Headteacher blog 31st January

It has, in large part, been a lovely bright, crisp week at school.

We are having lots of trips and visitors at the moment: Florence Nightingale in Y2 earlier this week, Y5 on two trips to Cartwright Hall for an excellent workshop about Early Islamic Civilisation, Y4 to Murton Park next week to be Anglo-Saxons and Y1 to the Leeds art gallery. I also heard that a Roman soldier was walking around Farsley on Wednesday having visited Westroyd down the road. This sort of historical enrichment is a brilliant part of schools’ curriculum offer and brings learning to life.

Last week we had a teacher training day that focused on ‘metacognition’: thinking about how adults and children learn and implications for pedagogy. One thing that we are doing more of is ‘adults thinking aloud’: uninterrupted models of thought processes and reasoning to help children to work through academic and other challenges.

We have got the final results for the season’s school cross country events. We are the only local school that attend these events on Saturday morning. Despite this, the races are huge: up to 150 runners in each one, with very strong teams from some independent schools too. We have had our best ever participation rate: 39 children which is 1 in 6 of the children in KS2. There have been 4 races this season and overall our teams came: Y3/4 girls- 15th, Y3/4 boys – 15th, Y5/6 girls- 10th, Y5/6 boys- 18th. Our best overall individual was Teddy (27th place as a Y5 in the U11 category). Well done to all the children and special thanks to Mrs Fain and Mrs Tomlinson for their support at all the events this year. Mrs Fain reported: “The whole team has all done amazingly well and seen real improvement this year as well as had a good laugh, and I am hugely proud of them and they should be super proud of themselves. We have been referred to ……. as the school that grins the most, the school with most fruit, and the school that cheers the loudest for everyone on their team. All fantastic accolades.”