Message from Headteacher

It comes around very quickly every year and it’s incredibly exhausting… but I do love the build up to the Christmas period in school. There’s something magical about being around seven-hundred excited children as they perform in their nativities, sing carols and Christmas songs and write their Christmas lists to Santa. Staff looked incredibly tired as they left the school on the last day of term, no-doubt relieved that we’d made it to the Christmas holidays, but I know that they also feel very proud of all that their children and our school have achieved throughout the term. Teachers don’t expect presents at the end of term and please never feel under pressure to get anything – but staff did ask me to thank you for your generosity in this newsletter.

As I write this newsletter, I’m particularly proud of how much we as a school community have supported others this term, through our ‘Big Bocs Bwyd’ onsite supermarket initiative, raising money for various charities through Crazy Hair Day and Christmas Jumper Day, supporting orphans with a Christmas party in Africa, as well as distributing Christmas meal hampers, presents and books to families within our own community. All of that is only possible because of the support that you, our families and parents, give us and for that, I’m extremely grateful.

I hope that we’ve helped you to feel Christmassy when you’ve attended our various events through December, and that you too have felt an immense sense of pride as you’ve watched your children perform and sing their hearts out on stage during their nativities.

I’ve talked of the joy that Christmas brings but I also know that for some, it can be an incredibly difficult time for a whole variety of reasons. If you’re struggling for whatever reason, I’ll keep checking the school email inbox intermittently over the coming weeks. If there’s a way we as a school can help, even if it’s by just listening, do get in touch.

Please enjoy reading our updates from the term below and be sure to check out the individual year group updates from staff at the bottom.

I’ll leave you with one final story… On one morning towards the end of term, I was particularly touched to arrive in work to read an email which had been sent in by the parents of a child in Reception. They told me how there had been a ‘Santa drive by’ in their street the evening before and that they had said to their son “There’s someone very special and exciting outside to see you, who do you think it is?” to which their son replied “It is Mr Mansfield…?!”  – Reading that email absolutely made my term! I melted like a snowman as I read that! Your children are just the greatest.

Merry Christmas all,

Mr Mansfield

Return to School

Children return after the Christmas Break on Tuesday 9th January.

We have a staff training day on 8th January – as a reminder, our staff training day dates can be found here.

Attendance

Our current Whole School Attendance is 93.3%

The graph below shows each class’ attendance since September…

Nativity Plays

All year groups from Nursery to Year 4 have performed in a Nativity play. We are so proud of all the children who have taken part. The speaking was amazing, acting was fabulous and the singing blew us away! It was so lovely to be able to look out as children performed to see so many smiling, proud parents and grandparents.

If you ordered a USB stick with the concert video or photo and did not receive it before the end of term, please contact us and we’ll follow it up for you.

Carol Service

We hosted our annual Carol Service at St Julian’s Baptist Church towards the end of December. The choirs sang, children read passages from the Christmas story, we all enjoyed singing some classic carols and Mr Mansfield demonstrated some of the latest toys… with the help of Cllr. Spencer and Mr Milling!

Instrumentalists

We are incredibly proud of all the children in the school who are learning to play an instrument. We try to give as many opportunities as possible for these children to perform and celebrate all their hard work and hours of practising. Thank you to everyone who has performed over the Christmas period.

Christmas Dinner

Children enjoyed eating their Christmas Dinner from Chartwells.

School Christmas Video

Each year, it’s become a bit of a tradition that we record a whole school Christmas video. In previous years, we’ve recreated some of the classic supermarket adverts, sang our way through various Christmas songs and hits and even done our own version of ’12 days of Christmas’ complete with live animals! This year, we had the idea of going on a sleigh ride together! It was lots of fun to film, including Mr Mansfield and Mr Jones being pulled around the corridors on wheelie chairs by children dressed as reindeer, blasting children with a snow machine as they danced and even green-screening children driving around the streets in a sleigh. You can watch this year’s video here or view all our previous videos here.

Singing at Church Court and Glyn Anwen

One thing we always enjoy doing each Christmas is popping over to Glyn Anwen and Church Court, the residential care homes opposite and near our school.

The residents love hearing our children sing. In Glyn Anwen, each year group performed a Christmas song. In Church court, the junior choir performed some Christmas classics. One kind resident enjoyed the performance so much that they even made a donation to the school, which was very kind!

Crazy Hair Day and Christmas Jumper Day

We managed to raise £409.88 for Children in Need from our Crazy Hair Day and also rasied £363 for ‘Save the Children’ from our Christmas Jumper Day. Thank you to everyone who contributed.

Uganda Christmas Party

We’ve linked up with a few schools in Uganda, Africa since 2015. Whilst visiting Uganda one year, we were taken to meet the children in a small community on the outskirts of town. Many of the children in the community were orphans but other adults in the community looked after them all. Each year, we send out a donation towards giving them a Christmas Party. The money goes towards giving each child a meal and a drink as well as getting a DJ for a disco. A huge thank you to everyone who contributed towards this on ParentPay – we raised £221.65. You can see the video, including their thank you message to us, here.

Christmas Dinner Hampers

As a school, we do as much as possible to support families within our community. Over the past few years at Christmas, we’ve provided Christmas Dinner hampers to many of our families to help relieve some of the financial pressures Christmas can bring. Each year, we fundraise to be able to do this including receiving donations from families in school as well as seeking support from local businesses. We were so grateful to families in school who very kindly donated £418.44 towards this. I was then having a conversation with Mr Banks, who plays the piano for many of our concerts and also attends St Julian’s Baptist Church. I explained that we had more requests for hampers than we could afford. The congregation at St Julian’s Baptist church took a collection the following Sunday and managed to raise just under £1000 to go towards the hampers. Not only this but many of the members also bought children’s presents to include with the hampers. We did a deal with Heron foods to help us put the hampers together. Whilst we were able to afford the main meal items one of the staff members said ‘but there’s no dessert included’. We explained that there was only a limited amount of money and upon hearing that, a member of staff individually contributed to buying each family a Christmas ice-cream log.

I am often incredibly humbled by the love and support shown towards our families and community.

An enormous ‘thank you’ to everyone who donated. We gave out 60 hampers containing everything needed for a Christmas lunch, and also a Christmas present to each child.

Book for Every Child

Santa very kindly gave a book to every child in the Foundation Phase. We were also extremely grateful to ‘Business in the Community’ who donated us a book for each child in the juniors. Miss Thomas applied for the books and they arrived just before the last day of term. We sent a message to parents inviting them to pop in to our hall to choose a book for their child. So many happy children and parents left the hall excited to read their new book over the holidays. We’re so grateful to Business in the Community and to Miss Thomas for arranging this.

Parent Teacher Association

We were so thrilled to have our first PTA meeting of the year last month. A great group of parents arrived for the meeting straight after school and we sat and chatted about ideas for Christmas events and other events also. If you’re keen to join our great team of parents and staff on the PTA, please don’t hesitate to join the next meeting in the infant hall straight after school (3:30pm) on Thursday 18th January – childcare is provided if you have children with you.

Christmas Bazaar and Mince Pie and Raffle Event

A huge thank you to everyone who came to our Christmas Bazaar on the 18th December and our Mince Pie and Raffle event on the 6th December. Both events were a great success (except that we forgot to order Mince Pies for our Mince Pie and Raffle event, so had to go with chocolate brownies!)

Both events raised money for our PTA, who will decide how best to use the money for our children.

Christmas Video for Newport Council

We were asked by the Chief Education Officer for Newport to record a Christmas Video message which could be shared across the entire council. Children, of course, obliged and we got to work straight away. We were given the script and key headlines to report in the message and then the children did the rest. We have received lots of messages from various departments within the Council saying how much they loved our video. The Chief Education Officer was so pleased with it that she very kindly delivered some treats to thank the children who took part. We thought we’d share the video with parents, too!

Defibrillator

It’s finally installed! Back last year, children in the Department for Finance and Statistics and Department of Health and Wellbeing raised money to install a Defibrillator on site. Thanks to the money raised from their bake sale, generous donations from parents and also donations from WT Laminates, Parker & Co Accountants, Calon Hearts, Hydrotech Mechanical-Electrical LTD, Apex Joinery & Shop fitting LTD and Castle Plumbing supplies… we’ve been able to afford two defibrillators. One has already been installed outside the main junior entrance and another will be installed internally at the other end of the building in the Foundation Phase. An enormous thank you to everyone who contributed.

Tree Planting

We teach children a lot about ways they can look after the planet and their environment. The Eco Council, Department for Community Outreach and Department for Outdoor Learning are incredibly passionate about their roles and had the great idea of inviting families in to plant trees on our site. We invited families to contribute £4 for the tree sapling and equipment they’d need to plant it, then invited them all in to plant their saplings at the bottom of our school field. So far, we’ve planted around 60 new saplings on our site and we’re keeping our fingers crossed they make it through the winter and grow big and tall over the next 100 years! We have taken photos of each family who planted a tree and will have this turned into a big canvas for our school.

Virtual Christmas Quiz

We thought virtual quizzes were a thing of the past now the pandemic is over but it would appear that they are still quite popular! We had quite a few families tell us they’d enjoyed the last ones so much that they wanted us to host another one. We took the opportunity just before Christmas and enticed families to take part with the possibility of winning two large Dominos Pizzas! We had just over 25 families take part and it was close all the way through but congratulations to the Trout Family who won the pizzas!

Christmas Movie Nights

A big thank you to everyone who stayed for our Christmas Movie nights. All the money raised will go to the PTA, who will decide how it can be used to benefit our children.

Santa Visit

We were so lucky on the last day of term as Santa himself decided to stop by at St Julian’s Primary! He met with all the children in the Foundation Phase, gave out presents and listened to our singing! All the children, of course, told him that they should be on the ‘nice’ list this year but Mr Mansfield was not impressed when Santa asked the children which list they thought he should be on and they all simultaneously started chanting ‘Naughty list, naughty list’! How rude!

They children were delighted to see Santa. He sounded remarkably like Mr Carter who used to teach at the school! 😉

KS2 Nurture Group visit to Festive

Some of our children in the Key Stage 2 nurture group got to visit Festive in Cwmbran. They explored all of the aisles and bought Christmas decorations to decorate the school.  We are so grateful to Festive for giving our children a warm welcome and also giving them a little Christmas stocking each!

Updates from Each Year Group