Westdale Junior School news

HARVEST FESTIVAL AT WESTDALE

For our harvest service, most of the children brought in some food for the display and to give away to old people after the service. The display was really great and colourful.

Every class did something different for the service. Year 6 did a really cool poem, Year 5 told the story of Johnny Apple Seed and also read poems. Year 4 performed the story of the great big turnip and Year 3 presented the tale of the Little Red Hen.

We sang lots of harvest songs including Lord of the Harvest, Autumn Days and, to top all that, Reverend Phil Williams came and taught the Royal Potato song.

KINGSWOOD 2002

In October lots of our Year 6 children went to Kingswood. Kingswood is an exciting activity centre for children where they can get to do these activities:

• Quadbikes
• Archery
• Climbing
• Orienteering
• Fencing
• Outdoor Initiatives
• Flash (computer sessions)

Fencing and quadbikes were especially popular activities and lots of people surprised themselves by getting to the top of the climbing wall.

The Flash computer sessions were also very good. The task was to position a small toy then photograph it with the computer. The toy was then slightly repositioned and photographed again. This was done many times to create a kind of "stop-animation" movie when all the frames were put together to make an animated film.

At Kingswood the children sleep in dormitories that have bunk beds. No food or drink is allowed at any time in the dormitories and there are room inspections every morning. Points are awarded for tidy beds and clean floors. The children in the dormitory which gets the most points are awarded a prize.

The food at Kingswood was very good. Tea was the favourite meal with chicken and chips being very popular. There was lots of choice at breakfast but we had to get up at 7 o'clock in order to be ready for breakfast at 8 am.

CHRISTMAS PARTY

In the last week before the Christmas holidays, everyone had a Christmas party. The classes in Years 3 and 4 had their party on one day and Years 5 and 6 had their party on the next afternoon.

At the party there was loads of fun. First we played some party games including musical statues, "bring me", pass the parcel, bus stops and the chocolate game (where you have to roll a 6 on a dice, then put on gloves and try to cut off a piece of chocolate using a knife but wearing a pair of gloves – VERY hard).

All the children had to bring food which we shared at the end of the party.

CHILDREN IN NEED

On Friday 15th November 2002, the staff and pupils at Westdale Junior School supported the BBC Children in Need appeal. We had a non-uniform day and we brought in a donation of money if we did not want to wear our school uniform on that day. We raised over £200 from about 220 pupils in our school.

JIGSAW THEATRE GROUP VISIT

One of the special events this term was a visit to the school of the Jigsaw Theatre Group. The school day started off normally with registration but there was no assembly because the theatre group were setting up their props in the hall. The children went into the hall at half past nine, the time they usually come out of assembly, and sat down ready for the play. At the beginning, two women actors came out dressed in yellow togas and introduced the story – “The Trojan Horse”.

They had a screen behind which they could change their clothes because they were the only actresses in the play. It was a funny retelling of the story because one of the actresses had to be the beautiful Queen Helen (but she looked pretty ugly) and said to the other actress, “I don’t feel beautiful”. So the other one said, “Well, try to act beautiful!”

The play carried on with the real Trojan Horse story but with funny bits to make it more interesting. For example, the wooden horse, which is meant to be about sixty feet high was only a young child’s toy horse in this play!

The children thoroughly enjoyed the play even though they knew the ancient Greek story well already.

SPORTS NEWS

This has been a very good year for sport at Westdale.

The football team began the year well by winning through to the finals day of the 5 aside tournament. They worked had all year with Mr Gregory and after Christmas had some very good results and earned the school its best position in the league for many years. Some of the Year 6 girls also attended a special girls’ football event in the summer term.

Mr Bannister has run a cricket and a rugby club this term. These have been very successful and some of the older children have been to represent our school in cricket and rugby festivals. This is the first time for a long time that our school has been involved in these sports and both teams did extremely well for our first attempts.

Since Easter the rounders club, run by Mr Jennings and Mrs Gartside, has met every Tuesday. By going to this club, we have become good enough to compete in matches against other schools around the area. All of the children that attend rounders have learnt all of the skills of how to score rounders and get people out.

On Tuesday 17th June, 10 of the rounders club people went to a rally against 3 other schools. We drew one match, lost one and won one! We were invited to another rally on the 25th June, at Jesse Boot Primary School. Fortunately, the weather stayed sunny and dry. This time the results were positive. We won all three of our matches!

Labels: 2002, 2003, charity, Christmas, news, sport, visit