Margaret Wix Primary School
What have the children at Margaret Wix Primary School been up to?
Book Week 2024 was a great success! As a school, we decided to focus our week around sustainability. We wanted the children to be engaged and immersed in texts that taught us the importance of respecting our precious planet. Each class centred their learning around a book, which had a strong sustainable message at the heart of the story. Some of these texts included: Dear Earth, A Planet Full of Plastic, Tin Forest, The Forest and Our Planet.
We kicked off the week with a very special assembly. A visitor from the council, Monika Koziara, came to talk to out about our waste. We learned lots of facts about rubbish, the impact it has on our environment, and how we can dispose of it in a more sustainable way. Year 3 and 4 were then lucky enough to take part in a workshop, from Monika, where they explored this further.
We also welcomed our parents and carers into our classrooms to read with their children on Monday and Wednesday. It was so lovely to have the classrooms full of friendly faces and to see the joy that sharing in a book has.
On World Book Day itself, the children had the chance to showcase their sustainable costumes, which were fantastic! We had our very own Margaret Wix fashion show to show off our wonderful creations!
As well as this, EYFS, Year 1 and 2 had some special visitors from Townsend School, who came to read a sustainable story with us. We loved sharing our own sustainable texts and learning with them too!
Water safety awareness by PCSO Russo with Years 3 and 4 this afternoon. Lots of interesting information shared! Thank you for coming PCSO Russo.
This afternoon’s classroom looked a little different for Mrs Gibbs, Miss Abbott and some of our Pupil Parliament members - it was in fact a conference hall FULL of other headteachers and senior leaders from primary and secondary schools in Hertfordshire!
Our school was selected by leaders at HFL Education to share the work we have done over the past few years to develop our curriculum, especially with regards to equality, diversity and inclusion, after taking part in the Great Representation Programme.
Mrs Gibbs, Miss Abbott and the children delivered a presentation for half an hour that ended with great applause and fantastic feedback. One person was so impressed they actually asked if our pupils could head to Westminster to help our country’s real government! We are so proud of the children who spoke today: public speaking can be nerve-wracking, especially in such an unfamiliar environment, but they did brilliantly! 🤩 🗣️🎤
#TheWixWay #EqualityDiversityInclusion #PupilParliament #Oracy
Hearing from our local community about their religion is such a valuable way for us to learn from each other and how we live. Emperors had the pleasure of that this morning, as we welcomed Zain’s Mum in to talk about Muslim prayer (Salat). The children asked great questions and really enjoyed hearing about what we have learnt in our RE lessons coming from someone who is committed to daily prayer. Thank you so much to Zain’s Mum for coming in and giving us such an interesting talk, and to Zain for being such a great helper!
In this afternoon’s assembly, we learned about Shrove Tuesday and why pancakes are traditionally eaten each year. Shrove Tuesday marks the start of Lent for Christians - a time in which people choose something to give up as Jesus did when he withdrew to the desert. Nowadays, this is often chocolate or crisps but, many years ago, people often gave up eggs, milk and flour. What do these ingredients make? Pancakes! As well as learning about the meaning of Shrove Tuesday, we had great fun with a house pancake race competition; the winners were Marcus Rashford!
The children at Margaret Wix had a special assembly this morning with Val Male, who is our Chair of Governors and also Hertfordshire Principal Railway Officer. Val discussed the benefits of rail travel with the children as well as the importance of keeping safe on the railway. We learned where it is safe to stand and how to behave on the platform as well as the importance of taking care when getting onto trains. An astonishing fact we learned is that a train weighs 400 tonnes! This is important because it means that a train travelling at up to 125mph takes 20 football pitches to stop - this showed us the importance of keeping away from train tracks as it would be impossible for a driver to notice us and stop in time. Val also showed us pictures of who could help us if we needed it
As a whole school we celebrated Safer Internet Day by learning about how to access activities online in a safe way. The theme this year was change: how to use the internet to make change for the better and how young people can influence change.
The whole school took part in activities across the day. We all learnt about what we could do if something made us feel worried or upset and who we can turn to for help.
Mrs Arnott and the Digital Leaders also led an assembly this afternoon where we shared ideas and empowered each other to do something if there was something that upset us. We also celebrated how fantastic technology can be and thought about where we might be without it!
Watch this space for more information for parents and caters about how to keep your children safe after half-term!
Firetips and Hummingbirds were so lucky to have a visit from the Storytent today! We listened to a fantastic story about a lion and a little mouse. Then we all had the chance to create our own landscapes and choose our own characters, to create our own amazing stories
On Tuesday, some of our amazing parliament members ran an assembly on Tuesday for Feel Good February and Children’s Mental Health Week.
Rose, Jayden, Anna and Aizah with the support of the EMT created the assembly from scratch including the PowerPoint slides.
Sarah, our EMT, sent a glowing review of the children, here is what she said:-
“I just wanted to say how impressed I was with Aizah, Rose, Anna and Jayden. They came up with great ideas, made the slides and content by themselves, delivered the assembly brilliantly and were generally a pleasure to work with. Just wow!”
Year 5 have had some brilliant opportunities this week in the form of workshops centred around mental health.
In our retune workshop, we learnt that we all have mental health and that it is important to take care of our minds.
We looked at the 'SCALES' model, which supported us with ways in which we could support our minds to get back in tune if we are feeling low. These included: sleep, active, earth, listen and social. We then added our own ideas to each strand to support us if we need a little boost to feel better again.