Balby Central Primary AcademyOur blogs
Date: 16th Jul 2021 @ 9:33am
As we come to the end of a summer term it is a time for reflection of the academic year and this feels very different again to other years. We have had a year where children have spent time back in the classroom and other times when we have all learned new skills with remote education. We have put systems and processes in place that we have never had to consider before. The way in which everyone in our school community has supported what we have to do is commendable. Thank you to you as parents and carers for your support with the measures that we have needed to take together to prevent and reduce the infections rate of Covid-19. We appreciate how you have adapted, been responsive and it is a time to celebrate the strength shown by the Balby Central community.
This week you received your child’s school report which shared your individual child’s achievements, their strengths and how they work with their peers. We hope that you have had chance to read the report, discuss it with your child and reflect on their learning. It was lovely to read the comments made by the teachers and to know how well our children follow Ready, Respectful, Safe behaviours. Please complete the online form to give school some feedback as this helps us for the academic year ahead.
Across school our children have really embraced their learning this term both in the classroom, through their paper packs, information on the website and through the live lessons. We have worked hard to ensure that children can access the same curriculum both in the classroom and at home and our children have produced some amazing pieces of work. Even though some of the classrooms have looked a little different, children have shown great resilience to keep momentum with their learning and continue to be the best they can be.
We have welcomed a range of sporting visitors to school including rugby players Watson Boas and then Jason Robinson OBE the England rugby league and rugby union footballer. Northern Ballet have made their annual visit to school talent spotting and we were proud to say a selection of children were given the opportunity for further work with the company. Other visitors have included Clancy Biggs Cycling Academy, ACMAC Martial Arts, JR Sports and Peglers have donated lots of sports equipment for our children to use, thank you Peglers. Key Stage One and Two were still able to visit Keepmoat Athletic Stadium for our annual sports days with great events including long jump, hurdles, sprints, javelin and the experience of using sporting facilities in our local area. Year 6 were also able to take part in Crucial Crew, understanding their responsibilities as a young person, learning from different emergency services and problem solving with real life situation. We have also welcomed the school nursing team in school to deliver health sessions in classes, immunisations, health checks and offer advice to families. The school team and children have continued to work with our Evolve Health Mentor, The Mental Health Trailblazer Team and Fortis for Trauma Informed Approaches to support our children. Their contribution has supported many children across school and we look forward to continuing our programmes next academic year.
We were excited to continue to work with Doncaster Stories with a group of children being filmed to talk about reading at school and also many children completed their reading miles marked out on their map around Doncaster. Reading is a key priority across the school and we hope that children will continue to have read some great books over the holidays.
As your children break up for the summer holidays, we wish everyone a happy, safe and fun summer. There is lots going on in Doncaster with their Staycation programme and a real variety of activities planned, booking is essential to reserve a place for children of all ages.
We are excited for the next academic year with lots of exciting curriculum opportunities ahead. As our youngest children start to move to their next year group we look forward to welcoming our new starters come to join the Balby Central community. Our Year 6 children leave us today ready for their next journey as they move to secondary school, they are a fantastic group of children and on behalf of all the Balby Central Team we wish them all the very best in their futures. They have been a great asset to the school and we will miss them. We hope we will hear of their success stories, as we know there will be many. Good luck to each and every one of them and well done for your resilience, energy, determination and enthusiasm.
We wish all of our families and the Balby Central community a wonderful summer, keep safe, take care and we look forward to welcoming everyone back in school next academic year
Mrs Cooke
Date: 3rd Jul 2021 @ 9:51am
Our Balby Bots have taken part in this incredible competition. Please take some time to explore their work as they've worked very hard on their project!
The competition:
FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge is a global STEM programme for teams of young people, to encourage an interest in real world themes and devel
op key skills that are crucial for their future careers. Young people work together to explore a given topic and to design, build and program an autonomous LEGO® robot to solve a series of missions.
The Balby Bots will be assessed on each of the four parts of FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge:
Robot Game- Teams build a robot using a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® or SPIKE™ Prime kit that they program to autonomously complete a series of missions on a specialised field to score as many points as possible.
Innovation Project-Teams must research the annual theme as detailed in the Challenge Document. After exploring different ideas, they will identify one problem related to the theme, design a solution to solve it, and develop a presentation to communicate that solution.
Core Values- Whilst competing, the teams need to demonstrate the FIRST® LEGO® League Core Values which include innovation, teamwork and inclusion. Being respectful and having a great time are central to what makes FIRST® LEGO® League so special.
Robot Design- Teams must explain the process of designing, building and programming their LEGO® robot they are using with the Robot Game.
Jason Robinson visits Year 3 !
Date: 2nd Jul 2021 @ 8:43am
Date: 14th Jun 2021 @ 7:45pm
Date: 9th Jun 2021 @ 4:58pm
On the last day of our summer 1 half term, the children were invited to our Scarecrow Wedding. The children and staff all got dressed up in their finest wedding clothes and had a wonderful day. We read the story of the Scarecrows Wedding and learnt about different weddings from other cultures. We baked wedding cakes which we all enjoyed eating together. We ended the day with a party, just like at a real wedding. The children and staff loved our special day.
Date: 8th Jun 2021 @ 7:27pm
Year 3 were incredibly fortunate to have three members of the Northern Ballet come to school and take them through some complex steps. Everyone thought that the event was very enjoyable and they suprised us all with how quickly they were able to pick up the techniques. A few of our children were even chosen to attend the Northern Ballet training session at the end of this month so watch this space!
Date: 6th Jun 2021 @ 8:09pm
Friction finders!
Year 3 were set a very important task today: they had to observe and describe the movement of objects on sufaces that are smooth and rough, flat and inclined to different angles. It was a very successful lesson as we were able to draw some similar conclusions, compiled lots of findings and generated several questions that we wish to find the answers to next.
Date: 6th Jun 2021 @ 4:15pm
Newspaper Reports
As part of our learning in science, we have been looking at climate change. As part of this work, we created newspaper reports about Greta Thunberg. We wanted to spread the issue of climate change wider to make people stand up and listen- just like Greta does.
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Date: 6th Jun 2021 @ 3:48pm
Have a look and listen to Year 1 enjoying reading stories they have chosen individually and how we can read our RWI books with increasing fluency!
Date: 6th Jun 2021 @ 3:38pm
Year 1 have been busy preparing for Sports Day! They have been practising their running, jumping, balancing and throwing skills. 
Date: 3rd Jun 2021 @ 8:58pm
To celebrate and share our wonderful writing, we performed our favourite paragraphs from our brochures, to our peers.
Date: 3rd Jun 2021 @ 7:25pm
Rome - the dream destination!
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If you' ve not been tempted to visit Rome before now, you most certainly will be after reading these leaflets. Year 3 have worked hard to apply persuasive techniques like exaggeration, alliteration, positive expanded noun phrases and rhetorical questions to name just a few. We hope that you'll agree that they've done a really good job at tempting us to book a trip away!
Date: 25th May 2021 @ 1:25pm
In Reception, we have been looking at the photography of Ansel Adams who took photos of landscapes and the environment using black and white photography. We were inspired to use digital cameras to take some black and white photos of our environment in EYFS. You will see examples of our photos below.
Date: 16th May 2021 @ 8:49am
3 boxes appeared in our playground this week. We used them to do lots of imaginative play. Some children used them as big drums. Some used them as play houses, boats, castles and superhero headquarters. Some were turned in to tents, postboxes and one child played peek a boo through the hole in the side. We had lots of fun with the boxes this week!
Date: 14th May 2021 @ 3:48pm
In writing, Year 2 have been making up their own endings for the story Fantastic Mr. Fox. They had to be creative with their ideas and use plenty of adjectives and conjunctions to add detail to their writing. They finished the week with a neat write that included their own image for their new ending.
Date: 10th May 2021 @ 8:03pm
We are only half way through our book ‘The Captive Celt’ but we have already been through so a lot with our main character, Deri. This young chap has suffered lots of pain and heartache and it's just about to get worse as you'll see in our letters.
