Newsletter – 13 June 2025

Dear parents and carers, 

I hope you’re all well and have been enjoying the sunshine this week. As you’ll see in the class pages below, we’ve been very busy since half-term with highlights including our inaugural International Day, as well as Year 4 and 5s performance with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Don’t forget you can see updates of all our biggest events on our Instagram page which you can find here. 

Parent forum – smart phones

If you remember, last half-term we advertised a parent forum about children’s use of smart phones. This was in response to parental concern about what Scarcroft as a school does to inform and educate our children and families in this area. Unfortunately parents of only two children attended the forum, however, as promised, I have outlined our discussions below:

 If you would like to see copies of some of the documents discussed, please pop into the school office and I will happily provide you with them. 

Living Streets – WOW Challenge

Scarcroft School has been chosen to be part of an exciting initiative to encourage more children and their families to walk to school. WOW – the walk to school challenge is delivered by Living Streets, the UK charity for everyday walking, to help as many children as possible experience the benefits of walking to school.

Each day, children will let their WOW Ambassadors (children in their class) know how they get to school. The WOW Ambassadors will then collect this information on the Online Living Streets Travel Tracker: https://www.livingstreets.org.uk/ The only information shared is your child’s first name, year group, class and how they got to school. This information is only available to the WOW Ambassadors, teachers and the team at Living Streets.

If they travel actively (walk/wheel, cycle, scoot or Park and Stride) at least once a week for a month, they get rewarded with a badge. It’s that simple!

What are the benefits of walking to school?

• Children feel happier and healthier
• They arrive to school refreshed and ready to learn
• Helps reduce congestion and pollution at the school gates

What if we can’t walk to school?

We know a number of pupils come from outside our catchment area but don’t worry – you can earn badges too by choosing to ‘Park and Stride’. Park at least five minutes away from the school and walk the remaining journey.

What is a WOW badge?

There are different badges to be earned each month. Each badge has been designed by a pupil from across the UK as part of the Living Street’s annual WOW Badge Design Competition. A new badge can be earned every month if pupils’ walk/wheel, cycle, scoot or Park and Stride at least once a week.

The badges are made in Cornwall from material that was otherwise destined for landfill, including fridge trays, plastic plates and yoghurt pot off-cuts. For more information, visit: livingstreets.org.uk/recycling

The challenge begins on Monday and the first badges will be awarded at the end of June. The children had an assembly this morning to launch the challenge and can’t wait to get started!
Dates for the diary

Wishing you a very happy weekend.

Best wishes, 

Jen Mitchell 

Head of School

Reception – Fishergate: 94.25%

Reception – Petergate: 92.19%

Year 1 – Gillygate: 95.38%

Year 1 – Stonegate: 94.8%

Year 2 – Castlegate: 92.6%

Year 2 – Micklegate: 97.4%

Year 3 – Coppergate: 93.61%

Year 3 – Whip ma whop ma gate: 91.9%

Year 4 – Swinegate: 97.96%

Year 4 – Walmgate: 96.76%

Year 5 – Colliergate: 96.94%

Year 5 – Skeldergate: 98%

Year 6 – Fossgate: 93.75%

Year 6 – Goodramgate: 94.14%

We had the best time ever on International Day! The children made Nachos and Guacamole in the morning, all ready for us to taste test in the afternoon. Then a lovely parent made us a  piñata and the children all helped to break it apart. 

Over the half term, we planted some flowers for the children to take care of. They have done a fantastic job of watering them everyday and making sure we are careful when playing near them. Well done Reception!

In DT this week we have been testing different materials to see which would be best to make a Boat. The children tested cotton wool, foil, plastic, corks and felt. They decided that foil would be the best material with corks on the bottom.

Recognition Awards

Fishergate

Amelia – For her growing confidence in the classroom and her positive attitude to learning. Amelia wows us everyday with her effort and this is shown through her amazing writing. 

Cariad – For being super independent during learning time, getting on with the task and putting in 100% effort. For also showing your independence during provision time, having a go at the activities and challenging yourself. 

Kindness Trophy – Milo B – For having a super kind heart and being a role model for other children. For building lots of relationships in our class and having the ability to play with any one of the friends in Reception. Well done Milo! 

Petergate

Monty – For being such a role model for our class. Making sure you are always following our class rules and also reminding others how we behave. Also, for beginning to play with others and making new friendships, showing how much of a kind person you are. 

Sofia – For showing your teachers how much of a kind friend you can be. Making sure your friends are included and taking it in turns to share the toys in our provision. Well done Sofia.

As part of our Geography topic, we went on a field trip in our local area to look for human and physical features. We enjoyed using the camera to take photographs of what we saw. Do you think we saw more human or physical features?

In PE sessions with Mrs Topliss we’ve loved our ‘Playing Games’ topic. We’ve been working on key skills like sportsmanship and teamwork.

Recognition Awards

Stonegate

Vinnie – For always trying his best and working really hard in lessons. 

Audrey – For listening really well in class and maintaining focus.

Nell – For taking such care to always produce her best work.

Gillygate

Esmae – For her fantastic mental maths skills and applying her knowledge of number bonds to 10.

Charlie – For his beautiful story writing, using conjunctions to make his writing more exciting.

Hannah – For always being an exceptional role-model of super behaviour and taking her time to write with fantastic letter formation.

The children are very excited to bring home the plants we have been growing this term.

In Learning for Life, we have been discussing and practising techniques for self care and relaxation. We trialled a carousel of: blowing bubbles, mindful colouring, playdough and yoga. Then we voted for our favourite.

Castlegate loved learning all about South Africa for International Day. We grabbed our passports and took a flight before discovering the country’s landmarks and culture. We created our own African inspired artwork and learned to count to 10!

We had a fantastic time on International Day! Ernesto’s mum visited us and talked about life as a child in Mexico and we investigated Vietnam and learned how to count to 10 in Vietnamese.

We were inspired by the artist Anna Blatman so we created our own birds using bold, colourful flowers.

Recognition Awards

Castlegate

Isaac W – for quietly working away and producing some fabulous writing

Diyar – He has been really impressing his teachers, especially in The Nest, with his enthusiasm and willingness to learn.

Micklegate

Serenity – for 100% effort in reading and writing and making fabulous progress.

Xander – for making huge leaps with his presentation. He has worked really hard to keep it neat and joined all of the time!

Achievement Trophy

Anna – Her enthusiasm, engagement and attention to detail in all areas of learning mean she has made exceptional progress this year, especially in her writing.

Oscar – for his outstanding effort in writing. Oscar has such a determined attitude to writing and works hard to improve his sentences.

History – Egypt

We are thoroughly enjoying our new topic all about Ancient Egypt.  We have learned how advanced the civilisation was for its time (at the same time as the Stone Age in England!), why the river Nile was so important to daily life and have had a go at code-cracking Egyptian hieroglyphics..  The Prime VR experience really brought ancient Egypt to life for us – we loved exploring the pyramids and Tutenkahmun’s tomb.  We will be using this experience to create our own artwork over the next few weeks – watch this space!

International Day

We really enjoyed learning about different countries around the world, and hearing about other people’s experiences. It was great to see how many nationalities we have in Year 3! 3ES had fun learning about the history and culture of Belgium, creating their own comic strips. 3LE delved deeper into Egypt and discovered that modern Egypt is very different to our history topic!

Learning for Life

Over the last few weeks, we have been learning why we enjoy the things we do and why it is important to have our own opinions.  We have also been role playing how to listen to the opinions of others and how to disagree respectfully.  To finish our unit, we took the opportunity to practise our oracy skills in a parliamentary debate about whether teachers should be replaced with computers!  The children did a great job with some of them arguing the opinion of “their constituents” instead of their own opinion before reaching a final vote.  Thankfully, after their vote, the jobs of teachers are safe for the time being!

Recognition Awards

Coppergate

Ezra – For being an all around superstar but especially for using the tools in class to build his confidence in writing.  He uses models to help with structure and our discussions to spark his creativity.  Well done!

Sam – For the incredible journey he has been on with writing this year. Not only has he worked hard to understand english sentence structure but he now also uses more complex sentences and checks his work without being prompted!

Tilly – Tilly works hard all of the time and always with a beaming smile on her face.  It has been great to watch her confidence grow.  She is beginning to try more challenging vocabulary and is starting to segment those words to spell them.  

Effort trophy – Jacob – What a turn-around Jacob!  Outstanding effort in all his lessons, happy to share ideas and help others.  On top of which, he is also one of the most helpful members of the class.  What a superstar!

Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma Gate

Jose – For his hard work in reading over the last 7 months.  His confidence and ability have grown so much, all because of the effort he has put in.  Well done!

Florence– For being a role model to other children and always having high expectations for her behaviour and learning. Well done Florence!

Ray – For always having a positive attitude to learning and being inquisitive. I love reading the research you do at home. Keep up the great enthusiasm!

Samuel – For displaying a lot of motivation for our Geography learning and planning a great castle. I enjoyed hearing all about your design!

Marnie – For having a great first term at Scarcroft and displaying a resilient, positive attitude. It has been great to see you make so many new friends and we are so glad you joined us.

Vinnie – For making a great effort in writing and determination to improve your work. The hard work is paying off, keep it up!

We really enjoyed our trip to see, and participate in, the Orchestra of the New Age of Enlightenment performing a Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Just before the May half term holidays, we had a great trip to York Minster.

For our class book, Weslandia, we had lots of fun creating Lego houses for the main character.

To kick off our Mayans topic, we really enjoyed exploring Chichen Itza through our VR headsets.

Recognition Awards

Walmgate

William – for his new and improved mature attitude. 

Ted – for working so hard during independent work. 

Darcy – for making mature decisions and having a mature attitude.

Swinegate 

Lyana – for working hard to be more independent in her writing

Leo – for being such a great friend and always working hard

Alfie – for always making sure that he is listening and completing what is required of him in lessons

Sahasra – for improved concentration and therefore better work in the past couple of weeks

Kindness Trophy – Sofia

Croquet 

We had a fabulous afternoon on Monday. We were invited by York Croquet Club to have a taster session. We were amazing!

Art Installation: ‘LOST’

This week we created an art installation on our playground. We found out lots of fascinating facts about lost property! We used our mountain of lost property to create 3-D creatures and wrote stories about how they were created in the lost property store!

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Year 4 and 5 had the amazing opportunity this week to perform an opera alongside an orchestra at the Jack Lyons Concert Hall at York University. The children loved the workshops prior to the performance but seeing a live orchestra had everyone mesmerised!

Recognition Awards

Colliergate

Alex – Always brings such fantastic extra general knowledge to our classroom and enthuses us about Science!

Ed – An absolute PE legend and has made an excellent improvement to his attitude to learning this half term.

Lauren – For her fantastically thoughtful and mature contributions to our Daily Circle time.

Kindness Trophy – Hannah & Amber – For always thinking about their friends but also for rounding up lost jumpers every lunchtime!

Skeldergate

Ethan – Fantastic behaviour for learning. Always ready! Amazing progress in writing. Well done, Ethan. 

Etienne – Well done, Etienne for creating an excellent coded soundtrack. It really made me feel I was there!

Zofia – Brilliant attitude to learning. Could have this award every week. I have chosen her this week for her amazing progress in writing over the year. It is a joy to read. 

Effort Trophy – Hattie – Hattie has just put 100% effort into this year from day one. She not only is a super star in the classroom but she is also such an active member in the whole school community. Scarcroft is lucky to have her.

International Day

Last week, 6 Goodramgate studied Pakistan, ably assisted by Aminah, one of our pupils. We looked at various key facts, learned to count to 10 in Urdu and played traditional playground games like seven stones and baraf paani (despite the rain, evidenced by the hoods in the photo!).

Hoodies

On the topic of hoods, Year 6 are looking very suave in their much-anticipated leavers’ hoodies.

Year 4 Money Matters Fair

Along with other year groups, the Year 6 classes were invited to the Year 4 Money Matters Fair to help the children gain a better understanding of the use of money.  We had a really enjoyable time engaging with the Years 4 stalls that had been carefully planned.  The event helped the Year 4 children to raise money for books for the school library.

Recognition Awards

Faye Lavender – for excellent focus and effort over the last few weeks. Faye put in an absolute shift as we were revising for the SATs and has continued to work hard on her writing ever since.

Mimi Barker – For amazing effort during our recent push on writing as a subject. Mini tries hard to show off a whole range of different skills in every piece of writing and tries hard to make sure her own voice and own ideas come across often too.

Muhammad – For great writing recently and a good attitude to jobs he is asked to do in class.  Of particular note is how Muhammad has joined in enthusiastically with French over the last week!

Recognition award and Effort Trophy – Alice – what a week for Alice receiving both awards!  This reflects Alice’s excellent attitude recently to everything she does and her quiet determination to do well.