ST. THOMAS’ NEWS
GOOD NEWS
Cancer Bank Cookie Bake Sale
We are delighted to share that our recent cookie sale, supported by Dolce Education Catering raised over £400.00 for Cancer Bank! We would like to thank all of our parents for your support in raising money for such a worthy cause. Your generosity really does help to make a different to people who are in need. This is a fabulous example of our school Christian value service.
Cancer bank is a local charity supporting people with cancer. The charity gives bags of essential items that will help individuals at a very difficult time.
VOICE 21 DAY
At St Thomas’ we were pleased to welcome visitors from a range of different schools in the North West for a Voice 21 Open Morning. Throughout the morning, we showcased the oracy strategies we have been embedding within our teaching and learning. We are so proud of how brilliantly our children represented St Thomas’. The oracy skills they displayed were fantastic!
Global Neighbours Bronze Award
The Global Neighbours accreditation scheme was launched in
2018 as a way of inspiring, engaging and helping young people
to understand more about the inequalities in this world. By
encouraging them to find their voice and be heard, the scheme
equips them to become courageous advocates for change.
At St Thomas’ School we have been focusing on recycling and
developing our awareness of climate change and global
warming. This has led to many positive actions across the school
community, with pupils becoming more environmentally aware
and taking an active role in caring for our world. Through class
projects, discussions and practical activities, children have
developed a greater understanding of global inequalities and the
importance of protecting our planet for future generations.
We are excited to announce that we have received recognition for our work and have been awarded the Bronze Global
Neighbours Accreditation, recognising our commitment to
learning about global issues and inspiring pupils to become
courageous advocates for change. We are proud of the
enthusiasm shown by our children and staff and look forward to
continuing our journey towards making a positive difference
both locally and globally.
Our report read:
“It’s fantastic to see how the whole school community at St
Thomas CE Primary have become inspirational Global
Neighbours and are actively engaging in challenging inequality
in our world”.
Poetry Competition
Our children had a fantastic afternoon representing school in the SIG poetry competition! They delivered their poems with fantastic oracy skills. Demonstrating the ability to bring their words alive with their performances. We are so proud of all four of them. Special congratulations to our year 6 competitor who left with a runner up trophy.
Well done to all of you.
Antarctic Champions
The whole school who took part in a historical event earlier this academic year. We joined a live assembly at the Antarctic! We spoke with explorer Robert Swan about the land at the South Pole. He showed us the amazingly vast landscape with his video camera and answered lots of questions about this part of the world. We learned about the impact of global warming and how climate change is affecting this precious landscape. Robert Swan spoke of melting glaciers and rising sea levels. He expertly explained why we all need to act now in helping to protect it.
The children learned how to become Antarctic Champions in their everyday lives. As a school, we have started to take action against this global crisis as part of our courageous advocacy work.
The Great Lancashire Debate Winners
School has received some extremely exciting news. A group of children from Year 5 entered the ‘Great Lancashire Debate’ and we are extremely excited and proud to share that we were the Primary Local Area Winner for Blackburn! The judges stated that “We were impressed by your passionate delivery, your well researched topic, and how you used props and different areas around your school to help convey your message”. Well done to our talented children. Thank you to Miss Priestley and Mr Dean for making this possible.
Reading Plus Winners
Our Year 6 children have come first place in the Dream Box, Reading Plus, Autumn Start Up Challenge. This is a national competition where children across the country compete against one another and the children at St Thomas’ have been recognised for completing the most reading lessons in total. What a super start to the academic year! Well done children and a huge thank you to all of the parents and staff for their efforts.
A huge well done to our children that presented their debate in a series of workshops at the Blackburn with Darwen Headteacher’s conference. They were absolutely amazing and here are some of the comments we have received by some of those Headteachers.
“Just had to email to say – your pupils were superb today!!! One colleague said she wanted them in her school! They were a credit to families, your school and our borough. They were brilliant – thank you for sharing them with us today.” Jo Siddle
“I just wanted to say how fantastic I thought your children were on Thursday. They are a real credit to you and your school – the way they performed was amazing. The work Paul has done with them is tremendous. You must be really proud. Well done to all.” Sue Aldred
After a year of hard work by the children and teachers, we are delighted to announce that St Thomas’ has been awarded the Primary Science Quality Mark. We are very proud of achieving this nationally recognised award and hope to achieve gold in the near future. A huge thank you to Mrs Yates, the staff and children for their hard work and dedication.
As a follow up from Brian Haworth’s visit to school as part of our ‘Stay Safe’ week, Mr. Bethell’s class ventured our on the train from Blackburn to Accrington to learn more about trains and how they operate. We thank Brian again for his time and here’s what he had to say about our children.
“Just a quick note to compliment the conduct of the children from St Thomas, who visited our classroom in Accrington yesterday . Their behaviour was brilliant and they were a credit to the school, it was a pleasure working with them.”
Regards
Brian
To kick off our ‘Safety Week’ we welcomed Chris and Jan from Childline. Here is what they said about our children and staff.
“It was great to work with children and staff who were so up for everything. Credit to you, they had more knowledge that some of the school children and staff we see and it was obvious that you take Safeguarding very seriously.”
The Lego team have been busy preparing for their Lego project this time which is ‘Bees’. They have had a Q & A session with Joe Harper – CEO for Just bees Drinks (pictured), a visit by Russell Piercy and local bee keeper and a visit to Offshots Permaculture at Townley Park , Burnley. The children, as always, are giving this project 110% and no doubt they will do themselves proud when it comes to the competiton.
Again thank you for your kind donations this harvest. As always we have donated to Blackburn Foodbank and here is what Ross Duerden (Foodbank Manger) wrote in a letter to us.
“Thank you so much for your amazing donation of food from your Harvest Collection; it weighed in at 65kg. This will provide 155 meals. It is greatly appreciated and ensures that we can continue to support people in crisis in Blackburn with Darwen.”
Our first day back saw the staff at St. Thomas’ join together with St. James’ Lower Darwen to take part in training from Enough Abuse UK, which provides education on ‘Grooming’, the preamble to sexual and other forms of abuse.
The training was fantastic and here is what the lead trainer thought about the trainees.
“Thank you so much for the opportunity to train your staff and for your warm hospitality. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, ” MARILYN HAWES.
The INSET day on Friday saw the staff take part in Team-Teach training. It was a fantastic day and thoroughly enjoyed by all of the staff. Here is what Mike, the lead tutor, had to say about the staff at St. Thomas’, “The staff were an absolute pleasure to train.” A huge thanks to Mike and his team.
On Monday we had a visit from Mrs. Hart who was from the NFER. She is a lady that used to be a Deputy Headteacher and is a volunteer in another primary school. She praised our children for their excellent manners, behaviour and how wonderful they were in general. We pride ourselves on these qualities and it is always great when a visitor comments on them. Thank you Mrs. Hart and well done St. Thomas’.
This morning we welcomed 22 delegates from a variety of schools in Blackburn with Darwen for the iPads in EYFS course. this was led by Mrs. Welsby and Mr. Dean. A huge thank you to both and from the feedback given it was a great success. A response received from a Headteacher of one of the delegates emailed the school to say,
“I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for the training course which was delivered this morning which one of my staff attended on the use of Ipads in the EYFS. You have inspired Carol to enthuse about ICT after feeling incredibly nervous about attending.
This is down to the expertise of the course facilitators and the willingness of other practitioners to support her, and for that I thank you.”
We are extremely proud of both members of staff!
Here is some feedback from one of the many courses Miss Arshad runs as part of St. Thomas’ being a RTC school.
“This session was brilliant and I thought it was really good to have the mentors help us as we got a chance to see the programmes from a child’s perspective too. One of my favourite sessions so far.”
“Great to see how ipads can be used in the classroom – really useful!”
“I really enjoyed working with the student mentors. It was a lot of fun!”
“This session was probably one of the best I’ve been! It was fun and really cross-curricular with regards to the things she showed us!”
Well Done Miss Arshad!