Reception - Hello Yellow Day
Reception have enjoyed raising awareness for Young Minds through wearing yellow today and taking part in lots of activities that enhance our happiness. We took part in some cosmic yoga to calm our minds, created beautiful pictures and talked about different feelings from the film ‘inside out.’ The children were very thoughtful about their feelings and what we can do when we are feeling sad, scared or angry.
Friday Celebration Worship and Hello Yellow Day
This morning, we enjoyed an extra special celebration worship to mark ‘Hello Yellow’ Day for World Mental Health Day. We began by exploring the range of emotions we all experience and discussed ways to lift our spirits when we're feeling down, with thoughtful suggestions like listening to favourite music, taking deep breaths, watching a funny film, reading a book, singing wholeheartedly, having a cuddle, or counting to ten. To boost our mood even further, we had a joyful singalong to Golden by K-pop and lit candles to pray for those facing mental health challenges. We then celebrated our Value Award winners across the school—well done to Coban, Reggie, Olly and Percy in EYFS and KS1, and to Harry, Olivia, Carter and Jenson in KS2—for their outstanding attitudes to learning and for consistently demonstrating our Barney’s 4Bs. Congratulations also to India Mill for being our overall Value Award winners with an impressive 979 points, as well as to EYFS and Year 2 for 100% attendance in the infants and Year 3 for an excellent 99.3% in the juniors. Mrs Ham shared the fantastic news that we had 100% attendance across the whole school on Tuesday. We also celebrated the achievements of our pupils beyond the classroom—well done to Mason for swimming 5m, Chester for earning ‘Player of the Week’ as a goalkeeper at Darwen FC, Phoebe for her wonderful dancing, Callie for her gymnastics skills, Callie and Alice for completing the Summer Reading Challenge, Grace for excelling in a recent dance competition with acro, song and dance, classical and her own choreography, Harry for achieving his yellow belt in kickboxing, Thea for being named Star of the Week in gymnastics, Scarlett for being a superstar netballer and earning Player of the Match, Willow for achieving her Puffin award in swimming and Star of the Week in gymnastics, and Eleanor for earning her Stage 4 in swimming, her recycling badge at Rainbows and completing the Summer Reading Challenge. A huge congratulations also went to our brilliant Year 4/5 Girls Football Squad for their outstanding performance in the Girls DPSSA Football League, and to the group of eight Year 2 children who represented our school so brilliantly in the Key Stage 1 Multi Skills Festival. To finish our worship, Mrs Ham reminded us of the upcoming Harvest Family Service at St Barnabas Church this Sunday at 11am, and how we hope to see as many of our children there as possible for a joyful Harvest singalong. We are also proud to be supporting Year 5 and the Rotakids in their campaign to collect as many shoeboxes as possible filled with essentials for local refugees and The Bishop's Harvest Appeal 2025—please see Class Dojo for further information.
Year 1 English: Fact hunt
In our English lesson today, we were looking for facts about Emperor Penguins which will help us to write our non-chronological reports over the next two weeks. The children had to find a fact around the room, remember it and come and write it in the correct box in their English books. They all tried really hard and showed our 4B’s whilst moving around the room: be ready, be safe, be kind, be respectful.
DPSSA Girls Football
Our St Barnabas girls’ team did amazingly well today! They showed great teamwork and determination, earning hard-fought draws against St James’ Lower Darwen and St Cuthbert’s, before securing a fantastic 1–0 win against St Paul’s. We’re so proud of their effort, skill and sportsmanship throughout the matches.
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Year 6 - History
Today, Year 6 had a visit from Diana Killey, who as a child, attended St Barnabas in the 1940s. She spoke to the children about what life was like growing up during that time and shared her experiences as a child of war. Diana described her daily life and spoke about the strong sense of community that developed during those years. The children were fascinated by her stories and asked many thoughtful questions, showing great curiosity and respect for her experiences.
Whole school Rev. Ben Worship
Today in Rev. Ben’s Worship we looked at The Story of Jacob, who was a cheat and he wasn’t kind at all as he tricked his brother out of a special gift from his father. God saw Jacob's wrong doings and still showed his family generosity. If we make the wrong choices sometimes, God will always forgive us, showing us grace and love.
Reception Maths - Subitising Bingo
This week in Maths, Reception have been really focusing on their subitising skills and have applied this quick thinking to a game of Bingo! We took turns to roll a die of 1-3 and subitised the images on our boards to match the numeral to the amount. Once we had covered all the images on our board we shouted ‘Bingo!’ We really enjoyed playing this game together.
Year 4 English - Information Texts
Over the past few weeks in English, we have been building an information text based on The Amazon which links with our current geography unit. This week, we have been using all of the key pieces of information that we have collected and adding these to a grid which includes a page title, headings, subheadings, opening statement, diagrams. Bulletin points and text boxes. We also added in specific grammar content which included determiners including quantifiers and demonstratives, commas for clauses and paragraphs. The end product was super and the children loved sharing their examples with each other and used peer evaluation confidently.
Year 5 - Music
In music, Year 5 listened to reggae music in order to develop their critical analysis. Then they developed their songwriting and composing skills on the glockenspiel before performing their music to the class.
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Year 5 - RE
In RE, we explored the Jewish sacred text called the Torah. We discussed the role that the Torah plays in worship at the synagogue and how it compares and contrasts to the Christian Bible. The children then wrote their names in Hebrew and we placed spiritual words on our prayer tree.
Year 4 Art - Optical Illusions Part 2
In the second part of our art lesson on optical illusions, we finished our designs. First we collected our packs that we had prepared in the previous lesson which included our A3 folded card, picture one chopped into strips and picture two chopped into strips. Next we took out the card and our first picture laying the strips one by one onto the card. Once we knew there were all correct in the right order and the right way up, we glued them down with pva glue. We then repeated this process with the other picture to complete the piece. The children have worked so hard on this art project and we can’t wait to see them up in the hall to showcase every individual work of art.
Online Safety: Dealing with traumatic and challenging events
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