Comic Relief was organised by the School Council and was a fantastic success! Pupils and staff came together dressed in red, proudly wore their red noses and donated money for a wonderful cause. We held a best joke competition where each class’s winning joke was shared in assembly to lots of laughter. We also really enjoyed playing ‘guess the teacher’ from their childhood photos. We raised an amazing £562.20!  Well done Team Springbank! 

A group of children from Year 4 went to Armley Leisure Centre to take part in a skipping competition. The children have been practising for weeks, with lots of children even giving up their own play and lunch times to practise. The children travelled down to Armley, full of excitement and a few nerves. They took part in group skips to warm up, followed by phase 1. In this part, the children who had their individual skips took to the stage to perform. After this, the children had another group skip together, followed by the partner skips. Finally, the group skips (keep the pot boiling and run, jump out) had their turn. The children waited in anticipation as they read out the results, they all did SO well with lots of 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. We were the overall winners, which is an incredible achievement and the first time Year 4 has ever qualified from Springbank! The Leeds City Final is on the 9th June so they need to continue their practising until then! What a fabulous achievement, every single person involved should be so proud. Well done Year 4!  

Year 3 had an amazing day out at Leeds City Museum, where they had the opportunity to explore a variety of fascinating exhibits and take part in an exciting workshop on the Ancient Egyptians. The trip was a fantastic way to bring their history learning to life and provided a hands-on experience that the children will never forget! 

When we got there, the children were eager to explore the museum’s galleries, discovering incredible artefacts, interactive displays and historical treasures. They were particularly fascinated by the real Mummy, Nesyamun, the ancient relics and the stories they told about people from the past.   The highlight of the trip was the engaging Ancient Egypt workshop, where the children learned about the mummification process. They were thrilled to take part in a hands-on activity, where they re-enacted the steps of mummification, wrapping a ‘body’ and carefully preparing it for the afterlife.

Through this immersive experience, they deepened their understanding of Egyptian beliefs and traditions.  The children had an amazing time and were so eager to tell each other about the new facts they had learned, it was a lovely way to consolidate their learning over this past term!

As part of our topic on evolution and inheritance, Year 6 visited Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster. We spent our morning exploring all the animal enclosures and were lucky to see lots of the animals at their most active. The children watched the polar bears having a roam and a swim, saw the tigers patrolling their territory and saw the wallabies and their babies up close in their enclosure. We then spent time with one of the park's education specialists - Alex - who showed us how some of the park's animals had evolved over time by using real fur, teeth and skulls of the residents! The children used the knowledge they gained to make up their own evolved animal, eventually playing a game of survival of the fittest! We even had time to run off some steam in the jungle adventure playground before heading back to school. It was a fantastic day and a great way to consolidate our learning around this top attraction.

Our Reception classes went to Swithens Farm in Rothwell. The children were very excited about meeting lots of different animals. The children walked around the farm with a box of carrots each to feed the animals and they met an emu, donkeys, llamas and alpacas, cows, pigs, goats. They were brilliant at feeding the animals by offering their carrot piece with a flat hand or dropping pieces into the pens. They were very respectful and interested in the animals, asking some great questions to the farmers. There were lots of baby animals, including a five-day old calf and some 1-day old piglets! The children all had a ride on hay bales in the trailer which was attached to Tony's tractor! We all sang songs and enjoyed a bumpy ride. The children also got to feed some lambs with bottles of milk. The hungry lambs were extremely excited and jumpy and the children did a great job giving them their milk. They had the opportunity to pet guinea pigs and a rabbit too. The children all behaved beautifully and respectfully and were a real credit to our school.      

To celebrate Science Week, we held a Science Day to keep the buzz and excitement high. As part of the day, NOVA-School delivered a workshop to all year groups. The session focused on observing changes and encouraged the children to use their curiosity — an essential part of being a scientist.  Throughout the workshop, the children were asked to make predictions about what might happen during the experiments, helping them to think carefully and develop their scientific thinking. The highlight for many was the spectacular “elephant toothpaste” experiment, which created huge excitement. The children loved it so much that they were still talking about it the next morning!

The Nova team sent us a lovely message about the children "All of the children were excellent and an absolute pleasure to work with. They asked great questions and really got involved, which made the sessions brilliant fun for us to run."

As part of our World Book Day celebrations, Years 2-6 had some very special visitors last week. Years 4-6 were visited by the brilliant Susannah Lloyd who initiated the children into the world of badger operated human robots dauthorsuring her session with them on World Book Day itself! Whilst the next day, Years 2 and 3 took part in a cartoon drawing and creating workshop with Mark Bradley. All of the children really enjoyed their visits and it was wonderful to see them engaging so well with the authors and their sessions.

The whole school thoroughly enjoyed celebrating their love of reading on World Book Day.  As always, it was lovely to see the children so engaged with the characters that they had chosen to dress up as and telling their adults about the stories from which they came.  The children enjoyed spending time seeing all of the different costumes in their key stage assemblies before taking part in various different reading or book themed activities such as creating their own reading bookmarks or retelling the key parts of their favourite book by creating their own film trailers for it!

Year 3 headed up to Otley Chevin last week where they had their first attempt at drawing a landscape. This visit helped them observe the natural environment closely and practise sketching what they could see, in preparation for their upcoming Art unit on landscapes inspired by Claude Monet.  This trip is a great example of using the local environment to enhance our curriculum.  Before we had minibuses this was a class-based lesson where Year 3 practised their sketching skills using photographs.  Now they can take this lesson outside into nature and draw from a real-life view…how fantastic!

Three children went to Temple Newsam for the West Yorkshire Cross Country Final! What an incredible achievement to even attend this event, the children (and staff) are so proud of them! Luckily, the weather conditions were good and the rain stopped for the race. The children had to run 900m up hills and on different terrains so it was extremely challenging. They all showed determination, resilience and their efforts were outstanding. They represented Farsley Springbank brilliantly. Well done boys!