Take a look at all of our wonderful costumes for World Book Day 2023! The children and staff all went to so much effort dressing up as their favourite characters and it made for a fantastic celebration of the amazing world of books. Next week, we have special visitors coming into St. Augustine’s – West End In Schools. We are very excited to welcome them and continue the World Book Day celebrations by exploring stories through performance and drama!
As part of Children’s Mental Health week we held our ‘happy mind, happy me day’!
We dressed in clothes that made us feel happy, did a whole school Go Noodle in the hall and made our mental health first aid kits.
Throughout the week we had our weekly Relax Kids session and celebration worship.
This week we had one of our parents Mrs Lowrie visit us to talk about her work as a vet!
The children loved this interactive talk and found it incredibly interesting, especially the skeletons!
Thank you Mrs Lowrie for giving up your time, we really appreciate it.
Today we were lucky enough to have a visit from Hoglets and the British Wildlife Rescue Centre. They came in to teach us about hedgehogs and what we can do to best help these creatures. We met Harry the hedgehog and learnt that he has 5000 spikes, likes to live in hedges, eats lots of worms and bugs, rolls up into a ball when he is scared and has a small nose and eyes. 50 years ago, there were 30 million hedgehogs and now there are only 1 million. This is linked to their habitats being destroyed by new houses being built and no safe space for hedgehogs to go and move to. We participated in lots of activities throughout the morning to help us understand how we can help this animal survive in the future.
First, we were hedgehogs hunting for worms. When a badger or fox came and had a sniff around, we rolled into a ball. We collected 20 worms to help the big hedgehog and 19 for the small one. We found it easy because we used our eyes, however, we know this is different for hedgehogs because they use their nose as their eyes are so small. They are also nocturnal animals so it is harder to see when they hunt for their food at night.
The next activity involved us finding slugs. If we found one we would lose a point and go to the wildlife hospital, if we didn’t, we would get an insect to eat. We found out that hedgehogs like cat food and get poorly from slug pellets.
In EYFS we used clay to make our own hedgehogs. We used sticks to create the spikes, eyes and noses of our hedgehogs. This was based on a book we were read about hibernation and hedgehogs being nocturnal animals.
In KS1 and KS2 we were builders in our final activity where we used our STEAM skills. We had to create a hedgehog friendly housing estate. We had to think about: crossing roads, access to food, moving around between houses and gardens etc. Our housing estates were very creative and even included a hedgehog play area, speed camera and traffic lights!
Please see the link below for some exciting careers talks which took place this week!
The children loved learning about the exciting jobs which some people do! Thank you so much to the parents who gave up their time and put so much effort into their presentations! We are so grateful to you all.
Our friends from Burton Albion Golden Goals Club came into school today and joined us for our wellbeing walk around the village. The children had a lovely time chatting to everyone on the walk and served our guests tea and delicious cakes when we arrived back to school. The weather was perfect and we thoroughly enjoyed being out in the fresh air!
“On behalf of the Draycott and Burton area members of the Burton Albion Community Trust Golden Goals Club, I would like to thank the staff and children of St Augustine’s Academy for treating us to such delicious refreshments when we returned from our walk around the village on Friday 25th November. The children joined us on our walk and I’m sure they enjoyed it as much as we did! They were excellent at waiting on the tables and so polite. Thank you so much, we cannot wait to do it again!”
Ruth Adams.
Maths Morning
Our Maths Morning held on 20th October was a huge success! Many thanks to everyone who supported this! It was a wonderful opportunity to come into school and enjoy some fun maths games with the children and also to ask any questions you may have regarding maths in school. We look forward to welcoming you to our our maths morning next term.
We are so very grateful for your support this morning. We have so many wonderful harvest gifts to drop off at The Soup Kitchen in Burton upon Trent. Thank you so much.
We had a wonderful Harvest Festival in the school hall this morning. The children performed beautifully and read their poems and prayers with such confidence- you wouldn’t believe we were only 5 weeks in to a new term! We were very proud of them and I’m sure you were too!
It was also wonderful to have Jordan and John in for the harvest festival. After COVID quashing our plans over the past few years it was wonderful to have our visitors, parents and students back together for a worship.
We are proud to announce we have raised a whopping £1,067.75 for Cancer Research UK!! We are so proud and thankful to you all. Well done!
The summer production of Edith’s Wartime Scrapbook went down a treat with the audiences on Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th July. All pupils at St Augustine’s from Reception to Year 4 took part and performed brilliantly! They spoke their lines with clarity and confidence and sang beautifully. Whilst moving out of the house in which she has lived for 80 years, Edith Coleman discovers an old scrapbook from her childhood. The turn of every page rekindles memories of a time when war affected every aspect of her daily life. But despite the perils of the Blitz, evacuation, rations and bossy ARP wardens, we learn of how families and communities cared for and supported each other, found comfort and humour in their unusual circumstances, and ultimately triumphed in the face of adversity. A fabulous play!
We are so proud of everyone today, All of our pupils completed the Race for Life this morning! We are still waiting on a few donations but we are astounded at the amount we have raised so far! We will update you with final total when we have received all of the donations! Well done everyone! Our donation page can be found here and all proceeds go to Cancer Research UK.
A massive thank you to everyone who donated, came to cheer us on or baked such wonderful cakes for our cake sale!
We all wore red, white and blue today for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration Day. The children made crowns and other craft activities outside. We had a special celebration picnic outside for lunch.
Class 2 had made some wonderful jubilee artwork! Well done Class 2!
Ahead of our Jubilee Day tomorrow we are delighted to inform you that Jesse has won our Jubilee traybake competition! Well done Jesse!
Miss Jayne has made our cake and we think it looks amazing! We can’t wait to try some tomorrow!
We had a fabulous sports day on the 27th May! Thank you to everyone who came to watch and support the children! We were so proud of every child and the team spirit, friendship and love they showed throughout the day!
To enjoy the video of Sports Day please click on the image.
We had a fabulous turnout at the maths morning today! Thank you so much to everyone for coming, the children had so much fun playing the maths games and showing off their maths skills!
Class 3 were part of the SUAT Podcast this term, please have a listen! We are so proud of our children and to be a part of Staffordshire University Academies Trust.
Well we have teamed up with St Peter’s Alton, All Saints at Denstone and The Dove to raise money to have a well drilled in Nepal. It costs £600 to drill a well and we have all raised £150 each. This is being done alongside Feed the Hungry who will be actually doing the work over in Nepal. There is a plaque with our school’s names on which can be seen below.
We are really proud of what we have achieved with this project and look forward to following the amazing work they are carrying out improving lives in Nepal.
To watch the video please click here to go to our supporting charities page.
This week has been science week at St Augustine’s. The theme was growth, take a look here to see all of the exciting things we have been up to!
Golden mile
We have started our golden mile journey once again! This involves all children and adults to complete a 1-mile circuit of the school playground or field every day. At the moment we have a mixture of running and walking but hopefully we will be running the whole distance in no time! We are all really enjoying this and have found we have more energy, more concentration and just generally feel better in ourselves afterwards. To encourage us to keep the running up, we have also applied to participate in a school organised Race for Life in June this year for Cancer Research UK. We relish any opportunity to raise money to help those who need it and cannot wait for the sponsoring to begin! More information will be sent out in due course.
Guide Dogs Visit
After learning about Louis Braille and how he changed the lives of millions of people, Class 2 were offered the opportunity to meet a guide dog. Due to this being such an important and exciting occasion, we turned it into a whole-school learning experience. We had a visit from Barry and his guide dog Woody. We learnt how a guide dog is trained, how they are essential in everyday life, the gadgets that are used alongside a guide dog and so much more. We also used this chance to show our appreciation and support of such a great cause and managed to raise and absolutely incredible amount of £150!
Nature/ Science Walk
On Monday 14th March we kicked off our Science Week with a nature/ science walk at Eland Lodge.
It was perfect sunny but cold weather and the children had great fun and learned so much from John Coupland.
The children learnt about the deer in the woods, fungi, insects and much more!
A massive thank you to Eland Lodge and in particular John Coupland for his help with this! It really is a highlight in our calendar each season for us all!
Our ‘Family Reading Morning’ was a huge success and everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy the time to just sit enjoy the wonder of books! We have really missed inviting our parents and relatives into school in recent times, to share our classrooms and learning with them, so it was fantastic to see so many loved ones at school this morning – thank you to everyone! Reading is so important to all learning, both during and beyond our school years and this morning was a way of showing the children that reading can be a really special time to spend with loved ones too. We have another reading morning coming up before Easter, so be on the lookout for the date – to be confirmed! Thank you all again for making the morning so special.
Some of the children in Class 3 led worship this week and focussed on the story of the first people – Adam and Eve – and their fall from God. The children retold the story using the Bible and acted it out for their peers, so everyone could really see and imagine the events. The children did an amazing job of including the younger members of our school in story so they all understood what was happening. They wanted to show everyone what happened when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s order not to eat the forbidden fruit. They fell from God and were never as close to him again. We need help to be close to Him, which is what the Bible is for and why Jesus was sent to earth – to save us. The children then explained that humans have free will – we can choose to make good choices or bad ones. It is up to us to make the good ones.
We were so proud of the children for putting together their own worship for the whole school, working together so well and telling us all the important lessons from this part of the Bible.
We had so much fun decorating our tree last Friday!! Christmas has arrived at St Augustine’s!!
Poet from the Peaks:
Today, we welcomed Andy Tooze, the Poet from the Peaks, to St. Augustine’s and what a fabulous day we had! Andy worked with the whole school and with individual classes to perform some of his own poems and to support the children in writing their own. We had an amazing day full of laughter and joy, surrounded by language, words and rhythm. Andy was a true inspiration to us all and the teachers were blown away by how enthusiastic and eager the children were to write and share their own work! He brought out the very best in all of the children and they were all enchanted from the beginning to the very end. We won’t be surprised to see a few notebooks appearing in pockets after today! Thank you, Andy, from us all here at St. Augustine’s for such a fantastic day. We know the children will continue to channel the inspiration you have fostered in them to their future writing, both in and out of school.
Kenning Poems:
This week, the children in Class 3 have been learning all about kennings and how they are structured differently to other poems. We explored a few examples together, including ‘What Am I?’ by Pie Corbett. We explored different ideas of riddles and two-word lines using noun-nouns or noun-verbs and used our rainforest work to inspire us!
Listen to our own rainforest kennings here:
This week in English, the children in Class 3 have been inspired by the COP26 event in Glasgow recently and our unit of work in Geography: ‘Rainforests’.We read the story ‘There’s a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom’ by James Sellick (in partnership with Greenpeace) and the children were shocked to learn of the beautiful rainforests in South-East Asia being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations! They couldn’t believe it and felt angry and sad that the orangutans’ homes are being taken away day after day. Did you know that palm oil can be found in almost anything we consume or use in the supermarkets: toothpaste, cookies, chocolate, shampoo, biscuits, just to name a few!?After this, we decided we needed to take action together as a class. So, we made a pledge to the Earth:
We felt we couldn’t do this along though. We wanted to know what the UK is doing to help. So, we decided to contact the MP for Energy and Climate Change: Greg Hands MP. We wrote formal letters to him to find out what his job entails and what the UK government has done so far and is planning to do in the future to help the fight against climate.Mrs Walker and I couldn’t believe how passionate and inspired the children were by this mini-project and the work they produced only proved this – amazing! We hope we get a reply to our fabulous letters (fingers crossed!).Please see more photographs by following the link here.
As part of black history month our pupils enjoyed a collective worship about Rosa Parks. A part of this can be shown below.
Rosa Parks features on our timeline in the hall as part of our ‘Why do we remember people’ topic.
Our certificate winner this week was from Class 2. During our isolation week he had made an incredible clock as part of his maths home learning! We were super impressed!! Well done Jesse!!
Well done to our certificate winners this week!
We hope you’ve enjoyed the last week and our wonderful happy mind happy me activities!
A massive thank you to our wonderful PTA for the donation of the Easter Eggs which the children took home, School Council who ran the Easter Egg hunt & provided the eggs, and The Methodist Church for the donation of their wonderful eggs also! That’s a massive amount of chocolate for our lucky pupils!
Happy Easter, from everyone at St Augustine’s!
We stood in class bubbles for some quiet reflection time at 12pm today.
What a busy week back! It has been so wonderful to see all of the children back in Class 3, learning and playing together, just as it should be! We have been so busy reading and going over a few things with Miss Cashmore, ready for next week, but we didn’t forget it is Mother’s Day on Sunday! Usually, we’d hold an amazing service in church or school and share the special time with all of the fantastic women in our lives together, but unfortunately this year we can’t. Instead, we got creative and made some beautiful hand-made cards, painted and written by each of us in Class 3 to give to our lovely mums at the weekend. We each wrote a personal message inside our cards, as to why we love our mums so much and why they are so special and important to us! Here we all are looking very proud of our creations…
We all came dressed up today in something that represents maths – that could be number, shape, space, measure, statistics and so on! The children all looked fantastic and came ready to share why they had chosen the clothes that they had. In Class 3, we had a jumper full of hexagons, a number on a football shirt, parallel lines and even a handmade necklace to represent a repeating pattern! It was so lovely to see the children who are currently at home too – they too had found something mathematical to wear and it was amazing to see and chat to them this morning on Teams!
For our extra maths activities, Miss Cashmore sent home a pack of puzzles, including: a Sudoku number puzzle, a shape Sudoku and an Emoji crack the code quiz! At school, we went outside and gathered objects from around the school grounds. We then categorised them, ready to collate the data. We represented how many of each item we had in our categories and presented it on a giant bar chart on the playground and used metre sticks instead of our usual rulers to draw accurate bars! We had an amazing time!
This year due to some children being at home for World Book Day, our teachers have recorded some videos to share of their favourite stories! We start off with Miss Cashmore, Miss Machin and Miss Jane. We hope you enjoy them.
Class 3 pinned it up in the classroom (on our core values and prayer board), and explained to the children that during their daily prayer or quiet time, if they want to, they can take a look at the calendar and see which country name has been given for today. There is one country for each day of the month. Each country is a place where Feed the Hungry has provided aid. We spoke about the work we did with them before the pandemic and why it is such an important and worthwhile cause.
The children often take a look at which country could be in our thoughts today. There are often surprised that some richer countries, such as the UK, are also helped by Feed the Hungry!
SUAT supports and leads in the set-up of new academies joining the partnership. The services provided by the central support function cover both educational and non-educational support. In terms of educational support, SUAT is linked to the School of Education of Staffordshire University, which is an outstanding ITT provider.
