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Year 4 - PE: Netball Skills
This week in PE session 1, Year 4 developed their chest passing skills, holding the ball with their fingertips and pushing it from chest height. They also learned how to jump and receive the ball. The class had great fun practising these skills and they finally had a chance to apply these skills in a netball match.
Year 4 - Linking Schools: Courageous Advocacy
A few weeks ago, the Year 4 class discussed a number of ideas to improve our community and decided on one issue to focus on. After a vote, the children decided they would like to tackle vandalism in the area. This week, we walked to Whitehall Park to assess the damage and found much of the equipment to be unsafe to play on. We took pictures of the problem areas and the children have decided they want to write to their local MP to ask him to repair the park. We are really hoping for a reply!
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning in celebration worship, we started by signing the trinity and discussing a very busy first week back after the half-term holidays. This week, we have had a worship about St Barnabas, the encourager and how St Paul was originally called Saul and how he changed his behaviour, a worship from Rev Ben about Jesus being a compass and helping us to find the way when things become difficult and a wonderful Father’s Day Stay and Play in Reception Class. This week also saw a group of our Year 6 children taking part in The Darwen Primary Schools Netball Finals event at Darwen Vale and coming away with joint first but second on goal difference, a group of our Year 6 children for taking part in a BwD cricket competition at Darwen Cricket Club and coming an overall 8th and Year 5 class for being the class who walked to school the most in May. This week, we also said a huge well done to Haydn, Carter, Bluebelle, Miles, Elsie, Ruby and Isaac who were awarded as our value award winners this week for always striving to do their best and showing respect and kindness and we also congratulated Year 1 and Year 4 on being our attendance winners and Darwen Tower as our overall value award winners this week with 275 points. We then moved on to hearing about what great things our children at St Barnabas have been achieving outside of school. Well done to Charlie for achieving his brown belt in martial arts, Ella-Grace for being awarded with a trophy for demonstrating fantastic football skills, Callie for working extremely hard and showing amazing skill in her gymnastics, Carter for achieving his silver award at swimming, Amelia for running 5k in the Race For Life and raising £600 for Cancer Research, Olivia for being an amazing Brownie, Daisy for achieving 2nd place at a recent gymnastics competition, Finn for achieving ‘Player of the Week’ at football, Lyla for achieving 10m in her backstroke, Isabella for achieving her brown belt in martial arts and 20m in her swimming, Eliza for achieving ‘Player of the Season’ in her football and being invited back to Blackburn Rovers after trialling out for their girls team, Leonora for swimming amazingly for the centurions and achieving both ‘The Funkiest Hairstyle’ and ‘Heart of Gold Award’ from the club she went to while on holiday, James for achieving a silver medal at Jiu Jitsu for demonstrating very powerful kicks and punches, Maggie for achieving a fantastic 50m in her swimming, Edward for being a super reader and achieving 100% in his reading eggs quiz, Tristen for achieving yet another impressive kick-boxing belt, Miles for achieving 3rd place in a recent football tournament, Annabel for being an incredible tap dancer and achieving her first steps certificate and Summer for achieving a first class medal for demonstrating incredible skill in her gymnastics. Finally, we ended our worship with two beautiful prayers from Jack and Leonora thanking all of our amazing staff for all that they do and praying for those who are in the midst of war and conflict. We also sang, ‘Build Up' as this week we have been thinking about how we can be like St Barnabas and encourage each other and build each other up. Thank you as always for those who could attend celebration worship today and we send an extended thank you to the rest of our school family for their continued support. We wish you all a lovely weekend when it arrives and we hope all of the Dads and Grandads have a wonderful Father's Day on Sunday.
Year 4 English - The Mousehole Cat
In our English session this morning we have been focusing on our new class novel ‘The Mousehole Cat’ by Antonia Barber. After sharing more of the story, our objective was to sequence and discuss events using a story map. The children first discussed their ideas, working in pairs to sequence pictures. Then then created a whole class word bank that included key vocabulary from the story. Finally they wrote a paragraph for each picture. The children produced some lovely writing during the session with lots of complex sentence, uplevelling their work as they went along.
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Year 4 - The Big Debate - Should parents be able to access their children’s social media?
As part of our class worship this morning, we completed our big debate on whether or not parents should be able to access their child’s social media accounts? We know that social media can have both a negative and positive impact on children. We also found that OFCOM completed a survey in 2020 which showed that 30% of children aged 5-7 years had a social media account! Reasons for ‘should’ were : It could protect the child from danger It can support with mental health if the child is struggling to deal with issues It can correct negative behaviour ( the parent can intervene) Reasons for ‘shouldn’t’ included: It’s invasion of privacy They can learn their own way about e-safety There are other ways of checking on your child Overall our class voted 22 people for their parents checking and only 5 opposed it.
Year 4 - PE: Underarm Throw
This week, we started our new games unit in PE. We were working on skills to perfect our underarm throw and the correct way to receive the ball. The children played various games in order to apply the skills they learned. They also worked on the skill of communication by suggesting tactical manoeuvres to their teammates.
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Rev Ben’s Worship: Jesus is Our Compass
This week, Rev Ben joined us for worship to talk about seeking the truth. He began with a true or false quiz in which the options become progressively more difficult. We discussed why sometimes it’s hard to know what’s true and how it feels to feel lost. We learned that Christians believe that Jesus will always guide them to the truth if they put their trust in him.
St Barnabas Day Collective Worship
It was wonderful to welcome our school family back again this morning after the half term break. Tomorrow it is St Barnabas day so we focused on St Barnabas, the Encourager this morning in our Collective Worship. We also looked at how St Barnabas and St Paul became friends and we thought about how Rev Ben is the vicar at both St Barnabas and St Pauls in Hoddlesden. We learnt how Paul was originally called Saul and he was mean and didn't like followers of Jesus. One day Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and after that Saul became a good person, changed his name to Paul and spread the word of God. Barnabas met Paul and encouraged others to listen to him and to give him another chance as he always saw the good in others. Barnabas and Paul went on lots of missionaries together to spread the word of God and the good news of Jesus. We reflected on how we could be like St Barnabas and encourage each other in the coming weeks. We discussed the bible quote 'encourage one another and build each other up' and had some wonderful answers. We thought about how our vision 'achieving great things through learning and growing together in a love-filled family' can only be achieved if we encourage each other and build each other up. We then finished with a prayer and sang 'Build up one another'.
Happy half term
Good afternoon parents and carers, I can't believe that we only have a half term left in school and it feels like this year has flown by. We have had a brilliant last week of the half term and the highlights have been: *Year 1 and 2's visit to BeWILDerwood in Cheshire. All the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/year-1-2-bewilderwood-trip-may-2024 *Year 2 and 4's visit to our church For all of the news from each class, please click here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/news Our Heads and Deputies told our whole school about the Barney's Got Talent show that they will be hosting on Friday 21st June. If children would like to enter, they have the next two weeks to practise their talents and auditions will be held the first week back. A reminder that our FOSB are selling Father's Day breakfast in bed boxes that can be collected on Friday 14th June. These can be purchased through parent pay until Monday 10th June. They will not be able to accept orders after this date as the boxes will need to be prepared. As Thursday 4th July is now a General Election, we will be closed on this day for all staff and children as our school is used as a polling station. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. I would like to say a huge thank you to our staff team for their support and dedication to our school family. I hope they all have a well deserved rest and chance to recharge. Thank you so much for all of your continued support and I hope that you all have a wonderful half term break. We look forward to seeing you all on Monday 10th June and I hope the weather is kind to us all, Mrs Ham
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 The Little Voices after school club showcase their amazing learning over the last six weeks, Year 1&2 visit BeWILDerwood in Cheshire, Year 2&4 visit St Barnabas Church to learn about the symbols of the church with Rev Ben, amazing learning in computing, music and French through our Junior Jam sessions, and two wonderful worships with Mrs Wilkinson about mental health awareness and Rev Matt about Pentecost. We then presented Percy, Isabella, Euan, Hamza and Archie as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for demonstrating an amazing attitude to their learning. Miss Flynn then presented all of Year 1 as value award winners this week for challenging themselves to try new activities at BeWILDerwood and representing school amazingly well by showing an amazing amount of courage, friendship and teamwork and Mr Norris presented all of Year 2 as value award winners for approaching their recent tests with amazing smiles on their faces and a huge amount of perseverance as well as being amazing on our trip to BeWILDerwood yesterday. We also congratulated Year 1 and Year 4 on being our amazing attendance winners this week, Whitehall Park as the overall value award winners this week with 329 points, Annabelle, Mason, Jenson and Elsie for achieving ‘Rock Legend’ status for being able to rapidly recall their timetables and to Lily-May for achieving her pen licence for amazing handwriting across all of her subjects. We then congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Callie for being awarded a certificate and trophy for demonstrating high standards of courtesy, respect and a black belt attitude at martial arts, Leonora for her certificate of recognition for her effort in working towards an award in her gymnastics, Iris for achieving her stage 1 grading at gymnastics and all of her hard work that has gone into achieving this, Ella-Grace for being a super football star and being selected as the manager’s player in her football team, showing amazing commitment to her training at Manchester United and achieving 20m in her swimming, Ed for achieving 25m in his swimming, Isaac for playing for being voted as the players’ player in his football team, Archie for running 2km in the Winter Warmer at Witton, Maggie for being awarded Olivia at Rainbows for being a superstar and always being kind, caring and showing wonderful behaviour, Lyla for her commitment to Rainbows and achieving lots of badges, James for achieving his Stage 2 swimming certificate, Annabelle for achieving an incredible gold award in swimming, Sofia for achieving her Stage 1 gymnastics award and Lucy for being awarded the manager’s player of the year. Her manager said although she’s younger than the other players, she certainly makes up for it on the football pitch. To end our worship, we had a message about Barney’s Got Talent from our heads and deputies. They told us that auditions for this will be W/C 10th June and the showcase of these amazing talents will be on Friday 21st June. Finally, we had some lovely prayers from Sofia and Olivia in Year 3 and we sang ‘Our God is a Great Big God.’ We thank 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 and restful half-term holiday.
Year 4 Designing and Making Viking Longships
What a great ending to our History unit on The Vikings. Today we created our very own Viking longships and the children were really enthusiastic and creative. It has been wonderful to see how much they have learned about this topic and how they have created lots of cross curricular pieces of work around it.
Year 4 Class Worship - Is it fair to judge others based on first impressions?
In our class worship this morning we used Picture News and looked at if it is fair to judge others based on first impressions? We discussed the all girls football team from Bournemouth who were undefeated all season in a league dominated by boys. We shared our ambitions and goals with each other and looked at how we can exceed expectations.