Newsletter, Friday 7th July 2017

This week saw the 2017 Barry Island Sport’s Day. Children gave their ‘Barry Island best’ as Foundation Phase and Key Stage 2 were challenged to test their skills (in the egg and spoon race), speed (in the sprint) and endurance (in the obstacle and long distance races!). Our whole community came together and celebrated our childrens best efforts. Llongyfarchiadau to the winning house, The Blues!

Dosbarth Derw have been enjoying visits to their selected comprehensive school’s this week. Children have been experiencing Key Stage 3 timetables and meeting form classes to ensure a smooth transition from primary to secondary school. Our children were commended for their excellent behaviour! Da iawn, Dosbarth Derw.

Dosbarth Onnen delivered a brilliant performance in the Summer performance. ‘Jake’s FANTASTICAL Sandcastle’ took us into the ocean as our children shared catchy songs and showcased their oracy skills. Mrs Evans, Mrs Holder and Miss Preece were very proud of them! We would like to thank everyone who came along.

Next week is our annual Year 5 and 6 trip. We will be visiting Manorbier in Tenby. The trip is an opportunity to develop their building skills, independence and opportunity to bond ahead of their respective transitions to Year 6 and Year 7.

As part of our Beach Schools programme Dosbarth Bedwen have been trawling the beach as a stimulus to their writing and using numeracy skills to plot and plan beach huts. Also, Dosbarth Onnen partnered up with a school from Birmingham. They both visited the beach and enjoyed some Summer sun and a well deserved ice cream!

Remember that ‘fake news’ is any news outlet that is not official. Please remember to always check the source of the information before reading.

Welsh Phrase

Ydy hi’n bwrw glaw?

Nag ydy, dydy hi ddim yn bwrw glaw, mae hi’n braf.

Is it raining? No it isn’t, it is fine.

What can we do to clear up our beach?

 

Summer Term Key Dates

Monday 10^th July

Dosbarth Celyn Summer Performance

 Tuesday 11^th July – Friday 14^th July

Year 5 & 6 Manorbier Trip.

 

THIS SUMMER…

Art, Making and Creating!

Monday 31^st July 2017

Time: 11am-3pm

At MAC HQ

Drama and Show!

Wednesday 2^nd August – Sunday 6^th August, at WMC, (Show on Sunday 6^th August).

Times: Weds – Sat 11am – 4pm, Sunday TBC

This year’s show will be in the Weston Studio in the Wales Millennium Centre!

Please be able to attend and commit to all five days of drama activities.

If you would like to book a space for one of our activities please contact Rebekah on:

02920667668

PTA

 

We desperately need donations for class colour hampers and jolly jars. Please send in next week and support your class.

Diolch yn fawr.

 Thursday 13^th July

Nursery Graduation 10.30am

Show and See 2.30pm

 Monday 17^th July

Year 1 & 2 Miskin Mill Trip

Tuesday 18^th July

Reception Trip to Barage

Wednesday 19^th July

Year 6 Leavers Assembly (2pm)

Thursday 20^th July

Summer Fete

Friday 21^st July

Break up for Summer Holidays

Reader of The Week

 

Star of The Week

 

 

 

Newsletter, Friday 23rd June 2017

What a busy week we’ve had! The girls football team attended Barry Town Ladies Football team tournament at Jenner Park Stadium and despite the sweltering conditions the girls performed magnificently. It was a fun day and the girls did parents and school proud.

Year 6 held their annual summer performance of Midsummers Night Dream and show cased their wonderful acting talents. The performance was a huge success and Miss Cox and Mr.Broad were extremely proud.

Year 5 had a trip to Cardiff Museum where they participated in insect workshops and learnt how to order and classify minibeasts. The children were their Barry Island best and showed a very keen interest in the workshops.

The School Council held a “Pupil Rights” Day and the children had to design a poster for their given right. The winner from each class will have their poster made into a plaque to be displayed around the school.

Bryn Hafren girls came to visit year 5 and worked with the children on a music workshop. It was great to learn from older children.

Year 4 have been working on the new school app – soon to be launched. Watch out for more information.

The C-Cadets have been busy making friends online with “bubble” and the year 3 E-Cadets wrote and performed a short script about having safe and strong passwords.

If you are interested in advertising your local company on our Partnerships area of the School Website then please contact the school and leave your name and number for us to contact you in the near future.

E-Cadets

Remember that news can be “Fake” Do not share news you think is fake as it will hurt someone in the end.

 

 

Welsh Phrase of The Week

Pwy ydych chi’n byw

Who do you love with?

FP – Dw i’n byw gyda teulu.

I live with my family

KS2 – Dw i’n byw gyda mam, dad, chwaer, brawd a ci o’r enw Bella

Thunk of The Week

What are the smells of Summer?

Summer Term Key Dates

 Sports Day Wednesday 5th July

Friday 7th July Reserve Sports Day

Year 4

Caerleon educational visit   Tuesday 27^th June

 Year 2 Summer Play 6th July 2pm

 Derw Leavers Assembly 19th July 2017

Year 2 Trip to Miskin Mill Monday 17-18^th July

Last Day of Term Friday 23rd July 2017

PTA

The Summer Fete is on Thursday 20 July at 3.30pm.

 If you would like a stall to sell your wares or are willing to help with the fete please contact Sarah Goodman at the school. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Attendance

KS2: Celyn 95.3%

FP: Onnen 98.3%

 

 

Star of The Week

Reader of The Week

 

 

Newsletter, Friday 16th June 2017

The launch of the Story Trail was a huge success for the school, parents and the community. The support was phenomenal and we look forward to forging further links with local business’s and the local community.

The children and families gathered together to watch the Story Trail films on the “BIG” TV screen supplied by ISTRADIA. The children were the obvious stars of the show demonstrating their excellent Literacy skills, film making skills and collaborative learning skills. The children researched the past and found a way to bring it in to the 21^st Century Learning. Many thanks to the Barry Historical Society for their support and guidance during the project.

The Mayor of Barry came to show support and chat to the children. The Leader of the Vale of Glamorgan spoke about how impressed how was with the children and the Story Trail Project. The afternoon was a huge success and ice creams and chips were enjoyed by all.

If you are interested in advertising your local company on our Partnerships area of the School Website then please contact the school and leave your name and number for us to contact you in the near future.

This week the whole school has been celebrating “My Money Week”. As usual it has been a huge success and the children have enjoyed finding out about different aspects of money.

 

In the foundation phase the children learnt about saving different amounts of money and the value of different coins, shopping and giving change in a toy shop, and adding different amounts with decimals. A great foundation for early years learning with recognising money. .

 

Higher up the school the children looked and income and expenditure, investments, savings and salaries and earning for different types of jobs. The children were surprised by how much it costs to run a house and family and began to understand the importance of saving fro such a young age.

If you would like to save with the school please contact Sarah Goodman for an excellent way to save with local government initiatives.

Please remember that a strong password should include letters and numbers, capital letters and punctuation. It should not be names or anything personal. Never share passwords  

  

 

If the sun protection factor in sun tan lotion is 15? How long can you stay in the sun if the burn time is 10 mins?

Welsh Phrase

Beth wyt ti’n mwynhau?

What do you enjoy?

Dw I’n mwynhau…..I enjoy…

 

 

Summer Term Key Dates

Sports Day

Wednesday 5^th July

 Friday 7^th July Reserve Sports Day

 Derw Summer Performance

21^st June 2017

 Year 4

Caerleon educational visit

27^th June 2017

 Year 2

Summer Play 6^th July 2pm

 Derw Leavers Assembly

19^th July 2017

 Last Day of Term

Friday 23^rd July 2017

 

Reader of The Week

 

 

Star Of The Week

 

KS2 BAA

Helygen 95.2%

FP BAA

Onnen 98.8%

Dosbarth Hywen & Onnen’s ‘Dens and Dandelions’ Wow Day

What a fantastic outdoor learning experience we had today to engage in our new Summer Term Topic, Dens & Dandelions!  The children looked amazing dressed up in their ‘Eco Warrior’ costume, ready for action!

We enjoyed a fun packed carousel of activities including den building; mud sculptures; problem solving and sketching.

 

We had a letter from Her Royal Highness of the Woodland, Princess Dandelion, giving us a riddle to solve.  We had loads of fun trying to find hidden letters in our garden and putting them together to find the secret codeword…BLUEBELL!

 

We made tree rubbings from our school garden and took them back to class to use as templates for our woodland sculptures.  We also used technology to record images of trees and plants to use for sketching material and collected live specimens of plants and flowers for our artwork.

Wow!  What a fantastic way to launch our new Summer Term Topic.  Diolch to all our lovely parents for supporting the children with their fabulous costumes. Ardderchog!

 

Newsletter, Friday 9th June 2017

We welcomed our fantastic children back to school in what is the final half term before the Summer break. We hope to enjoy the good weather and help our children prepare for the next step in their journey in September.

IMPORTANT COMMUNITY EVENT:

Classes have completed their documentaries for the Story Trail. Each class visited their locations and completed filming. We performed our scripts and used our production skills to create an exciting and informative film. Please follow us on twitter @atbarryisland and @BarryStoryTrail

The launch of the Story Trail will be next Thursday (15^th June) at 15:45. We would appreciate if you could all join us near the bandstand to watch children’s work over the last year. Please come along and support our school and local businesses.

 

Dosbarth Helygen had a wowderful WOW day this week. Children were busy green screening to create super hero comic strips. Please take a look at our You Tube channel (TVatBIPS) to watch the children’s work.

Our school has been lucky enough to pilot Class VR head sets. They are Virtual Reality headsets that allow children to visit other countries and in some cases other Worlds. Please read our review of the headsets on our school blog hosted on our website http://www.barryislandprimary.com

Year 5 (Dosbarth Bedwen) are planning ahead for next year’s trip to Braeside. Braeside is an important trip as it is the introduction to the Year 6 scheme of work and important roles such as Head Boy and Head Girl are given out during the trip. We hope all children attend the educational visit in September, in order to have the best possible start to life in Dosbarth Derw.

Remember, age restrictions on social media are important. Keep our children safe – do not allow them to use social media if they are below the recommended age

Welsh Phrase

 Beth wyt ti’n byw?

Dw i’n byw yn Ynys a Barri gyda mam,dad chwaer, brawd a ci o’r enw Bob

 

Which is your favourite location on Barry Island?

 

 

Summer Term Key Dates

 Story Trail Launch Event

THURSDAY 15^TH June at Whitmore Bay Bandstand

 Sports Day

Wednesday 5^th July

 Derw Summer Performance

21^st June 2017

 Year 4

Caerleon educational visit

27^th June 2017

 Year 2

Summer Play 6^th July 2pm

 

 

 

 

Class VR Virtual Reality at Barry Island Primary

Here at Barry Island Primary School we have been exploring innovative ways to engage children in the classroom. We have been working alongside Avantis to test the Class VR head sets and we have found a huge improvement in children’s motivation to plan and write a story.

Quite often we expect children to write adventure stories using a variety of adventurous vocabulary and relative description. How can we expect them to do this if they have no experience? Most of the time we rely on imagination or previous ‘images’ children have gathered from movies or stories.

Therefore we decided to use Class VR headsets as a stimulus to the writing. We have found that it really helps the children with emotive language and selection of adventurous vocabulary when setting a scene.

At first we were concerned that the impact on writing may not be as significant as we had hoped. But we soon realised that teaching the children to relate to a scene and providing experiences is just as important as teaching them the skills of story writing.

The responses from the children have been fantastic.

“What I like about VR headsets is that it feels like you’re actually there. You see the movement of the animals and you see things you never thought you would see. When the shark came close to me it made my heart beat out of my chest! When you look at a picture it doesn’t really feel like its real. VR makes it come alive!”

We have seen a big impact in the quality of writing when pupils use Class VR to inspire their writing.

Descriptive writing using a printed image.

This short descriptive piece uses word banks and an image of a shark as stimulus. Although it described the scene and the child selects vocabulary in keeping with their expected age, they are not writing emotively. They cannot relate to the situation as they never experienced it.

Descriptive writing after the Shark Experience on Class VRImmediately we see a change in the child’s writing style once they have used the head sets. They now swim nervously instead of happily and the while encounter with the shark is far more ‘up close and personal’ due to the fact they have experienced diving with Great Whites through the Class VR.

 

We hope that we can continue to provide learning experiences for our children and believe that Class VR is a fast and easy way to provide rich experiences to our children.

 

We believe that the key to any child’s success in school is engagement and enjoyment. And the children of Barry Island Primary School certainly enjoyed this lesson!

 

Dosbarth Onnen @Bristol Zoo, May 2017

Dosbarth Onnen had a great visit to Bristol Zoo which started with a session about pets and caring for animals.  We talked about what makes a suitable pet and how to care for different pets.  We then got to hold Giant African Cockroaches, which were really wriggly and tickled.  The we talked about how to care for a reptiles and got to stroke a real snake. It was cold to touch and really smooth.  Finally we watched a video about how intelligent rats are and got to meet a new baby rat at the zoo. He was gorgeous and very well behaved.

 

 

 

We then went off to explore the different animals……

 

 

 

 

 

…..and feeding time at the zoo!

 

 

The children were incredibly well behaved and polite at all times and a real credit to the school and parents alike.  Many thanks for supporting such a worthwhile, fun but educational visit. Not to mention tiring…

 

Mrs Evans, Miss Preece and Mrs Holder.