Good afternoon families! It was amazing to see so many of you for Carols on the Playground today. Despite the technical hitches and my very questionable attempts to sing and conduct a whole school, it was a marvellous event! There was much excitement pre and post singing from the children and hopefully it will become an annual event for the BVP family!

Today's assemblies were especially important as we were celebrating our Values Champions. Our children are really getting to know our school values now and we hope that as families, you can see that everything we are doing is underpinned by aims to demonstrate respect, collaboration, compassion, responsibility, integrity and the ability to rise to challenges and achieve the highest of standards.

We are continuing to work on our Personal Development Curriculum which again is underpinned by our values; we want to increase the number of 'character developing' opportunities we provide for our children, but not sign up to these ad hoc- instead our aim is to ensure that our overall BVP curriculum (e.g. the whole package that we offer to our children) and especially the 'extra' opportunities are planned carefully so that we are paying attention to each school and British value. One of these 'extras' today has been a visit to University of Birmingham Engineering Campus for a selection of our KS2 children. Read on for more information about the children's experiences.

Our school halls and classrooms have been filled with the sound of Christmas rehearsals this week and we know many of you will be looking forward to to seeing children taking part in Carol Services and Nativities. Please do pay attention to the details in the letters about these events. We are really keen to get as many parents in to school and St. Francis Church as possible and that means we cannot allow toddlers or pushchairs/ prams. Thankyou for your support with this.

On Thursday we had an air quality monitor installed on the playground. Once it is up and running properly, we will be involving children collecting and analysing readings. Also yesterday, we had one of our routine fire drills. The children behaved exceptionally and we were very proud of how 654 children exited school carefully and quietly within a matter of minutes. 

On Sunday evening, our Choir and Hand Bell group performed at The Town Hall.. read on for Mrs Vaughan's report! And on Wednesday, our Year 6 members of the Choir sung carols at the Memory Cafe over the road. They were absolutely fantastic and such wonderful ambassadors for our school.

So overall, a very busy week...let's see if we can cram in a bit more for our final week of the term!

Values of The Week 

Today, teachers have presented the Values Champion Award to the following children for demonstrating Responsibility.

We've had another outbreak of nits at the school in both KS1 and KS2. 

In a bid to tackle the problem, we are asking all parents to ensure pupils with long hair come into school with it tied back.

Also, if your child has lice, please do not bring them into school until their hair has been treated. We appreciate your ongoing cooperation with this. 

Measles cases have been confirmed locally in Birmingham.  Measles outbreaks can happen when not enough children have been vaccinated.  

Education settings are asked to pass the below information to parents and encourage them to check that their child has been vaccinated. Parents can check the personal child health record (the Red Book) or if this doesn’t help, speak to their GP surgery. Parents can contact their GP surgery to catch their child up, at any age, or indeed, for themselves.

About measles

Measles is highly infectious (it can spread easily from person to person). While most people recover completely within a couple of weeks, measles can cause serious illness and in rare cases it can be fatal. Vaccination with two doses of MMR is the only way to give people maximum protection. 

The first signs of measles are:

• high temperature
• runny or blocked nose
• sneezing
• cough
• red, sore, watery eyes
• rash usually appears a few days after cold-like symptoms (sometimes starts around the ears before spreading to rest of the body)

Measles can cause complications, especially in certain at-risk groups that include babies and small children, pregnant women and people with weak immunity.

Further important information

The MMR vaccine

If your child has not received two doses of MMR vaccination as part of their childhood immunisation programme, you should take up the offer of the MMR vaccine for your child now. If you are not sure if your child needs an MMR vaccine, you can contact your GP to check.

The MMR vaccination is the best way to protect against measles as it is:

• effective
• safe and
• free of charge

The vaccine provides effective protection against three diseases – measles, mumps and rubella. The first dose of MMR is given soon after the first birthday. A second dose is normally given before school entry. However, you can have the MMR vaccine at any age. If either you or your child are not fully protected against measles (two doses of MMR), you can contact your GP surgery to arrange vaccination. It is never too late to get vaccinated.  Two doses of MMR are required to produce satisfactory protection against measles, mumps and rubella. If your family avoids pork, a MMR vaccine is available that does not contain any pork products.

This is especially important when measles is circulating because any child or adult who has not had at least one dose of MMR and comes into contact with a person with measles will have to be excluded from nursery, school or work for 21 days and stay at home.

What to do if you think your child has measles

If your child develops symptoms, you should contact your GP. You must contact the surgery by telephone before visiting and tell the reception staff that you think that your child may have measles and not attend the surgery unless you are asked to. The doctor will make special arrangements to see your child so that, if they have measles, they won’t pass it to others.

People with measles will remain infectious, and so be able to pass on the disease to others for 4 days after the start of the rash. Therefore, it is important that anyone with measles stays away from nursery, school, group activities, gatherings or anywhere with people outside of the household during that time.

Further information on the MMR vaccine can be found on the NHS website:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/mmr-vaccine/

If your setting needs any further support or resources to have this conversation, or if you have any further questions, please email [email protected].

Christmas Fact of the week:

Santa has his own postcode!

Do you know what it was? 

We know that Santa has an important job every 24th December, and he knows where everyone lives. He does have his naughty or nice list, after all! But did you know that Santa also has his very own postcode? While the home of Santa may be the North Pole, Canada has a postcode reserved for children to send their letters to!

Each year, Canada Post helps Santa respond to thousands of letters sent from around the world to him, with the address being Santa Claus, North Pole, H0H 0H0, Canada. So, now you know where to send your letters next year!

Thanks to you all for registering for our Jobs January event.

If you wish to participate please complete the form by following the link.

Mr Evans [email protected] 

Today our budding engineers went on a trip to Birmingham University’s School of Engineering. Two pupils from each of our KS2 classes were selected for the trip to get them excited about STEM.  They had a tour of the workshop where they made some very exciting (and tasty!) wind turbines and spaghetti cars. They saw 3D printers in action and got to meet a robot dog! After such a positive reaction from the children, we plan to host various workshops at school after Christmas for all classes to interact with.

Once again, this week we have been celebrating  the musical talent at BVPS. The week kicked off on Sunday with our choir and Hand bells performing at Birmingham Town Hall. They were just simply outstanding. Wednesday saw some of our violin players performing beautifully in assembly and our Year 6 choir members singing for St Francis Centre Memory Café’s Christmas Meal. We finished off the week with our oboes, flute group and S. in 6S performing brilliantly in assembly. Well done to all involved, we are super proud of you all.

Our Choir performing at The Town Hall!

The Memory Cafe at St Francis Centre to sing for members of our community with dementia. They were outstanding! 

Monday 18^th December

This will be our last rehearsal and we will be concentrating on music for Young Voices. Choir will start back on Monday 15^th January 2024.

Young Voices Tickets and T short update 

We have been advised that we will receive T shirts and tickets when we return in January.

Young Voices Resources 

If your choir member is going to Young Voices, can you please encourage them to practice the songs at home.

The link to access the resources is below:

https://yvmusicroom.com/parentRegisterReferral?code=Mjg1My8xNzAwODIwMDg0

We will also resend this link via Arbour to all those not yet signed up.

Home learning is important, as we do not have time before our first rehearsal next term, January 15^th, to teach the songs and dance moves.

Stopping Music Lessons for the Spring Term

The deadline for stopping music lessons has now passed. If you have any queries about this, please contact Mrs Vaughan as a matter of urgency.

Music Lessons continue next week until Thursday 21^st December and then resume on Tuesday 9^th January. They continue until the end of term.

School Orchestra to the Symphony Hall – we are seeking 2 parents to help take the school orchestra to the hear the KS2 CBSO Schools concert on Tuesday 6^th February. We will be travelling by train,  leaving school at 11.30pm and returning approximately 4pm. If any orchestra parents are free to help, please let Mrs Vaughan know. More details will follow in the Spring Term.

A Big Thank You

We would like to extend a big thank you to all our peripatetic music teachers, who work so hard for the children in our school. A special thank you to Mr Ali, who is leading our school orchestra and Miss Barber for accompanying the choir is brilliantly.

Some more fantastic maths learning to share with you this week! This time courtesy of J and R in 5HPS. Year 5 have been working on fractions recently, including how to add and subtract them. Here we can see that the boys have been work systematically to make balancing calculations, adding one ninth to the left and right hand side each time. Fantastic work! It’s been great to see all kinds of different maths going on around school – it could be your class or even your work featured next time!

Welcome to a new piece in our newsletter, organised by the Year 6 journalists. We will be interviewing teachers across the school so that children in other year groups and parents can get to know them better! If you have ideas for questions which you would like answering, please pass them on to Oscar V (6GW).

1. Bio: Miss McCabe, teacher of 6M at BVP.
   
   
   
2. What is your favourite out-of-school activity?: I love running and going on bike rides. I love travelling and my favourite countries are Australia and Jamaica.
   
   
   
3. What made you want to be a teacher?: I was working as an Auxiliary Nurse and preferred child interactions so I thought I would be good at it.
   
   
   
4. Minecraft or Roblox?: Neither – bring back Super Mario!
   
   
   
5. What is your favourite subject to teach?: I love teaching English or PE.
   
   
   
6. What’s your favourite year to teach?: Probably Year 6.

By the year 6 journalists: Oscar V, Lewis R, Felix D and James F.

Fresh seasonal salad bar with fresh bread available daily as well as a daily selection of fresh fruit.

Booking School Dinners Update 

As of January, you can book all dinners (including Halal) on the same booking form. We apologise for the multiple changes regarding Halal meals recently, but we have been trying to find the most effective way of collecting orders and we have come to the conclusion, this is the way forward. Thank you for your patience.

Also, please remember if you want to book your child a school dinner, make sure your ParentPay account is in credit before doing so.

We hope everyone enjoyed the Carols in the Playground this afternoon. It was great to see so many of you and thank you so much to the Year 6 PTA Ambassadors that helped host the event for our Parent community. Fingers crossed we will also be able to deliver the amazing Christmas Cake to the lucky winner!

Christmas Raffle

Tickets are now available on ParentPay for the Christmas Raffle Draw £1 per entry - see https://bournvillehsa.wordpress.com/end-of-term-raffle-december-2023/ for evolving prize list. The draw will take place on 20th December. We have added another set of prizes from local businesses, so please do take a look and get involved!

We are still seeking donations from the Parent community for Raffle Prizes to be part of the Christmas Raffle. We had a hugely successful response to the previous raffle donation request that we are looking to repeat. Tickets are now on ParentPay and we have published the Prize List - which we will add to as the donations come in - see https://bournvillehsa.wordpress.com/end-of-term-raffle-december-2023/ for the list

Extension of the secret Present Room

Due to popular demand we are extending the "Present Room" and inviting Parents to add the item to their ParentPay cart and we will support their child/ren to visit the Present Room during school time, choose a present from a wide range of items, help wrap it and then bring it home as a gift for anyone you choose (Parents/Grandparents etc.). It worked well last year and helped those that could not attend the Fair to enjoy the experience. The "Visit to the Present Room for a loved one" is now available on ParentPay for £5 until Monday 18^th December (same price as at the Fair) and they will visit the Present Room on Tuesday or Wednesday afternoons.

Silent Disco kit available for borrow/hire

If any Parents (or another local School that you are associated with) want to borrow/hire for a donation the silent disco kit (60 headphones, 3 transmitters) just get in touch [email protected]. We'd be happy to help you recreate the disco enjoyment at other times, and they were funded as part of the Commonwealth Games legacy fund - so they are available for all to benefit.

Silent Disco kit available for borrow/hire

If any Parents (or another local School that you are associated with) want to borrow/hire for a donation the silent disco kit (60 headphones, 3 transmitters) just get in touch [email protected]. We'd be happy to help you recreate the disco enjoyment at other times, and they were funded as part of the Commonwealth Games legacy fund - so they are available for all to benefit.

Message from Bring it on Brum!

To book Bring It On Brum! holiday clubs you will need your Bring It On Brum! code (BIOB code), sometimes called a Free School Meal Code (FSM code) or Holiday Activity and Food Code (HAF code). Our code is 3303353. 

If you haven't received your Bring It On Brum! code, but believe you are eligible for the programme, please speak to your school office. Alternatively, you can contact the Bring It On Brum! team via the contact form on the Bring It On Brum! website. 

In preparation for holiday clubs opening, we suggest you familiarise yourself with the booking process by checking out our 'How to Book' guide. 

https://www.bringitonbrum.co.uk/content/uploads/2023/03/How-to-Book-.pdf?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Bring%20it%20on%20Brum%20News&utm_content=Bring%20it%20on%20Brum%20News+CID_76e227aa0d0060d31ac45468a282ffd3&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=View%20How%20to%20Book%20Guide 

We hope you all have an enjoyable weekend especially if you are lucky enough to be at home with family. Stay safe and we look forward to seeing you for one more week, on Monday! 

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is the responsibility of everyone in our school and at all times we consider what is in our children’s best interests. We work to ensure our children our safe and cared for and by doing this we are protecting their health and development and preventing them from harm. If we are worried, we will raise concerns, share information, and take prompt action with the aim of ensuring families receive the right help at the right time.