Here are our new School Councillors who will be representing each year group in School over the next 12months.
Every pupil in school was given the opportunity to vote for the person they thought would listen to the views of others, be willing to work hard, have good ideas and be able to suggest ways to raise funds to support charities and improve our school.
More news from our team will follow soon!
Nursery and Reception children in EYFS have been turning detective this week and discovering all about fossils. The story ‘A girl called Mary’ kicked off our learning, introducing the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning. There has been much excitement watching videos about the process of fossilisation, thinking about what the animal or plant may have looked like whilst it was alive and hunting in our playground for fossils hidden in and around our walls. We also enjoyed investigating clay and using it to make our own imprint of a fossil using different resources from our classroom.
Classes 2,3 and 4 all enjoyed action packed sessions with our Cricket Coach John during Tuesday. We worked on a series of different cricket skills including running between the wickets, throwing and catching, hitting and fielding and even over arm bowling too. We then put these all together in a non stop cricket game. Look out for cricket club, starting in the summer term.
**STOP PRESS** In Celebration Assembly, all our fantastic runners showed off their medals and were presented with certificates of achievement. Mrs Coker announced that our Y4 and Y3 girls won the team event for Y5 and under girls team competition and were proudly presented with their shield and certificates – many congratulations one and all!
Very sadly our winter X Country running season drew to an end last Friday, but what a season it has been!
The staff have had the very best of times, every Friday after school, running through, mud, rain, sleet, slurried fields – no end to what we got up to alongside our pupil running buddies. Poor weather was just an enhanced challenge to us!
The third and final event of the running calendar, was the grand finale X Country Championships at Windermere St. Anne’s School where, on Wednesday last week, our teams ran themselves into the history books with a 3rd place in the Yr6 Boys event, and a first place, Elleray Shield Champions, in the Girls Yr5 and Under race (with all of our participants Yr4 or Yr3), how good is that!
Aside from team performances, there were individual goals achieved and running resilience and support for team mates that could not have been bettered, we were proud to the point of being tearful.
We then all enjoyed the most fabulous celebratory run together on Friday evening, through Levens Park, finishing with hot chocolate and cakes at Mrs Mason’s Farm – what a week, what an occasion!
The last thing to say is to wish Dougal the best of luck in the National Finals at Leicester on 26th March. Good luck Dougal, we will all be thinking of you!
Running Club starts again next September, when we look forward to welcoming back our existing fellow runners, and hopefully encouraging some new running friends as well.
Thank you for your support on our ‘Day for Ukraine’ last Friday which raised a staggering £452, which included a very generous donation from one pupil’s grandfather.
Every penny will be forwarded to one of the DEC’s (Disaster Emergency Committee) 15 charities to support refugees affected by this terrible crisis in Ukraine.
Next week, every child will be involved in a democratic vote to decide which charity they would like to support, following some input from Class 4 about how the charities that are members of DEC help people in crisis all around the world.
At Levens, we have been celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight. Through our key-stage assemblies in recent weeks, we have been learning about the Fairtrade
Foundation and what it means for a product to be “Fairtrade”. We’ve found out about the conditions that workers around the world sometime have to endure to produce some of the products we take for granted, including bananas, chocolate and even footballs! However, when we buy a product that has the Fairtrade symbol on it, we know that the producer of that product has been paid fairly for the work they have done.
We also learned about the Fairtrade Premium, which is an extra pot of money which Fairtrade producers can access and spend in their communities on a variety of improvements. In class, we role-played this and put ourselves in the shoes of the Ghanaian cocoa farming community. Different groups had different ‘roles’ within the community and had to decide what to spend the money on.
We found that it was fairly easy to agree how to spend the money in a small group of people with the same job, but incredibly hard to decide when different people had different wants and needs! After debating for a long while we made our decision by democratic vote.
In grey – the decisions we made in a group of people with the same role. In orange – what we changed our mind on when debating with the class!
For our homework, we had a range of activities to choose from, all based on Fair Trade. Some of us have created comics, some posters, some art, but my favourite of all has been the three separate Fairtrade chocolate based recipes which the class has been lucky enough to enjoy! Well done to everyone who has got themselves into the spirit of Fair Trade, and a huge thanks to Pam Martin for all of her help in championing Fair Trade in our school.
Today is Safer Internet Day 2022, when schools and youth organisations across the country take part in a global campaign to promote the safe and responsible use of technology. Safer internet day calls on young people, parents, carers, teachers, social workers, law enforcement, companies, policymakers and more to join together in helping to create a better internet.
Using the internet safely and positively is a key message that we promote in school, and celebrating Safer Internet Day is a great opportunity for us to re-emphasise the online safety messages we deliver throughout the year.
This week, Class 1 have listened to a story about Smartie the penguin, joined in with Mummy penguin’s song and learned about what to do if we feel unsure, scared or upset by something we see online. Class 2 have met “Jessie and Friends” and explored how to share pictures online appropriately and use online games responsibly. Class 3 are and Class 4 have both looked in detail at online gaming by teaching an alien from another planet about how online games work, what’s OK, what’s not and where to get help if we need it.
We would be delighted if you could join us in celebrating the day by continuing the conversation at home. To help you with this, you may be interested in downloading the free Safer Internet Day resources for Parents and Carers which are available at: saferinternet.org.uk/sid-parents.
There are top tips, quizzes, and films which you can use at home with your child.
Some other resources which you may find helpful in supporting your child online are:
● Tips, advice and guides for parents and carers from the UK Safer Internet Centre (saferinternet.org.uk/parents-and-carers)
● Advice for parents and carers from Childnet (childnet.com/parents-and-carers)
● Reviews and information about games, apps, TV shows and websites from
Common Sense Media (commonsensemedia.org)
● Help on using parental controls and privacy settings from Internet Matters
(internetmatters.org/parental-controls)
● Information and reporting of online grooming or abuse from CEOP (ceop.police.uk)
This week, we were treated to another of the “experience” series of events by St. Johns church. We’ve previously enjoyed experience Easter and experience Christmas, this time was “experience Church”.
Arriving at church, we found 6 stations waiting for us – each one representing a part of the church and service that the church provides. These included: the font (welcoming); the pulpit (teaching); the prayer desk (praying); stained glass windows (serving) and the altar (celebrating). At each station, we were encouraged to think about how the church serves all of these different functions. We also took part in a special activity to represent each station.
The sixth and final station was saved until the end. Everyone sat down in front of the great wooden door in the side of the church. Here, we learned that the church shares – part of the job is to share the ideas of Christianity with others. The things that we learn in church are designed to be taken out into the world and shared with others. I wonder if any of our children have shared what they learned with you?
Thanks to everyone from St Johns Church who helped to organise and staff this experience for us – it is greatly appreciated!
YoYo Club are having so much fun, captured earlier this week absorbed in, and thoroughly enjoying their selection of new games.
What great fun they were having, combined with hot buttered toast, what more could anyone want!
