Skip to content ↓

This week at Bentley...

Despite the gloomy November start to the day, there is a great buzz about school with our special ‘Teach the Teachers’ event. A big thank you to everyone at home who has helped prepare for lessons, organise resources and get the ‘new teachers’ looking smart! There are some exciting sounding plans and I know everyone has been looking forward to it. Well done to those children who stepped up to the whiteboard to have a go and a big thank you to everyone who donated to teach – or learn. Your support is important to us at this time.

I wanted to say a big thank you for your feedback from the Parents Evenings, the results of which can be found on the latest news page on our website – the link is at the foot of this page. Mrs Vogel has shared the consultation information for our RSE curriculum in line with the Department for Education roll out. We would very much appreciate your feedback by Wednesday 18th November. We will also send home the 2020 Governor questionnaire next week by hard copy so look out for these in book bags next Tuesday. Your views, ideas and feedback are important to us and are reviewed by our team of teachers, support staff and Governors to plan strategically so please do put aside a little time to take part. It is much appreciated.

Children and teachers continue to post some in school learning to share with you at home. Do take a look to see what has been going on…

In Year R this week Miss Smith has posted the class learning about Diwali. There is also the Set 2 phonic sounds to support your child’s learning with you at home. A little and often makes a huge difference!

In Year 1 Mrs Scott-Bromley has been teaching the children what Geography is as pupils are now working in the Key Stage 1 curriculum.  They have learnt that Geography is about People and Places and it would be great to look at their work together with your child on Seesaw.

In Year 2 Mrs Vogel has posted the videos taken in English lessons earlier this week with news reports about the Tortoise and the Hare. Great work Year 2 (some future reporters in the making I think)!

In Years 3, 4, 5 and 6 the teachers were ALL so impressed with the football competition so there are photos of the children in action for you to enjoy.

A reminder that Seesaw is a record of your child’s learning journey at Bentley and is for communication between teacher and child.  It is not checked every day so please do continue to email the school office if you have questions or information to share.

It is that time of year where our pupils start to get rather tired and hibernation seems quite enticing… I wish you all a restful weekend.  Happy Diwali to those celebrating!

Mrs Pinchess, Headteacher

 

COVID Update

The government has updated their guidance for parents and carers on what they need to know about early years providers, schools and colleges during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. This update provides information on the national restrictions that came into force on 5 November, the latest advice for clinically extremely vulnerable children and young people and advice on the use of face coverings in education settings. You can read the guidance here.

 

PARENTs EVENING FEEDBACK

We have 144 families at the school currently and 48 parents responded to our questionnaire – thank you. Of these, 100% took up the offer of the teacher meeting and across the school 99.5% of pupils have now been discussed, with one meeting still pending. 100% of parents felt informed about their child’s progress.

22% of parents took the time to leave some feedback. Of these 81% felt that a phone call was much easier or just as good as a face to face meeting. 2% of parents reported they missed the face to face and all of our teachers commented they missed the face-to-face too. Budgets and time constraints make it impossible to implement a more ‘virtual’ meeting at this time and so phone calls are the only way forward for us until the COVID situation changes. 

One parent requested a longer appointment than the usual ten minutes, but without closing the school for the day to hold Parents Evenings this is really not manageable for teachers who prepare and teach a full curriculum each.

One parent highlighted a hearing difficulty for them by phone. Please do let us know any disabilities so that we can support these individual cases.

We have just two classes with jobshare teachers, and from these classes two parents would have liked to choose which teacher they spoke with. All job shares have a shared responsibility for learning and are up-to-date with pupil outcomes.

 

GOVERNOR UPDATES

From Dave Ibbotson, Chair of the Full Governing Body

We are very fortunate in having a great team of sixteen governors and two associate governors at Bentley. This number gives us a great deal of support and expertise in the strategic planning and review of our primary school. We now have one position as Parent Governor which has become vacant. One of our experienced Associate Governors is willing to stand but I need to see if any other parent is interested and keen to stand for election to represent the parent perspective on behalf of our school community. If you are interested in the role of governor, or Associate governor, I would very much like to hear from you. It is a rewarding and interesting volunteer role.

Please get in touch with me before Friday 20 November to make a note of interest and I will call you to talk about the role. You can contact me via the school email account listing governors in the subject title.

 

From Paul Harrison, Chair of the Resources Committee

With the autumn budget revision about to be approved, the Resources Committee would like to report to parents and the community on the school's finances. Thanks to some careful budgeting on the part of Mrs Pinchess and our Finance Officer, Mrs Tewkesbury, we are in a positive financial situation and expect to finish the financial year in April with a small budget surplus. This has not been an easy task, with additional COVID costs not being refunded to schools as yet and much of the great PTFA fundraising being halted.

The long-term outlook remains difficult, with the local authority once again forecasting that our school will go into deficit in the next financial year. We will continue to explore ways to avoid this, but as a small rural school your support for PTFA work and donations are still vital and very much appreciated. 

If you would like to know more about our school budget please click here.  

The school has engaged with the Fairer Funding campaign, which would make a tremendous difference for us moving forwards. You can learn more about this and the ‘Worth Less’ campaign by clicking here.

 

Easy Fundraising logo - Changing LivesEasyFundraising

We would REALLY appreciate it if you would sign up and use easyfundraising when you do your online shopping this year. With the lockdown and Christmas coming up it is a great time to sign up and it costs nothing to you but will give the PTFA a percentage of whatever you spend.

Over 4,300 shops and sites will donate to Bentley School PTFA for FREE when you use easyfundraising to shop with them. This means you can raise donations for us when you buy anything from decorations and festive food shopping to gifts like toys, jewellery, tech, experiences and more!

These donations really help us and it is really easy to sign up – just click this link and follow the instructions.  Please do pass the link to friends and family too! It’s a really nice feeling to know that you have helped the school out whilst doing your shopping!

Thank you for your support.

 

BOOK FAIR

Our annual Scholastic Book Fair will be in school from next week, just in time for you to purchase some lovely reading books for Christmas for your friends and family.

This year, we are unable to invite parents into school to look at the books.  The Scholastic Book Fair catalogue can be found at the foot of this page for you to browse.  All the books within this catalogue will be available from the Book Fair trolley. 

At the end of the catalogue is an order form.  If you wish to purchase a book/s, please complete the order form and return it to school.  The easiest way to pay for the books is by phone, direct with the Scholastic team.  Details of how to do this are included on the order form.  Our school’s customer ID number is 18002386 - you will need this number when making your payment by phone.  

Once payment has been made, please record the transaction code on your order form before returning the form to school.  We are unable to take any payments by cash or cheque at this time so please do not send cash or cheques into school with your child.  

Once you have returned your order form and paid for your books the books will be sent home with your child.  We are unable to wrap the books or put them into carrier bags so please don’t purchase books you want to be a surprise!

In addition to parents being able to browse the catalogue, each class will have the opportunity to visit the book fair and each child will complete a wish list, which they will be able to bring home.  You may want to delay making your order until your child has visited the fair.  Books will not be sent home with children until we have your completed order form and a record of your payment.

The final date for all orders will be Tuesday 1st December 2020.  

If you wish to purchase books after this date, you will need to do so via the Scholastic website as the book fair trolleys will have been returned.

Timetable for classes visiting the fair.

Year R - Monday 16th November

Year 1 - Tuesday 17th November

Year 2 - Wednesday 18th November

Year 3 - Monday 23rd November

Year 4 - Tuesday 24th November

Year 5 - Wednesday 25th November

Year 6 - Thursday 26th November

Last year the Book Fair generated an income of just over £700 for our school with which we were able to purchase lovely new books for our library and class book boxes.  By buying books in this way, you are supporting our school, which is very much appreciated – thank you!

Happy reading everyone, 

Mrs Miffling, English Lead

 

SUMMER READING CHALLENGE

Hampshire Library Service is delighted to share that over four thousand children from across the county took part in the Summer Reading Challenge, despite schools and libraries being closed. The campaign, which ran in tandem with The Reading Agency’s own virtual Summer Reading Challenge, encouraged children across the county to read anything and everything they could get their hands on. The connection between home, school and library in supporting children’s literacy and love of learning is absolutely invaluable!

We have been given a list of Hampshire library reading champions and their medals are being delivered to school. If your child took part with a Surrey library we would love to know about it so we can give them a big clap in one of our Virtual Celebration Assemblies.

 

SCHOOL LUNCHES

We have been so happy HC3S has been able to provide hot dinners to all the children again this half term. We know how much these are enjoyed by the children and Cook Alison has been delighted by the numbers taking these up again. She and her team are always keen to promote healthy eating and we are participating in the ‘Eat them to Defeat’ them campaign to encourage children to keep trying vegetables to support at least ‘5 a day’ good eating habits. Every child is bringing home a free scrapbook to promote healthy eating, which has been sponsored by supermarkets and the Government ‘Change for Life’ work. The kitchen staff will be promoting different vegetables at lunch times with the children. Happy vegetable eating everyone!

 

THANK YOU …

for all the super recipes for the PTFA Family Cookbook - see below for how to order

… for all the donations to the Poppy Appeal.  Sir Hew Pike was delighted to collect the very heavy donations pot yesterday and thanked everyone for their support.  We will let you know as soon as we have a total for you.

… for a record breaking haul of apples this year – we have delivered over 7000 kilos to the apple press!  All of your hard work, and that of the wider community, is hugely appreciated – particularly in a year when the PTFA fundraising is hampered by the current pandemic. Thank you!

 

KS2 FOOTBALL TOURNAMENT

Tuesday's Football Tournament for Years 3-6 was a huge success.  Sports Ambassador, Will in Year 6 reported, "I think that the football tournament was a really good thing to do as it gets all our hearts pumping. Some people were a bit upset with the placing of their team score but everyone were amazing sportsmen and women and involved everyone on their team even if they weren't as confident as others.  Well done Bentley!"

Miss Wiggins, our PE Leader, said “It was great to get all of the KS2 children involved in the tournament in the sunshine on Tuesday.  The teams played really well and it was lovely to see all the children taking part and supporting one another. EVERYONE got involved and it was a great tournament, giving all the juniors an opportunity to compete.  I was really proud of all their efforts.”

 

TECHNOLOGY APPEAL

Do you have working tech equipment sitting in a cupboard doing nothing?

Would you like to recycle your unused equipment?

Can you help other families who don’t have access to digital technology?

If the answer to all three questions is ‘yes’, we would love to hear from you!

We want to ensure all our families have the ability to access on-line learning and other digital resources. While we really hope we won’t find ourselves relying on virtual teaching and learning again, but should it become necessary, we are keen none of our families are left behind. In any case, learning is enhanced by access to digital resources.

With advances in technology, we sometimes replace working equipment and it can sit, unused, in a cupboard or in the attic, when it might be of use to someone.

We are looking for working equipment, in good order, complete with peripherals such as chargers. Redundant laptops, tablet devices and even PCs can be given a new lease of life, and could avoid ending up in landfill. All we ask is that they are working, complete, and sufficiently recent that they will perform the usual basic functions: be able to connect to the internet, have a relatively recent operating system and some basic apps/programs.

If you think you might have equipment that could be reused by another family, please contact Mr Goddard, by e-mail to the office and he will be in touch to find out more.

Thank you.

 

IS YOUR CHILD ON TRACK WITHIN THE BENTLEY SUPERHEROES TIMES TABLES SCHEME?

Following some questions from parents about the Times Tables Superheroes, we have updated the information on the website to include the targets for each of the year groups – you can access it here. 

 

SUPER STEM LEARNING

Miss Smith has taken on the role of our teacher leading Science this year. Like the other teachers she is an ambassador for her subject, supporting the teachers with planning, teaching and assessment in her subject. She is really passionate about getting children interested in the World Around Us and enjoying science and engineering. We always hope to inspire future STEM roles for our pupils and have been alerted to a recommended documentary about Bloodhound on Channel 4 at 6.00pm this weekend on Saturday 14th November.  Bloodhound LSR is a UK-based project aiming to break the world land speed record using the most advanced straight-line racing car ever built. This is a project which has inspired many of our young scientists over the years!

If you have any good ideas or scientific links which would support our learners at school we would love to hear about them.

 

 

PTFA Cookbook

Thank you to everyone who has sent recipes and pictures in.  We now have over 70 delicious recipes for main meals, easy teas, breads, soups, cakes and biscuits.  You can pre-order your copy from the PTFA website for only £10 by clicking here.  Cookbooks will be delivered in plenty of time for Christmas -  it will make a super gift for grandparents and other family members, in addition to helping you create easy meals for your children.

All the profit from the Cookbook goes to the PTFA and will help us reach our target, so please do support us by buying a copy (or two!)

 

PTFA Birthday Parties

Next Friday is the Year R birthday party – invitations will come home with the children on Monday.  There will be music, dancing and party games and they may bring ‘party clothes’ to change into at school before the party – please ensure they are named and in a named bag.  This is a fundraising event and if you would like your child to have a party bag at the end, please click here to order one.  They are £5 each. 

 

Christmas Goody Bags

As we are unable to hold the annual Christmas Fair, we are bringing some Christmas cheer by selling Christmas Goodie bags to help us get in the mood. These will be distributed on Friday 4 December, in place of the Fair itself.

Each bag contains:

Infants – Christmas Tree Playdough, Wooden Tree decoration or keyring to colour in; Reindeer Gingerbread biscuit, Reindeer  Hot Chocolate Cone, Map for the Winter Scavenger Treasure Hunt around Bentley village which will take place weekend of 5/6th December and a chance to win a fabulous festive gift.

Juniors – Festive Bath Bomb, Elf Snot Slime, Reindeer Gingerbread Cookie, Reindeer Hot Chocolate cone, Map for the Winter Scavenger Treasure Hunt around Bentley village which will take place weekend of 5/6 December and a chance to win a fabulous festive gift.

They cost £6 each. You can place your order by clicking here. All orders must be received by Monday 23rd November. All proceeds to the PTFA.

Please click here for some exciting Community events coming up