Image of KS2 World Book Day Assembly
7 Mar

KS2 World Book Day Assembly

Thank you to our wonderful KS2 children for their fantastic engagement with this morning’s World Book Day assembly. Mrs Ham introduced the assembly by telling the children all about the word that she had come dressed as which was ‘onomatopoeia.’ The children then watched a video published by the literacy trust which gave them some top tips for choosing an appropriate book such as deciding if the genre is of interest to them, reading the blurb and ensuring that there are no more than 5 words that they can’t understand on the first page. They then joined in with a three part quiz. During the first round, the children had to identify the title of a book by looking at the front cover. This included book titles such as The Naughtiest Unicorn, Grimwood, Mac B Kid Spy, The Storey Treehouse collection, The Accidental Prime Minister, The Babysitters Club, Loki and Breakfast Club Adventures. The second round consisted of guessing the authors of certain books such as J.K. Rowling, Andy Stanton and Francesca Simon and the third round consisted of playing emoji Pictionary with books such as Goldfish Boy, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, Ninja Kid and Daisy and the Trouble With. All of the books that were on the quiz are books that we have in our library so we are hoping that our children now feel inspired to sample a book that they haven’t yet read. The librarians also awarded Annabelle and Miley with their book token as they were the KS2 winners of our ‘Design a Bookmark with Your Favourite Book Title’ competition. Annabelle‘s bookmark showed her love of the ‘The 13 Storey Treehouse’ collection of books and Miley’s showed her love of the ‘Daisy and the Trouble With’ collection of books.

Image of World Book Day- Dress as a word
7 Mar

World Book Day- Dress as a word

Happy world book day! The children have loved seeing all of our staff team dressed as different words and have had great fun guessing their lords. We have had some brilliant challenging vocabulary from onomatopoeia to metamorphosis! Can you guess the words?

Image of World Book Day- Reading for Pleasure
7 Mar

World Book Day- Reading for Pleasure

As part of our World Book Day celebrations, all of our teachers and teaching assistants swapped classes and read to a group of children in a different year group. The children loved being read to by a different adult to usual and our teaching staff thoroughly enjoyed promoting reading for pleasure.

Image of Let’s Go Sing concert 2024
6 Mar

Let’s Go Sing concert 2024

Wow, we are so proud of our school choir for their amazing singing and enthusiastic actions this evening at the Let’s go sing concert at King George’s Hall. I’ve loaded some videos onto class dojo and the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/let-s-go-sing-concert-2024 A huge thank you to Mrs Govan for her wonderful leadership of our choir and to Mrs Wilkinson for her support this afternoon. Thank you to all of our choir parents for their support in helping the children learn their words and for supporting them this evening. We are hoping to have more choir members next year and will be opening choir open to more KS2 children in the next few weeks. If your child is interested in joining, they are welcome to come along on Thursday lunchtimes to give it a try. It was an absolute pleasure to watch our children sing their hearts out. They will be performing their favourite song in worship on Friday. You are very welcome to join us.

Image of World Book Day Competition
6 Mar

World Book Day Competition

A few weeks ago, our school librarians set a whole school competition. This was to design a bookmark with their favourite book and explain why. Today, the school librarians and our English link governor have been judging our World Book Day competition ready to announce in our World Book Day assembly tomorrow.

Image of FOSB Mother’s Day Breakfast
6 Mar

FOSB Mother’s Day Breakfast

A huge thank you to our members of FOSB and staff who supported at our special Mother’s Day breakfast this morning. Thank you to everyone who came and we hope you enjoyed it. Wishing all of our school family Mums and Grandmas a wonderful relaxing Mother’s Day on Sunday. All of the photos can be found here: https://www.stbarnabasdarwen.co.uk/photo-galleries/fosb-mother-s-day-breakfast

Image of Year 5&6 Big Lent Walk
6 Mar

Year 5&6 Big Lent Walk

Today, Year 5&6 completed their big lent walk. The children walked through Jacks Key and around the local area and completed 4.5km each so that's 265.5km towards the school's 2000km target.

Image of KS2 Author Visit
6 Mar

KS2 Author Visit

Yesterday, the children in KS2 were lucky enough to have a visit from Richard Alker. Richard is the author of the book ‘My Grandad vs the Fangazoo’. The children were truly immersed in his session and had many questions to ask Richard about his life and how he became an author. During the session, he discussed various things: what inspired him to write, character development, simple strategies he uses when writing and finally the children had the chance to listen to a book reading. Thank you Richard!

Image of Year 5&6 Football Festival
5 Mar

Year 5&6 Football Festival

A huge well done to our year 5&6 B team who took part in a football festival. The team represented the school amazingly well; demonstrating lots of team spirit and dedication to the game. The team ended the festival unbeaten. Congratulations to all the team, we are hugely proud of you all.

Image of Year 5 - Dance - Earthlings
5 Mar

Year 5 - Dance - Earthlings

Year 5 have been continuing their dance unit this half term all based around earthlings. The children used their scientific knowledge of planets to create a dance sequence that would represent their chosen planet. The children focused on: movement, levels, transitions, expression and emotion while creating their sequence. All the children performed their sequence and then used constructive feedback to improve their performances.

Image of Year 5 - Orienteering
5 Mar

Year 5 - Orienteering

This week, Year 5 continued with practising their orienteering skills. The children worked well in teams to read maps and locate items based around the school. The children understood the concept of orientation and navigated their maps well in order to complete their tasks in the most efficient way.

Image of KS2- Author Visit-R.K. Alker
5 Mar

KS2- Author Visit-R.K. Alker

To celebrate World Book Day and foster a love for reading, we welcomed children's book author RK Alker today. He shared insights into his journey before becoming an author, recounting experiences such as growing chillies and collaborating with celebrities like Gordon Ramsay. Before pursuing writing, RK worked as an ambulance man until a leg injury led him to reconsider his career path. Inspired by his daughters, he fulfilled his lifelong dream of writing a book. During his talk, RK emphasised the importance of creative writing prompts and utilising the five senses to enhance writing. He introduced the children to his character Stretch the Dragon by reading chapter 7 from his current best-selling book 'My Grandad Vs the Fanga Zoo,' leaving it on a cliffhanger. RK hopes to get a word he made up, 'oopositollogy' (which means the opposite of opposite), into a dictionary one day. To end the visit, RK told funny jokes that had the children laughing their socks off.