Year One- Listening and Following Instructions
To kickstart their new English unit on instructions, Year One had to listen to a series of instructions and carry them out. They thoroughly enjoyed this and were absolutely incredible at it. They did this in the context of creating and then completing an obstacle course. E.g. Firstly, crawl under the hurdle. Secondly, run between the cones. Next, put the hula hoop over your head. After that, side gallop to the quoit. Then, throw the quoit in the air and catch it. Finally, drop the quoit and run back to your team. Year One spotted that instructions need both a time conjunction and a verb. They will also learn about using adverbs as part of their instructional writing and retelling too. What a fantastic start to our unit and even better that it was during mental health week as we know how important exercise is to keep us happy and healthy.
Year 1- Dress to Express
Year 1 made a wonderful effort for ‘Dress to Express Day.’ We had children dressing as their favourite Disney character or princess, dressing as superheroes, dressing in party clothes as they love to party and attend celebrations , dressing as a unicorn, wearing their favourite colours, wearing all things sparkly, wearing football kits and sport clothes to express their love of sports and wearing pyjamas to express their love of relaxing and being snuggled up. Well done Year 1. We loved hearing how you like to express yourselves.
Safer Internet Raps
*PROUD POST* A huge well done to Years 1-4 for their fantastic safer internet raps this morning & to Year 5 for introducing our safer internet worship. Please have a watch of the videos on class dojo. After the Safer Internet Day worship on Tuesday, Mrs Wilkinson set them the challenge of performing a rap to the whole school to advise them how to keep safe online. This week is also Children’s Mental Health week and the theme is My Voice Matters so this was a great opportunity for the children to use their voice. Some of the children were nervous about performing in front of the whole school but they showed lots of courage and did brilliantly. Over the next few years we are going to be involved in an oracy project with our Trust called Voice 21. This will develop our children’s oracy skills and develop their confidence when speaking in small groups and large groups. Well done, you are superstars!
St Barnabas Big Lent Walk
Good morning, Next Wednesday 14th February, is the start of Lent. During Lent, our school will be fundraising for CAFOD. We will be taking part in the big Lent walk where we will collectively try and walk 200km. Please help us to raise as much money as possible by sponsoring our whole school family. If you have been on a walk, please either sponsor and leave a message with how many km you have walked or send me a message and I can update our page. We will also be walking during the school day in our classes to achieve our target so any sponsorship will be greatly appreciated. Your sponsorship can change lives. Every £1 raised through the Big Lent Walk will help fight poverty globally in countries like Afghanistan, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan. This year, CAFOD’s Lent Appeal is helping fishing communities feed their families in Liberia, and SCIAF’s Wee Box Appeal is focused on women and girls in Rwanda facing gender-based violence. Also in Ethiopia, CAFOD and SCIAF are working together to respond to the devastating food crisis there. Years of drought caused by the climate crisis means families are no longer able to cope, but your support means we are working with people right now, providing them with water, emergency food and healthcare. With your hard work and sponsorship this Lent, we can change families’ lives for good and tell poverty to take a hike. Please access our page here where you can sponsor your child: https://schools.walk.cafod.org.uk/fundraising/st-barnabas-big-lent-walk Thank you for your kindness, Mrs Wilkinson
Year 1 Art- Hundertwasser
Year 1 have been working extremely hard this week to produce a piece of artwork in the style of Hundertwasser. To produce this piece of artwork, they had to use and apply the skills that they’ve been learning in art over the last few weeks such as exploring with various lines (curved, wavy, horizontal, vertical, diagonal and swirls) and shapes (circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, semi-circles and pentagons). Their pieces of artwork are now on display ready to be viewed so please take a look. Well done Year 1!
Year 1 Science
Year 1 have had a challenging science lesson this week exploring whether materials are manufactured or natural. First, we explored natural materials and described these as materials that can be found out in the world either by being collected, farmed or harvested. Examples of these are materials such as wood, rock, iron, wool and sand. We then talked about manufactured materials which are those that don’t exist naturally and have to be created by being heated or by mixed with other substances. Examples of these are materials such as plastic, polyester and paper. What we found very tricky is learning that some materials can be both. For example rubber can be natural if it is the sap that has come directly from the tree but it can also be manufactured using plastic and some metals are natural such as iron but others are manufactured such as steel. Year 1 also watched polyester being made in a factory from recycled bottles and found out that their school polos were made 65% polyester.
Safer Internet Day
This morning our whole school enjoyed a special worship, focusing on how to stay safe on the internet to celebrate Safer Internet Day. We discussed why it is important to raise awareness. We looked at what technology looked like compared to now. We then looked at what can happen online and how important it is that we know what to do if we come across something that makes us feel uncomfortable. The children discussed how we can speak to Mrs Ham, Mrs Wilkinson, our teachers, our sports coaches and our families if we feel we have seen something we shouldn’t have. We also discussed why our parents might check our devices and how our grown ups, including our teachers always want to keep us safe. We then joined lots of other schools from all around the country on a special assembly to discuss safe and unsafe things which may happen online. The importance of passwords, checking the settings so they aren’t sharing information with people they don’t know and also what to do if people they don’t know try to contact them online. Every Wednesday, we post guidance on how to keep safe online. Please have a look and discuss the National Online Safety posters with your children. The online world can be wonderful as long as we know how to use it safely.
Rev Matt’s Worship - Temptation
Today in whole-school worship, Rev Matt talked about temptation and how the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the desert. We thought about what tempts us and what we might do if we wanted to celebrate Lent.
Aladdin Pantomime
This afternoon our whole school family enjoyed a wonderful production of Aladdin by M&M productions. Oh no they didn't! Oh yes they did! It was fabulous to see all of the children joining in through cheering, booing, singing and dancing along to the songs. They particularly enjoyed Mr Prescott and Mr Norris' dancing! The cast said they had never had a school who joined in so well and who all stood up and danced at the end! Thank you so much to our FOSB for their donation and to all of your parent contributions, as without your support, we wouldn't be able to provide such exciting enrichment activities.We hope this has inspired some of our children to audition for our upcoming Barney's Got Talent show next half term. What a fabulous way to end a brilliant week of 'achieving great things' at St Barnabas!
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning, we started our worship by signing the trinity and discussing our week in school. We reflected on our very joyous singing worship that we had on Monday with Mrs Ham and our wonderful worship with Rev Ben about ‘Turning To God’ on Tuesday. We then presented Edward, Ella, Joshua, Luke, Eden, Bella, Ivy, Archie and Isaac as our value award winners this week. Well done to those children for demonstrating kindness, compassion and an excellent attitude and commitment to learning. We also congratulated Year 4 and Year 1 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and Whitehall Park who are our value award winners this week. We then moved on to our out of school achievers. Well done to Holly for achieving her Stage 3 at swimming, Sofia for working hard to achieve lots of new badges at Rainbows including her performance badge, Archie for giving 100% during his football training, Dougie for achieving his white belt at jiu jitsu, Isaac for celebrating his successes in drama and performance with achieving a part in Waterloo Road, Tristen for working hard to achieve his yellow belt in kickboxing, Grace for demonstrating incredible talent in both her acro and lyrical dancing, Jack for achieving Stage 4 in his swimming, Scarlett for getting Rainbow Bear at her netball sessions for demonstrating incredible footwork, Matthew for being awarded with a huge celebratory gold cup for his commitment to a recent tournament whilst representing Manchester United U10s football club, Finn for being elected as the sixer at cubs, Ivy and Betsy for their commitment to both lyrical and acro dancing and also performing an incredible duet together. We then ended our worship with a lovely prayer from Rev Ben and a sing along to ‘Build Up.’ We thank our children for another wonderful week of achieving great things and we look forward to next week. Just a reminder that it is our ‘Dress to Express Day’ next Friday 9th February. We thank all those who attended celebration worship and we wish the the rest of our school family a lovely restful weekend and thank you for your ongoing support too.
Rev Ben's Worship: Turning to God
This week, Rev Ben told us the story of John the Baptist and how he preached about the importance of turning our lives to God. We spent some time thinking about what it means to turn to God.
Year 1- Planning a Story
Year 1 have been working on their own versions of ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.’ They had to change the original settings of the story to those of their own e.g. A desert, zoo, candy/sweet shop, beach, school and farm and change the animal from a bear to one of their own e.g. an elephant, dog, parrot, lion or dragon. Now, they are ready to get to work writing up their new version of the story.