Mrs Ham's Weekly Highlights
Good afternoon parents and carers, it has been an extremely busy week at St Barnabas and here are the highlights: *Today Reception class released their butterflies that they had watched grow from tiny caterpillars. * Year 1 and 3 had a fun and informative road safety workshop. *Year 2 had a firefighter visit and learnt all about fire safety. *Years 4, 5 and 6 had RSE workshops today and learnt all about how their bodies change as they grow up. *Year 5 had a fantastic time at Winmarleigh Hall PGL and made lots of amazing memories. Photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/year-5-pgl-to-winmarleigh-2024 * Year 6 made us all extremely proud by the way they tackled their SATs with determination and positivity. The main focus of the week has been what was on offer at the free breakfast each day and they've loved having extra break times. It has been fantastic to see how much you have all flourished over the years and have shown us your many amazing qualities and gifts that SATs don't test. If SATs were awarded for showing courage, friendship, generosity, laughter and kindness then you would all achieve greater depth! Over the next few weeks all of our children in Years 1-5 will be completing their end of year assessments, like they have done at the end of each term so far. We are so proud of the progress that they are making and how they always face the 'quizzes' with positivity and enthusiasm. Information on their progress will be shared with you all in their end of year report in the last week of term. For all of this week's news in more detail, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news Next week we have another busy week in the lead up to the well deserved two week half term break. It is walk to school week and outdoor classroom day is on Thursday. On Thursday Reception class and Years 3-6 will be taking part in a walk around our local area. Years 1 and 2 will be going to BeWilderwood in Cheshire and we can't wait to hear all about the fun adventures they will have there. A quick reminder to please complete the consent form, if you haven't done so already, and thank you to those of you who have already paid the voluntary contribution. The cost of transport has hiked up over the last few years so all of our trips run at a loss if we do not receive enough contributions. Yesterday we had an Academy Review by our Trust CEO, Mr Ashworth and one of our trustees, Mrs Underwood, who is a Headteacher at one of our Cidari schools. They were extremely impressed with our school environment, the high quality teaching and learning taking place, the high standards of presentation in books, how articulate and confident our children are and the many wider opportunities that we offer our children through our clubs, visitors and trips. I was so proud to hear that they recognised what a special place St Barnabas is and it is an honour and privilege to lead such a wonderful school family. Thank you so much for your continued support and for trusting us to help your amazing children to learn and grow. Wishing you all a fantastic weekend and I hope you enjoy the sunshine, Mrs Ham
Year 1 Maths
Today in maths, year 1 made arrays with counters and/or cubes. They had to think about whether they were going to organise their groups into rows or columns before making their arrays. Well done year 1.
Year 5 - Jag Tag
Year 5 enjoyed another Jag Tag session. They put into practice all their learnt skills into competitive games; working specifically on offence and defensive work. The children took turns working on both skills and enjoyed different styles of play.
Friday Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by signing the trinity and talking about our extremely busy week in school. This week, we saw Year 6 showing an amazing amount of courage as they faced their SATs, Year 5 having a wonderful 3 day PGL residential at Winmarleigh Hall and lots of amazing lunch time and after school clubs such as Cricket, Little Voices, Mad Science, Choir, Netball and Story and Craft. We also congratulated our wonderful Year 4 tennis team (Jenson, Summer, Annabelle and Quinn) for performing amazingly on Wednesday afternoon and coming in 2nd place out of 8 schools in BwD. What an achievement! Thank you to Mr Foy for training up the tennis team in his lunch times and Miss Baxendale for taking them to the competition. We also congratulated our Year 5/6 Netball team who competed in the DPSSA Netball League on Thursday night. We are hopeful that they will qualify for the final in a few weeks. We then presented Lenny, Archie, Rosie, Layla, Neve and Millie as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for impeccable manners, an amazing attitude to learning and working extremely hard across the curriculum. Mr Bloomfield then presented all of Year 5 as value award winners this week for challenging themselves at PGL and showing an amazing amount of courage, friendship and teamwork and Mr Prescott presented Year 6 for approaching SATs with amazing smiles on their faces and a huge amount of perseverance. We also congratulated Year 1 and Year 6 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and Darwen Tower as the overall value award winners this week with 208 points. We then congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Summer for being an incredible gymnast, Grace for achieving Star of the Week at Little Voices after school club, Annabel for achieving a Certificate of Excellence from Butterflies After School Club for pushing herself out of her comfort zone by trying new things, Isaac for achieving an amazing 25m in his swimming, Teddy for achieving his red stripe belt at kickboxing, Sofia for achieving an honours in her musical theatre and being highly commended, Lottie for showing incredible swimming talent and achieving her level 4, Archie for achieving his black shirt in darts, James for starting Beavers this week and being awarded Beaver of the Week, Archie for demonstrating a wonderful attitude at football, Oscar for being a super scientist and taking part in various science (biology, chemistry and physics) investigations, Elliott for demonstrating an amazing attitude and wonderful behaviour during his football training and Darcy for being an incredible gymnast. To end our worship, we heard from Rev Ben who congratulated our wonderful Year 6 team for completing their SATs, Year 5 for an incredible few days at PGL and a lovely prayer thanking God for being with us and giving us the love, strength and power we all need. We then sang, ‘My Lighthouse’ with lots of enthusiasm and thanked all those who could attend celebration worship and we said an extended thank you to the rest of our school family for all of your continued support. We wish you all a lovely weekend.
Year 4 RSE - Time for Change
Today we have had Karen in from Coram Life Education. She covered our RSE unit - Time for Change. We covered lots of subjects and all things puberty. Everyone is unique and it’s normal to question - I’m growing up but am I different? We looked in greater detail at the reproductive system and genitals. The main thing to remember is to show empathy towards each other and each other's body changes and differences.
Forest school club
This week the children had a great time building dens which opened so much up for their imaginative play. The children created leaf tickets to enter the den. They gave each other different roles within the game. It was great to see the children all playing cooperatively together and using brilliant team work.
Year 5 - Coram Life Education Session
Year 5 had their Coram life education session where the class discussed the changes that occur within our bodies and why those changes occur. The children discussed both male and female changes to educate each other and to remain empathetic towards the changes that occur for both males and females.
Year 5 - Art
Year 5, created a poetic portrait in the style of Pablo Picasso. The children created a diamanté poem about their recent residential trip and traced their poem over the top of their one line portrait.
Reception- Releasing the butterflies
For the past few weeks we have watched our caterpillars go through metamorphosis. On Wednesday our butterflies started to emerge and by yesterday we had all 5 butterflies emerge from their chrysalis. We went out to the garden to release them. The butterflies landed on some of the children before flying away.
Year 6 History
In history, year 6 started to look at the impact air raids had on the town and people of Darwen during WW2. They looked at eye-witness accounts and realised that, although on a smaller scale to other towns and cities, Darwen was affected a great deal by air raids. There was death, destruction and injuries, but in a time of peril the town pulled together to support each other.
Year 6 P.E.
In their JAGTAG session, year 6 started to decide on routes they were going to take as a team. The quarter back would communicate this to their team, who would then have to put it into action. The defending team, on the other hand, had to decide on the players they were going to pick up in order to stop the attack.
Year 2 - Maths
Today we carried on looking at different units of measure. We have moved on to measuring volume. Today we were using millilitres to measure volume. We explored how different containers can hold more water so they have a larger capacity. After solving problems in our book we got hands on and began measuring out different amounts of water in our measuring jugs. This helped us to visualise how much water 100ml actually was. We took some water away and created a calculation on our whiteboards to show what we had done with the water.