Training Day Date

A reminder that the only remaining Staff Training Day for this year is Friday 21st July (Last Day of the Summer Term). Therefore, the last day of term for the children will be Thursday 20th July.

Sports Day Dates

We’ve had some great sports days so far this year, but had to postpone Year 2 and Nursery’s sports days due to bad weather. See the new dates below and also a reminder of the previously shared dates for the other year groups. Please understand that if the weather is poor or if the field is too wet and muddy, we may need to postpone these events at last minute. We will let parents know as soon as possible if this happens.

3rd MAY 2023, WED – 1:30 – Reception Sports Day (Took place as planned)
9th MAY 2023, TUE 9:30am and 1:15pm – AM / PM Nursery Sports Day (Postponed due to bad weather – New Date = 29th June)
10th MAY 2023, WED 1:30pm – Year 2 Sports Day (Postponed due to bad weather – New Date = Thursday 8th June)
24th MAY 2023, WED 1:30pm – Year 1 Sports Day (Took place as planned)
7th JUN 2023, WED 1:15pm – Year 3 Sports Day (Postponed as school visit to Plantasia Tropical Zoo offered on same date. New date = Monday 12th June)
14th JUN 2023, WED 1:15pm – Year 4 Sports Day
21st JUN 2023, WED 1:15pm – Year 5 Sports Day
27th JUN 2023, TUE 1:15pm – Year 6 Sports Day

Reading and Royalty

On Thursday 18th May, two lucky children from our group of librarians got to attend a special reading event at a school in Bristol. Whilst they were there, they got to meet some famous authors and even had the chance to meet The Queen. The Queen spoke to the girls about what their dream library would be like and she really liked one of the ideas they’d come up with… a library which serves ice-cream! It was a great day and we were grateful to be specially selected by the National Literacy Trust following on from the work that Mrs Thomas has done with our school library project.

Congratulations to Mrs Rue

Congratulations to Mrs Rue and her husband who celebrated the birth of their son just before half-term started. Mum, dad and baby are all doing well!

Coronation Party

Despite the rain, we managed to enjoy our Coronation party to celebrate the King’s coronation. Children in each class enjoyed making their own coronation picnics and also took part in a school bake-off to design and bake the next coronation cake! Some staff became extremely competitive!

We do have a confession to make at this point…

Earlier in the year, some of our pupils got to meet King Charles on his visit to Wales. We were seen on national news giving him one of our St Julian’s Primary Platinum Jubilee mugs. We cheekily tweeted on the day of his Coronation that we were pleased to see King Charles was still using our mug. Seemingly, some people thought he actually had our mug in his hand during the service… but we had to come clean and tell them it was just some clever computer trickery. I’m sure he still has our mugs in Buckingham Palace and I’m sure he and the Queen enjoy their morning breakfast tea out of them each morning – but sadly, they didn’t make an appearance at the Coronation.

Greenpower Go Karts

Year 6 children have been learning about the importance of renewable energy and have also been developing their engineering skills. Children in each class built their own Green-power Go Kart and entered them in a national race event at the beginning of this term. On a Saturday morning, we took a team of 30 Year six children to drive our karts in the tournament. We took part in the drag race, slalom and lap race. We won the slalom and nearly won the lap race! We came home with a number of awards and the children did us proud! We’re really grateful to TESCO who gave us a lorry and one of their drivers for the day to transport our karts to the race track!

Values Awards

As part of our work revisiting our vision and values, we asked parents, children, governors and staff to think about what values were important to us as a school. We filtered down the most commonly occurring values and there were 12 of them. See them above. We’ve been so impressed with how quickly children have remembered them and how well children can explain what they mean. We’ve changed our Star Pupil award in Friday’s celebration assemblies to an ‘Attitudes and Values Award’, so each week, we’ll give out an Achiever of the Week certificate and an Attitudes and Values Award where children or staff have put any of our values into action. If you see any of our children putting any of these values into action in the community, we’d love to hear about it – you can nominate them for an Attitudes and Values award by emailing us! We hope you agree these values are really important and suited to our school and community. Let us know if you think there are any really important ones missing!

School Dinners

As you know, the Welsh Government rolled out funding to provide Free School Meals for every child from Reception to Year 2 at the beginning of this academic year. It is expected that children in Years 3 – 6 will also be able to have free school meals in the next academic year. Schools have been asked by the Local Authority to make plans to accommodate this. For us, this has involved upgrading our kitchen equipment and increasing seating capacity in the dining rooms and school halls with new fold-down tables. Depending on uptake next year, we may have to consider staggering lunchtimes. Mr Mansfield has been meeting with Chartwells staff during the last term to plan the logistics.

You can find find the Chartwells Dinner Menu here for the Summer term.

Despite Free School Meals soon becoming available to all pupils, it is still so important that parents who are eligible apply for free school meals because it will give you access to: Pupil Development Grant money (to purchase uniform), Discounts on school trips, Additional funding for the school, Free School meals in school holidays.

If you think you may be eligible, please do apply here. Alternatively, if you want us to help complete the form, get in touch and Mrs Walshe or a member of the admin team will be happy to help.

Online Adaptive Assessments

Most children have now completed their online adaptive assessments now. These are assessments set by the Welsh Government in Reading, Procedural Maths and Mathematical Reasoning and are to be taken by children from Year 2 to Year 6 at least once in the school year. As children answer each question, the following question will either increase or decrease in difficulty depending on whether they got the previous questions correct or incorrect. Following the assessments, the computer generates a list of strengths and areas for development for each child. We aim to share these with parents at the end of the school year.

If you have any questions about these assessments, please do not hesitate to speak with your child’s teacher.

E-Scooters/Bikes

We are so concerned with the number of children riding e-scooters or bikes without helmets. In the past month, we have received seven calls/emails from concerned drivers and residents who have seen children wearing our school uniform narrowly avoiding accidents. The week before half-term, staff witnessed one of our pupils riding on the wrong side of the road, towards an oncoming car which was driving at speed, whilst they were looking back at their friend behind them. It was very nearly a trip to A&E. The majority of e-scooters and some of the e-bikes children have are not legal for use on public roads or pavements and the police have asked us to share this information leaflet with parents/children – https://www.south-wales.police.uk/police-forces/south-wales-police/areas/campaigns/campaigns/e-scooters-your-questions-answered/

For the safety of our children, bikes and e-scooters are not to be ridden on the school site.

We will speak to junior children in assembly over the coming week about road safety and e-scooters.

Visit from Cllr. Jane Mudd and Jessica Morden MP

On 21st April, Cllr. Jane Mudd (Leader of Newport City Council) and Jessica Morden MP visited our school. They came primarily to plant a tree on our site with our children as part of the National Trust’s ‘Blossom Watch’ project, but they enjoyed seeing lots of the great stuff we do whilst they were with us. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t great on the day! We (Mr Mansfield, Mrs Hollings, Miss Marshall and members from the Department for Outdoor Learning) greeted both Cllr. Mudd and Jessica Morden out on the front playground, complete with our umbrellas, raincoats and wellies.

We made our way through the junior hall, down to the bottom of the school field, where the tree was to be planted. When passing through the junior hall, both visiters were impressed with the Year 6 engineering project – building green-power go-karts ready for the South Wales STEM race day.

As we arrived at the bottom of the school field, we met Ellen from the National Trust, who was impressed with the hole we had already dug ready for the tree. Ellen told us about the Blossom tree and then set it in the hole. We all then took a turn shovelling the soil back into the hole to surround the tree and then stomped on it to make it firm around the base of the tree. We didn’t need to water it as by this point, it was raining so heavily that the ground was soaking wet anyway!

We then took our visitors into the infant hall to sing them a great song about sowing seeds and growing. They were really impressed with our singing.

Finally, we took them to our Big Bocs Bwyd, so they could hear about what we have been doing to reduce food waste and support our community.

St. Julian’s Primary’s Got Talent

During the last half-term, we invited children to enter our ‘St Julian’s Primary’s got Talent’. We asked parents to submit entries via an email address we’d set up. Lots of children have told us that they weren’t able to attach their video to their email address and therefore, couldn’t enter. We’ve now set up a temporary WhatsApp number to send entries in. All parents will receive this via text message shortly. Simply send your video to the WhatsApp number and we’ll be in touch! If you have already sent your entry via email, we suggest submitting your entry again as lots of the emails we received didn’t have any attachment.

Men Behaving Dadly is Back

Our ‘Men Behaving Dadly’ programme is back. We’re looking for six dads and their children (one child per dad) to take part – you must commit to all five sessions. Each session will take place after school on a Tuesday for an hour and a half. You can register online by clicking the button below if you’re interested. Places are limited. We’ll contact you over the next week if we’re able to offer you a place. The programme is likely to be as follows – Adventure Golf, Cooking, Bowling, Climbing. The programme is fully funded, so won’t cost you anything.

Spanish Teachers Visiting

Earlier in the year, Mrs Millett and I had the opportunity to work in a Spanish school for a day and built a link with some of the staff there. As a school, we are adopting Spanish as an international language, in-line with St. Julian’s High School. On Sunday 18th June, four of the Spanish teachers will be coming to join us at St. Julian’s Primary School to teach some Spanish lessons to our children and tell them about Spanish culture. On Monday 19th June straight after school, we’re hoping to host a Spanish Tapas and language session for any parents and children (Year 2 to Year 6) who fancy joining. We’ll provide the Tapas and drinks and you just need to come ready to learn some basic phrases in Spanish. You can register below to join us.

Year Group Updates

Click the buttons below to read the update from each year group or click here to view all our recent blog posts

Attendance

Our current whole school attendance is 92%. Our target for the end of the year is 92% – please help us reach it!

You can see each individual class attendance for the previous week here. This graph updates weekly.

Building Work Update

The electrical re-wire of our building is steadily progressing. Most of the junior classrooms and a few infant classrooms have had new sockets, network, lighting and fire-alarm cables installed. Over half-term, the electricians have been working in the corridors. We are hoping that the junior building will be completed by the end of this term to allow us to paint the classrooms before September.

Work on the infant roof is also progressing. We have had to reassure the younger children that everything is ok as some of them have been confused why there are men banging around on the roof whilst they are in class. It is hoped that this work will be completed by the end of the Summer holiday.