Year 1 Geography- Ordnance Survey Map Symbols
This afternoon in geography, Year 1 explored ordnance survey map symbols such as a school, place of worship, police station and post office. They really enjoyed trying to figure out what each of the symbols meant to match them correctly. They then explored an ordnance survey map of our local area and highlighted the symbols that they could find. They found several schools, footpaths, main roads, foot bridges and cemeteries.
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we started our worship by collectively signing our new Makaton signs ‘yes’, ‘no,’ and ‘happy’ and congratulating our amazing Year 6 children for their incredible efforts in their SATs and the way that they have tackled them with nothing but smiles and positivity. We are so proud of you all! We also reflected on many of our other highlights this week which have included prayers for the world as part of our Diocesan Year of Prayer, Reception having a visit from Nightingale Farm, Year 3 visiting Rock & River, Year 5 enjoying their PGL residential, having our DACA students join our school on work experience and our Year 5/6 Netball Squad who represented St Barnabas brilliantly in the DPSSA Netball league last night and came away with three victories. Furthermore, we congratulated Ted in Year 4 for working hard to achieve his pen license, our Year 2 and Year 5 classes for being our attendance winners this week with 99.2% and 100% attendance and River Darwen as our value award winners this week with 226 points. We then moved onto congratulating this week’s individual value award winners. Well done to Minnie, Elsie and Harry in EYFS and KS1 and Alice in KS2. Well done to these children for working incredibly hard, pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and showing our Barny’s 4Bs (being kind, safe, respectful and ready). We also congratulated the whole of the Year 3 & 5 classes for being amazing on their trip to PGL and Rock & River. They were extremely courageous, encouraged each other every step of the way and represented our school amazingly. Furthermore, we congratulated our Year 1 and Year 5 class for being our attendance winners this week and Whitehall Park as our value award winners this week with 161 points. We then moved onto congratulating all of our out of school achievers. Well done to Luna for achieving her Stage 1 in swimming, Olivia, Annie and Thea for being incredibly kind and caring at Rainbows, Hollie for achieving her Stage 2 in swimming, Lyla for achieving a distinction in her recent ballet exam, Jack for being the Player of the Match and achieving the Captain’s Armband in a recent football game, Annabel for achieving an entry level award for her music performance at Rocksteady and being Star of the Week at dancing, Eliza and Darcy for their commitment to Brownies, Maggie for achieving a gold award in Rainbows alongside multiple other certificates and badges, Olivia for being the Player of the Match and achieving the Captain’s Armband in a recent football game, Haydn for incredible football and Poppy, Brooke and Laila for being the EFLA cup winners 2025. To end our worship, we collective listened to this week’s Year of Prayer, said the Grace and sang ‘Sing a New Song.’ Thank you to all of our school family who could attend celebration worship and we thank you for your ongoing support. We send an extended thank you to the rest of our school family. We wish you all a lovely and restful weekend in the sunshine. The slides can be found on class dojo or here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/about-us/church-and-worship#tab-4370
Year 1 Class Worship- Young Inventors
Today in class worship, Year 1 explored the theme of Young Inventors. They were introduced to the story of three compassionate teenagers from India who developed a salt-powered fridge to store medicines and aid hospitals in rural areas lacking electricity. As part of this, Year 1 thought about things that they would invent to help our world. Samuel came up with the idea of creating a robot that can roam around playgrounds and provide first aid, Callie’s idea was for a similar invention but for animals in the wild, Ida and Thomas’ invention was to create a jet that could clear up litter in the seas and oceans to protect our animals and Vienna’s invention was a machine that could suck the fumes and gases out of our atmosphere. Well done Year 1. What incredible and thoughtful inventions!
Year 1 Science and Computing- How Does a Plant Grow?
This afternoon, Year 1 have been exploring the names of various parts of a plant and the different stages of plant growth. They created their own animations on Purple Mash to illustrate these stages and then played them back to enjoy watching their plant grow. They absolutely blew us away and managed to create some exceptional animations of a seed developing a stem and roots, growing into a sapling, growing leaves and a stronger stem, starting to bud and then finally flower. The children even added visiting bees to their plants to pollinate them and seeds dropping off their plants to form new ones. Amazing work, Year 1!
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Story Club with Miss Flynn and the Librarians
Today in Story Club, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 read ‘The Great Dog Bottom Swap’ with Miss Flynn and the librarians and then did a fabulous dog themed craft. They had great fun!
Year 1 English- Identifying the Features of a Non-Fiction Book
As part of their English unit, Year 1 have been exploring the features of non-fiction books. After seeing and reading a number of non-fiction books and familiarising themselves with the features, they independently looked for the features in a non-fiction book themselves. They looked for the title page, the contents page, the glossary, labels, captions and headings. Year 1 will now be writing their own non-fiction booklets about the Crocky Trail after their class visit last week.
Year 1 Art- Printing Shapes
This afternoon, Year 1 were asked to look back at the sketches (of a building) that they created last lesson to look for shapes and patterns within it. Then they practised printing with these shapes. They used building blocks and duplo to print with. They chose their shapes carefully e.g. choosing semi-circle shapes if their building had arched windows, doors or domes and rectangular and square shapes for standard windows and doors and the outline of their building. They also carefully applied the paint to their duplo and blocks in order to print with them. They are now ready to create a print of their chosen building (India Mill, Darwen Library, Darwen Post Office, Darwen Leisure Centre or Darwen Market Hall). Well done Year 1!
Year 1 Art- Printing
As part of their art unit, Year 1 have been inspired by Lowry. They first explored his artwork and some of the buildings in Darwen such as Darwen Library, India Mill, Darwen Market Hall, Darwen Post Office and Darwen Leisure Centre. After weeks of studying the landmarks, observing the shapes and lines that they are made up of and practising drawing and printing the shapes and lines that these buildings are made up of, Year 1 have created their final print. I’m sure you’ll agree that they have done a fabulous job.
Year 1 Maths- Estimating and Measuring the Mass of Objects
Today in their maths lesson, Year 1 were estimating and measuring the mass of objects using a balancing scale and cubes. They learnt that they should stop adding/counting cubes when the scale has balanced as this means that they have calculated the mass. They did really well with this and their estimates got better as the activity progressed as they could reason better e.g. I think this 3 glue sticks will weigh 60 cubes because they feel a lot heavier than the scissors which weighed 11 cubes.
Year 1 English- Retrieving Information From Non-Fiction Texts
This week in their English lessons, Year 1 are preparing to write a non-fiction booklet to share information about their trip to the Crocky Trail. Today, they explored some non-fiction books. They used the contents page and/or the headings on each page to support them in retrieving answers to questions that they had been given. Great work, Year 1!
Year 1 RE- Belonging
This afternoon, Year 1 have been thinking about belonging in RE. After exploring baptism and Rev Ben explaining to us that baptism is like a badge that people wear to show that they belong to the church, we thought about other groups that we belong to, how these groups make us feel and created our own badge to represent this. We had badges to symbolise our families, after-school clubs such as Butterflies and Kidsland, our school, our church, Rainbows, Beavers, Stagecoach, swimming, dance, gymnastics, football and kickboxing. The children described these groups as making them feel special, proud, happy, excited, overjoyed and thankful and they said that if a new person was to join their family, school family, church family or club, they would make them feel welcome by learning their name, giving them a smile, giving them a high-five, handshake or hug, helping them out and showing them where things go.
Year 1- Year of Prayer- The World
This week as part of the Diocesan Year of Prayer, Year 1 prayed for the world. First of all, we started by singing the seven continents song (which we absolutely love) to remind us of how vast our world is. Year 1 then highlighted places on the world map that they have visited such as London, Turkey, Italy and Belfast and thought about places in the world that they would like to visit such as Brazil to visit the rainforest, the North Pole to see the reindeers and meet Father Christmas, Africa to see the desert animals, Florida to meet the Disney characters, Greece to enjoy the sunshine, beaches, churches and swimming pools and China for the experience. We then finished with some beautiful prayers from Harry, Olly and Olivia who prayed to God to thank Him for the amazing animals that He created for us to love, care for and experience as well as the varied foods that we get to experience from around the world such as Indian foods, Italian foods and beautiful, exotic fruits. We also had a prayer to remind us to care for the world that God created for us all.