On Friday 3rd March, William Barcroft celebrated World Book Day! The children were invited to wear clothing that represented an adjective! We had some amazing outfits in school including colourful, festive, sparkly, purple and trendy.  We even had an author visit in school, Stuart Rowson, who shared his fantastic new book, Izzy and the Tumble Thunder, with us. He shared the story of his childhood growing up in Grimsby and how he became an author. We all enjoyed a tasty hot chocolate and read as much as we could – it was a fantastic day!

Year 3

Today we celebrated World Book Day! We listened to the story of Mr and Mrs Twit and all of their silly tricks! We made our own dirty beards and acted out as Mr and Mrs Twit. We also met a local author called Stu Rowson who has had an incredible career working for the BBC. We loved hearing about his experiences and he has inspired us to pick up a book or begin writing! Please enjoy reading with your child this weekend and talk about your favourite books. Take a look at our wonderful outfits and try to guess our adjectives that we have dressed as!

Year 4

4V read The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. We really enjoyed reading this book! We loved the storyline throughout, but also the fact that each page is a valuable quote that can stand alone. We enjoyed focusing on a few key pictures and ‘reading them’. Looking at the characters emotions and how they might be feeling about it! We also tried to recreate some of the pictures in the book ourselves. 4S read The Witches. We enjoyed starting this book! Whilst reading, we learnt how to spot a witch and then drew our own scary witches! We did lots of reading of this book as we were enjoying it so much! 4BL read The book that eats people. The children created their own page for the book( inspired by the style) for our own class version of the book. some versions include Mr Blake being eaten!

Year 5

In 5S, the children enjoyed reading extracts from Tom’s Midnight Garden, which is a book they chose themselves following reading an extract during Whole Class Reading. They discussed the key themes within the story: time, friendship, love and loss; using these themes they created a piece of artwork, which also celebrated their love of reading. In 5A, the children read ‘Here We Are’ by Oliver Jeffers. We read the beautiful book that encourages togetherness and created fantastic art based on the book as our inspiration. In 5HS, we read The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore! This is an amazing book sharing the love of reading throughout the life of Mr Morris Lessmore.

Year 6

In 6S, the children were so excited to learn that we were able to read the third instalment to the Aveline Jones series: The Vanishing! We read throughout the day as much as we could, created art based on the spooky descriptions In 6F, we carried out our activities around Gangsta Granny by David Walliams. We produced a diary entry from Ben’s point of view staying over for a night with his Granny. We also recreated some of the images of the key characters including Ben, Granny and Mr Parker. In 6B, we read the sequel Catching Fire to our English text The Hunger Games. We enjoyed designing a costume for Katniss in the second Hunger Games and reading as much of the book as we could! We even want to read the third instalment!

On Wednesday 1st March, 35 of our pupils participated in a Cross Country event at Weelsby Woods. The event had over 1000 children participating from over 30 schools. We had some great success in some of the races. This included our highest ever finish by a year 3 pupil, coming in 6th place out of 144 pupils. Massive congratulations to Esmai! Everyone who ran was amazing and showed true grit and determination to finish the races. A lot of notable mentions including Zoe in year 3 who finished 14th and Georgia who finished 12th. In Year 5, Lillie-Rose finished 25th which massively improved on her place last year. All members of staff were impressed with how the children behaved and yet again they represented the school brilliantly. Well done everyone!

Year 4 had a fabulous time at Woodside Wildlife Park  as part of our rainforest topic. We enjoyed seeing lots of wonderful animals and hearing lots of great facts about a wide range of animals including ring-tailed lemurs, wolves, red pandas, meerkats and otters. The immersive rainforest section was extremely exciting as we got to see some of the animals we have been learning about in our topic! We also got to see the tiger feeding and penguin feeding which we loved! The children really impressed the keepers with their knowledge of deforestation and conservation. It was a thoroughly engaging and enjoyable day provided by the fantastic guides at Woodside!

As a part of our topic in in Year 3, we had an immersive day learning all about Natural Disasters. First, we learnt how an earthquake would happen and created our very own simulation to see one in action. Then, we worked fabulously in teams to build buildings that were earthquake proof using spaghetti and marshmallows- some really were strong enough to survive an earthquake! Next, we learnt about the real life effects of natural disasters and how they put people in danger. We imagined that we had experienced this and acted out our thoughts and feelings in some role-play and hot-seating. We finished the morning with an incredible workshop from Lab Rascals who helped us to create our own volcano structures which we then erupted using dry ice and boiling water. We all had so much fun trying to create the biggest eruption cloud and we could even hear the ‘magma’ bubbling away on the inside of the volcano. To finish the day, we painted miniature volcanoes and placed them on a giant world map, helping us to locate famous volcanoes around the world and spot the ‘Ring of Fire’.

Our student governors meet in school weekly to discuss the school priorities for the upcoming term. After discussing with children in school our student governors requested a Valentines Disco. The children’s behaviour across school has been exceptional since the Autumn term and they have completed 10 consecutive weeks with less than 10 names on the school trackers. Therefore, as a fabulous reward the disco was given the go ahead!

The disco took place on Thursday 9^th February in our school hall. The children were able to get changed into party clothes and enjoyed a disco from local entertainer Andy Carr! Treat bags filled with crisps, chocolates, sweets as well as popcorn and drinks were enjoyed by all!

12 Year 5 pupils had the exciting opportunity to join a community Tree plant event in Grant Thorold Park this week. This event was part of a scheme to turn the East Marsh Green. Together they planted trees that were from various parts of the world and learnt how trees help to keep us and our planet healthy.

As part of our internet safety day, all children have had lots of conversations about how to look after themselves online. They have discussed their digital footprints and how what they post online leaves tracks. They discussed the pros and cons of the internet in a sensible, mature manner. During conversations, they demonstrated that they know who to go to if they had issues- a trusted adult. Our digital leaders did an amazing job in helping to support the afternoon. A highlight in year 5, was playing a game ‘How much do you know me?’ where they had to guess how a friend would deal with an online scenario.The afternoon concluded by them discussing what is better with or without tech. A favourite question was- what do you hope for the internet in ten years time- they said: kinder, safer and free!

On Tuesday, the children enjoyed a visit from Patience Agbabi: a sought-after poet and author. Patience has visited schools across the country and delivered many exciting, awe-inspiring workshops. She shared with us her book trilogy: The Infinite, The Time Thief and The Circle Breakers! Patience gave us an incredible insight into how an author creates characters and the inspirations behind each character and the plot. The children really enjoyed the reading from The Circle Breakers! Some children had bought books from the trilogy and even had them signed by Patience herself!

A selection of children have been out to Havelock Academy this week to learn a variety of new basketball skills with the local Grimsby Phoenix team. They had a fantastic time learning how to dribble and shoot accurately and even had an in-house hoop shooting competition. Lots of children who visited now have a new love for basketball!

On the 31st January, 8 pupils participated in a Year 3/4 Dodgeball tournament at Oasis Academy Wintringham. There were a total of 11 local primary schools. William Barcroft competed in the Large School League against Wybers Wood, Elliston Primary, Healing Primary, Humberston Cloverfield and Waltham Leas.

We lost our first game 2-1 against Wybers Wood before beating Healing Primary 2-1. Then, we drew 1-1 with Elliston Primary before beating Waltham Leas 2-1. Finally, we fell short in our last game against Humberston Cloverfield, losing 2-1. This meant that William Barcroft finished in an outstanding joint 2nd place overall.

The competition’s focus was honesty and being honest if pupils were hit. The team displaying the most honesty were to be awarded with medals. Deservedly, William Barcroft was awarded with the most honest school and the team were rewarded with medals. Mr Dawes is very proud of every single person who represented our school in this competition. You were all simply faultless!