Issue 417: 10th March 2023

Dear Parents and Carers,

I thought this week would be another first for me! Having to decide whether or not it would be a snow day in school. Fortunately (although I think the children would disagree) the snow did not settle and instead just resulted in a few wet playtimes in school. I hope you have all had a good week. Looking out of my office window, I can see lots of the Foundation Stage children outside in their splash suits having fun in the snow/slush - definitely a good week for them! 

Burwell Residential

I know the Year Three children who come home today from Burwell are having a fantastic time. For many of them, it will be the first time they have spent this long away from home without their family and that can be quite daunting for some. Having been on this trip in the past, I know they are busy from the moment they wake up to the second the lights go out for bedtime. They will no doubt return exhausted but with lots of fond memories of their first Wistow residential. 

Year Six Mock SATs

We have a carefully planned out assessment schedule at Orton Wistow and this week Year Six have completed their mock SAT tests. Miss Tansley and Mrs. Simmons try to run the week as close to the real thing as possible allowing the children to have a go at completing the reading, GPS and maths tests that were used for the real tests last year. I know that both teachers feel very happy with how the children performed and have said that their attitude has been great all week. These tests will also help the Year Six team to see where there are gaps in the children's knowledge and plan for these to be covered in the remaining weeks of the year. Well done Year Six. 

Time to say goodbye

We will be saying farewell to Fiona Schneider, a member of our school office team, at the end of this term. Fiona has had a number of roles at Orton Wistow over the years and has finished her time with us being our digital lead in the office. Fiona is an aspiring (and very talented) author and has been offered a two-book publishing deal! We are all very proud of her and look forward to seeing her work being published in the near future. Fiona will continue to work within the OWN Trust for a couple of days a week, so I am sure we will still get to see her occasionally, and I know she will come back to sign copies of her books! 

Are you smarter than a Wistow pupil?

See if you can answer these questions that have been asked in school this week:

1. What obstacles did Mary Seacole have to overcome to fulfill her ambition of serving in the Crimean War? (Year 5)
2. How many grams are in 1kg? (Year 2)
3. Question from the Year Six mock SATs paper:

   

Good luck!

Have a great weekend everyone.

Mr Marks

Headteacher

^{Photo by Mekht on Unsplash}

Each week, we publish the latest achievements of the children at Orton Wistow Primary School.

Meat-Free Mondays 

By Ms Porter, Eco Lead

We are always looking for ways to encourage children to try and enjoy a range of different foods.  As many families/children choose to be vegetarian, we discussed 'Meat Free Mondays' with the classes. 

The School Council met with our kitchen team, and they came up with lots of good ideas, such as vegetable curry, tomato pasta and quorn bolognaise. 

With this in mind, we are going to trial this for the summer term.  We often add healthy alternatives to our meat meals, such as adding more vegetables to bolognaise and lentils to lasagne.  We hope you will continue to order school meals for your children, we would be grateful to hear any feedback they have about this new change at mealtimes!  

Look out for the Meat-Free Mondays in the Summer Menu which will be sent to parents before the end of term.

Break the Rules Day Coming Up on 31.03.23

By Jo Watson, FOWS Chair

FOWS Break The Rules Day fundraising activity is BACK!

On Friday 31st March, for one day only, children are allowed to break the rules! For every rule they break, you must pay 50p via Parentmail.

An email will be sent out next week from the school office with details of how you can select and pay for the rules your child is going to break. Here are the choices that will be available:

^{Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash}

Library Corner - OWPS World Book Day

English Ambassadors' Account of World Book Day at OWPS -  by Avie and Elissa in Year 6

On the 2023 World Book Day at OWPS, we had different costumes: from Harry Potter to Dork Diaries and many more amazing outfits. Many children made fantastic shoe box creations that were displayed in our school library. We were given book tokens to spend in many local shops. 

When we arrived at school, we were given a challenge to create a special book mark, which was brightly coloured. Afterwards, we had different puzzles to solve, which were related to World Book Day. It was an amazing, enjoyable day, and we hope it will carry on through many more years!

World Book Day 2023 by Mr Sneeze (aka Mrs Campling) 

My World Book Day started by dressing myself and my two children in our costumes (Mr Sneeze, Supertato, and Ava from Squishy McFluff) and taking them off to their school. I then hot-footed it over here for a day full of bookish excitement - and it was VERY exciting!

First port of call was to pop in to each classroom to see all the fantastic costumes. I was so impressed by the variety of costumes I saw across the school, with some of my personal favourites including an owl in Year 2 and a panda in Year 5!

Then it was full steam ahead with the Escape Room: running for the last fortnight with every class visiting to solve the puzzles and find a secret password! Year 2 and the Wombats were the lucky ones who got to experience this on World Book Day itself and they rose to the challenge with gusto. At the time of writing, every team has escaped in under 20 minutes and has demonstrated exceptional teamwork as they tackle the clues. With a few groups still to go, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to see which teams are going to take the Teamwork prize, and the Speed prize! 

Years 1, 2 and 6 also accessed the Now Press Play resource for an interactive reading session, which certainly looked a lot of fun as I poked my head round their doors, and a great way to engage with texts slightly differently than usual. All classes thoroughly enjoyed taking part in activities around books, and of course doing plenty of reading!

As well as dressing up, many of the children decorated shoeboxes with scenes from their favourite books, and these arrived in the library steadily over the course of the day. The creativity and, in some cases, engineering in these absolutely blew me away - to the extent that I had to expand from a winner for each unit to a winner from each year group! These are featured below, and I’m sure you will agree they are all very deserving!

Shoebox Winners

It was incredibly hard to choose just one winner from each year group but these boxes stood out for either creativity, engineering, or ingenuity! These children will need to come and see me to choose their prize - a book, of course!

And Finally...

We must say a huge thank you to the English and Library ambassadors, who have been an immense help to me and Mrs Tansley in collecting shoeboxes, helping in the Escape Room, and ensuring that everyone received their book tokens - which is, after all, what World Book Day is all about! We are very lucky here to have a lovely library and access to a huge variety of books, but for many children that isn’t the case. World Book Day provides them with the opportunity to own their own book, and the life-changing power of reading. A day worth celebrating!

Discover what is coming up in the OWPS Dining Car.

Read about what is happening in the local community.

^{Disclaimer: Orton Wistow Primary School does not endorse any products, services or activities that appear in the Community section of this newsletter, and is not responsible for any contract entered into by either party. We would recommend all parents check with any providers regarding the status of these services, activities and clubs}