Year 4 - Odd Socks Day
We had some rather whacky sock combinations in Year 4 for Odd Socks Day. The children loved showing off their unique styles. In PSHE, we watched a CBBC video of Andy and the Odd Socks and learned a bit about bullying and how we can ensure we show friendship to others. The children then designed their own odd sock to represent what friendship means to them.
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning in celebration worship, we reflected on a wonderful first week back to start the second half of our Autumn term. This week, we have remembered all those who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice their lives for us, and we observed a special two-minute silence. We would like to thank everyone who has supported the Poppy Appeal; our poppy merchandise will continue to be available next week. We then presented our individual value award winners in EYFS, KS1 and KS2. Well done to our worthy winners Hunter, Finn, Inaiya, Elijah, Chay, Harriet and Quinn for consistently demonstrating the Barney’s 4Bs, working extremely hard across the curriculum, producing work of an exceptional standard and showing a genuine desire to always improve. A huge well done also goes to Elijah, Chay, Isaac, Lana, Lyla, Cassidy, Naomi and Emily for achieving their pen licences—we know how hard you have all worked for this accomplishment. We also congratulated Whitehall Park as our overall value award winners for the week, along with Year 1 and Year 5 for achieving the highest attendance. Moving on, we celebrated the wonderful achievements of our children who have been excelling outside of school in their various sports and activities. Well done to Beau for being a mighty defender in football, Ida and Leila for showing impressive skill in stop, starting and steering during horse riding, Callie for demonstrating outstanding floor and vault work in gymnastics, Ava for her generosity at Rainbows and for achieving Star of the Week at Street Dance, Lana for her performing arts award, Theo for earning her drawing interest badge and Star of the Week in gymnastics for exceptional beam work, Olivia for achieving her 20m swimming certificate, Lyla for her success in lyrical, jazz and commercial dance, Olivia again for achieving her Level 1 gymnastics award, Isaac for demonstrating exceptional football skills at the Everton Academy experience, Rosie for being a superstar Brownie and earning several badges, Martha for achieving her 10m swimming award, Lydia for earning her laughter badge at Rainbows and for being extremely helpful, and Eleanor for achieving both her Rainbow Silver Award and a laughter badge. In other news, our Wellbeing Warriors also announced Year 3 as the winning class for having the most walkers in October and proudly shared that our school placed third in the borough for the highest number of walkers overall, our Sports Leaders presented India Mill as the Inter-house Dodgeball Competition winners from before the holidays, and we also congratulated our Year 5/6 Boys Football Team, who represented our school brilliantly and achieved two wins in the BwD Football League last night. Looking ahead, we are excited to continue our Scholastic Book Fair next week, to wear odd socks on Monday as we launch Anti-Bullying Week, and to end the week by wearing spots, pyjamas or Pudsey attire in support of Children in Need next Friday. Thank you to our wonderful school family for their support this week and always. Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Value Award Winner Disco- India Mill
Today, India Mill enjoyed a well-deserved non-uniform day and disco to celebrate their success as the overall Value Award winners for last half-term. As part of this, they enjoyed a game of bonfire themed corners followed by a game of musical bumps. Well done to everyone for your fantastic achievement!
Year 4 English - Escape From Pompeii
Our new class novel is Escape From Pompeii by Christina Balit. In today’s sessions we have continued to use sentence stacking to develop and construct better sentences. We started by adding a fronted adverbial by watching the main character Tranio and recording how he feels about living in Pompeii at the start of the story. We then moved into a modelled sentence and then an independent one with a different fronted adverbial. In our next sentence, we referred back to our experience day and described the size of Mount Vesuvius using words such as colossal and humongous. Finally we used the same modelling to construct a sentence thinking about how Tranio feels about living in such a beautiful part of the world. The children produced some very effective sentences, using the success criteria to ensure they added all of the key parts.
Year 4 Maths - Area
In our maths session today, the children were looking at how to compare different areas. They compared various shapes and added which was greater, larger or the same. They also discussed about what is the same and what is different between them. The children found how to work out the difference but must first use their times tables to help calculate the answer.
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Wellbeing Warriors Wow Challenge - October
In our Wellbeing Warriors meeting today, the children identified who had done enough walks or park and strides and to gain their October badges. We are thrilled to see that so many children are trying so hard to make their journey to school a healthier one. The girls went through each class highlighting names and then collecting the right amount of badges which they will give out in Worship tomorrow. Another great achievement is that St Barnabas have managed to come third place in the Blackburn with Darwen Top Ten Leader Board for Autumn 2025 which shows that our engagement rate is outstanding!
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Year 4 - English: Research
It was the start of our new English unit on Monday and the Year 4s were busy conducting research and collecting information about Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. Their objective was to take keywords from each question and type them into a safe search engine in order to gather relevant information to answer the question. The children also used a range of primary and secondary sources to support their research. The children will be using this information to support their writing of stories based on a historical setting.
Whole School Worship - Remembrance
Ahead of Remembrance Sunday, our collective worships this week are all about taking time to reflect on those that have sacrificed themselves to keep us all safe. We have been learning about what Remembrance Day means to our nation and also to us personally. Mrs Ham explained the significance of the poppy and she shared some stories of extreme bravery and self-sacrifice demonstrated by those in the services during the World Wars. We considered which Christian values these people showed and Mrs Ham invited some children to share how they will be remembering our service men and women, past and present, this Remembrance Day.
Whole School-Harvest Festival at the Church – Living Life in All Its Fullness
This morning, our school community came together at our church to celebrate our Harvest Festival, a joyful morning filled with song, prayer, and thanksgiving. The service began as Naomi and Martha signed The Trinity, followed by everyone joining in a rendition of our Harvest Samba song. We also heard about Bishop Philip’s inspiring challenge, pedalling to raise money for those in need, reminding us that even small acts of kindness can have a big impact. As part of the Bishop of Blackburn’s Harvest Appeal, we have been encouraging everyone to ‘Pedal Along’ and raise money for Christians in South Africa. Olivia shared a thoughtful talk, and Darcy reminded us to keep in our prayers families and countries around the world who are suffering. We also gave thanks for the work of DARE and reflected on people using their time and energy to support good causes. The reception and Year 2 class delighted everyone with their Harvest songs. Year 1 shared Thank You for Our Favourite Food, helping us reflect on gratitude. Lilly and Sofia led us in a thoughtful final prayer. We also said goodbye and good luck to Miss Norton, April, and Eve, and shared our thanks to Mrs Araujo, Mrs Ham, and our dedicated WOW Group for helping make this service so meaningful. Our Harvest celebration at the church was a wonderful reminder of our school vision, living life in all its fullness, through thankfulness, compassion, and community. Wishing all our families a restful and joy-filled half-term break!
FOSB Spooky Discos
A huge thank you to our Friends of St Barnabas (FOSB) volunteers and Mrs Wilkinson for planning and running our spooky discos tonight. What a great way to end a busy half term! The children had a great time dancing and playing games! The photos can be found here : https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/fosb-spooky-disco-1
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Whole School Worship & Farewell to Mrs Norton
It is with great sadness that we are saying goodbye to our school cook of 19 years, Mrs Norton, this week. In our whole school worship we celebrated all Mrs Norton has done for us by inviting some of our children to share memories and messages of thanks. Each class made Mrs Norton a special card and Mrs Ham presented her with some gifts from our school family. We wish her well as she embarks on a new chapter. Mrs Ham also shared an update about our Harvest collections for Dare and we practised our songs for the Harvest service.
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Year 4 - English: Subordinate Clauses
In Year 4, we started our work on clauses this week. The children learned that clauses contain a subject and verb, and they began differentiating between main and subordinate clauses. In pairs, children wrote a main and a subordinate clause on their whiteboards and formed human sentences. They practised reading the clauses in different orders to see the effect.