Christingle Service. December 3rd.

A lovely evening with the first Advent candle being lit and community involvement in a Christingle Service. The children gave a presentation - What is a Christingle ? - and readings, a bible story, a talk from Father Joe and singing preceeded the lighting of the beautifully decorated Christingle candles. All the children with a Christingle stood on or near the stage. As the main lights were dimmed, faces lit only by candlelight, the singing of 'Like a candle flame' gave a wonderful start to the beginning of the Christmas season in an atmosphere of peace and joy. Donations collected in the special candle boxes are for the Children's Society.

Anne Davies-Hutton

Year 3 Visit - Learning to tell the time!

What a great morning ! Had my first visit to year 3 whilst Mr Osborne was teaching numeracy. I'm sure all of us have some understanding and respect for the job teachers do but to be in the classroom and involved in the process really gives you a greater appreciation of all the skills required. First of all was the subject itself – telling the time. As adults, it's a skill we all take for granted but it's actually  quite a complex set of rules to learn. Mr Osborne started by playing number bingo with the class using the five times table, refreshing the children's knowledge of counting in fives. Then each child was given a clock face drawing which was then divided into four representing the quarters of hours. The hour numbers were written on the inside of the clock face and the 5 minutes intervals written on the outside. Then time was taken explaining what the 15 minute intervals were called ie. quarter past, half past and quarter to. The children were then given different work sheets to do, working out what the time was for differing clock faces. Afterwards, the children self evaluated how they felt they had done using a smiley face, straight face or sad face, thereby highlighting those children that needed a bit more time to grasp the concept. To communicate all this to 27 children  in just over an hour takes skill, but to keep the children engaged, enthusiastic and well behaved whilst taking into consideration their differing abilities and needs takes even greater skill and it was a privilege to watch. Thank you Mr Osborne!

 

David Bennetts ( Parent Governor Yr 3 )

Around the World in Eighty Days

I watched an amazing performance on Thursday night in Blandford St Mary School.

All the Key Stage 2 children performed with great skill and enthusiasm.The music was impressive,the dancers were terrific, every single child enjoyed being on stage .

It was  a real treat to watch!

Children and staff had obviously worked hard to achieve such success.

CONGRATULATIONS all your efforts were worth it.

Kate Melvin

Governor Visit

I spent a good afternoon in school today seeing the Children in their learning environment.  The plan was to do a short work/job presentation to year 5 when they arrived back from their trip to "Streetwise" in Poole, but they arrived back too late and I have promised to rearrange for another day.  I did give them a quick 5 minute introduction to myself and what I was going to show them, which was great and they were very quick to ask some pretty smart questions, so I am anticipating a very interactive session when I go back.
 
I also got to do a quick visit around the school with Carol Brown and chat to some of the children about what they were learning - it was great to have them so willingly engage me in what they were doing and nice to see them so enthusiastic about it too.  Thank you to those teachers on whose class we popped into - much appreciated.
 
Finally, as the Governor for Maths I got some good discussion time with Nick Osborne to talk about the new Maths Curriculum and how it was being rolled out with teachers and pupils at school.  There is clearly lots to do and bits still to clarify - particularly around performance marking - but there is a plan in place and the children have a great set of teachers to lead them through it all.
 
Until next time,  bye for now - Trevor Keep - Chair of Governors

Celebration Assembly - Year 1

An excellent display from Year 1 about their learning with the topic 'All Creatures Great and Small' .  They had learnt about endangered animals and had painted some brilliant pictures of tigers, eagles and a huge picture of a giant panda with some bamboo shoots with green leaves made from paper. Rebecca from Monkey World had been to visit the class and helped everyone make bottles with the monkeys favourite food inside. For National Poetry Day they decided to write about Orangutans and a poem was read for the whole school to enjoy.The class had been working very hard learning a dance and the video, with catchy music and some excellent moves, was great fun and very well performed.

 

The theme of the reflection time was 'Our Beautiful World' and the singing of 'All things bright and beautiful' was

loud and much enjoyed. Visitors to the assembly were then treated to cakes made by Year 1, which were decorated with poppies. 

 

A very interesting assembly with fantastic work and good listening and learning skills demonstrated.

Fireworks night!

What a fantastic spectacle night last night !! Great to see so many people enjoying themselves and a huge thank you to Trevor Keep and everyone else who was instrumental in putting it all together. Thank you!

Governor's blog

Harvest Assembly

The Reception class children showed off all the hard work they have been doing based on Autumn in their first class assembly today.
Having been into Reception class on Tuesday morning, I saw the children working on cutting out pumpkins (that they had painted the day before) and creating fantastic autumn leaf pictures using vibrant, eye catching paints.
These were all on display today, along with pictures of baskets of fruit and also some fantastic singing to a lively harvest themed song which everybody enjoyed. An excellent first assembly for Reception class.

It was also great to see that so many children from across the school had taken part in the Library Challenge this summer and they were rewarded with the certificates for this achievement today.

Amanda Oakley
Foundation & Early Years Governor
24/10/14

Chair of Governor's Training

It has been all change within the Governing body over the last few months and I am very happy to have been elected as the new Chair of Governors at Blandford St. Mary.  We have a great governing team and I will be doing my best to lead the Governing Body in serving the best interests of the school.  To help with this I have enrolled on the Chair of Governors Leadership Development Programme and this week completed my first day of training, which proved a great learning and networking opportunity and is something that will definitely help me going forward.  If anyone reading this has any questions then please do stop me when in school or drop me an email at trevor.keep@hotmail.co.uk.

 

Trevor

Today in Year 1 the children were very busy.  The egg they had been looking after so carefully had hatched leaving only a pile of twigs and leaves.  The very sad fact is that the baby dinosaur was nowhere to be seen !  The children searched the room and looked around the trees and bushes outside.    It was time to get busy and expand the search.

Posters were made with a picture of a baby dinosaur so everyone would know exactly what it would look like and at the top of the poster in large letters the word ‘Missing’

The posters were put up around the school in the hope someone would find the dinosaur.

Some amazing fossils were being found in the sand pit as the children learnt to be

paleontologists and search for remains of creatures that were alive millions of years ago.

Just before home time the story about Tom and his adventures was read with everyone

listening very carefully and quietly. The story was about Tom almost getting stuck in a bog. Fortunately Tom was able to reach out to a nearby fern and haul himself free.

A lively and interesting afternoon with some time spent admiring the new additions to the room – a new fish tank with four beautiful fish swimming very fast indeed !

Anne Davies-Hutton  

21/10/2014