School Bell St Philips Catholic

AT the time of writing this piece, the children have been back in school for just 6 weeks, following on from lockdown and partial school closure. During that time, we have been making up for lost time together and have managed to squeeze in a lot of learning and many experiences. Here are just a few examples to share:

Learning

We delayed the National Science week until we were all back together in school. Each class looked at creating their own invention for rolling an object down a ramp, using dominoes, tubes, piping and other household items. The children had great fun and spent a lot of time evaluating and reassessing how to improve their model/ invention. As part of the Science week, we also had a whole school ‘Acids and alkalis’ experiment morning. Hope’s Mum and Oscar’s Dad, who are both Scientists, came into school and led assemblies and worked with children in class to test whether household items were acid or alkali based. The children used red cabbage as the indicator. A fantastic morning of Science where all children from Reception to Year 6 were fully engaged. The school did have a strong aroma of cabbage permeating throughout, however!

Throughout lockdown, Year 4 were kept focused with work based on their topic- The Romans. They learned songs, wrote speeches, listened to stories, learned about the impact they have had on our everyday lives now and so on. When they returned, the children used the shields that they had made at home to take part in a battle on the school grounds. There was a great lot of noise emitting as soldiers charged at each other in the reenactment.

Reception Class celebrated Chinese New Year whilst home schooling. Families made dragons, lanterns and sampled Chinese food. The children who were able to come to school shared a Chinese meal too.

Reception Class had Fairytales as their topic for the Spring Term. This ended with a Fairytale party. Children came dressed up as a Fairytale character, they made bunting and paper chains so that the classroom looked like a palace. They had a Fairytale tea party, played games on the school field and party games in the classroom.

Faith

The first week the school opened, in March, we joined together (in bubbles) for our annual Spirituality Day. The theme was ‘Friendship’ which lent itself really well to the rejoining of friends together in class. The children heard stories, wrote prayers, made bookmarks and learned about what it is to be a good friend.

The week before we broke up for Easter, each class performed a representation of part of the Easter story. Reception started with Palm Sunday leading up to Year 6 who reenacted the crucifixion. We usually hold these Holy Week liturgies as a whole school but this year we had to do it slightly differently by filming it and each class watching the daily instalment in their classroom.

When we return from Easter, as a school we celebrate the resurrection. We put gold cloths on the prayer focus and flowers too to celebrate. We also have a Mass of the Risen Lord. This year we were able to go up to the Cathedral and sit in bubbles. The children bring in flowers and greenery from their gardens and we decorate the cross. The cross is then placed at the front of the school entrance to show passersby that we are the Easter people, living out Jesus’ mission of spreading the Good News.

Wider community and world

As part of the Wildflower project in the town, organised by Martin and Karen, our younger children planted their wild flower seeds in the school allotment. The mayor came along to lend a hand too and promote the benefits of the project in attracting bees and pollinators. The rest of the school planted their seeds at home or in communal areas.

Liam Treadwell, a jockey who won the Grand National in 2009, is a past pupil of the school. His family have strong links with the town and the school and, as such, wanted to plant a tree in memory of Liam. The tree was planted on the school field with a group of Year 4 children who had been learning about Liam’s successes. The tree will grow and create shade for the many more children who will attend St Philip’s in the future.

A child in Year 5 who has epilepsy, wanted to raise awareness and funds for the Charity Epilepsy in Action. Oscar led an assembly for each year group and explained what epilepsy is. He then wrote to all families at the school explaining that he was organising a fundraising day. The idea was to complete 1km in any way they could – walking, scooting, running etc. Oscar’s class wore something purple and walked to Hiorne tower. Oscar raised over £1,000. An excellent sense of achievement and accomplishment. Well done Oscar.

Last year a project was launched to travel the world on a boat called S.V. Traveledge. The challenge was called ‘eXXpedition voyage’ and a family at the school helped to sponsor one of the members for their leg of the trip. There were to be many legs in total covering 38,000 miles over two years. Sophie and Daniel sponsored Katie Redfern to do her leg from Fugi to Vanuatu in the South Pacific. The boat had 12 people aboard at any one time and their job was also to carry out Scientific research. Sadly, due to Covid, only 8 legs were accomplished and the rest was done virtually. However, Katie sent us a video message about the trip. She tasked the children with becoming plastic detectives. Using an app, the children are able to go to their local beach and record any litter they find. This is tallied in the app and recorded. For Year 6, this fits in beautifully with their topic about caring for the world.

For Fairtrade Fortnight, we raise awareness of what Fairtrade is and how we can support Fairtrade farmers across the world. We usually visit Arundel Co-op and look at the produce available and have input from the outreach team. This year we were unable to visit the Co-op so instead, Jacky Burzio arranged for Fairtrade produce to be dropped off at school for our Year 6 children to make banana pancakes using only Fairtrade produce.

Over the next few weeks we have several events to look forward to. Reception Class will take delivery of a batch of duck eggs and they will be able to watch them hatch. The different bubbles across the school will all have the opportunity to spend time watching them and learning about their life cycle. All classes from Year 1 to Year 6 will start swimming lessons at Arundel Lido, we have some children who have applied to become sports leaders and they will undertake their training this term and we will have athletics coaching alongside hockey coaching.