Year 4 Dodgeball Festival
Our Year 4 dodgeball team were amazing at the BWD Dodgeball Festival and showed lots of skill and determination. They demonstrated wonderful sportsmanship through congratulating each team and shaking hands after each game. They also had lots of fun!
Whole School Worship - World Toilet Day
In worship yesterday, we looked through our spirituality windows and out into the world on toilets. We were shocked and saddened to find out that around 700 children under 5 die every year due to poor sanitation. We heard about Jeremiah in Kenya who doesn’t have access to a toilet. In his community, people would mostly use a hole in the ground or a plastic bag, which some people would tie up and throw on other people’s roofs. We talked about how this affects people’s health and shared ideas of what we could do to help. The children then learned about our Toilet Twinning project for which we raised money a few years go to sponsor the building and maintenance of toilets in Nepal, Uganda, Tanzania, and Afghanistan. We reflected on how we should never take our toilets for granted and thought of ways we could save loo paper and water.
Year 4 Seasonal Stockings - Bringing our design to life
In this week’s DT session, the children tried to bring their design to life. They got their two felt stockings and separated them so they could start to sew on their extra pieces which included snow men, Christmas trees, love hearts and their initials. The children really persevered with quite complex skills which was great to see. We can’t wait until the next session to add even more appliqué and create wonderful vibrant Christmas stockings.
Voice 21 development in Year 4
In this session we looked at what Voice 21 is and how it supports us in developing our speaking and listening skills. Building practice into our curriculum allows us to articulate ideas, develop understanding and engage with others through spoken language and listening. We practised using our body language to show that we are listening, experimented with adjusting our tone, volume and pace and how to nest our ideas. We focused on learning the ‘Talk Tactics’ which included: Instigate, Build and Challenge. Through this we used diagnostic questions to develop these three key focuses.
KS2 - Fun in the Snow
Our classes in Years 3 to 6 had a whale of a time in the snow yesterday. They made snowmen and snow sculptures of varying sizes. We even had some Year 5s using a mould to create duckling sculptures.
Year 4 - Class Worship: How Do We Know Who We Are?
We had an extremely thought-provoking class worship today. We found out about Amur, a Muslim boy in Denmark, using Lyfta. He shared a small snapshot of his daily life and explored the question “Who am I?” The discussion which followed was the perfect opportunity for us to practise our talk tactics and listening skills as we shared our opinions on who Amir is as a person, whether or not we thought he was a good person, and how we could tell. There was a lot of agreement among the children with some building on others’ ideas, and a couple of respectful disagreements.
Year 4 - Smart School Council
The children were very enthusiastic about the Smart School Council question this time. They were asked whether or not they’d like to take part in NO PENS DAY. The answer was a resounding yes, with some children choosing ‘tidying up the war graves’ as an activity. There were many different reasons for their choices, including giving their hands a rest, making time for games and doing things for other people in our community. We’re now hoping for a YES from the rest of the school.
Year 4 - Science: Teeth
Our current science topic has definitely got the Year 4s buzzing. This week we explored our own teeth using mirrors, counted them with our tongues, learned about the different types of teeth and then recorded our findings on a diagram using a key. We watched a video of an investigation, which demonstrated what would happen if we had a mouth full of just one type of tooth and we wrote about the functions of each tooth type. There was even enough time to recap tooth brushing habits: two times a day for two minutes, tickling every tooth!
Little Craft Club: Dinosaur Week
This week at The Little Craft Club, it was Dinosaur week! The children used problem solving skills to make paper plate dinosaurs without instructions. They also created exploding volcanoes using paint in a spray bottle… this was lots of fun! The children finished by working together as a team to clean and tidy the Rainbow Room. Next week is the final Little Craft Club of term and the children are excited to be making some cold climate creatures.
Children in Need 2024
Our Y6 Heads and Deputies asked everyone to dress in pyjamas or spots to show our support for Children in Need this year. Yesterday we had a special visit from Pudsey Bear and Christine from Asda. They told us all about how Asda are raising money for Children in Need and they said a special thank you to us all for our fundraising to help children who are less fortunate than us. Thank you so much to our staff, children and parents for the effort you have gone to in dressing in your pyjamas or spots and thank you for your generous donations on parent pay. Together we can make a positive difference to the lives of so many disadvantaged children around our country.
Friday Celebration Worship
Today, we started our celebration worship by reflecting on our very special and busy week in school. This week has seen us celebrate Remembrance Day, Anti-Bullying Week, Inter-Faith Week and Children in Need. We then congratulated our individual value award winners. Well done to Beau, Leila and Roman in EYFS and KS1 and Emily, Olivia, Mason and Daisy in KS2 as our individual value award winners. Well done to these children for working exceptionally hard across the curriculum, demonstrating our Christian Values. We also presented Emily with an additional award for achieving her pen license, our Year 5/6 football team for bouncing back from last week’s defeat and representing school with exemplary behaviour and brilliant sportsmanship which saw them win two matches at the Darwen School’s League last night, Year 1 and Year 6 on being our amazing attendance winners this week and River Darwen as the overall value award winners this week with 404 points. We then congratulated our out of school achievers. Well done to Ava for taking part in Remembrance Day at Bold Venture Park, Callie for always listening and following instructions beautifully during her singing, dancing and acting lessons at Stage Coach, Seb for getting ‘Man of the Match’ and ‘Trainer of the Week’ at football, Elijah for achieving ‘Player of the Week’ at football for mastering a new skill called the step over, Finn for achieving ‘Player of the Day’ at Football and achieving ‘Most Improved Player’ for his cricket team, Quinn, April, Walter, Eve and Percy for attending the ‘Little Potting Club’ at Whitehall Park and achieving an environmentalist award, Beau for achieving 5m in her swimming, Jack for being awarded with his Stage 6 swimming certificate, James for attending the remembrance service with Beavers and Haydn for showing super skills in a recent football match. To end our worship, we had three beautiful prayers from Darcy, Olivia and Mason who thought about fuelling children in need with food and remembering those who sacrificed their lives for us and we sang ‘Build Up’ to reinforce the message of ‘building each other up’ this Anti-Bullying Week. We thank all those who could attend celebration worship and we said an extended thank you to the rest of our school family for all of your continued support. We wish you all a lovely and restful weekend.
Street Dance 3 in Year 4
In our third dance session we revised all of our previous dance moves and then added another which was called a top rock. We continued to build our group dance with step cross, step cross, scoop up the sweets, push, push, cross, cross. The moves were done at a quicker pace this week so the children found it quite challenging but everyone worked really hard to improve their ability to join the moves successfully.