Purple Pages

Issue 4 (30.9.16)

Coming Up:

October: Celebration of Reading Month

4th & 6th October: Author Visit

7th October: Monthly Cake Stall. Please could the cakes be donated by Years 3 and 4.

7th October: PTA Family Bingo Night

Message from the Headteacher:

Thank you to those who attended our wonderful harvest services

today. It was a joy to present bibles to our new Reception classes.

The local foodbank will be very grateful for all your donations

which we will deliver next week.

Fr. Christopher joined us for the

service and emphasised how

fortunate we are to have plenty

of food and clean water.

Thank you so much to the PTA for their generosity in allowing every

child to be donated with a bible. Hope to see you all at the Bingo

Night!

We are really pleased to have refurbished our library thanks to the

PTA and will be celebrating this as we launch our month long

celebration of reading in school. There will be a competition for

the most avid and out of school readers as well as visits and visitors

planned.

We also have our first competitive sporting event of the year at

Wellsway School . I’m looking forward to the cross-country next

Wednesday!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Claire Mirams

Headteacher.

The next Talk Topic is…

If I could invent a new toy,

what kind of toy would I

create and why?.

School Dinner Menu

Please note next week

will be Week 2 and there

is a change to the menu

on Monday when it will

be jacket potatoes with

a choice of fillings.

Vacancy

We are looking to recruit

a Lunchtime Supervisor

and Playworker. If you

would like more details,

please contact the

School Office.

Data Collection Sheets

Can we please remind

everyone to return these

as soon as possible to the

School Office. Thank you.

Stars of the Week

This week’s Stars of the Week are:

Reception Poppy G for fantastic effort and enthusiasm in phonics. Lille H for always following our ‘Golden Rules’ and being a ‘Good Friend’

Year 1 Riley C for great independence when coming in to school! Bailey T for his huge effort with all his work!

Year 2 William C for fantastic writing this week. Austin H for trying really hard to improve his presentation.

Year 3 Ellie S for beautifully presented work. Callum B for working hard every day.

Year 4 Oakley P for super focus in Maths and Literacy. Jack W for always being focused and working hard.

Year 5 Will L for consistently amazing attitude. Freddie H for always being polite and very well mannered

Year 6 Simon G for showing great enthusiasm towards his learning and putting in the

effort to persevere when challenging. Jack S for a great attitude to learning.

Children’s Author to visit our School

We are very fortunate to have a visitor coming to our school on Tuesday 4th October to present

to our children. David Lawrence Jones is a well-respected author of children’s books and is

renowned for his popular “Bradley Baker” and “Jig and Saw” adventure series.

During his visit, David will talk about his working life as an author, showcasing some of his stories to

the children and generally enthusing to them about being creative in their own lives.

All the author’s books will be available to purchase in school and we have some time set aside for

David to personally sign copies during a second visit on Thursday 6th October. An order form will

be sent home after the showcase presentation, which will enable you to discuss David’s books

and the event with your child. If you would like your child to purchase a book(s), please ensure

the order form and payment is returned on the day of the official book signing session.

Your child is also encouraged to think of at least one question to ask David about his work or life

and research some facts about him. Should you wish to find out more about the author and his

books you can check out the following website: www.authorvisitstoschools.com

We are all very excited about the visit of David Lawrence Jones to our school. We sincerely hope

your child enjoys the whole experience of meeting the author and hopefully having their very

own book signed to celebrate the occasion.

Volunteer Readers Our children benefit hugely from reading and enjoy being listened to at home and at school. We want them to read as often as possible. Whilst teachers will listen to their pupils, we are looking for volunteer parent readers to help during the week as well. If you are able to spare a little time, you would be making a big contribution to pupils’ learning. We know you will also enjoy hearing about a child’s view of the world! Volunteers would read and talk about books with children to help improve their confidence, overall reading skills and encouraging a love of reading. If you have a DBS check and an hour spare once a week, then we would be most happy to hear from you. Please contact Jan Dixon for further information jan.dixon@stjohnsmsn.co.uk

Improving School Communications

At St John’s, we are always looking at ways to improve communication between home and school.

Our aim is to become a ‘cashless’ school, so please can we encourage parents and carers to use

the online ParentPay facility. If you need a login or have forgotten your password, please contact

the school office.

We have now upgraded our ParentMail system which is more efficient and will make life for parents

much easier.

For parents, one of the biggest benefits is that you can easily pick up school messages on your

smartphone by downloading the free ParentMail App on Android or iOS.

To use the latest version of ParentMail all you need to do is verify your account. Over the next few

days you will be sent either an email or text message from ParentMail, when you receive this please

just follow the instructions below:

Mobile and Email registration:

Please click on the link from the text message or email and follow the verification process. You will be

asked to enter some details, answer a security question to verify who you are and to set a password

for your account.

Please be assured that ParentMail is registered with the Information Commissioner

and guarantees that all information you provide will be kept private and will not be passed on to any

other organisation.

If you have not yet provided the school with your e-mail address, and are happy to do so, please

contact the School Office.

If you have any issues or queries with the process please contact Jan Dixon, Office Manager/PA to

Headteacher jan.dixon@stjohnsmsn.co.uk at the school.

Top Table

The nominations for the top table next week are:

* These pupils are nominated again this week, as due to 'Bring a friend' teething problems last week,

they didn't manage to take their well deserved turn.

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6

Chloe R Jennifer H

Evie B Oliver B

Cody V Lucy S

Zavanna L Oliver A

Hollie O * Jasmine B *

Harley C * Gracie S

Parking

Could we please remind parents again

to be considerate with parking at the

start and end of the school day and not

to use the car parks of local businesses.

We have been advised by Pampered

Pets that they will start clamping cars of

non-customers in the car park.

“It was a terrible day. The time I didn't know, but I know

this. Cramped in a box is all I had for warmth was a

cosy rug and the arctic body heat of everyone else.”

Learning in Year 6

Pupils in 6B have been learning about life in

London throughout history. They have written

a diary of life in Victorian times, inspired by

reading ‘Oliver Twist’.

“I woke up this morning to the sound of a loud

donging of the bell; Matron was telling us all to

go to the breakfast hall, it was a cold night

again last night. It was even colder in the hall

but I didn’t dare complain.. This morning was

lumpy, sloppy gruel the same as yesterday, no

surprise there.”

“This morning I woke up to the bell like

any other day. 5 o’clock precisely.

We had to drag our weary bodies off

the floor and get into our itchy

clothes.”

“I just woke up. It’s another boring day at the orphanage” I slowly walked

down the stairs for breakfast. I sat down and had my slober. It’s yuck but

you can get used to it.” “ Today started like any other day. At 4.30 in the

morning, I got lifted up from my freezing rat infested bed.

My back felt like in the night someone had snapped it in

half whilst loads of rats had feet for their dinner.”

“This morning I woke and

realised that I was in this

horrible place. I had been in

the best dream ever!!”

“I was sat in an overcrowded dormitory with a box for a

bed. My body shivered for once again it was a cold winter

night. My bones ached as I was ushered out of my mouldy

box and ordered down to the dinning room. My feet kept

tripping over each other, I was that tired”

“I woke up in the same old rust pig

trough, I had a headache but I still

have to work at this unbearable

place, with no school to go to and

also no family, I was anxious of the

day ahead!”

“Today started like any other day. At 4.30 am

I was rushed our of the dorm. It had been

another cold night sleeping on the cold, hard

floor. All I could hear was the rats skidding on

the floor. Every bone ached and my toes

were like icicles.”

Celebration of Reading

To coincide with the Bath Children’s Literature Festival, this October will be a celebration of

reading at St Johns. Years 3 and 5 will be visiting the festival next week and there will also be an

author visit on Tuesday and Thursday. As well as these exciting events, there will be a reading

competition for the whole school. The child who reads the most will win a book token. One avid

reader from each year group will be in with a chance to win, so get reading! Parents/carers

can download a competition form from the school website and monitor their child’s reading in

order to take part.

Year 1 visit to Carymoor Environmental Centre

Our Year 1's had a fantastic educational visit to Carymoor on Wednesday. They became wildlife

detectives for the day, exploring our topic of "Who lives in a place like this?".

The children saw many native species in their habitats, including grass snakes (parents and a

baby!), a shrew, huge ants nests, caterpillars, birds and many dragonflies. In the wood circle, we

even managed to hear UK native birds returning the calls from our toy birds, which was magical.

We undertook many scientific skills of exploring, categorising and identifying animals and

minibeasts, as well as understanding how animals adapt themselves to their habitats.

We all had a wonderful day and the Year 1 staff were very proud of our children. It was super to

see their inquisitive minds in action. Huge thanks must go to our parent helpers for coming with

us and helping to make the day such a lovely experience for our children.

St John’s School PTA

PTA BINGO EVENING FRIDAY 7TH OCTOBER

The PTA are holding a Family Bingo Night on Friday 7th October Doors open at 6.00pm and “Eyes Down” will

commence at 6.30pm.

We will be running a licensed bar, holding a raffle and selling Hot Food and Refreshment’s (also available to

purchase will be the all-important Bingo Dapper Pens!)

Places will be limited due to the space available in the main hall, to reserve your seats you will need to pay for

your tickets in advance – The PTA team will be selling tickets after school from Monday 3rd October or you can

reserve your seats by popping in to the school office from Monday 3rd October and paying.

You will get a receipt for the number of seats you have paid for and your game tickets will be handed out when

you arrive on the night.

The cost per person is £3.50 - each player gets 6 x game tickets (we will be playing 6 games;

games 1, 3, 4 and 6 will be any line followed by the full house, with games 2 and 5 being any two lines making a

total of 10 ‘games’ all together).

For the Bingo enthusiast who can play more than one card per game – additional books of 6 game tickets will

available for £1.50 each.

We will be playing adult and child games simultaneously, meaning the first adult to ‘call’ the game will win the

cash prize and the first child to ‘call’ the game will be able to choose a prize from the prize table.

Whilst we do not need a licence to hold a bingo night, we need to make you aware that we are playing for

‘good causes’. This means that the on the night:

•Bingo can only take place at events where none of the proceeds are being used for private gain

•Players are aware that St John’s school will benefit from the money raised

We will be playing ‘prize bingo’. The rules for this are:

•All the prizes are put up in advance and are not dependent on the number of players or amount of money

collected.

•There are no limits on the amount of money you can collect for admission fees or ticket sales, or on the value

of prizes paid out.

FULL HOUSE £30

ANY TWO LINES £20

ANY LINE £10

CHILDREN’S PRIZES – THEY WILL BE ABLE TO CHOOSE A PRIZE FROM OUR PRIZE TABLE

4 pint or 6 pint Plastic Milk Bottles

Many thanks to those of you who have already brought some in to school reception, we still need lots and lots

more. Please can they be washed out and have the lids on. We will be recycling them after use.

We are holding a Christmas Fayre planning meeting after school on Tuesday 11th October at 3pm – we are still

in the planning stages so bring along your ideas!