We have started our Spring expedition here in nursery. It is called “Once Upon a Time” and our guiding question is “Who is hiding in the pages of this book?” During hook week we have read the story ‘The Great Nursery Rhyme Disaster’ and explored the different nursery rhymes in the book. We made a list of nursery rhymes we liked, sung nursery rhymes in class and acted out nursery rhymes in our nursery puppet theatre. Our parents came in to share a story or rhyme with us this Friday and we have had lots of fun making ‘Rhyming stones’ for our outdoor area. Phew! We have even met lots of new friends that started nursery this week and have helped them to settle in.
Another brick in the wall: Beautiful Work from XP Gateshead
In Autumn 2023, students in Year 9 studied a joint HUMAN and STEAM expedition called ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ where students had to answer the guiding question: ‘How are structures important in helping us to explain our world?’
For the final product, students used plaster to create sculptures in the brutalist aesthetic. The Presentation of Learning (PoL) was an unveiling of an installation to the community and dedicated to the people of Gateshead, who have suffered due to the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis; both examples of failings of societal structures. Experts, including architects from SOS-UK and Ryder Architecture, whom the students had worked alongside throughout the learning expedition, came along to speak at the PoL at the Farrell Centre, Newcastle University.
The work will be on display there for the foreseeable future!
We Are Artists at Plover
Mel from the XP Trust Comms Crew visited Plover as an Expert Artist – showing Year 5 how to draw trains and teach them about perspective and the vanishing point. The children enjoyed seeing her amazing drawings and made a great start on having a go at their own drawings.
Carcroft’s Fabulous Foyer!
Whilst making an impromptu visit to Carcroft Primary in December, we noticed this! We simply had to get the phone out and take some photos of the wonderful displays on show in the Carcroft foyer area. The array of work exhibited was interesting, engaging and of high quality; and was curated impeccably by the staff – beautiful work!
Today has been such a wonderful day. Where we’ve seen lots of different animals however, the highlight of the day was definitely the polar bears. It was a privilege to see such majestic creatures. We look forward to finding out more about them and the reasons why polar bears need our help.
Our expedition working wall is an important feature in our classroom as it shows the journey of our learning. Therefore I needed some help to add some pieces to it. We’d planned to make some art using the the rubbish we’d recycled on Monday, however, we wondered how hygienic this would be. Although, we weren’t able to use the rubbish we collected we’d done a good thing by tidying up our environment.
Lots of energy was used in out Scotty’s session this week. Children played some games to warm up and the. They had to run circuits by picking up the pace each time.
During the week commencing Monday 29th January we will be celebrating the National Storytelling Week event here at Carcroft Primary School! We highly value reading and the importance of telling stories to inspire, entertain and educate our pupils. We will also take this opportunity to continue to promote the love of books and reading.
Throughout the week, pupils will participate in a range of engaging activities including sharing their favourite stories, listening to stories, creating stick puppets, writing mini stories to share, performing plays, contributing to drama activities such as ‘hot seating’, ‘conscious alley’ and ‘freeze framing’ as well as sharing stories through different mediums such as films and short clips and so much more! We hope that by providing our pupils with these carefully planned activities that these will support our drive to maintain, promote and engage our pupils in reading. Each Crew Leader will create a blog at the end of the day/week so that you can see all of the exciting things that your child/ren have been getting up to throughout the week!
As part of this exciting week, we are asking for children (and staff!) to come to school in their pyjamas or comfy clothes (lounge wear) on the final day of the event on Friday 2nd February. On this day, children will be exploring ‘bedtime stories’ as well as books for our older pupils that are perfect for reading as they drift off to sleep! Pupils are welcome to come to school in their dressing gowns but please can you also ensure that they have a coat as the weather is still likely to be wet and cold at this time of year. Pupils are also welcome to bring their slippers to school but will need sensible footwear to wear outside at break and lunch times. For this school event we will not be asking for any monetary donations. We are aware that as a school we will be celebrating other exciting National events linked to reading such as World Book Day on Thursday 7th March, where it is likely that pupils will dress as their favourite character, which is why for this upcoming event we have made the decision to go with comfy pjs! We hope that you understand this decision as our utmost priority for the event is for our pupils to love reading!
Either at the end of this week or in preparation for the week it would be lovely for you to share with your child/ren your favourite story/ies or maybe even orally share a story with them. It is also a good opportunity to discuss characters, story morals and plots with them. At the end of the week I am sure that they will have lots of stories to share with you!
We look forward to celebrating this National event with you!Â
Thank you for your continued support and cooperation.
Crew Godley have been working really hard this week to develop their understanding of positional language, including left, right, forwards and backwards. We have been sending our selves dizzy! We have played lots of games including Simon says, the children can’t wait to challenge their grown ups at home.
