School closed due to the snow
Good morning parents and carers, Mr Tierney and I are in school now and have assessed the snow situation. The roads around school are awful as there is ice underneath the snow and the road near school hasn’t been gritted. It is still snowing now and not due to stop for several hours. We have taken the difficult decision to close, which those of you who have had children at St Barnabas for a while know, we haven’t taken lightly, as we always try to stay open. However as the children know, my number one job is to keep everyone safe and that includes the children, staff and parents. Several of our staff live far away and are unable to get into school safely and it isn’t safe for our children or parents to be travelling to school. The snow is drifting in places as we seem to have our micro-climate up at St Barnabas! Our teachers will be in touch with remote learning and you are all welcome to join virtual celebration worship at 9.05am. Further details to follow. Please keep safe and I hope the children are able to enjoy the snow once it is safe to do so. Thank you in advance for your understanding. ❄️ ⛄️
Year 5- Collective Worship
During our class worship today, we discussed the importance of looking after wild animals in our local area. Through class discussion, we learned that the children have spotted dears, rabbits, hedgehogs, and squirrels in their areas. The children were shocked and sad to learn that from around 3.5 million to only 750,000 hazel door mice numbers have dropped. We then reminded ourselves about the story from the Bible (Noah's Ark), Noah did what he was asked by God and he cared for the animals. We can care for and protect animals like Noah did. The children have suggested bird feeders, and building homes using twigs and branches on the school grounds during forest school sessions for the animals. Our British Value of' Democracy' teaches children to speak and take action and the children have decided to do just that.
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Year 5 - Young Geographers-What lies beneath the surface of the Earth?
This afternoon in our Geography lesson, the Year 5 geographers watched a short clip on how Earthquakes occur. We then used a boiled egg to grasp a deeper understanding of how tectonic plates move. The plates come in different sizes and shapes and move when there is too much pressure. The children moved on and worked in pairs to identify the Earth's surface on a map and explore why they think earthquakes happen. They noticed that the plates were either moving in the opposite direction, away from each other and towards each other which created a fault. They also labelled the core, crust, and mantle parts of the Earth in their books.
World Book Day Competition
During World Book Day, we held a whole school competition to create a book cover. All of the entries were excellent! Well done to: Cassidy in Year 1 Nevaeh in Year 2 Matthew in Year 4 Sienna in Year 5 Charlotte in Year 6 The children will all receive a £5 voucher to spend at our Scholastic book fair which will be at school between 15th-21st March. A huge well done to our winners and for everyone who took part. Just a reminder that our author Raysa Farah’s book is still available on parent pay to purchase. The last date to purchase the book will be next Friday.
Let Girls Play Campaign
Today to celebrate International Women’s Day we supported the FA’s campaign to ‘Let Girls Play’ by wearing sports kits in school, fun football sessions and 8 girls attended the biggest EVER football session at St Bede’s. It was absolutely freezing but the girls didn’t let that stop them and they really got stuck into the football sessions. We are hopeful to have some future lionesses in our school. Well done girls, we are so proud of you all! ⚽️
Year 5 - Computing - Animation
Today for computing we have been learning how to make our pictures look 3D. After some practice sketching the children then tried to transfer these skills onto the computer.
Verse speaking competition
This afternoon some of our super talented children took part in a verse speaking competition at QEGS, with other local schools in our school improvement group. They each had to perform a poem in front of a large audition and a judge called Paul Jenkins, who is a poet. We are so proud of them as they showed lots of courage and performed with confidence. A huge well done to Freya for winning her category. We really enjoyed listening to Paul perform his poems and it was wonderful to watch the other children perform too.
Scrooge by Charles Dickens
This morning all of the children enjoyed watching a theatrical production of Scrooge, which is a stage adaptation of the classic story 'A Christmas Carol', which was written by Charles Dickens. We were so proud of how well they joined in and the performers said they were a fantastic audience and couldn’t praise our school enough for the warm welcome they received. The children said 'It was even better than the film', 'It was amazing', 'I loved the songs' 'Everyone needs to show kindness' and our Year 6 children said this had made them even more excited to go and see the Lion King in London with school in a couple of weeks! The classic story highlighted our school focus on kindness as mean Scrooge learnt to be kind after being visited by three spirits who showed him the error of his ways. A huge well done to Daisy for showing lots of courage when she was chosen to join the actors on stage. Thank you so much FOSB for paying for the performance. It was a delight to see the childrens' faces as they were a picture and made several of our staff team, including myself, rather emotional watching them. What a great end to world book day week!
Forest School- Lunchtime Club
What a brilliant first week of Forest School we’ve had! We’ve had an introduction to forest school and some time to get to know each other and our likes and dislikes. The children have been so enthusiastic and excited to give ideas on how they want our new forest school area to look and what they would like to focus on. We have some children who are fountains of knowledge when it comes to mini beasts and wildlife, these children are really excited to create bug houses, bird feeders and bird boxes. We have some children who are keen gardeners who would like to plant some new flowers and vegetables. We are looking forward to seeing what next week has in store for us.
Year 5- Design and Technology- Electrical System
This term in D.T. the Year 5 class has been applying knowledge of circuits to practical activities. The children worked in small groups to create a moving toy vehicle using a battery-powered electric car that is able to move forward and reverse as well as having lights that can be switched on and off, they have made an air conditioning unit, a windmill, floating boat, and a floating ball. The children took inspiration from a parent engineer, who left a set of materials for us to work with, including a battery, a DVD motor with a connector, and a propeller. The children were thrilled with the outcome.
Year 5- Music with Mr Gardiner
In Music, the Year 5 class had the opportunity to sing their hearts out in their pyjamas. They were all in full spirit and enjoyed every minute of it.
Year 5- World Book Day- Happy Reading
The Year 5 students have had an absolute blast celebrating 'World Book Day'. The children came dressed in their pyjamas which linked to the theme 'Bedtime Stories'. We carried out a series of fun activities to inspire everyone to pick up a book and read. We started the day with the whole school worship, we played guess the book and listened to Mrs. Ham read about her favourite author Charles Dickens. We also joined BBC live to listen to stories read by Michael Rosen and Kevin Tsang. We also had a visit from an author Raysa Farah who read her story, 'A cub without a mane'. The children had the opportunity to ask the author questions related to the book and her life. In the afternoon, we had a blind date with a book. The children were all given a book to unwrap and discuss the cover and blurb of the book with their partners. We then gathered what the children thought of the cover and blurb, some of the children said they would never pick the book based on the cover and blurb. However, after 10 minutes of reading the book the children wanted to know what happens next. The moral of the activity was to never judge a book by its cover. We also got creative and drew pictures of our favourite characters. Finally, we started to write a story together as a class which demonstrates the power and joy of reading.