Blog by Jo Hurley

Some of our Upper School pupils took part in the lessons and carols service at St Peter’s Church this morning. They came to the front and each read parts of the story of the nativity. Abigail told us about Mary and Joseph’s long journey to Bethlehem and only being able to find a stable to stay in.…

Upper School class had a visit from Mhairi, STEM ambassador from the Ogden Trust, who ran two workshops. The one in the morning reinforced our current learning about electricity with practical activities involving making series circuits using circuit diagrams, testing voltage and to extend the…

As part of the Upper School homework activities this term, the children were asked to design and make an advent calendar which could be shared with the class or with their family. Several of these have been brought into school now and they are fantastic! Such a lot of time and effort has gone into…

Today the children Upper School continued their learning about the Banana Trade having read Juliana’s Bananas. They were introduced to the idea of fair trade and spent time thinking about how much money members of the supply chain should be paid for their part in the trade of bananas. We had a…

What a fantastic PE lesson we had with Logan from PNE! We learnt how to play invasion ball games by improving our throwing and catching skills; he taught us different techniques for attack and defence; we learnt about using space and keeping moving to win a goal. 

Upper School have been learning about 3D shapes in our Maths lessons and today we explored how to make a 3D shape using a net. The children enjoyed cutting out, scoring and folding to create a range of shapes including octahedrons and tetrahedrons which were very tricky to put together! 

Today Upper School explored and recapped their learning from Middle School about how to make a simple circuit. They chose equipment by themselves and investigated how to make a bulb and a motor work. There was lots of discussion and diagnostics when some of the circuits didn’t appear to work. Some…

This week, the children have been reading the last few chapters of Street Child by Bertie Doherty. We have particularly explored comprehension of the vocabulary and inference of a character’s behaviour. We have also worked on how to make realistic predictions about what might happen next in the…

The class have been learning the skills of hockey for the last 5 weeks. They have made huge progress and have begun to play small hockey games now where they have shown their skills of dribbling, tackling and shooting the ball into the goal. Well done Year 5/6!

Over the past couple of English sessions, the Upper School children have been preparing a descriptive narrative through reading, role play and exploring vocabulary. 
We read a chapter of Street Child and chose scenes to turn into freeze frames (see the gallery). When the freeze frames were ‘woken…

What a privilege it was to be a part of the Harvest Festival at St Peter’s today. The church was beautifully decorated and full of families who had brought along their gifts for the food bank. Archdeacon David led an uplifting service with the children from Upper School class-Abigail, Lilly,…

Today the children learnt what a gear system is and how a simple gear system works on a bike or inside a clock. As part of the lesson, the class made their own gears using templates, card, split pins and a lot of hard work! After lots of careful cutting, sticking and placing of the gears in the…