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Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
Sunday is the first season of advent and marks the time when the Christian countdown to Christmas begins. We will explore these themes in worship over the next few weeks but something that really marks this season is putting up the tree! A much loved Upham tradition is that we ask children to make decorations, if they want to, to hang on the tree. This weekend, children might like to do this and bring them in from Monday. The theme this year is ‘angels’. Children can use any media or material – just make sure it has a sturdy loop or hook to hang on the tree. Decorations should not be bigger than around 10cm – if they are, they will be hung towards the back. Feel free to help your child with their project and enjoy a craft session – the weather doesn’t look good tomorrow so this might be ideal!
This week is national anti-bullying week and was a theme we explored in assemblies. We started by defining bullying – lots of children sometimes use the word to describe anything someone does that they don’t like or without recognising they instigated something. Bullying is ‘Behaviour by an individual or group, repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group either physically or emotionally’. This intention to upset, is thankfully very rare at Upham but we are always looking for
ways to further encourage the children. We used the Anti-bullying Alliance resources which gave a lovely message about ‘One Kind Word’ as a way of making a positive choice and taking responsibility for our own choices. Part of the video highlighted key words like Love and Kind and some Class 3 children had a go at ‘making’ the words, just as they saw on the video! If you would like to see the resource, follow: https://anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/anti-bullying-week/school-resources/primary-school-pack
We had a lovely Remembrance assembly at the Blessed Mary church yesterday. We discussed the many conflicts over the last 100 years but also moments of hope in between, where countries worked together for peace. We took in the national 11am silence. The children observed this impeccably and also offered thoughts and prayers they had previously made in school on paper poppies. As they ‘offered’ these at the front of the church, they did so silently, demonstrating understanding of the serious and reflective context. I was very proud how respectfully they all conducted themselves.
We elected our new school council this week, having explored how our parliamentary system works in assemblies to understand democracy. We did it slightly differently this year to help the children think about ideas people have rather than if the person was a friend or not. In Class 4 the children wrote manifestos based on some work we hope to use the council for. These were then shared, but anonymously. This worked really well and also enabled children who in the past may not have
wanted to stand up in front of their class, to be involved. Class 3 and 2 followed a similar process and Class 1 also voted for who they thought would do a good job.