Hot Air Balloon Landing

Year 1 and 2 wrote their own adventure stories about meeting pirates who were either hunting for or escaping with precious treasure. Up in KS2: Year 3 and 4 wrote some fantastic stories about travelling to imaginary worlds in the hot air balloon, Year 5 made up their own plays about an explorer's unusual voyages and Year 6 wrote some super descriptions about the balloon's last moments before crashing. The week was a huge success as every child really enjoyed developing their story writing skills and learning how to include lots of exciting vocabulary to interest the reader.

The whole school were: shocked, surprised and amazed one morning in January when a hot air balloon crash landed onto the junior playground! Why had it crashed? Who was travelling in it? Why had they disappeared? The children's answers to these questions inspired them to spend the rest of the week doing lots of creative writing work in their literacy lessons... Reception acted out their journey to a cold land, where they believed the balloon had come from, to help out a sad polar bear and penguin.

World Book Day

To celebrate World Book day the teachers visited different classes to read extracts from their favourite stories and everyone took part in a book-themed Harlem Shake dance which has now had over 3,000 views on YouTube from across the world!

Chinese New Year

KS1 children enjoyed having a Chinese New Year afternoon to celebrate the start of the year of the snake. They rotated around the different classrooms to: make lanterns, do dragon dances and taste traditional Chinese food like noodles.

Shrove Tuesday

Many classes enjoyed making their own pancakes (and putting delicious toppings on them) to learn about Shrove Tuesday being the last day before Lent.

Journalist Visit

A journalist from MEN Media came in to visit Year 6 during one morning's literacy lesson. She gave them feedback on the news reports they'd been writing and translated some of them into shorthand.

Eco Event

Our eco-councillors visited St Edward's Primary where they made little purses using recycled milk cartons and went outside to meet the farm animals that are kept there.

The Creepy Crawly Show

The whole school enjoyed watching a special show to learn about a range of tropical animals. The children loved meeting and holding lots of creatures like: a tarantula, a terrapin, a python and two corn snakes - one of our Year 6's was even brave enough to kiss a cockroach!

Red Nose Day

Everyone enjoyed wearing red noses and clothes to help raise money for this year's Comic Relief appeal.

Playground to Podium

Some of our KS2 children enjoyed visiting Kingsway Sports Centre to take part in a 'Playground to Podium' athletics event. This is part of a national programme set up after the 2012 Paralympics to get children involved in sports .

Family Disco

The PTFA organised another fun family disco with a DJ to help raise money for the school.

Egg-citing Easter Celebrations

The whole school had another 'egg'-citing time celebrating Easter this year in the final week of the spring term.

Years: 1, 3 and 5 visited All Saints and Martyrs church to learn about the different parts of the Easter story whilst in school, the children had lots of fun showing off their Easter bonnets and decorated eggs they had made in the annual competition.

Then, on the last day of term, parents joined the Easter service at Holy Trinity Church to sing songs and watch each class' contributions, which included: explaining how Easter is celebrated in different countries of the world, singing about Spring chickens and reading out some Easter-inspired prayers.

Learning Logs

The new homework style that has been recently introduced is becoming very popular among the children. They are each given a grid of nine activities covering a range of different tasks linked to a topic (like: writing, researching and making) from which they must choose at least six to complete at home each half-term in a special 'Learning Log' book. The quality of the work being brought in has been outstanding - not only is it extremely creative and very interesting to read, but it's also shown that our children are really keen to continue their learning at home!

Created by Mr. Haughton

UNICEF

Many thanks to all the children who donated money for this year's UNICEF Day for Change campaign which we supported.

Reading Buddies

Our KS2 'reading buddies' have enjoyed sharing our new story sacks with some of our reception children in the library.

Play in a Day

Year 6 performed an awesome retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth after spending just one day rehearsing it!

Class Assemblies

Two more class assemblies have taken place this term:

Year 1 Year 1 recounted their work on 'Sharks and Shipwrecks' by explaining about a floating and sinking science experiment they had done and by showing some Pirate maps they had drawn in geography lessons.

Year 2 Year 2 explained about the Chinese New Year festival in their assembly. They: re-enacted the origins of the celebration, did a dragon dance and told each class what animal's year they were born in.

Skipton Castle Trip

Year 1 and 2 visited Skipton Castle in March. They were given a guided tour of the rooms inside and enjoyed looking at all of its defensive battlements.