We always look forward to our Easter Service at St Faith’s Church in Shellingford. Easter is at the heart of the Christian faith and the children in Class 4 led our service. It was lovely to see so many parents, relatives and family friends attend and join the staff and pupils for this occasion.
The children have involved in a series of codebreaking activities linked to the work of Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park during the World War II. They have written and cracked codes using colour codes, sequencing, binary codes and cipher wheels. We have all had great fun solving the codes!
Some of our Y4, 5 and 6 pupils represented the school in a Faringdon inter-schools Netball Tournament. They played four initial matches, winning three out of the four resulting in them going through to the semi-final. Out of 10 teams their persistence and enthusiasm culminated in us coming fourth overall. An excellent achievement considering we were competing against larger schools and as always the Shellingford sporting spirit was on show throughout.
We have been celebrating British Science Week and have had another very exciting week here at school. Year 4 had a wonderful time at FCC designing and testing balloon powered cars. Bright Sparks inspired the children with exploding volcanoes, earthquakes, weather experiments and chemical reactions. Mrs Clementson-Mobbs also came into school to talk to each class about her work as a Scientific Researcher.
Some fabulous costumes were worn on World Book Day – see if you can spot who’s who!
We had another very successful Open Afternoon and community event on Friday 8th February from 2-3pm with parents and family friends looking around the classes and talking to the children and staff about their learning.
Class 3 had a wonderful time visiting The Story Museum and Blackwell’s Bookshop on Wednesday 30th January. They spent the morning storytelling and creating stories at The Story Museum, followed by exploring the books in the children’s department at Blackwell’s Bookshop. The children came back with lots of ideas to help them create their own books and fairy tale room designs at the end of their project.
One-Eighty have introduced a peer-to-peer mentoring mental health awareness project for the children in Year 5/6, who then delivered the same content to the children in Y3/4. The project is told through a story of a girl who is overwhelmed by her worries. The children made felt textile faces to help them remember to look after their own mental health and make themselves smile again.
We all enjoyed the African Drumming Workshop led by World Beats Music and each class performed all they had learnt during the day at our ‘Music Serenade’ for parents. We also invited instrumentalists to ‘serenade’ us and a number of pianists, guitarists and a violinist took part in the performance. We certainly have many talented musicians in our school!
We ended the Autumn Term with our Christmas Service at St Faith’s Church on Friday 21st December to celebrate the birth of Jesus. The pupils in Class 3 recited the Christmas story and helped lead the prayers. We listened to the Bible Reading about Jesus’ birth which was read by one of our school Governors and the service was introduced by the Reverend Jeremy Goulston. Our School Choir sang ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ and the whole school sang their hearts out – a lovely way to end the term and to celebrate Christmas.
