End of Summer Term 2015 Review So, we find ourselves again at the end of another eventful academic year. This term we will be saying goodbye to our present Year 6 children before welcoming new starters into school in September. Some parents will be concluding an association with Hayton School which, in some cases, has lasted for many years. A range of strong emotions - excitement, nostalgia and, naturally, a hint of trepidation - fill the air. As ever, however, we all hope that the children who leave here do so with confidence, resilience and enthusiasm for the next stage of their educational journey. To enrich our curriculum and to develop these attributes we have incorporated, throughout the year, a wide range of activities encompassing performances both on and off site and a number of excursions linked to various aspects of our learning. In addition, we have welcomed into school a variety of interesting visitors to talk to and work with the children and continue to benefit from an excellent relationship with Hayton Church. This final term has seen, amongst other things: the launch of our new Hayton Primary School website (please have a look to keep up with everything that is going on); a huge amount of entries to the Cumberland Show resulting in Hayton gaining the Rose Bowl; an assortment of fantastic sporting events detailed by Mrs Hawkswell inside this review; the highest number of Children’s University graduates to date; a ‘Neolithic’ performance incorporating music and animation by Year 3 at the Imax cinema at Rheged; the election of our very own Hayton School Prime Minister (Archie Rattray who won a very hard fought contest); and, this final week, the Summer Fair, Summer Show, excellent KS2 performances (‘Jack & the Beanstalk’ and ‘Hoodwinked’) and a Leaver’s Disco to say goodbye to Year 6. None of these things could happen if it wasn’t for dedicated staff, enthusiastic pupils, supportive parents and the additional support that we are so lucky to have in the form of many members of the local community who cook meals, bake cakes, garden, put up marquees and serve teas etc. If nothing else, these words aim to convey a massive thank you to everyone who has helped to make this a brilliant year. We would like to wish you a very happy break to prepare for the return to school on 7th September. 1
EYFS It has been a busy summer term in the EYFS class. The children went to Tullie House on a Seaside adventure. They pretended to take a ride on a Victorian train and sat in the first and second class carriages on the way to Silloth.
They explored other exhibits around the museum linked to the seaside. The museum curator showed one group of children a travel suitcase that a young
person may have taken on holiday. The children explored the contents and used some of the artefacts as props in their
imaginary play later. Meanwhile, another groups of children pretended to fish in a rock pool, play in the sand, and make a collage of the sea, while others made up their own Punch and Judy show with a puppet theatre. Finally the 2
children sang songs and heard a story all about the seaside. We returned to school and, with the help of the Teaching Students from the University of Cumbria, made an interesting display all about the seaside in the classroom.
A big thank you must go to all our parents for volunteering to help out on trips with the children this year. Without your help these trips would not have been possible.
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Year 1
“Never, ever underestimate the importance of having fun.” (Randy Pausch)
We all loved our trip to Walby Farm Park ; we had fun on the slides, fed and handled the animals and played in the park outside. ………… And that’s just what we have done in PE this term.
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The children have had a fun introduction to tennis as well as learning skills to help them play the game.
Last week we took part in a ‘BeeBot’ workshop where we learned to program a robot and practice using control and directional language. This linked into our work we have been doing on algorithms.
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Year 2 What a term it’s been! Where do we start? We spent the first half of the summer term preparing ourselves for our end of key stage one SATs assessments and worked extremely hard in numeracy, literacy and reading. The highlight was reading about the dirtiest families you are ever likely to meet! First we met The Grunt and The Grouch – the most disgusting trolls in the world! We wrote wonderful character descriptions about The Grunt and how he never washes, never cleans and never flushes the toilet and the horrid things he does! Yuck! Then we wrote reports about what trolls eat, like to do, where they live and what they look like. We love Trolls. Half term ended with our annual cold and slightly wet sports day (wouldn’t be Hayton sports day without rain!). We really enjoyed the obstacle course going under the sheet and jumping in the sack race. The first week back after whit half term we enjoyed taking part in a sports afternoon at William Howard where we split into groups and the young leaders helped us to improve our skills of running, throwing, jumping and catching. 6
We spent a whole week doing arts and crafts to enter into the Cumberland Show and Hayton Summer Show. Our classroom was very messy but was very worthwhile with lots of us winning. Our favourite craft was making hats out of newspaper and decorating them with tissue paper and flowers. To see us modelling our hats look on the school website. We drew pictures of birthday cakes, made finger puppets using paper and felt and drew some amazing bookmarks with our favourite book characters. The following weeks were busy when we were learning the words and actions for a choric recitation at Lanercost Festival. We chose to recite a poem written by Colin McNaughton called ‘We’re Having a Monster Party’. We were very nervous about performing to other schools but got up on to the stage and really did have a monster time! Mr Harrison recorded us and you can see the video on the school website. We enjoyed performing the poem so much that we invited our parents to watch us in a class assembly and decided to learn other monster poems in small groups to perform too. The assembly ended in a thrilling end of the show show 7
where we dressed up as zombies and danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Once again the video of our assembly is on the school website. We had a great time on our key stage one trip to Walby Farm Park. We began by watching the ferret show and enjoyed cheering on our ferret in a maze game and guessing which tube it would come out of. It was really cute feeding the baby lambs milk from bottles and stroking the rabbits and guinea pigs. In the afternoon we went on the go-karts, got lost in the maze, built sandcastles in the sand pit, swung on swings and bounced on the trampolines. To end our year we have been carrying out some science investigations. We all made and designed our own paper airplanes to see who could make a plane that would fly the furthest by changing the design and shape of the wings and adding weights in the form of paperclips. We had a tower challenge to see who could build the tallest tower using marshmallows and spaghetti. 8
Music From Nursery through to Year 6, music is happening all the time at Hayton. We have rhythm and song running through our veins, during class and in assemblies and in lunch-time clubs. Well done to all those children who achieved music exam success this year, and to all those others who sang and played so well at all the events we have been involved in. In classes, we have ukuleles, drums and recorders out most weeks. We learn part-singing, rhythm and we listen to music from all genres. Years 3-6 trotted out some amazing musical performances at the end of this term and some of years 4-6 attended the fantastic Big Sing in Gateshead with thousands upon thousands of other primary school singers. We also have a hard working choir and ukulele club. They have been on parade at the Carlisle Music Festival, Eden Valley Hospice, Carlisle Cathedral and Brampton Farmers Markets. We have performed at Carol Services, Christmas and Summer Fairs and at end of term performances. We are extremely proud of them and they never fail to sing and play their hearts out. Most importantly, it is great fun and a brilliant team effort. The commitment shown by the members of the clubs is fantastic so well done and keep it up! For next year, we would love to have more instrumental players! If we did, we would be able to start a band or mini orchestra and to link up with other primary schools doing the same. Please encourage your children to take up an instrument. It is a brilliant thing to do. Many thanks to parents for all your support throughout the year. Mrs C.Platton, Mr I.Brown and Ms J.Light 9
Year 3 This has been another action packed term, I thank you all for your support and enthusiasm throughout the year. We were fortunate enough to have Miss Mason working with us, she led work on the Ancient Egyptians in humanities and literacy. We learned about the ‘Boy Pharaoh’ Tutankhamen, and investigated his death – did he die naturally, or was he killed? We even travelled in a time machine. Howard Carter
Ancient Egypt
In April we had a visit from Zoo Lab, who provided us with a selection of exotic animals to look at and handle. This was part of our science work about habitats and camouflage. We faced our fears as we handled a snake, a gecko, a tree frog and looked at a rat and tarantula.
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Robinwood Nearly all of the class had a fantastic time at Robinwood, tramping up valleys, wading through streams and throwing ourselves out of trees. Everybody pushed themselves and were a credit to the school.
When Stone meets Sky We were lucky to be involved in an arts project about Long Meg Stone Circle. We visited the museum in Penrith, then went on to Long Meg to ‘Dowse’ for the site of missing standing stones. On our return we wrote poems linked to the information we had learnt about the stone circle. We then made animations of our poems, with the help of Year 5 and the Haltwhistle Film Project. We performed these along with some music we had composed, using ukuleles and natural objects...It sounded great ; however we did have a maggot problem with some of our bones… We have also worked hard to produce craft for the Cumberland and School Summer Shows. We have looked at plants in science and grown beans and sunflowers from seed. Carlisle Wheelchair Sports Club came in to talk to us about the range of wheelchair sports and the difference it makes to the lives of wheelchair users. They allowed us to play some ball games using wheelchairs. They were very fast and nippy once you got the hang of it. 11
Year 4 We have had another very busy term in Year 4. … In maths we have covered a variety of topics but one we particularly enjoyed was creating pictograms and bar charts. We collected our own data and tried to think of something useful to collect. It seems the favourite subject in Year 4 is Physical Education! We also managed to find the area and perimeter of the School hall, field and playground. We realised Mr Tucker has a lot of grass to cut! In Literacy we have looked in depth at the Spiderwick Chronicles. We really enjoyed it and even managed to have a go at writing our own Spiderwick adventure. We also tried our hand at being authors, publishers and illustrators. We created our own ‘Dreamgiver’ stories, made them into a book and placed them on our wall for all to read!
We have had some fantastic Science activities and visitors this term. We had a visit from Zoo Lab which fit in greatly with our learning on Habitats. Year 4 was able to hold some wild and exotic animals and I was amazed at how brave they were. Thank goodness the Tarantula stayed in its box……
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We also had a fantastic day with Mr Mayhew where we searched for wildlife and habitats in the School grounds and Mr Mayhew’s garden. We couldn’t believe what we found! In the afternoon we investigated pond life and looked at how classification keys work. We were amazed at the amount of life that can be found in a pond and it was really interesting how one living thing cannot live without another.
Our work with Mr Mayhew inspired us to create a ‘Bee Friendly’ garden which is ‘Perfect for Pollinators’. We worked hard on finding just the right plants for the garden. We were pleased with how it looked in the end.
Some of the children were lucky enough to visit Robin Wood earlier in the term. The activities were fantastic and the children all learnt to work together as a team. They all came home with vital new skills they had learnt.
It has been such a busy but fantastic year. The children have worked very hard and come a long way. For more photographs of what the children have been up to, please visit the school website. Happy Holidays! 13
Year 5 The term has flown by, and again we have managed to cram so much into a few short weeks. We started in April putting the finishing touches to the new willow structures with the Willow man, after Tucker had to finally dispose of the old, dead ones. We thought that this might have been the start of our glorious summer weather!!
We then were lucky enough to have Mark and Vicky back from the Haltwhistle Film Project, but this time they brought their tiny Raspberry Pi computers with them. We had to work out how to build a computer from scratch, then create a film using a piece of software called ‘Sonic Pi’ in which we merged our own digitally masterminded music with an animation made with ‘Scratch’, with the final films presented to the whole school. These were also available to view via the website.
As part of our literacy we produced comic books, inspired by the Phoenix comics we have in school. We used our knowledge of comic features, and tweeted 14
some early creations to the comic themselves. They tweeted back, saying they loved them and can’t wait to see the finished articles, possibly even publishing some of the finished articles!! Watch this space…. A small group of us went to Austin Friars to meet a teacher, Mr Judge, who had just had his first book published, Johnny Jakes and the Hamburgers of Doom! We took part in a writing workshop, heard extracts from the book and had a question and answer session with Mr Judge. It was enjoyed by all parties so much that he has agreed to come into school in the Autumn term to meet some other children, possibly getting inspiration for his next book!! We also participated in a choric recitation at Lanercost Priory as part of its literacy festival, performing the poem ‘The Highwayman’ by Alfred Noyes.
A part of our science this term we had a visit from Bright Sparks, who taught us about electricity, how to make circuits, and the dangers of it. We saw 8 people selected via an application and rigorous interview process to become our Rota kids for next, good luck as you have a tough job ahead of you, but we are sure you will all work together to become a successful team. Finally, a huge thank you to all year 5 this year, we have had a terrific time, learnt so much and really had great fun along the way. Just remember the basics for next year, and I am sure you will all have a hugely enjoyable and successful year 6. Have a great Summer Holiday. 15
Year 6 May – SATS came and went and the pupils in Year 6 took them in their stride – Then, the momentum really increased with sport and action galore! Orienteering and athletics largely featured. June – Lockerbie Manor residential took place and much fun and laughter was enjoyed by all during which the weather had been superb! Luke Temperley’s braveness in pouring lake water over Mrs D on the hottest day of the year so far was admirable! On the return to school, a visit from the Cumbria Wheelchair Sports, headed by Nat, was so much fun and the children really appreciated how much upper body strength was needed to compete in wheelchair basketball. July- In sport, special credit must go to Laura Hazelhurst, who won the Cumbria County orienteering championships at Millom in the year 6 category.
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A transition sports day took place at William Howard School on 1st July and, phew, was it a hot one!
‘The show must go on’ and that show is ‘Hoodwinked’ which will round off the previous term’s theme of ‘Justice’. Special mention must be made of some year 6 performances but in particular, Kate Dawson, who sang a fantastic solo as Maid Marian, Luke Thompson, who cut a dashing Robin Hood, a particularly evil portrayal by Alex Briggs as the Sheriff of Nottingham and some wonderful singing from Jack Hutchinson, but we must never forget the great efforts of Elliot Lowrie who was understudy to Luke during WHS Music Week and whom made everyone laugh in the many roles he so convincingly portrayed. (Well done Elliot!) 17
I must say I’ve been looking forward to writing this report. Another amazing term as far as sport is concerned. We have had two successful outdoor activity residential stays, years 3 & 4 spent a weekend at Robinwood near Alston and years 5 & 6 spent a very sunny week at Lockerbie Manor. Photographs of these trips are available on the school website. April saw the Year 5 & 6 Rugby team do very well at a tournament held at Carlisle Rugby Club. We narrowly lost to the winning team, something to aim for next year. Our own school Sports Day was a damp affair, however, there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing ‌ everyone enjoyed the day, and pushed themselves, demonstrating the high quality of athletes we have in school. The victors on the day were Yellow Team, well done to you. The last weekend of May half term saw 10 pupils from 18
Hayton travel down to Twickenham with parents and staff. They played a tag rugby demonstration during half time of the Aviva Premier Cup Final. It was an awesome day, (and a long one – you get value for money with ‘Hawkswell Tours’). First we achieved the world record for the longest human equation, (Newcastle Falcons had been teaching Year Four rugby and numeracy) then our Year Four Team played in front of a crowd of over 80,000. Certainly a day to remember. Orienteering went well this year, it was great to see so many new faces, especially from the lower end of the school. We won the Carlisle District League, then several members went on to win for Carlisle District in the School Games, against teams from all over the County. We then had a small team in the Cumbria Schools Orienteering League Competition down at Haverigg near Millom, in the south of the county, and 19
after coming second for the last two years, Hayton won and are county champions….A very big well done to all of you who took part in all of the events. We also had success with our ‘Mini Tennis Red’ team, who played well in the first round, and were also selected to play at the school games. A great effort by all of you on a very hot day. We also took part in the Year 6 Transition Sports and Year 2 festival, a year 3&4 Netball festival and a range of after school clubs. Children took part in Sports Club, Tennis Club and Football with Mr Davies. We have had a good turnout on a regular basis for our lunchtime cross country club which takes place twice a week. Although several events at William Howard School had to be cancelled due to bad weather, we did take part in the rounders tournament, which saw Hayton beat every team in their half of the draw. Well done! All of the staff and pupils at Hayton would like to thank the army of parents and helpers who make all of these fantastic achievements possible. Have a splendid and safe holiday, Mrs Hawkswell 20