Following our democratic process, we have elected our new Head Girl and Head Boy for Reid Street. It was a hard fought contest. Each candidate who was brave enough to put themselves forward for this coveted role had to record a speech persuading the pupils in other bubble year groups to vote for them. We heard some very convincing promises and plans. Having counted all of the votes, we have our newly elected representatives. Well done to them!
We have enjoyed celebrating National Career’s week at Reid Street. We have completed work on careers, jobs and stereotypes and had many visitors into school. Reception had visits from Nurse Walton, PC Banks and PC Jones. The children enjoyed learning about their jobs and even got to dress up in the police and nurse’s uniforms. Nurse Walton also visited Year 5 where she talked about her career path. She always wanted to be a nurse from a young age so she went to university and trained for her job. She thought she would want to be in the operating theatre but that was boring! She now works in intensive care which is her dream job and she finds it’s incredibly rewarding.
Mrs Davison arranged (through the Primary Futures website) an aspirations morning which involved a ‘What’s my Job?’ assembly followed by Speed Networking events in the Year 4 and Year 5 classrooms. Six volunteers attended, including a Clinical Research Project Manager, a Regional Manager for an Agricultural Company, a Finance Manager, Marketing Advertiser and a Management Consultant. As a school, we had to guess their job. During the assembly, the volunteers were only allowed to answer yes or no to the questions posed by the children. We were thrilled that we managed to guess 4 of the jobs out of the 6. The volunteers were incredibly helpful and interesting to listen to. The children and staff thoroughly enjoyed the morning and gained a valuable insight into a range of jobs and careers. It was perfect as the jobs were not your mainstream jobs such as vet, hairdressers, teachers etc. The year 4 and year 5 children also enjoyed the speed networking which allowed them to ask their own questions which included: qualifications needed, training, their salaries and their own school life. The volunteers seemed to enjoy it too: “Thank you for the invite and can I say how much I enjoyed Wednesday’s aspirations morning. The pupils were fantastic and a credit to the school. I shall look forward to any further invites from Reid Street School.” Simon “I really enjoyed the experience and I’d be delighted to support future events. I love the fact that one child asked if I was a spy.” Keith The whole week was a great success and made everyone realise that you can’t leave careers education until children go to secondary school. Everyone should have a career plan for the future. As always on ‘Children in Need’ day, our whole school dressed up with spots and Pudsey clothing for charity. We brought in donations to raise money for Children in Need to send off to the less fortunate. Altogether, we collected £313 across the whole school to donate. Last term, we (Reid Street Rota Kids) have been encouraging the children (and adults) to donate old pairs of glasses to the school. We have been doing this for a charity named Vision Aid Overseas. This charity helps children around the world who don’t have access to spectacles help them to see and gain glasses. Many of our pupils collected and donated old glasses. We gained a total of 65 spectacles to send off oversea. Check out their website for more information. https://www.visionaidoverseas.org/recycling We have been and will continue to collect crisps packets for the air ambulance. Our empty crisp packets might not mean much to us, but they’re worth a whole lot to the air ambulance. The used crisp packets are turned into hypothermia blankets which help them save lives. It is surprising how many crisp packets we collect daily in school.
By Y5 and Y6 Pupil Voice Rotary Kids. After securing a place in the final, Reid Street Choir performed at Ushaw College alongside 11 other schools for a chance to win Durham Music Service Primary Choir of the Year 2019. The children sang ‘Christmas Wish’ and demonstrated fantastic harmonies, diction and perfect pitch. This resulted in them achieving 1st place in the competition and they have gained a place in the next stage at Durham Cathedral in January where they will compete to win Regional Primary Choir of the Year 2020. Well done to all involved!
On Thursday 21st November, 12 children from our dance club took part in a show at Middlesbrough Theatre alongside other schools from across the county. Children from years 4-6 helped choreograph a dance to ‘Aladdin – Friend Like Me’. This evening was a great success and not only did the children enjoy participating in the event, they also enjoyed watching the other performances at the show.
Mrs Farthing and Mrs Rimmer were extremely proud of everyone’s dancing ability, attitude and behaviour while out at this event. We are now watching all of the dance club carefully to select children for a dance at the Hippodrome for Darlington’s Dance Festival. Children had great fun today taking part in the Inclusive Ice Festival at Billingham Forum. Throughout the morning the children had the chance to experience what it felt like to have fun on the ice with both skates and normal shoes. The use of penguins provided the children with the confidence to engage in all of the activities. The children particularly enjoyed the sledges. The morning finished with an appearance from Santa
On Wednesday 23 rd October we learnt about staying safe around fire. The lady who came in told us that fire can be very dangerous when children are near it. We learnt that children that are 10 or older can have a criminal record if they are involved in a small or big fire even if they did not light it.
We watched a little clip about a group of children who got bored and decided to light a fire but when the child came home, the fire had spread into the house. It was lucky that the fire crew had reached the situation and rescued his parents. Unfortunately, the child’s beloved dog had sadly died. This taught us that whatever happens, even if we get bored, that we should never start a fire or say to light one because it could end in a dangerous way and we could lose someone or something we love. This made us more aware about fire and reminded us that we should never play with fire, lighters or matches. The lady said that if we ever see somebody about to light a fire when it is unnecessary that we should tell an adult or a carer who is capable of knowing what to do next urgently. If there was no adult about we should tell them not to do it because it could have disastrous consequences or the person who lit the fire could have serious injuries or even die. This assembly taught us how to be safe near fire and that we should thank and respect our fire crew. COME AND JOIN OUR TEAM! We are very lucky to have a dedicated team of reading volunteers who come into school on a weekly basis to listen to our pupils read. Our volunteers provide valuable one to one support to pupils which benefits their reading significantly. The more pupils read, the more progress they make and the more confident they become as readers. Pupils really enjoy this individual reading time and our volunteers find it hugely rewarding too. So if you can spare an hour or two once a week please call into the office for more details or e-mail [email protected]
If you are interested in volunteering we will be holding a short training session on Thursday 21st November from 1.30 – 2.30. This session aims to provide information on how our pupils learn to read and the role volunteers can play in supporting them in this process. If you would like to attend this session then please contact the school office. Our annual Harvest Festival took place on Wednesday October 16th. The theme this year was ‘Autumn’ and all year groups chose an aspect of this linked to the season of Harvest, which was celebrated by the whole school. Our Head Boy and Girl introduced the Assembly and were the ‘comperes’ throughout.
From the week before our celebration, families from Reid Street sent in produce with their children, which was collected and displayed on the day, ready to hand over to the King’s Church Food Bank for distribution. On the morning of our Harvest Assembly, many children of all ages were able to bring their produce into our hall and help arrange ready for our celebration. During the Harvest Assembly, the following themes were performed: Year 1: the Weather in Autumn. Year 5: Autumn – the season of Harvest. Reception: Colours of Autumn. Year 4: Autumn Poetry. Year 2: Autumn artists. Y3: Harvest song. Year 6: Changing the clocks; getting darker; feelings about Autumn. Songs were sung by Key Stage 1: ‘Getting Busy’ and by Key Stage 2: ‘Thank You Lord’. Jamie from the King’s Church told us about the work carried out at the Food Bank and we discovered that of the population in Darlington(106,000) over 70,000 meals were distributed last year to those in need. A daily meal and some breakfast foodstuffs were given to each person requiring it. Our Harvest Assembly closed with a prayer from the King’s Church and with our Head Boy and Girl beginning our school prayer. The Harvest collection was bagged up by Year 5 in a flurry of activity and packed into the King’s Church van ready to be used from their premises. We held our Autumn Book Fair this month which proved to be very successful. Thank you to all the parents and carers who brought their children along and supported this event, your generosity has helped the school to earn £334 in rewards allowing us to buy new books for our reading shelves. Pupils always get very excited when the book fair is in school and it is lovely to watch them as they enjoy looking at all the new books on offer.
On Friday, the whole school took part in our annual International Day. We enjoyed dressing up in different culture’s clothing and performing our Brazilian dance for parents and the school. We discussed respect for different cultures and shared reasons why we chose our clothing for the day.
On Friday, the figures needed to be in. We knew we had received lots of interest from businesses wanting to sponsor us (see the Sponsorship blog). It was our job to count the sleep over total. We had collected lots of money over the two weeks as we were counting and checking totals all the time. Jack, Tyler and Alfie had great fun counting all the money! We had over £900 as 76 children have paid. Alfie said, “It’s the most money I’ve ever counted.” Jack said, “I can’t believe we have raised that amount as when the other school arranged a sleepover they only raised £450 but charged £15:00.” Tyler who is the deputy finance manager said, “This is going to be amazing everyone is talking about it! We loved the movie night but this has raised nearly double the amount of that.” Over the last three weeks, we have been collecting money from the children who are coming to the sleep over. We have decided to run a hospitality business and have a massive sleepover. We have visited other schools in Darlington to find out about their sleep over and we even went to the local Mecure Hotel. Our design team created an invitation/ticket which everyone got with their receipt when they paid the £12:00. Every day we collected the money and took it to the school office to keep in the safe and we gave out the envelopes with the children’s receipt and ticket. Members of our Choir were invited to take part in Darlington’s annual Proms in the Park event alongside the winners and runners up from this year’s Mayor’s Singing Contest. Children performed a medley from Mary Poppins and participated in the finale of Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory. They performed alongside The Royal Signals (Northern) Band. The children were a credit to the school and sang with great enthusiasm. The event was a huge success and raised over £1600 which is used to support ABF The Soldiers' Charity.
Well, what a fantastic day we had for our KS1 and KS2 Sports Day. The weather could not have been better. The children had slightly longer than usual on the field and managed to complete most of the activities. It was great to see the children laughing, enjoying themselves and being so supportive of each other. Thank you very much to all of the parents, friends and family members who came to support us.
On Friday 14th June, we had some visitors from Barclays Bank who taught us the 7 steps of coding. 15 children from Year 5 and Year 4 were chosen to complete the workshop. We discussed how televisions and computers have changed from the 1950s for the better. We also learned how jobs were changing and programming for many children would be their profession in the future.
We then went into the IT suite and used the game designing app called Scratch. We all had little missions to complete and we had to design and create our own character. Once we had done this we then followed the 7 steps of coding and created our own game. It was great fun! Part way through the lesson, Jenny Chapman (MP for Darlington) came into the lesson to see what we were doing and creating. She was really interested in this. She talked to the children and staff about the programmer and asked many questions. She did say Reid Street was her favourite school in Darlington. “I really enjoyed the morning and I now want to be a game designer or computer programmer!” Quincy Y4. Hamish Y5 said, “The coding was excellent because I enjoyed the final result- making my game work!” On Sunday 19th May, the Dance Club took part in Darlington’s Mass Dance. They thoroughly enjoyed practising the dance steps as well as learning the sign language. This year’s theme was “This Is Me” and was all about challenging inequality. The children also took part in an Indian and Zumba workshop. Darlington’s Mass Dance is important for promoting how dancing can bring everyone together regardless of background, gender, disability, age or race - dancing can be enjoyed by all.
This year, the school took part in a fabulous drama day. Each year group took part in a focused drama session which promoted self-esteem and helped children to build confidence. The children were encouraged to look at and be aware of their body language, posture, eye contact and creativity. Alongside these exciting workshops, the children’s lessons were linked to drama based activities.
We are the new Junior Road Safety Officers for Reid Street School. Our names are Lewis and Erica and we are in Year 5. We had to complete an application form for this role and then the classes voted amongst themselves for who they wanted to be the officers. The teachers counted the votes and we both won! We had some tough competition from our class mates.
Our first job was to lead an assembly to the whole school. Mrs Davison, Denise Caley (Darlington’s Road safety officer) Liam and Kaitlyn (last year’s JRSOs) also helped us with the assembly. During the assembly, we talked about crossing the road safely and looking for safe places to cross. We have set a competition for each Key stage. We’re very excited because once again Reid Street Primary School is taking part in the annual Darlington Community Carnival and this year’s procession is ‘Heritage Themes’. The carnival will take place on Saturday 29th June. Each school involved has been given their very own special part within the procession on a heritage theme linked to our local area and our school’s theme is Darlington Indoor Market.
Our local artist, Yvonne Preston from Scrap Art Studios, has been coming into school to work with some of our Year 4 and Year 5 pupils that are taking part in the carnival. The pupils have had great fun creating eye catching showpieces and individual artworks. On Friday 22nd March, Pupil Voice and some other children from year 4 went litter picking to make a difference in our local community. Before we set off, we got into groups of five and were given an adult to work with. After that, we all got bin bags for the litter and grabbers to pick it up.
We split up in our teams and headed out to collect litter from Reid Street, Craig Street and Columbia Street. We all headed to the play Dene from different directions. There was actually less litter than we thought. Some people stopped us and asked what we were doing. They were impressed with us for making a difference. We all worked incredibly hard so Mrs Davison and Miss Bunn allowed us to play on the equipment. By Edee and Matthew Y4 We love the colour red at Reid Street and are always proud to wear our lovely red jumpers, sweatshirts and cardigans. On Friday 15th March there was even more red in school as pupils wore their red noses, deely boppers and official Red Nose Day T-shirts. Well done to everyone who took part and contributed to our fundraising for this good cause, raising £150.92 for Comic Relief.
Once again pupils and staff did themselves proud on this annual dress up day. There were story characters galore from Harry Potter and Mr Men to Doctor Who and his Tardis!! It was great to see the time and effort that many pupils had put into making their costumes and this was rewarded with book prizes for the best costumes in each class.
On Monday 11th February, we held our first movie night in school. 258 pupils attended the spectacular night. Children bought popcorn and drinks and enjoyed some sweet treats. We raised £498 for our playgrounds. All of the children enjoyed watching the Incredibles 2 with family and friends.
“I thought the movie night was a great success.” Matthew Year 4. “I thought it was a good fundraiser and we hope to do it again or something different.” Darcey Year 5. We are also considering running a board game night, a talent show, an assault course challenge or even sleeping in school! Year 6 children were invited to Wyvern Academy alongside schools from across Darlington to participate in a Messiah Project as part of the Durham Vocal Festival and Durham Music Service.
The project was to compose pieces of music inspired by Handel’s Messiah but with a modern ‘twist’. A workshop was led by members of the Orchestra for the Age of Enlightenment before the performance and then all the children came together to sing, listen and appraise various pieces of music. This was a wonderful opportunity for the children and they thoroughly enjoyed the experience. |
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March 2020
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