Image of Year 6 World Book Day
7 Mar

Year 6 World Book Day

Year 6 have had a fantastic World Book Day! After a fantastic assembly led by Miss Flynn, as a year group, year 6 developed their own dictionary. They found the meaning of their word, wrote a sentence containing that word and provided some symbolic imagery to enhance the meaning. In addition, year 6 also took part in a ‘book tasting’ session and added book titles to their wish lists that they took home. They followed a three stage process when choosing their books: do I like the front cover? Do I like the sound of the story from the blurb? And finally, can I access the language inside the book?

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 Year 6 P.E.
6 Mar

Year 6 P.E.

In P.E. Year 6 continued to develop their forehand and backhand strokes. The children who were demonstrating consistency in those strokes started to develop rallies with the net being used as an obstacle. It was important that the children continued to apply the basics, but react to the bounce of the ball by moving their feet quickly.

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 6 Science
5 Mar

Year 6 Science

This week, we started our new unit in Science, which is all about evolution and inheritance. We looked at the term ‘Natural Selection’ and discovered that if an animal is unable to adapt to its surroundings, it is more likely to become extinct. We then carried out an investigation involving some matchsticks on the MUGA. This demonstrated the benefits of being camouflaged and how animals are more likely to survive if they blend into their surroundings. The green matchsticks were picked up the least; however, numerous multicoloured matchsticks were not so lucky as they were gathered by our predators.

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.

Image of Rev Ben’s Worship- Jesus welcomes the children
4 Mar

Rev Ben’s Worship- Jesus welcomes the children

This morning in Collective Worship Rev Ben started with a fun game where we all had to touch our nose, then stand on one leg, then whilst hopping, then whilst turning around and finally whilst shouting 'Good morning Mrs Ham'. We discussed how the busier you get, the harder it can be to do things. He then read us a story from the Bible about how everyone wanted to see Jesus and how his disciples thought he was too busy and important to see the children. However, they were wrong as Jesus welcomed the children and said that adults could learn from the example of children and that he is never too busy. We reflected on how we are sometimes so busy but it helps us to know that Jesus is never too busy to listen to us. We finished by singing Jesus strong and kind and My God's the King of Giants. Thank you Rev Ben for another brilliant Worship!