Month: March 2022

This year our focus charity for fundraising is UNICEF. This has been chosen by staff and the Pupil Parliament because it fits in with a number of issues that we have looked at in the curriculum and because the work on children’s rights (in particular, girls’ rights) ties in with ideas we have been exploring in school.

The children who chose to be involved worked extremely hard in their lunch and break times to get a range of activities and stalls ready before we opened to the community at 9:30.

The support from our parents, governors and pupils was fantastic and showed just how rooted in our community the school is.

We were really pleased to be able to raise over £300 for UNICEF and everyone had an enjoyable morning.

It was also an opportunity for a short presentation to parents and the community about our journey towards UNICEF’s Rights Respecting School Award this year.

In Class 2 the children in D & T have been learning about textile design. As part of their ‘Dentrepreneurs’ social enterprise slant on D&T, they have been making sensory blankets for use by residents in nursing homes.

Wherever possible we try to bring the curriculum to life in ways that connect to our local community and also that help to raise pupil aspirations. Our visitor this week certainly did that.

Most pupils know Angela Smith, as she lives in Dent and has her own design business. But perhaps not all of them knew that Ang spent years living in Hong Kong, where she was lead designer for a textiles manufacturing company! Ang shared her portfolio with the children and talked to them about some of the key ideas when it comes to working in Design. She really was an inspiring visitor!

For World Book Day this year we had a range of lovely activities that celebrated and encouraged a love of reading in our school community.

Ahead of the day and in the morning, Class 1 designed book covers for their favourite books, whilst Class 2 wrote reviews of their favourite novels.

These were made into a display in Westwood Books for the whole community to enjoy. We are really grateful to Westwood Books for working with us to promote a love of reading in our area!

During the afternoon pupils took part in a whole school reading activity, where everybody had a chance to read a favourite poem or section of a book they loved. We had everything from limericks through to non-fiction and excerpts from novels.

All of the children had prepared well and read beautifully. It was hard to pick an overall winner from each class but in the end, all the staff agreed that Frank and Alice had worked so hard and read so well that they deserved to be the winners. We hope they enjoyed their prize – book vouchers very kindly given by Westwood Books.