Calverley News #3 | Calverley CE Primary School

It has been a wonderful half term here at Calverley. The children have worked so hard and have been a credit to both you and the school community! As you can see from our three newsletters so far, the learning the children are doing is excellent, varied and creative! There have been a number of after school clubs which have proved extremely popular with the children too! We hope you enjoy the half term and we look forward to seeing you all back safe in just over a week's time!

Safeguarding Update

Just a quick update from the Safeguarding Team following our letters to you this week.

The Safeguarding Team in school includes the following 4 people who are fully trained as Designated Safeguarding Officers. The Lead Designated Safeguarding Officer is Mr C Minett. The other named Designated Safeguarding Officers are; Miss D O’Hara and Mrs T Haigh. Miss S Wilkinson will also be a fully trained Designated Safeguarding Officer by the end of November when she has completed her Safeguarding training. We are easily identifiable around school for children and adults as we wear green lanyards. If you wish to speak to us about any safeguarding concerns that you may have about a child, please contact us via the school office on 01132 575127.

Just to let you know that on our Calverley school website under the tab titled ‘Parents’, if you scroll down to the section in this menu titled, ‘Parent/Child Support’ you will find links to a number of support agencies and charities. These organisations offer support and advice on a range of topics related to safeguarding.

We will continue to offer regular Safeguarding updates on the fortnightly school newsletter.

Reception have been learning about people who made a voyage on Empire Windrush for black history month and reading Granny Came Here on Empire Windrush.

We have been learning about the Caribbean and how it compares with Britain.

The children have also been sharing their Special Box items from home, filled with precious sentimental items and talking about the memories attached to it. Our Special Box was inspired by the episode on Jojo and Gran Gran’s episode for Black History Month about Gran Gran’s voyage to Britain. You can watch the same episode by following this link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001crtf/jojo-gran-gran-specials-1-its-time-to-go-on-a-voyage

We have been enjoying our singing lessons with Mrs O’Leary and singing Tony Chestnut after our autumn walk as well as counting songs such as; 5 little ducks. The children have done a full half term of yoga in their PE lessons, learning how to keep their mind and body strong and healthy.

We have also innovated the Leaf Man story to make our own version which we have written out independently too. We are having a tea party this week to say goodbye to Miss Garrett who we will miss lots!

Year 1

What a busy half term we have had!

In P.E we have enjoyed learning about agility, balance, and co- ordination. We have played games such as zig zag alley testing our agility, number balance creating a balance using a given number of body parts, and coordination traps, when bouncing a ball around the space if we collided with a cone or another person we got caught in the trap!!!!

We have also welcomed back our singing lessons this half term with our new singing teacher Mrs O’Leary. The children have enjoyed singing songs about the body autumn and harvest.

In English we have been learning about poetry and understanding what makes two words rhyme. We have also been reading some funny poems and made up some of our own nonsense rhymes based on the poem, ‘My name is…

We have had an introduction to a simple drawing programme in computing and have learnt how to change the colour of a background, add a stamp and change its size and position.

We are very much looking forward to continuing our learning next half term.

Sweety Art

Year 5 have been getting creative over the last few weeks as their topics have been art focussed. We have been exploring line art and have created a number of superb pieces... A particular favourite of the children was creating a collage from sweet wrappers that they then recreated as a line drawing. Year 5 hope you enjoy some of our pieces.

Year 6

This week, Hannah Mulligan from the Leeds United Foundation, visited Year 6 to deliver a Primary Choices workshop linked to our PSHE unit: Keeping Safe and Managing Risk. The aim of the session was to give children the skills and knowledge to make positive choices, to become

aware of the consequences of making negative choices and to gain a better understanding of how to stay safe on the internet. The children enjoyed a fun, interactive and informative session taking part in games, quizzes and drama activities.

Therapy Dog – Meet Fudge!

Fudge is a Pets as Therapy dog hence her little yellow jacket. You may have seen her around the village and in church. She's been into school once to meet some children and is coming in again before she goes on maternity leave, Fudge is expecting! However we very much hope  she will be back regularly after her pups have been born. 

Two sporting events took place recently with children in Y4 attending a Tag Rugby Festival organised by Leeds Rhinos to coincide with the RLWC being held currently here and the

other was Y6 taking part in a series of friendly football matches against each other.

With the Tag Rugby, all the children took part in a series of drills to improve their rugby skills such as running with the ball, passing, catching, attacking and defending. It was a great start to promote the game of rugby with the children and all of the people who went had a fantastic time.

Last week, our Y6 football teams were due to play Farsley Springbank in a friendly, but unfortunately they were

unable to attend. Instead, we played a series of tough and competitive matches amongst ourselves where great skills were shown by all. It was brilliant to see the key elements of sport demonstrated such as teamwork, respect and resilience.

We also took some Year 2 children to an amazing event led by the head of the Leeds Rhinos Cheerleading team who worked with our students and other school to produce a short piece of dancing using various positions, jumps and of course – glittering pom poms!