This week the children celebrated World Mental Health Day by wearing a flash of yellow and dressing up their teacher !
Thank fully, they didn't bring anything too embarrassing in! We joined in the BBC live stream programme where children from all over the country tuned in to hear about ways they can develop their own strategies for keeping physically and mentally well.
During the next few weeks we will putting some ideas into practise such as Mindfulness and promoting a Growth Mindset.
Today we said goodbye to Mrs Barlow, one of our MDSs at Denby Free. We will miss you Mrs Barloe but wish you good luck in your new job!

Our new Year 6s have made a very impressive start to the year! They have settled in really quickly and are already producing Y6 standard work confidently. In addition, they have also taken on a number of roles across the school to model good behaviour, service to others and leadership. In the coming weeks we will be introducing each child and they will be telling you a bit about their role in school and their hopes and wishes for Year 6.
Have a look at our gallery where you will see Eagles working hard in PE. Our theme is athletics to link with the Olympics from our Groovy Greeks topic. Y6 were tasked to use their Science and Maths skills to create a fair test as to which is the best starting position for a sprint race. There was lots to think about but they all came up with some useful findings.

After a wonderful week with all the children putting in their best efforts in their SATS, today was all about celebrating!
The class have been working hard all term and achieved their 100 class awards in April. As a treat they chose to spend the morning in the park playing games and just generally chilling out! This was followed by a slap-up fish and chip lunch (kindly donated by Henry Simms Letting Agents - thank you!). In the afternoon the children enjoyed watching Mary Poppins and eating popcorn! Thank you to all the parents who donated snacks for the day - they were very much appreciated.

Eagles have had a great time celebrating Book Week as always. The week began last Friday with a visit from Sophie Snell, a local author who talked to us about the art of oral storytelling. She told us lots of her stories and also sang some folk songs. On Monday, in Literacy, we began our new topic where we will be writing stories taking our inspiration from other cultures. We have enjoyed reading the story of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters and we all then rewrote the ending so we created 17 different versions of the story! We went on to make mini books to illustrate our stories and then we each memorised our story so we could tell it orally to someone else. On Friday, we spent time with our Reception partners, telling them our stories and showing them our books. They loved it and we did too! Friday was also the day we came dressed as a character from our favourite book. We all took part and there was an amazing variety of costumes.

Today we had a visitor from the food company Quorn. Y5 and Y6 were chosen to take part in a food tasting trial of a new product that Quorn are developing especially for school dinners. The children sampled a barbeque and a tomato filet and gave feedback on which they preferred and whether, if the product became available as a lunch option, they would choose it. The children's response was very positive and the overwhelming feeling was that they would very much like the product to appear on the school menu in the future!
In the afternoon, the company provided a science based cookery demonstration based on sustainable sources of protein in the diet. The children learnt a lot about all the food groups and what constitutes a healthy diet. They also learnt about the environmental impact of producing meat based protein and the current initiative to encourage people to reduce their meat consumption in favour of other protein based alternatives. The cook demonstrated how to make a stir fry with help from the children and then everyone got to try some. It was a really great afternoon with lots of new information to add to our existing science learning.

Now that we have finished Who Let The Gods Out, we have started a brand new book called Holes it is about a young boy called Stanley Yelnats. And we are really enjoying it!

Niamh has arrived in Uganda. She is finding it very hard to drink water in front of people who don't have enough water themselves. But other than that she is having a lovely time in Uganda she has been answering lots of our questions. 

Eagles class have had a great first week back. We have done lots of exciting activities to launch our new topic 'Amazing Africa'. In Literacy we have been learning about Performance Poetry. Our focus has been the poem 'Walking with my Iguana by Brian Moses. On Friday we performed our version of the poem to the whole school in assembly and it went down very well! So much so that in the afternoon one of the Reception children made her own Iguana from an egg box and took it for a walk! The power of poetry!
On Thursday Mrs Melton's daughter Niamh came to visit. Niamh is leaving to go to Uganda on Saturday as part of her work with the oversees development charity CAFOD. She told us a  lot about her trip and we gave her 15 questions that we would like her to research while she is there e.g. What are the similarities/differences between schools in England/Uganda? What is transport like in Uganda? How does it feel visiting families who have very little to eat?
​Niamh will try to send us a VLOG while she is in Uganda if she has internet but if not she has promised to come back and see us when she returns to tell us all about her trip.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a visitor in Eagles who was called Mrs Reast. She taught us about Dementia  as in our class book (Who Let The Gods Out) one of the main characters suffers from Dementia. At the end of the talk we all received badges confirming we were all Dementia Friends.

This year for Advent, as the Hope For Belper Team are moving to a much bigger space they are not able to receive food products so we are raising money for their charity by filling a huge heart with pound coins. Year 6 are responsible for counting the money that pupils are raising. We are attempting to raise £100 by the end of Advent. Please make a contribution by bringing silver coins in and placing them in the jar at Collective Worship.

A week ago we all made a Greek Salads. Everybody took their salads home for them or a member of their family.

What an exciting week ! This week it was anti-bullying week and we designed some odd socks to go with our song we have been learning (Andy and the odd socks) which was fun. We also designed a collage using synonyms for the word RESPECT which was this year's theme for anti - bullying week. These will de displayed around to school as a reminder to all the children and adults that work in our school that we should always treat each other as we would want to be treated.

The other reason it has been such an exciting week is that Miss Hunt came to visit us with her new baby Luca! It was lovely to see her and to meet Luca. He was very good especially as we were all so excited! We hope they will come and see us again soon!

This week has been a week of contrast in Eagles Class! Year 6 were given the special responsibility of leading our Act of Remembrance on Friday. We all prepared a cross with the names of the Denby Parishioners who died in the First World War and read their names out as part of the service. It was a very moving tribute  especially as Mr Nelson played the Last Post.
​

On a much happier note, we welcomed our World Champion Kick Boxer Nancy back from her competition in Italy where she won Gold and Silver medals! We are SO proud of her achievement! Although Nancy is really humble and doesn't like a fuss normally, she did bring in her medals and some other memorabilia and we all enjoyed celebrating with her. Well done Nancy - you are a credit to our class and to Denby Free School!