The Durham Dales Federation is a federation of small rural primary schools, which was formed in September 2023. Staff from all schools work together to share expertise and to plan and deliver the curriculum. Our subject leaders co-ordinate their subjects across all the schools within our federation, which ensures that we can offer the same high-quality experiences to all pupils in our schools.
The Upper Dales schools of Wearhead and St John’s Chapel work together on a regular basis each week. At the start of the week, each school works in their own building and on Thursdays and Fridays, the schools come together on the St John’s Chapel Primary School site. On Federation days, we take advantage of the opportunities to work in larger groups with other children of the same age, and we often arrange visits and visitors for these days so that everyone can participate.
St John's Chapel and Rookhope Primary In our topic lesson this week, Class 1 were looking at a map of a costal town. We predicted what physical or human feature some of the symbols might represent, explaining our reasoning. Then, in pairs, we looked at the same map but this time it included a key. After looking at the key, we identified that some of our predictions were correct and used the key to answer some questions.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School In Topic today Class 1 learnt all about Coastal Erosion. We started our lesson by taking part in a demonstration. In a plastic box we built sandcastles in a row to make a cliff. We then placed a wooden block on the top to represent a building and lastly added water to show the sea. Waves were then created by moving the water back and forth. This showed that the waves eroded the cliff causing the building to fall. We then repeated the experiment with a minor change, we added large rocks to represent the sea defences. Everybody then got to create the waves to see if they could make the building fall, it didn't fall. The experiment showed the children the value of sea defences with regard to defeating the erosion of our coasts.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Today in Computing, year 3 and 4 have been looking at creating variables in scratch. They have been programming a quiz that is able to keep track of the score and identify if the answer is correct or incorrect. The children's sprites were also able to interact throughout the quiz.
View this PostSt John's Chapel & Rookhope In our Topic lesson today, the children in KS2 have been using OS maps to identify human and physical features and six figure grid references.
View this PostWearhead Primary School This afternoon, Class 2 have been looking at OS maps of our local area and using 4 and 6-figure grid references to locate various places of interest.
View this PostChapel Tots is on today at St John's Chapel Primary School from 1.30pm - 3.00pm. It is open for all children aged 0 - 3 years old and is FREE! Refreshments will be available for all. We hope to see you there!
View this PostWearhead Primary School It was a windy Forest Schools session at Wearhead yesterday! We worked in groups and practised reading a compass to help us to say what we could see in different directions. We also cooked toffee apple slices on the fire - they were delicious!
View this PostHamsterley Primary In Forest School this afternoon, Class 1 made bird feeders using sticks, mud and birdseed. Then, we used an information sheet to see if we could identify different types of birds that we could see and hear. We made mud pies, and then toasted and ate marshmallows! Lots of fun was had by all.
View this PostSt John's Chapel & Rookhope This afternoon, we had great fun in Forest School. We cooked hotdogs on the fire and started to weed the planters in the garden.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Well done to all of our star award winners this week! Henri received the star of the week award for class 2 this week for his outstanding effort in everything he does.
View this PostSt John's Chapel, Rookhope & Wearhead Congratulations to this week's award winners!
View this PostSt John's Chapel, Rookhope & Wearhead This afternoon, the children in KS2 have been practising their tennis skills in PE.
View this PostSt John's Chapel, Rookhope & Wearhead In Science, the children in year 5 and 6 have been learning about animal life cycles. They used PowerPoint to create three life cycles.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School In Science this week, Year 3 and 4 have been looking at classification and the different ways we can classify the animal kingdom. They sorted the animals into vertebrates and invertebrates and then we looked at how we could subdivide the vertebrates further. Year 5 and 6 The children looked at classifying heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures and then carried out a sieving activity to separate three different mixtures.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School In our Computing lesson, Reception have been learning how to sort and categorise objects and discuss how items can be categorised. Our task was to order ourselves in height , shoe size, eye colour and age.
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