Give It A Go Club - identify your potential... then exceed it!
 

Our hall now has a magnificent display of our children’s achievements both within and outside school. We know that it takes determination, constant practice and resilience to achieve really top notch results. The Give It A Go Club display celebrates how our children do this in many disciplines, including sport, drama, dance and music. This is particularly important to us as a group of our children are working with Professor Barry Hymer to explore how increasing our determination and resilience enables us to really challenge our potential.

The children’s determination and passion for sport has led to recent successes in inter-school events with pupils being selected to represent the Boroughbridge cluster in football and cross country competitions in the New Year.

Chinese Language and Culture Residential

Every morning began with Morning Exercises to get the body and mind tuned in for the day. The cultural activities were brilliant and covered traditional Mandarin music and dance, sewing, dragon drawing, lantern decorating, Chinese knotting, traditional Mandarin bamboo games, tai chi, kung fu, and calligraphy.

Over the course of the week the children completed the equivalent of one years’ Mandarin lessons and returned proudly displaying a nationally recognised qualification in Mandarin speaking and writing. The course culminated in a celebration performance which amazed parents in the audience. All children and parents agreed that the week had been a very special opportunity that they had been very lucky to experience.

In October we will be visited by Education Officials and Headteachers from China, including the headteacher from our partner school in Taiyuan. This will help us to further strengthen our links with China... and our Year 6 children will have a superb opportunity to practise their new Mandarin skills!

Treasure Island - Summer Performance

Take a classic story, some dramatic scenery and a whole school of excited and enthusiastic children and what do you get - a fantastic end of year school play!

This year's was Treasure Island, the story of Jim Hawkins, a humble soul, who becomes a cabin boy on the Hispaniola; a ship bound for Treasure Island with the purpose of finding buried treasure! He meets many colourful characters on his journey, including Long John Silver, the one legged ship's cook, and Ben Gunn the island eccentric.

The children acted out, along with authentic pirate voices, the story brilliantly and more importantly seemed to fully enjoy every minute of it!

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum

When Billy Bones dies, they look in his sea chest and find a map.

Oooh Arrh - it's Long John Silver

Setting sail to Treasure island - 'all hands on deck'

The Scene Changers

The eccentric Ben Gunn dreaming about 'Just a little cheese on toast' with his mice friends

Israel Hands before his

excursion overboard!

The Skeleton points the way to the Treasure

At last, the Treasure!

Cross Country at Boroughbridge

Nine children had a very successful evening at Boroughbridge Primary school recently where they joined children from eight other cluster schools to take part in cross country races.  We had some fabulous results with a gold medal for Talia Shires for winning the girls' Year 5/6 race, and a silver second place for Alex Sheldon in the boys' Year 3/4 race.  The other children also did wonderfully, with the girls' Year 5/6 winning overall best team position and bringing home a trophy; and the boys' Year 3/4 coming overall third.  Well done to all the children for some brilliant performances which helped us to score such high team rankings. 

Harlow Carr Garden Competition

We are very proud of our Garden Club’s budding gardeners as their “Chinese Theme Garden” not only won the award for ‘Most Decorative Garden’ but also scooped the top ‘People’s Choice Award’ recently at a competition for school’s at Harlow Carr Gardens.

The criteria used by the judges was to look at shapes, water, structure and ambience of design.  Ethan Smith and Liam Blacker-Meek, both year 3, were the successful designers, producing both colourful and interesting designs including dragons and water, with a pagoda that doubled as a mini bug hotel!  A small pool with a bridge was also incorporated into the design and Chinese Vegetables were planted to grow around the pool, alongside some colourful Chinese themed flowers.  We’d like to take this opportunity to thank Fiona Slight and Alison Smith for their time and effort with this project, as well as their on-going commitment to the club itself.

With their design before they start planting

The winning garden

The Official Opening of our School’s New Hall

After all the planning, talking, form filling, negotiating, designing and building – our new hall and catering kitchen is complete, and we are chuffed to bits with the finished product!  In order to celebrate this momentous occasion we held an opening ceremony where we were delighted to welcome Councillor Craggs and Mrs Craggs; Keith Scott as Chair of our Parish Council; and many members of our local community, without whom we would not have been able to achieve such a useful addition to our building.

The children also showed their appreciation by sharing some of their topic work they had been doing in school lately.  Our younger children demonstrated the importance of bees in pollinating plants and helping to produce fruit and vegetables; Years 3 and 4 performed a role play on how bees are extremely important to our eco system and our older children presented their recent Fairtrade ‘Snack Attack’ designs.

After the ceremony, guests were invited to look around the school and talk to pupils about their work in school.

Councillor Craggs, Mayor of Boroughbride,

officially opens our new hall and kitchen

Snack attack!

Year 5 and 6 have recently undertaken a project to create and market their own Fairtrade healthy food product as part of a nationwide exercise for all Fairtrade Schools.  Pupils worked in small groups and began by designing their tasty snacks from a selection of fruits and Fairtrade ingredients. They then had to put their recipes to the test and ‘bake’ their products which were then tasted by children from other classes.  The project didn’t end there as each team also designed and created some very eye-catching packaging complete with a very persuasive product name and strap line as well as some informative text.  Each team even wrote, produced and sang their product’s very own jingle before finally presenting their finished design to parents and carers during a school assembly, using a Power Point slide show and their own natural charms!

All of the children fully enjoyed using their array of skills to complete the project and have since gone out in the field (well, the school hall!) to sell their creations, along with other established Fairtrade products, during recent school events.

Making their healthy snacks using

a selection of Fairtrade ingredients

Taste testing session

New Role Play Area for Foundation Stage

Our Reception children’s outdoor play area has recently been transformed into a busy town street along with zebra crossings and roundabouts, traffic lights and traffic signs, a police station and much more.  So it seemed very fitting that PC Marie Scott and PCSO Nicki Smith came to visit the children to officially open their fabulous new role play area.   The children also asked lots of questions and found out what happens in police stations and what type of things police officers do, including how they communicate to one and other using radio. They also had the opportunity to try on the police jackets and handcuffs as well as visiting the police van and locating the siren (always an exciting moment!). 

Year 5 and 6 children also had a chance to discuss the role of police officers in relation to careers that might be open to them when they are older.

Recording some information

at the Police Station

Parking up the police car

outside the station 

The den

Great Ouseburn School’s before and after school club, the den, was launched in September ’09 and we’re delighted to say it has gone from strength to strength since then.  The children have enjoyed an array of exciting activities and its success today is proven by the huge number of children who ‘vote with their feet’ and attend the club.

In addition to the den’s ‘everyday’ type of activities, which include a wide selection of games, construction and arts and crafts, Michelle (Play Leader) and Kirsty (Play Worker) hold special event nights on a regular basis which offer the children something a little bit different.  These event nights can include anything from disco parties to puppet shows; Bingo night to cinema night and Mario Kart Wii competions to Chinese cooking and tasting.  All are a big hit with the children and consequently the den is attended by children with both working and non-working mums and dads.  Our new school hall has also allowed den staff to introduce more inside activities that require that little bit extra space such as table tennis, ball games and big craft events.

One extremely popular event at the den is when ‘Nuzzlets’ come to visit.  Nuzzlets is a local charity that provide a loving home for unwanted animals who in turn provide therapy and education for young people.  Our visitors this time included guinea pigs, rabbits (including a giant rabbit!), a hen and a goose! All the children were allowed to hold the animals and were given instructions on how to do this gently – they were also given the opportunity to feed the animals with food that was brought with them.  Commenting on the visit, Michelle said “This is the third time we've been lucky enough to have Nuzzlets visit us here in the den and it’s a lovely experience for the children.  They just love interacting with the animals and it’s great that the children get taught the real meaning of caring for animals”

We are hopeful that Nuzzlets will visit us again sometime in April so the children can meet some of the lambs.

PE with 'Sports Xtra'

Fencing is just one of the

exciting sports we cover in P.E.

Finding out a bit about the human body

in a fun and interactive way

We are extremely pleased that ‘Sports Xtra’ supports our school’s weekly P.E. lessons. ‘Sports Xtra’ is an organisation that specialises in sports development and health promotion, and its series of 6 week blocks of structured lessons, enable our children to access the two hour per week, in school, sports based activities, which Ofsted recommends.

Activities on offer follow curriculum guidelines which include provision for: Gymnastics; Invasion Sports (such as tag rugby, hockey, dodge-ball and rocket-ball); Net Sports (such as basketball, tennis and badminton); Sports through motion (such as fencing, dance and athletics) as well as other more general sports like golf.  The school’s partnership with Sports Xtra also allows minority sports (such as fencing) to be accessible to pupils, which in turn increases the chances of a child discovering a sport or skill that they are particularly talented at – something that is especially helpful to those children who may not enjoy some of the more traditional sports.

During the ‘Sports Science’ part of our P.E. lessons, the children learned about the importance of a healthy diet and how taking exercise, and eating the right amounts and types of food help us all to keep healthy. 'Sports Xtra' demonstrated this with a series of "Xtra Healthy" programmes. One of the modules, ‘Food and Drink’, discusses the importance of a balanced diet, and introduces the children to all the main food groups in a fun and interactive way.  For example, the stomach (represented by a parachute) holds water (represented by ping pong balls), carbohydrates (represented by soft balls), and fat (represented by t- shirts). The children exercise, by shaking the parachute, and watch how the different food types leave the body at different rates during exercise; water first, then carbohydrates and then the fat. A very visual, fun and simple way to explain how parts of the body work.

Human Rights and Jamia

Over the last few weeks our older children have been discussing human rights, in particular the rights of children.  So we were very honoured to receive award winner and human rights activist, Judith Awondo from The Republic of Cameroon in West Africa, who answered questions from the children regarding life in her native country and the rights children have there.  The children also took part in a workshop designing and making masks based on the culture of The Republic of Cameroon.

The following week, Year 5 and 6 children also had an opportunity to visit the ‘biggest human right celebrations in the North of England’ – Jamia, in York.  The event is a celebration of world cultures and the entertainment and activities all took place in giant tepees outside the Minster.  The teepees were very cosy inside and the programme of music, dance, storytelling, and song from a range of different cultures and traditions, was extremely enlightening - the children really got in to the spirit of the event – spontaneously joining in with the dancing and singing.

Other ‘hands on’ activities took place throughout the day, including making a quilt banner to be hung at the back of the stage for that day’s evening performance and any future Jamia event.  All in all a very fun and interesting day, which the children fully enjoyed.  For more information on Jamia, take a look at their website at www.is-jamia.org.uk.

Introducing the 'Bug Hotel'

The Gardening Club's latest big project was to build a ‘bug hotel’, constructed in a nice secluded spot in the corner of the school’s small playing field. 

The ‘hotel’ is made from old pallets, straw, old pipes, Pringles tubes packed with hay, dead leaves, bricks, hollow bamboo canes, old square pots, grass, and a couple of old boots for decoration (filled with crocus bulbs for the spring). The pallets were piled on top of each other and then stuffed with all of the above to create warm, comfortable spaces for any bugs and animals around. The children also made a space on the ground floor to hopefully entice hedgehogs, frogs or toads to hibernate.   The bugs that will hopefully take advantage of the hotel include ladybirds, beetles, caterpillars, centipedes, millipedes, lacewings, shield bugs – in fact a whole host of different living things.