your child new to English or finding spelling difficult? Are you simply interested in learning more about reading skills and processes? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, please sign up for the Phonics Parent Workshopon Tuesday 4^th February at 8.30 in the auditorium by clicking here.

As part of our reviews on learning this term, we have decided that handwriting needs to be a focus across Primary. All teachers and TAs have undertaken training and we have introduced a new scheme: Spectrum. This starts in a pre-cursive style where every letter starts in the same position. This style naturally progresses into cursive and the letter formations are especially selected to help emerging readers and children with reading difficulties. The early cursive style also helps with spelling and finger spacing.

I will be running a handwriting workshop to inform parents of what this entails and how to help at home on 17^thFebruary. More information will follow.

The Flea Market was not only enjoyable and useful for developing the children’s money problem solving skills, but it also raised 114.000HUF to spend on our children. We are already planning our community art project for the summer and will spend the money on paints and materials, plus some beautifying this term. We are very excited to develop our environment with our children and look forward to the exciting teamwork that the community art project entails.

ELTE University is very keen to send 2 more students to learn from our wonderful teachers and environment later this term. The students will shadow some of our teachers as part of their training and our teachers also benefit from sharing their strategies and pedagogy with the students, who are also full of enthusiasm and energy, eager to support and find out about our children’s learning.

Many thanks to Year 5 Thames and the Student Council, assisted by Miss Lorna and Mrs Egerszegi, for organising the non-uniform day on Monday. The children were concerned by the wildfires currently afflicting vast areas in Australia. They really wanted to do something to help on Australia Day, suggesting the non-uniform day and bringing 200HUF to wear yellow and green.

The money will be donated to support the WWF. Please see the gallery for pictures.

Fiona Durbridge has returned to Y4 Tees class. I would like to take this opportunity to warmly welcome her back to the LKS2 team. Y4 Tees parents have been fully informed about the changes.

Please note that there will be a meeting of class representatives next week. If you have ideas, suggestions or would like to find out information, please tell your class rep to bring to our meeting.

As we are developing our handwriting in Primary, I have also saved some handwriting resources to the Parent Portal to help parents continue the learning at home, if you wish. Please find the resources at the following pathway:

School Information – Documents and Files – Curriculum – English - Handwriting

As always, if you find any information on the Parent Portal missing or unclear, do either let me or your Class Representative know so we can continually improve what we communicate and do.

This week’s assembly was the marvellous Mersey class on how individuality helps the team work!

Many congratulations to all of our stars of the week - you can find their pictures and reasons for receiving them in the display in reception.

Congratulations also for those children who appeared in the Merit Book – please feel free to flick through the golden pages; the book is stored outside the Primary Office and parents are encouraged to take a look – it does make your children proud!

This is a reminder to parents that if you have any concerns or worries, please contact your child’s teacher. You can find all email addresses under the teacher’s picture on the school website: https://britannicaschool.hu/staff

The Key Stage Coordinators are also very lovely and willing to help. You can contact them here:

KS1 Coordinator - Rosie Wolland: r.wolland@britannicaschool.hu

LKS2 Coordinator - Justyna Bilski: j.bilski@britannicaschool.hu

UKS2 Coordinator - Ryan Phillips: r.phillips@britannicaschool.hu

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

Marie Moreton

Head of Primary