St Joseph's Catholic Primary School

We are delighted, this week, to have had so many opportunities to invite our lovely families into school! Our Christmas Fayre was absolutely packed on Sunday, we filled our seating for our Advent Service on Wednesday morning and we welcomed many families to our usual celebration assembly this morning. Our Friends of St Joseph's have come along to every single event and provided refreshments for our families. We are incredibly grateful for this. Your support does not go unnoticed!

Alongside family and friends, we've had several colleagues visiting school this week and they are all echoing the same comments about how positively our lovely school has progressed in the past few months. Our children (and staff!) are happy and settled and we can see the significant impact of this as we continue to...

Live, love and learn with the Lord.

Mrs Ronicle

This week, we began exploring our virtue of patience.

We discussed how it can be hard to wait for things, especially when it's something exciting, like Christmas! We are celebrating patience seen in school. If your child shows patience at home, please let us know so we can celebrate them in school too!

We are really grateful that so many families and friends came along to help us celebrate the start of Advent in school with us this week. Thank you also to Father Sean for coming to celebrate with us and bless us. I'm sure you will agree that our children were amazing. Even our littlest reception children had the confidence to stand up and read in front of the whole school and visitors! We are very proud of them.

A huge huge thank you to all those families who came along to the Christmas fayre last Sunday. It was wonderful to see our school so busy and full of festive fun!

Extra thanks too for all the help and support many parents, wider families and school staff offered in the planning and on the day. It would not have been possible without you.

Our cheeky (large) elf's name was Marshmallow and Bartholomew Bear's birthday was 22nd August. Both have found their new home with their prize winners!

As well as being a great day, the fayre also raised a significant amount of money which will go towards a new sound system in the school hall, as well as other treats for the children throughout the year.

We are delighted to be holding a Christmas Pantry event in school on Monday 11th December at 2pm. The event is being hosted by Catholic Care. Please ask at the office for your free tickets. There will be free refreshments, music, arts and crafts. Food bags will be given to all attendees!

The percentage of children arriving late in our school

is a staggering 5.9% (compared to the national average of 1.7%).

Arriving late has a significant impact for our children. Not only does it mean they are accessing less learning time each day, it also means that they don't have the calm and ordered start to the school day that we would like them to have.

From next week, we are closing the playground gates at 8:58am, so that children still have 2 minutes to walk through the playground and into class to be on time for our 9:00am register. Any child arriving after this point will be marked as late and we will notify you of this via text.

It is a statutory requirement that we report (and work hard to improve) school attendance and punctuality, but, more importantly than this, we want to give our children the best start to their day!

We would like to take the time to thank our Friends of St Joseph's, who organised a fantastic Christmas Fayre. In particular, we extend our gratitude to our key postholders: Mrs Cooper, Dr McMahon and Miss Byers, who worked tirelessly in the lead-up to the event and during the fayre itself.

Thank you!

Our children in St Nicholas have enjoyed learning about the story of Jesus' birth. They have been colouring Christmas pictures at our creative table!

St Francis’ advent calendar has suggestions for acts of kindness. Thursday’s mission was to create a card to make someone smile.

In Science, we thought about what humans need to survive. We role-played going on an adventure to a desert island and thought about what we would need to survive each day and night.

This week in St Patrick’s class we have been making clay pots which is linked to our topic on Ancient Greece. The Greeks were famous for their pottery and so we followed instructions on how to make a pinch pot. We created a lip for the pot, added a base and some of us even added handles too. Next week we will decorate our pots with Ancient Greek style patterns.

This week, we have started to refresh our knowledge of co-ordinates, beginning with a Christmas-themed co-ordinate pictures. Here is one example.

St Nicholas (Nursery/Preschool): Sidney

St Francis: (Reception/ Year 1): Hannah

St Bernadette (Year 2): Theo

St Patrick (Year 3/4): Delilah

St Therese (Year 5/6): Leo

Headteacher's Award: Dollie

Team point winners: St John

Christmas Pantry Event (in school): Monday 11th Dec, 2pm

Nursery / Preschool Nativity (in school, for families): Thurs 14th Dec, 10am

Reception/ Y1/ Y2 Nativity (in school, for families): Thurs 14th Dec, 2:20pm

Reception/ Y1/ Y2 Nativity (in school, for families): Thurs 14th Dec, 6pm (children at school for 5:30pm)

KS2 Christmas Carol Concert (in Church, for families): Thurs 21st Dec, 6pm

After a very busy few weeks organising the fayre, Friends of St Joseph's will meeting up again in the new year to plan more treats and events.

More updates and plans will be shared in future newsletters and on the FB page.

Use the button below if you'd like to give our staff a shout out!

We love hearing from you!

If you have a query or concern, please feel free to speak to me (Mrs Ronicle) at the gates in the morning or via email (headteacher@stjosephstadcaster.org); your child's class teacher at the end of the day; or our school admin team at the front entrance.

If this is not possible, feel free to phone or email the office who can forward any messages to staff.

Website: https://www.st-josephs-tadcaster.n-yorks.sch.uk/
Location: Station Road, Tadcaster, UK
Phone: 01937 832344
Twitter: @StJosephsTad

We are a proud member school of the Bishop Wheeler Catholic Academy Trust:

https://www.bishopwheelercatholicacademytrust.org/

Email: admin@stjosephstadcaster.org

Families (and children of all ages) are warmly welcomed to celebrate Mass at our parish Church:

St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Tadcaster.

Mass times are as follows:

SUNDAY Mass 9am

WEDNESDAY Mass 10am

FRIDAY Mass 10am

Please visit the Church website for further details:

https://www.stjosephstadcaster.org.uk/

FEAST is open to all children and young people across North Yorkshire. Places on these school holiday activities are free to eligible children and young people. Learn more about who is eligible for a free place in our Frequently Asked Questions.