Friday Celebration Worship: Children in Need
This morning in our celebration worship, we gathered as a whole school family to mark Children in Need, offering heartfelt thanks for the generosity shown in raising awareness and funds for such a worthy cause. This week, we have also celebrated the start of Anti-Bullying Week by wearing odd socks, a joyful reminder of the importance of uniqueness and individuality. Together, we reflected on how love, friendship, generosity and kindness can help us use our power for good and stand against bullying and nurture one another’s mental health. Throughout the week, our after-school clubs have brought great excitement and creativity, with children enjoying board games, football, forest school, Warhammer painting and a lively Let’s Go Sing workshop. Reception delighted in a terrific Trekking Tuesday, Year 3 welcomed Rev Ben and enjoyed a memorable visit to Nightingale Farm, and all classes began their new Design & Technology units as they prepare to create products for the Christmas Fair. Our worship continued with the presentation of awards. We celebrated our Value award winners Alfie, Beau and Haydn in EYFS and KS1, and Joshua, Luke and Mason across KS2, for demonstrating an excellent work ethic, thoughtful listening, teamwork, independence and our Christian values. We congratulated the whole of Year 3 for representing our school so beautifully during their farm visit, Darwen Tower as the overall value award winners with an impressive 233 points, and Year 2 and Year 3 as our attendance champions. We then celebrated our out of school star achievers. We celebrated Bo for earning both ‘Player of the Week’ in football and ‘Best in the Cast’ at Made for Stage, Haydn for his ‘Player of the Week’ award and an incredible 27 goals in just seven games, Ralphi for achieving his 5m swimming badge, Poppy for her wonderful dancing, Isabella for being ‘Star of the Day’ in acro, Hendrix and Maggie for completing Stage 1 gymnastics, Jack for his courage and skill as ‘Player of the Match’ with Blackburn Eagles, Marley for her dedication to Brownies, Grace for exceptional success across her dance competition, Freddie for swimming a fantastic 25 metres, Evie for achieving her laughter, communication, drawing and promise badges at Rainbows, Lydia and Naomi for demonstrating kindness, helpfulness and bravery at Rainbows and Brownies, and Ohana in Reception class for swimming an impressive 75 metres. We also celebrated our Year 5/6 football team for their two brilliant league wins last night in the DPSSA Football League and for representing our school proudly at the Blackburn Rovers Senior Ground on Wednesday as part of the KS2 BRFC Kids Cup. Mrs Ham and Mrs Govan then awarded certificates to Luna, Beau, Lyla, Skye, Olivia, Edward, Alana and Naomi for their success in the Spring Vale Ramblers Club Art Competition, with their artwork chosen for display in the Darwen Heritage Centre. Mrs Govan also introduced our Christmas ADVENTure Trail Art competition, inspired by the Nativity story and soon to be showcased in Whitehall Park, with a chocolate treat awaiting all who take part. We closed by thanking Renée, Callie and Harry for their beautiful prayers and offering our appreciation to everyone who joined us in worship, as well as to our whole school community for their continued support. We wish you all a peaceful and restful weekend as we look forward to the busy and joy-filled weeks leading up to Christmas.
Year 4 History - How did Britons respond to the Roman Invasion
In our second history lesson, we looked at how the Britons responded to the Roman invasion and in particular, Queen Boudicca who was in charge of the Iceni Tribe . Through research and watching video clips we learned that the Britons responded to the Roman invasion in different ways: some fought back, but many tribes made peace and agreed to obey Roman laws and pay taxes to keep their kingdoms. A famous example of resistance was Queen Boudicca, who led a major rebellion in AD 60 that destroyed Roman towns like Colchester and London before her army was defeated by the more disciplined Roman soldiers. The children also observed different perceptions of Boudicca and what they could take from photos of her statues. Focusing on both her appearance and personality.
After-School: Board Game Club
Wow, what an amazing first session of Board Game Club! The children showed all 4B’s, it was lovely to see them all taking turns and sharing. The older children were so great with helping the younger children and teaching them some of the games. They all had such a lovely time.
Year 4 Class Council
In our Class Council session this week, Year 4 were asked to discuss the TV series - Traitors. If they were in a situation similar, would they choose to be completely honest or keep a secret in order to win a big prize? The children worked in five seperate groups but their choice was a unanimous decision of keep a secret. They communicated really well with each other and listened to each other’s points. There were a few children who said they would be honest in this situation but the majority of the vote won within each group!
Seasonal Stockings in Year 4 - Exploring and Analysing Products
In DT we have started our new unit on Seasonal Stockings. We looked at what we already know about stockings, what their function is and where the tradition of leaving stockings out at Christmas came from. Following this we shared a variety of Mrs Gardner’s Christmas stockings and had to guess whose was whose. We discussed both function and visual appeal of each of the examples. Finally we choose one of the stockings and answered questions relating directly to both the fiction and appeal then went on to start our very own designs in paper, choosing the colour of the two base felts in preparation.
Year 4 - Linking Schools: Who Am I?
Our Linking Schools project in Year 4 is well underway, beginning with a discussion around the question: Who Am I? We played the Speed Name Game and talked about our likes and dislikes. We then decorated a piece of bunting with our names and symbols to represent the things we like. Next, we will be exploring aspects of our identity and sharing our bunting with our linking class.
Year 4 - PE: Gymnastics Routines
Our Year 4 budding gymnasts began their new unit recapping some of the types of travels they have learned in previous years and perfected their technique. They then chose a routine and worked with a partner to learn and perform their routine for the rest of the class.
Whole School Worship - Power for Good
Our theme in today’s collective worship was “Power for Good”. Continuing our focus on Anti-Bullying Week, Mrs Ham shared some of the fantastic answers the children gave on Monday about standing up to bullying. These included saying stop, being assertive, asking why, and telling a trusted adult. We learned of how Jesus was a power for good, even when others turned against him, and we reflected on the ways in which we can also be a power for good by being a good friend and spotting when someone needs our help. The WOW Group also shared how they are being a power for good, by protecting our planet and leading our school’s Switch Off Fortnight campaign. They shared posters recommending ways to save energy around school, including turning off lights and computer monitors when they are not in use, and they explained that they will be checking how well each class is doing at saving energy every break time and lunchtime during the campaign.
Year 4 - Odd Socks Day
We had some rather whacky sock combinations in Year 4 for Odd Socks Day. The children loved showing off their unique styles. In PSHE, we watched a CBBC video of Andy and the Odd Socks and learned a bit about bullying and how we can ensure we show friendship to others. The children then designed their own odd sock to represent what friendship means to them.
Friday Celebration Worship
This morning in celebration worship, we reflected on a wonderful first week back to start the second half of our Autumn term. This week, we have remembered all those who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice their lives for us, and we observed a special two-minute silence. We would like to thank everyone who has supported the Poppy Appeal; our poppy merchandise will continue to be available next week. We then presented our individual value award winners in EYFS, KS1 and KS2. Well done to our worthy winners Hunter, Finn, Inaiya, Elijah, Chay, Harriet and Quinn for consistently demonstrating the Barney’s 4Bs, working extremely hard across the curriculum, producing work of an exceptional standard and showing a genuine desire to always improve. A huge well done also goes to Elijah, Chay, Isaac, Lana, Lyla, Cassidy, Naomi and Emily for achieving their pen licences—we know how hard you have all worked for this accomplishment. We also congratulated Whitehall Park as our overall value award winners for the week, along with Year 1 and Year 5 for achieving the highest attendance. Moving on, we celebrated the wonderful achievements of our children who have been excelling outside of school in their various sports and activities. Well done to Beau for being a mighty defender in football, Ida and Leila for showing impressive skill in stop, starting and steering during horse riding, Callie for demonstrating outstanding floor and vault work in gymnastics, Ava for her generosity at Rainbows and for achieving Star of the Week at Street Dance, Lana for her performing arts award, Theo for earning her drawing interest badge and Star of the Week in gymnastics for exceptional beam work, Olivia for achieving her 20m swimming certificate, Lyla for her success in lyrical, jazz and commercial dance, Olivia again for achieving her Level 1 gymnastics award, Isaac for demonstrating exceptional football skills at the Everton Academy experience, Rosie for being a superstar Brownie and earning several badges, Martha for achieving her 10m swimming award, Lydia for earning her laughter badge at Rainbows and for being extremely helpful, and Eleanor for achieving both her Rainbow Silver Award and a laughter badge. In other news, our Wellbeing Warriors also announced Year 3 as the winning class for having the most walkers in October and proudly shared that our school placed third in the borough for the highest number of walkers overall, our Sports Leaders presented India Mill as the Inter-house Dodgeball Competition winners from before the holidays, and we also congratulated our Year 5/6 Boys Football Team, who represented our school brilliantly and achieved two wins in the BwD Football League last night. Looking ahead, we are excited to continue our Scholastic Book Fair next week, to wear odd socks on Monday as we launch Anti-Bullying Week, and to end the week by wearing spots, pyjamas or Pudsey attire in support of Children in Need next Friday. Thank you to our wonderful school family for their support this week and always. Wishing you all a lovely weekend.
Value Award Winner Disco- India Mill
Today, India Mill enjoyed a well-deserved non-uniform day and disco to celebrate their success as the overall Value Award winners for last half-term. As part of this, they enjoyed a game of bonfire themed corners followed by a game of musical bumps. Well done to everyone for your fantastic achievement!
Year 4 English - Escape From Pompeii
Our new class novel is Escape From Pompeii by Christina Balit. In today’s sessions we have continued to use sentence stacking to develop and construct better sentences. We started by adding a fronted adverbial by watching the main character Tranio and recording how he feels about living in Pompeii at the start of the story. We then moved into a modelled sentence and then an independent one with a different fronted adverbial. In our next sentence, we referred back to our experience day and described the size of Mount Vesuvius using words such as colossal and humongous. Finally we used the same modelling to construct a sentence thinking about how Tranio feels about living in such a beautiful part of the world. The children produced some very effective sentences, using the success criteria to ensure they added all of the key parts.