Class Four


Elleray Finale and Special Celebration for Running Club

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.

 


World Book Day Wonders

Here are a selection of our amazing sock puppets of special book characters made to celebrate World Book Day 2022. We came together as a school to share our puppets and awarded prizes of £5 book tokens, kindly donated by FOLS.

We all loved your creativity and marveled at the many different ways you thought of to decorate your puppets. Thank you for all your hard work. 

In Assembly, Rev Bryan’s told us all about one of the most famous books in the world – The Bible. It is made up of different types of writing like poems, letters and biographies and was written by lots of different men and women. He showed us some Bibles written in different languages too – the one pictured below is in Hebrew.

After school, FOLS held a second hand book and hot chocolate stall – it was really popular and was great to see such a buzz around books with children recommending titles to each other and spotting books by authors they love – all for a bargain price! Thank you to FOLS for running this and to all who kindly donated and bought such lovely quality books which have now found new homes.

 


(Class) Four’s Fabulous Fairtrade Fortnight!

Fair Trade: What It Is, How It Works and How You Can Help | Treading My Own Path | Less waste, less stuff, sustainable living

At Levens, we have been celebrating Fairtrade Fortnight. Through our key-stage assemblies in recent weeks, we have been learning about the FairtradeFairtrade logo and symbol, meaning, history, PNG 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.


Reading Buddies

Year 6 visited EYFS today to hear their Reception buddies read.  Reception were thrilled to have the opportunity to share books with their friends and Year 6 were incredibly positive and inspiring reading role models.


Sketch Books in Years 5+6

Inspired by the items found in the tombs of the Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, including Tutankhamen himself, Class 4 have been exploring line, tone, colour and shape in their sketch books.

We used a range of media including oil pastels, watercolours, chalk pastels, drawing pencils and ink pens.


Safer Internet Day 2022!

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)

 

 

 


Hunter Hall County Cross Country Final

On the same day that our runners were competing in the Dallam Event, we were incredibly proud and excited that three of our boys from Class 4 had qualified for the county event at Hunter Hall School in Penrith.

Huge thanks indeed to parents who arranged transport and supported and encouraged our talented representatives, the running club adults were really sad not to be there celebrating the event and the atmosphere.

The course was incredibly challenging, much further than we are used to and with obstacles of walls and rivers. We await further news regarding progression, watch this space!

Well done boys!

 


Dallam Cross Country Competition

On a really cold and and windy afternoon this week, eleven tough and resilient running club athletes braved the elements and hilly course, to compete in the annual cross country event at Dallam along with other local schools.

The support and attitude could not have been bettered, everyone ran so well and tried so hard that staff and parents were just bursting with pride. A huge well done to all, not only to Charlotte, Rona and Grace who came away with medals, but to everyone who excelled themselves and had just the best of times, a day to be remembered by us all!


Liverpool World Museum

This week, Class 4 have had the pleasure of leaving school to spend their day learning in Liverpool World Museum! To support our Ancient Civilisations topic, we visited the museum to check out their fascinating (and often gruesome!) Ancient Egypt exhibit. We even got to “Meet the Mummy” as some lucky students were promoted to trainee priests for the day and taught how to mummify bodies.

Take a look at our image gallery below, but be warned, it’s not for the squeamish!


Experience Church

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!