Date Time Event Thursday 9th January 11:00 KS2 Mass in Church (Y6 to lead) Parents/Carers invited. Thursday 16th January   Taste of America Celebration Lunch Thursday 16th January All Day Y5 Trip to Newcastle Racecourse Tuesday 21st January 9:00 Nursery Phonics Workshop - Parents/Carers invited Wednesday 22nd January 9:00 Y6 Maths Workshop – Parents/Carers invited Thursday 23rd January 11:00 Y5 Mass in Church - Parents/Carers invited Tuesday 28th January 9:00 Reception Phonics Workshop - Parents/Carers invited Wednesday 29th January 9:00 Y1 Maths Workshop - Parents/Carers invited Wednesday 5th February 9:00 Y2 Maths Workshop- Parents/Carers invited Thursday 6th February 11:00 Y4 Mass in Church - Parents/Carers invited Wednesday 12th February 9:00 Y3 Maths Workshop - Parents/Carers invited Thursday 20th February 11:00 Y6 Mass in Church - Parents/Carers invited Friday 21st February 3:15 School closes for Half Term

Dear Parents and Carers of St Cuthbert’s,   Happy New Year and a huge welcome back to all of our children. They’ve all had a brilliant first day and have loved telling us all about their holidays and celebrations over the festive period. We are all looking forward to a very busy spring term and have lots of exciting activities and events planned for the children.   Please see the Dates for your Diary for more information when they are updated, later this week.   Reception Class September 2025 The closing date for Reception Class applications for September 2025 is 15 January 2025. Please ensure you have applied for a place for your child if they were born between 1 September 2020 and 31 August 2021.   Attendance and Punctuality Please continue to support your child with their attendance and prompt arrival at school before the main gates close.   Good attendance provides every child with the best chance of success at primary school and helps ensure they are ready for the challenges of high school. Every day at school counts and no child should be put at a disadvantage by missing school days where they can learn, spend time with their friends and teachers and get the very best out of their primary school days.   We fully understand and support school absences when children are too poorly to attend and we know that this type of absence is completely unavoidable, but we please ask that you make appointments, whenever possible, outside of the school day and that you do not take holidays during term time.   If your child is too poorly to attend school, please follow our school procedures and ring school on the first day of absence no later than 9.30am and by 9.30am on each subsequent day of absence.   Polite Reminder re: the school day Our school day begins at 8.45am prompt. We have a number of children who are consistently late and who are missing the first 10-15minutes of their learning in school. Please ensure you arrive at school in time for your child to start their school day properly alongside their classmates and to enable every child to access our free breakfast food provision.     Please also note: revised kitchen requirements for our school kitchen mean lunches need to be ordered promptly every day. If your child is late, it could impact on their lunch choice for that day.     Wraparound Provision Please continue to follow school procedures for booking children into our After School Club provision. This ensures school have enough staff and resources available to run the club safely.   School Lunches Polite reminder re: changing from school lunches to packed lunches and vice-versa – the school office need one week’s notice, please.   School Uniform Please support your child and St Cuthbert’s by fully adhering to our school’s uniform policy. Please visit our school website for more information. If you are short of any uniform items, please ring or pop into the school office – we have tons of clean, good quality, spare items available for free.   Thank you for your continued support. If you do have any concerns or there is anything we can support you with, please do not hesitate to contact us via the school office on 0191 2860129 or via email office@stcuthbertsk.org  or please come and catch us on the yard for a chat.   Best wishes,   Mrs Anne Bullerwell Executive Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers of St Cuthbert’s,   Christmas Lunch The Christmas Lunch was absolutely delicious this year, as always. Our kitchen team have really surpassed themselves and provided us all with a veritable feast of delicious turkey with all of the trimmings. Thank you to Jane, our cook, and everyone who made the Christmas Lunch such a success.   Christmas Productions Our Christmas productions this year have been outstanding. We are so proud of each and every one of our children from Nursery through to Year 6. They have shared their talents with us willingly and it has been a privilege to see them so full of joy and so confident during their performances. Thank you to all of our families who could join us in the celebrations. We’ve had some amazing feedback and it was great to see so many of you supporting the children this way. Special thanks to everyone for respecting the children throughout each performance and adhering to our mobile phones policy.    Poverty Proofing the School Day – No Gifts Policy Thank you for supporting our No Gifts into School Policy and thank you for the lovely cards, emails and messages we have received instead – we really appreciate them.   Spring Term Start Date St Cuthbert’s opens for the children on Tuesday 7 January 2025. Attendance up until December Rec Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 94.2 93.4 94.5 96.1 96.6 94.4 95.8 Green Zone: 97% and above; Amber Zone: 91-96%; Red Zone: 90% Well done, Year 4! Best attendance so far! Thank you for your continued support throughout the year. On behalf of all of the governors, staff and children of St Cuthbert’s, I wish every member of our school community a Happy and Holy Christmas. Mrs Anne Bullerwell Headteacher

In the last two weeks of term, in history, Year 4 explored Ancient and modern Olympics, tasted Greek food, made their own Greek vases and even found out how to say 'cheers' in Greek! Year 4 also enjoyed their Christmas party yesterday! Well done on a great term, Year 4! Year 4 have worked hard in RHE this week. We have looked at different types of relationships in our lives, including family, friends and other people and explored how to relate to people within these different relationships. We also discussed what it means to be a good friend and have tried some strategies to use when relationships become difficult.  - 06.09.24 - Year 4 have had a great start to the year! They have loved working together to come up with some fabulous class rules as well as modelling solid, liquids and gases particles in our science topic 'States of Matter'. Well done for a great start, Year 4! -13.09.24 - Year 4 have enjoyed their first music lesson and have worked collaboratively to identify features of mountain landscapes, as part of our Geography topic. Super work! - 27.9.24 - Year 4 have had an exciting week in English this week! They also enjoyed their French session. - 11.10.24 - Year 4 thoroughly enjoyed their Fire Safety talk this week. We spoke about lots of different things: how to stay safe in our homes, the importance of fire alarms and testing them frequently, signs and causes of a fire and what to do if there's a fire. We also loved filling in the workbook after the session! Well done, Year 4! Year 4 thoroughly enjoyed science this week! We explored the types of teeth we have and their functions. We discussed how to look after our teeth and why this is important. Near the end of the lesson, we played some matching games on the iPads - some Year 4 members definitely got competitive about how quickly they could complete the tasks! For Remembrance Day, Year 4 took time to gather around our class prayer table to read out some of our poems and prayers we created for those who fought for us. Year 4 have also been enjoying their gymnastics sessions where they have been working on balancing, 3 person and 6 person pyramids and strength positions!  Year 4 enjoyed investigating Ancient Greek artefacts in history this week!

Year 6 shared some Christmas cheer on Tuesday when they sang and danced at Kilbourn House. The residents and children had a great time! The student leaders from St Cuthbert's and St George's spread some Christmas cheer when they delivered the huge pile of goodies donated by our generous families to the food banks in Kenton and Lemington! They will make a big difference to lots of families over the coming weeks. Thank you so much to everyone who made a contribution! Year 6 are enjoying practising for carol singing next week! Year 6 have had a great start to the year. They have worked hard, shown great maturity and taken part in some fun games this afternoon. Year 6 enjoyed programming micro:bits in computing this week. Year 6 had some great moves and poses in their dance lesson today! Year 6 enjoyed a trip to Safetyworks this week where they took part in lots of role-play scenarios and learned all about consequences their actions may have. Year 6 enjoyed practising and performing poetry this week! Year 6 have been writing their own tunes to play on their ukuleles. Year 6 have enjoyed games of hockey in PE this week and had some fantastic odd socks on Monday for anti-bullying week!

Year 5 have been working hard on their advent topic. We have discussed the hymn 'The Servant King' and provided an explanation for verse 1 and the chorus. We discussed the impact on Christians today. In addition to this, we discussed how we would like to be treated in person or online. We recognised the positive and negative outcomes and hard an open and honest discussion.  Y5 enjoyed an epic trip to the Newcastle Castle. We met a fantastic team of tour guides and an expert on the infamous 'trials' that took place in 17th century Newcastle. The local history was so interesting and we understood more about the vulnerable people of the day that were targeted for financial gain! Our children were so enthusiastic and a credit to our school with several members of the public committing on their manners and good behaviour.  Year 5 took part in the Biggest Assembly, this morning. Picture News - who provide child-friendly news feed - organised a country wide event. There were opportunities for discussion, and we considered our British and Gospel Values. It was very interesting. Year 5 enjoyed some teambuilding with Miss Thompson, this week. The had to work as a team to move the group forward. However, they had to use different ways to communicate. Y5 were looking at examples of diary entries. We worked with our talk partners to read extracts to each other, as well as reading them as a class. We were able to recognise several English language features for this genre. 'Bikeability' was great fun! Congratulations to those who achieved Level 1 or 2. Huge thanks to the Creative Dance Centre for working with Y5 this Autumn term. The children have thoroughly enjoyed their journey through dance. In computing, Y5 are using shapes and software to create vector drawings. We had real fun using various tools. The children of Y5 presented and voted on school roles. This was optional. The electees spoke to their class to outline their manifestos. We used Microsoft Forms and iPads to record our votes to maintain discretion. Well done to all the children who outlined their vision and good luck for the collation of votes. Y5 celebrated Dyslexia Awareness Week. After our assembly, we talked about dyslexia and what that might mean for children. We described it as a 'superpower' for creative and different thinking. Y5 enjoyed their own celebration of the word to mark the end of our RE topic. The children wrote their own bidding prayers and decided on the format. It was a lovely, spiritual experience.

Dear Parents/Carers, Consultation on Admissions Arrangements for St George’s Catholic Primary School, Lemington 2026-2027 The Joint Local Governing Committee (LGC) for St Cuthbert’s and St George’s Catholic Primary Schools have recently met and reviewed the Admissions Policies for both schools. The LGC are in favour of both Admissions Policies being the same and to achieve this, the LGC have made one change to the Oversubscription Criteria on page 1 of the Admission Policy for 2026-2027 at St George’s Catholic Primary School. This change has been highlighted in yellow. There are no changes to the Admissions Policy for St Cuthbert's Catholic Primary School. Where changes to admissions arrangements are intended, all schools are required to consult before these are determined and published. The Admission Policy for 2026-2027 can be viewed below. The consultation period will run from 27 November 2024 to 8 January 2025. Any parents or carers who wish to respond to the consultation may do so via email to the following address:  admissions@bishopbewickcet.org . The LGC (on behalf of the School Admissions Authority) will consider all responses received before they determine the final admission arrangements for St George's for 2026-2027. If you would like to discuss this matter further, please contact the school office. Thank you for your continued support. Best wishes, Mrs Anne Bullerwell Executive Headteacher