A visitor from Durham County Council came into assembly to talk about waste management. The visitor explained that in County Durham most waste is recycled or used as fuel to create energy that can provide enough electricity to power 19000 homes. The children were shown the waste system of green bin, blue bin and green box. They were asked where they would put different waste items. The children were very good at explaining which items could be recycled and which couldn’t, and learnt to Reuse and Recycle.  Did you know that recycling one aluminium can can produce 4 hours of energy?

As part of safeguarding, our school is part of the Operation Encompass programme. If you would like any more information regarding this please come into school to speak to Mrs Jackson or Miss Mawson.

We celebrated World Book Day on Wednesday 1st March and the children had a fantastic day! Everyone made a fantastic effort with costumes, choosing to either come dressed up as their favourite character from a book or in their pyjamas.

Everyone took part in different book related activities throughout the day. The children ended the day with several stories read to them in assembly.

On Thursday 2nd March, our World Book Day focus continued with every child taking part in paired reading across the school. UKS2 read with a child from KS1 and LKS2 read with a child from EYFS. All children really enjoyed sharing some of their favourite books from school and home with children from different classes.

Our World Book Day activities started early in the first week of spring 2nd half term when we were lucky to be joined in school by Chris Bostock the Storyteller. Chris spent time with each year group from Nursery to Year 6. In Chris’ words his ‘stories are chosen to entertain, excite and encourage listeners to dream with open eyes…. and then to become storytellers themselves’. Chris told the children stories from other cultures and engaged the children in active storytelling and through the use of music.

Class 1 have been working with the Woodland Trust to complete some tree planting in Thornily. This is to help create a new and more diverse habitat for the local wildlife. We worked with the Woodland Trust learning about different birds and their food systems and how this important within the local habitat. Then following this we joined the Woodland Trust and a governor to plant some trees; these were a variety of oak, birch and hazel.

Making A Difference Locally (MADL) is a charity launched by Nisa Retail limited to support local communities. Michael McCormick from Nisa, Tow Law, got in touch with school to tell us about the funding available through their charity. The School Councillors worked with Miss Dobson to complete the application bid and we were successful! Making a Difference Locally donated £1150 towards our playground markings which have now been completed on our KS2 and EYFS/KS1 yards.

Our School Councillors added to the total through their own fundraising in the final week of spring 1st half term. They came up with the idea to have a raffle during celebrations assembly, ‘guess how many sweets in the jar’ and ‘name the teddies’. They wrote a letter explaining to parents what they were planning to do and then two of our UKS2 School Councillors went round the classes each day with their fundraising ideas to collect money and take guesses of names and numbers of sweets.

Our School Councillors did a fantastic job and raised a massive amount of £176.20 to add towards our fundraising total for the playground markings.

Well done School Councillors for your hard work and thank you to Making a Difference Locally for your donation.

Class 5 have enjoyed Music Bugs sessions in the hall every Wednesday during spring 1st half term. We sang songs with puppets and instruments. We all loved singing songs with the sensory snake and giant scrunchie band. We also danced with scarves and pom poms. We were very proud to hear our much the course leader has enjoyed working in our school!