We love, value and respect each other

St Godric’s RC Primary School June 2014 Summer Term 2014

Important dates for June 11.6.14 Y6 to Mass 9.15am 11.6.14 Y3 Healthy Eating Enterprise Day 11.6.14 Fathers’ Day Lunch 12.6.14 Year 6 to visit St Leonard’s 12.6.14 Y5—Tri Golf 13.6.14 Marvellous Maths Challenge Y1/2 14.6.14 First Holy Communion for pupils in Year 4—10am 16.6.14 Year 6 to YMT festival 16.6.14 Phonics Screening Test in Y1/2 17.6.14 Y2 Multi skills festival 18.6.14 Y6 to Robinwood 18.6.14 Y4 to Mass 18.6.14 Y4 Fair Trade Chocolate Chal-lenge 19.6.14 Movie Night—The Croods 23.6.14 IT Challenge Week 23.6.14 Transition worker in Y6 25.6.14 Y6 Bath Bomb Enterprise Day 25.6.14 Y3 to Mass 25.6.14 Y1 to Mini Olympics 27.6.14 Non-Uniform Day—please bring a bottle.

Congratulations to the following children who

will receive their First Holy Communion or a

special blessing on Saturday 14th June:

Francis, Beatrice, Erin, Jenny, Elizabeth, Jessi-

ca, Jessica, Daniel, Emma, Harry, Euan,

Georgie, Zoe, Callum, Lewis,

Tilly, Sarah, Sophie, Ethan,

Joseph, Charlie, Alex, Ben,

Heloise and Maria.

Please keep them all in your

prayers..

In this issue...

Page 1 Headteacher’s news Important Dates Congratulations

Page 2 What a Year We are the Cham-pions Game, set and Match Soccertots

Page 3 Ging Gang Goolie Durham Dash Olympic Dreams Stepping out Let’s Stick To-gether Walk to School

Page 4 FoSG news

1.7.14 Mini Vinnies invite the residents of Lindisfarne Care Home to tea. 1.7.14 Y6 to St Leonards 1.7.14 New starters visit 2.7.14 Y6 to Mass 3.7.14 Y4 Shanti Festival 6.7.14 SUMMER FAIR 6.7.14 Sending Forth FHC Mass 8.7.14 New starters visit 8.7.14 Y6 Leaver’s Mass with St Leonard’s feeder primary schools 9.7.14 KS2 Performance 1.30pm 10.7.14 KS2 Performance 6pm 10.7.14 Food Enterprise Day—Y2 10.7.14 FHC Session 9 11.7.14 Open Afternoon for parents 11.7.14 KS2 Orienteering Day 14.7.14 SPORTS DAY 16.7.14 Leavers’ Mass 16.7.14 Summer holiday begins 3.15pm

Welcome to our final newsletter of this academic year. You will see that this issue is devoted to the PE events that have been taking place recently throughout the school. The Sports Premium has enabled us to purchase high quality coaching and participate in more adventurous activities. We hope to achieve the gold active mark for the second year running. Sponsored Walk for Colombia We were sorry not to be able to complete our walk to Finchale Abbey due to the dreadful weather, however the children were amazing and participated in a joyful Mass in the hall followed by a few laps of the school field in the rain. Please can you send in any sponsor money as soon as possible so that we send it to Siobhan to enable her to help the Colombi-an children. Thank you very much for your support we have raised over £1400 so far! Relationship and Sex Education As you will have seen from the curriculum maps on our website, all children in school will be receiving teaching on this aspect of the curriculum this month. They will have one lesson each week lasting one hour. The children are taught about age appropriate aspects of this subject using Journey in Love by Sr Jude Groden. You are welcome to view this resource if you wish to. Parental questionnaires Many thanks to the parents who responded to these questionnaires. There was a very positive response from you all with some lovely comments. In response to a question raised, parents are able to find out about what their child is learning about in RE lessons on the curriculum map and diocesan leaflet on our website. Also our children know what level they are working at but this is also evident in the children’s books which are viewed by parents at parents’ evenings and can be discussed with class teachers. The RE inspection at the beginning of May went very well. We are currently awaiting receipt of our report which we will be sharing with you.

Having won the league everyone want-ed to keep up the winning streak by progressing to the finals. We were top of the group and in our final game we came up against long-time rivals, St. Margaret’s …The game started with a wonder goal taking us a 1-0 up by the break. Early in the second half the oppo-sition scored an early goal changing the game to a draw. The game looked likely to stay as a draw, but late in the second half as a well worked move finished in a goal to put St. Godric’s in pole position.

Some of the skills we practised helped us with aiming, throwing, catching, dribbling, balancing and team work. We all enjoyed the les-sons very much. Before Easter a lady called Ann came to introduce us to Gymnastics. A few of us could demonstrate some of the moves because we already go to gymnastics classes. Some of the balancing exercises were extremely tricky – but we just about managed! At the end of each

lesson Ann gave 2 certificates to the best workers that week.

PAGE 2 ST GODRIC’S RC PRIMARY SCHOOL SUMMER TERM 2014

On Wednesday 14th of May a group of Y3

children went to Maiden Castle to com-

pete in a tennis competition.

When we got there the coach welcomed

us and told the boys to go inside, mean-

while the girls played mini challenges -

the hardest one was the one where you

had to drop the ball onto the other per-

son’s racket without dropping the ball

onto the floor! We thoroughly en-

joyed the competition and the chance

to represent our school.

The game ended with a victory and the win booked us a spot in the final. Having won the league and many tro-phies along the way we can safely say that this year has been a very success-ful footballing year!

In March we took part in the Dance Fes-tival at the Gala Theatre. Everyone really enjoyed that! Mr Stevenson helped us to prepare and practise our dance – Dancing through the Decades.

In this last term we are working with Mr Wharton who is a gymnast. He is fan-tastic and we are learning so much! So far we have found out about body tension, balancing and stretching. He makes the warm-ups fun and we always end with a lively activity.

Reception Class were very excited on

the morning of Thursday 15th May

because they were taking part in

Soccertots, an inter-school challenge

competition at Durham Johnston

School. After a delayed start the chil-

dren were split into teams and took

part in 5-aside football games as well

as a range of fitness building activi-

ties. The children had a lovely time

and the poor weather did not damp-

en their spirits or enthusiasm.

Way back in the Autumn term of 2013 we had football coaching with Graham. It was awesome because people who liked football got the chance to improve their skills and the people who were not so keen on football found it interesting because Graham made it fun. We also worked with Mrs Hopkins to learn a Cat Dance. We did lots of stretching and pouncing because we thought a lot about the way cats move. Some of the moves were quite difficult to do. At the start of 2014 we had Multi-Skills coaching with Phil. We got to play Dodge Ball and it was really, really exciting. (Mrs M-G found it very hard to keep the score!)

Having started the season winning the League, St. Godric’s progressed to win the Pearl Cup. We also won a 5 a-side tournament and while everyone dis-played excellent skills, unfortunately we didn’t qualify to the County finals. After this last defeat , St. Godric’s team was determined to win. After a positive start we continued to build on our success. We ended up winning the league and finished seven points clear of our near-est rivals. - Coach [Paul Young] couldn’t

stop jumping up and down!

On Wednesday 7th May Year 5 went on a school trip to Moor House Scout Camp including an over-night stay. While we were there we tried all of the challenges; like the leap of faith, team activi-ties, toboggan run, then we had free time fol-lowed by lunch. After lunch we came back to orient-eering and wall climbing, all of which were fun but hard. After all our hard work we were invited to a warm campfire. Mr Park was the host of the campfire and he taught us many tunes and games from Canada! One of my favourites was bungalow - you show a dance move and the whole group copies you. Once we had all

experienced the campfire half of us went to the night line which was real-

ly fun because you are blindfolded and walked through the woods. It was great, but scary! Then we came back and met each other to go to bed. The beds were so comfy!!!

Most of us were woken up at 5:00am by the boys singing a song we learned at the campfire-“ Hey Hey Bo Diddly Bop” . So with that we all got changed and continued our day with survival skills - cooking, fire lighting and shelter building which were all very exciting . After that, we sadly had to go home.

Our favourite activity involved work-ing with a friend to walk together on planks of wood – it was more chal-lenging than it looked!

Year 1 attended the Meadowfield Sports Festival on Wednesday 30th April to participate in a range of out-door sporting activities. There were lots of other schools there too, and we all had a fantastic time. The activities included learning how to navigate a blind-folded friend around obstacles, ordering ourselves without stepping off the stepping stones and orienteering.

PAGE 3 ST GODRIC’S RC PRIMARY SCHOOL SUMMER TERM 2014

New park and stride site has been found thanks to the cooperation of the local Co-op on Carrhouse Drive. We now have 3 choices for park and stride: Abbey Sport Centre Bede Lodge Co- op Enjoy your walk to school!

KS2 were delighted to qualify for the

KS2 Key Steps Competition finals.

The finals were held at the ‘Pink

Gym’ in Spennymoor and after an

impressive opening ceremony with a

fantastic display of ‘free running’ we

were ready to start. The team from

Years 3 & 4 (Lilli, Nathan, Aliza, Eliza-

beth, Niamh, Georgie and Sophie)

and Poppy from Year 6 were to per-

form a floor routine and the vault.

We waited anxiously for the results

and we weren’t disappointed as

Year 3 & 4 finished in 2nd place

while Poppy also claimed the silver

medal. Our medals were presented

by Olympic Champion Chris Tomlin-

son.

Last half term Y4

have enjoyed ath-

letics with Mr Tinkler.

He taught us lots of

skills and techniques

to help us improve

our performance. We practised all 3 athletic

components: running, throwing and jump-

ing. P.E. is really fun especially the warm up

games testing our concentration and reac-

tion times. Watch out for the next genera-

tion of athletes—Jessica Ennis and Usain

Bolt beware!!!!

Well done to our Key Stage 2 chil-dren that took part in the Durham Dash.

The road race was as gruelling as ever with Sam in Y6 qualifying for the final. The field events tested our ath-letic abilities of throwing and jump-ing. Well done to Poppy who finished 3rd overall.

Dear Friends,

Now that we are back after half term, we are very busy with our plans for our 2014 Summer Fun day (Sunday 6th July). Everyone is welcome - drag your friends, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins - infact anyone you know - along to the day!

We need your help!

We need as much help as we can get on the day of the 6th July, either before or during the fun day (or both!), so please let us know if you can help. We also have a preparation night on Thursday 3rd July from 6.00pm. A form is included, that you can update with your availability. This can either be returned to the school office for us to col-lect - or you can email us directly - friendsofstgodrics@gmail.com.

Weekly collections

We are now underway with our weekly collections – and we’ve had a great start with books - thank you for all the books you have sent into us.

Just in case you need a list of the remaining weekly collections, please see below:

*if you are worried about your child bringing in glass bottles, we have a crate outside the school office so that you can deliver them directly into school.

We are also now collecting filled jars to be used as prizes on the children’s tombola stall. They are clean empty jars, filled with sweets, unused party bag items, pencils, pens, crayons or felt tips, hair accessories or anything that you think would be enjoyed by a child.

Fun day stalls

Our favourites are back by popular demand – cakes, tombolas, toys, books, plants, hot dogs and crafts. The rodeo bull is making a very welcome return, along with a bouncy castle and inflatable assault course. You can guess the number of balloons in a car or have a go at guessing whether a bottle is water or wine (no tasting allowed!)

Other fundraising items this term

Following the success of our Frozen movie night (we raised over £500), we are really excited about our next movie

night – ‘The Croods’ - Tuesday 19th June, 3.15pm – 5.30pm. Tickets are now on sale (ticket order form is en-

closed with this newsletter).

Decorate a wooden spoon competition - decorate a wooden spoon so that it looks like a celebrity – the best

spoon will win a prize. To enter, you need to buy a wooden spoon from us for 50 pence (the order form is enclosed

with this newsletter). Then, decorate the spoon and hand it in. the winner will be announced on Sunday 6th July at

our fun day.

Week commencing 9th June Toiletries and baskets

Week commencing 16th June Chocolates and sweets

Week commencing 23rd

June Bottles*

Week commencing 30th June Soft toys and games

Friday 4th July Home baked cakes and biscuits