Reception- Exploring our outdoor area
We have had a lovely time exploring the outdoors this afternoon. We went for a windy walk around our school grounds and then we had lots of fun on our new outdoor gym, which the children were so excited to use.
Year 5 - National River Trust
Today, Year 5 were treated to a 1-1 session with The National River Trust to discuss the food chains and predictors our trout will encounter when they are released into the wild. The children saw and got to see a real life pike skull. We discussed all its features including what makes the pike an apex predator. The children were fascinated with the skull and asked some really interesting questions which resulted in the children gaining some incredible facts.
Collective Worship- The boy in the temple
We started our Monday morning worship by singing Jesus strong and king and then by signing the trinity and the lighting of the candles. We then watched a video from the Worship Together Collective Worship led by Lisa from Blackburn Diocese. We heard the story ‘the boy in the temple’, which taught us about a twelve year old Jesus who went missing and was found in the temple. He said to Joseph when he was found “ you should have known I was here, it is my father's house after all.” Bishop Philip told us how in this story Jesus tells us who he is and what he has come to do. We then watched an animation of the story and discussed how Mary and Joseph must have felt when Jesus was missing for three days and how Jesus was a little child, just like us. We then finished our worship by singing and signing to two of our favourite songs about Jesus, Waymaker and My Lighthouse.
Year 3- Art- Tie-dyeing T-shirt
In today's afternoon's art session, Year 3 engaged in tie-dyeing. After watching a short clip on how to tie-dye a t-shirt the children carefully scrunched, folded, or coiled up their T-shirts and secured them with elastic bands. They then picked their favourite colours and mixed them in separate bottles, linking to their mood boards from our last art session. After applying the dye, each child's T-shirt was placed in a plastic bag labelled with their name. It is recommended to let the dye permeate the cloth overnight if possible, as it takes several hours for the colours to develop fully. The children are eagerly looking forward to tomorrow when they can finally remove the rubber bands and discover the exciting results of the tie-dye on their T-shirts.
Solo Parents United- Football Team
Good morning parents and carers, I hope you've had a lovely weekend. Please find attached some information from one of our former parents, Stephen Walker about his Solo Parents United group and new football teams he is setting up for children of single parents.
Year 5&6 County Football
As a result of winning the Darwen Schools Football League, our year 5 and 6 football team went on to represent our town in the county football finals held in Thornton, Cleveleys near Blackpool. Our team topped the group stages not losing a game and went into the quarter finals. Our team won the quarter finals on penalties but unfortunately lost in the semi finals. A huge achievement for our football team competing at such a high standard with a total of 14 teams who also finished top of their league within their own towns. A huge congratulations. You have done yourself and our school really proud!
Year 4 Art - One picture, four views
As part of our topic on rainforests, we have been looking at the flora and fauna. In today’s session we chose an animal or insect and then used a view finder to select four different parts of the picture to draw. We explored different techniques to develop imagery and observed the artwork of Ruth Daniel’s and Senaka Senanayake.
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we started our worship by signing the trinity and discussing our week in school. We reflected on our learning about courage and Martin Luther King in collective worship and how much fun we had in the snow on Tuesday. We then presented Ida, Fletcher, Bindi, Harriet, Annabelle, Alice, Alfie and Sophie as our value award winners this week. Well done for being extremely conscientious and hardworking. We also congratulated Maliki, Alfie, Zac and Rio for representing our school amazingly well at a Bowling Competition this week on Monday morning, Ruby, Daniel, Jessica for being rewarded with their pen licenses, Year 1 and Year 4 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and Whitehall Park who are our overall value award winners this week with 287 points. We then moved on to our out of school achievers. Well done to Isaac for achieving Player of the Match for showing an immense amount of courage by taking the role of goalkeeper in a recent football match for the first time, Arabelle for being extremely generous and sponsoring a dog called Crumble by donating money that she has raised through her swimming to support Crumble in becoming a guide dog, Cassidy for achieving a trophy for showing wonderful perseverance in her bar work at gymnastics, Eliza for achieving a trophy for showing lots of courage and hard work during her football training and matches and Annabelle for working extremely hard towards her bronze award in swimming. We then presented all of our teachers with their first aid qualifications. Finally, we heard some lovely prayers from Jacob, Olivia and Ivy who prayed for peace in our world. We thank all those who attended celebration worship- it is always lovely to see so many of our families attend and we wish the the rest of our school family a lovely restful weekend and thank you for your ongoing support too.
Year 6 Geography
The focus of our geography lesson today was the UK’s physical features, paying close attention to mountains. We discovered that Slieve Donard (Northern Ireland), Scafell Pike (England), Ben Nevis (Scotland) and Snowdon (Wales) were the highest peaks in their respective countries. The largest of the four, Ben Nevis, can be found in Scotland in the Grampian mountains.
Year 1 Phonics
Year 1 are working really hard in their phonics lessons to learn the alternative ways of reading and writing sounds that they already know. Today we recapped the ‘ew’ grapheme in stew, flew, crew, grew and screw before learning the ‘ue’ grapheme that is used in words such as rescue, due, true, flue and clue.
Year 4 Class Worship - Picture News - Is an e-reader better than a book?
In Class Worship this morning we focused on Picture News, which asked the question - Is an e-reader better than a book? A study from Spain found that print reading could boost skills by six to eight times more than digital reading. Our class was a complete split but the children discussed their ideas behind their choices and then looked at various ways in which we can read. We then looked at what we prefer to read and ordered these from favourite to least favourite. Reading messages from friends came top and reading instructions was our least favourite!
Year 2 - Music
In music this week, we used boom whackers to create different sounds. We created patterns with these sounds as a class. The children love using different instruments and are very lucky that they get the chance to play different instruments.