Thank you very much to our Open the Book team who led our Collective Worship, this week.  They acted out the story of Jesus choosing to have dinner with Zacchaeus, despite him not being popular due to cheating people on their taxes.  We learnt about the example that Jesus set of seeking out the people who weren’t included. We learnt about the value of forgiveness and the importance of moving on.

Father Adam visited us in school, on Thursday.  We heard the story that Jesus told of the Good Samaritan.  We considered who behaved as a good neighbour and what qualities they had displayed.  Father Adam asked us to consider the ways in which we can be good neighbours. The children gave some excellent examples, such as being generous, not being boastful and supporting someone if they are upset.

Hello parents and carers

As some of you may know, at the start of the year, we introduced Sports Leaders to are school. They have done an amazing job with helping are school grow a love for sports. They have introduced new activities to our playgrounds like football, skipping and loads more. People have started to get involved in new games on our playgrounds.

These are some of our playground activities we have added to our school:

.Football

.Skipping

.Hurdles

.Piggy in the middle

.Catch

.Rock paper scissors shoot race

Our Sports Leaders have made an amazing start to there jobs and made our school a better place. We just want to say a massive well done to our Sports Leaders.

Your sincerely,

Ben and Stanley

We have had a really lovely week of celebrations, at Church of the Ascension.  On Wednesday, we welcomed our reception children to school and church community. Thank you to Father Jonathan for leading our service reflecting on the importance of light in the world and how our children represent the light and hope of the future.  Thank you also to Max and Elizabeth, 2 of our year 6 pupils, who gave very thoughtful and reflective speeches about their experiences as pupils of our school.  Our reception children sang confidently and we all thoroughly enjoyed your service.

It was lovely to celebrate so many successes in our weekly Praise Assembly, this morning.  It was great to see a wide variety of subject achievements, as well as all of the brilliant activities that our children are involved in outside of school.

Well done to 10 of our year 6 pupils who participated in the T1 Rugby Tournament at DK Rugby Club, this afternoon.  The event was run by the sports leaders at Ellowes High School and they provided a great afternoon of activities and competitions.  Thank you to Mrs Clarke for organising. Mrs Clarke said that our children were a pleasure to spend the afternoon with and were excellent ambassadors for our school. We are looking forward to the team passing on the knowledge and skills that they learnt today, to the rest of the year group.

Huge thanks to our HSA for hosting the discos this week.  We had a great time – I hope that everyone has recovered from the excitement! Well done to the children who attended – it was a lovely atmosphere and I was very impressed by some of the dance moves!  I will be sending out a list of all other planned HSA events, next week.  There are already lots of great activities planned for this school year.

Our Sports Ambassadors have had a very busy week.  After some training with our sports coach, Matt, the children have been leading lots of games and activities.  These have included basket ball, netball, hurdles, skipping, balancing games and penalty shoot outs.  It has been brilliant to see the Ambassadors leading the other children in activities and challenges.  Thank you, Sports Ambassadors – you are doing a great job!

Mrs Peters launched our OPAL project with the children, this week.  We are very much looking forward to creating the first of our playground zones, after half term.  Thank you very much for the kind donations.  We are very grateful to have received toys, storage and monetary donations.  Your support with improving our social times is very much appreciated.

This week, we have been considering how sometimes being proud of achievements might turn into boasting.  We explored this idea through the story of The Tall Tower.  Once people had settled from the floods, they lived peacefully and happily together for some time.  However, they then started to compete with each other to see who could build the tallest towers.  Instead of concentrating on living a good life, people started to focus on showing off and boasting.  The children gave some great responses as to how it feels when people boast and whether it helps or hinders friendships.  When God responded to the selfishness and boastfulness by creating lots of new languages so people could no longer communicate, this caused huge confusion.  We considered how difficult this must have made life and how the people must have thought hard about how they were behaving.

In Thursday’s assembly, Mrs Peters and Mrs Birad introduced the children to our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) curriculum and explained how playtimes and lunchtimes will be changing, following the half term holiday.  The children responded very positively and are looking forward to having an increased variety of resources and activities for social times.

We are delighted to be continuing our collaborative work with Wall Heath in Bloom.  There are a couple of exciting projects that we would love to get involved with, as a school.  Children and families have been invited to contribute to the Remembrance Day service by creating either crocheted or knitted red poppies for a central display in the church grounds. If you would like to contribute any poppies, we are happy to accept the donations at school.  We will also be inviting children to design a Christmas Card competition. I have shared this with children today in assembly, and look forward to seeing their competition entries.

Music lessons with Dudley Performing Arts have resumed for those children learning to play an instrument, in school.  If you would like your child to have lessons with Dudley Performing Arts, please follow this link – Music lessons in school | Dudley Council

Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their opportunity to visit church this week for the Experience Harvest event.  Children listened carefully and interacted thoughtfully in all of the activities.  I look forward to seeing how well the seeds of radishes, carrots and lettuces grow.

Lunchtimes have been full of new activities, this week, thanks to our Sports Ambassadors.  They have been working closely with ACE coaching to lead some really great games and activities.  It has been lovely to see the children playing so creatively, although I have discovered that I need to work on my penalty taking skills.

Thank you to all of those at church who supported and hosted us.  Thank you also to our amazing Worship Committee who have worked closely with Mrs Moore and Mrs Austin to lead very thought provoking and interactive services for our key stage 1 and 2 children.  I thoroughly enjoyed the services and I know that the children did too.

Many thanks for all of the generous Harvest donations that we have received for the Foodbank. We will ensure it’s safe delivery to The Black Country Foodbank next week.

We are looking forward to  our first school discos of the year, which will be taking place on Thursday 8th October.

This week, we started thinking about the people of God.  We explored the story of Noah and the ark.  We considered what qualities Noah held that meant that God considered him trustworthy which such a big mission.  God made Noah a promise and Noah trusted in God – we thought about what that means about the relationship that God had with Noah.  At the end of the story, there was a rainbow that signified that the storm had passed.  We all agreed that we love rainbows and how they represent hope and brighter things.  The children made some very thoughtful contributions about the importance of promises and why they are sometimes quite difficult to keep.