Happy half term from the Durham Dales Federation! Enjoy the break and we look forward to welcoming you back to school on Monday 3rd March.

Hamsterley Primary School Our two private woodwind pupils from Year 4 put on a showcase of the pieces they have been learning in their lessons to Class 2 today. The audience were very appreciative of how far they have come since the beginning of their lessons earlier this year. Well done!

St John's Chapel & Wearhead In our gymnastics lesson today, the children in year 5 & 6 practised travelling in different ways.

St John's Chapel and Wearhead Schools This half term, our Jigsaw topic has been 'Dreams and Goals'. We started the unit talking about our successes, as well as some goals that we have. We also discussed what steps we could take to achieve this goal. We demonstrated this by following the steps to achieve the goal of making a jam sandwich. Then, we showed that we can work well with a partner or group by designing a welly boot together to represent a shared goal. Yesterday, we talked about how some tasks may be challenging at first, but when we tackle a new challenge we stretch our learning. We challenged ourselves to make a 'stretchy flower'. We found the cutting difficult at first but we maintained a positive attitude and kept trying until we achieved our goal.

St John's Chapel Primary School In Computing, KS1 have been learning how to create a branching database to identify and categorise different minibeasts.

St John's Chapel and Wearhead Schools The EYFS children have had a busy morning in Class 1!

St John's Chapel and Wearhead Schools Well done to this week's special certificate winners! It is amazing to see lots of full 'Good to be Green' bookmarks and certificates this week!

St John's Chapel Primary School This half term, the children in Class 1 have been busy creating collographs. First, we learnt that a collographs is a textured block that can be used to make a print and explored making one. For our Innovate project, we used textured materials to design and make our own weather collograph. Then, we used rollers to cover our collographs in ink, before making our prints. They have turned out great!

Hamsterley Primary School KS2 created their own stencils and used them to create a series of prints in their chosen colour combinations. This is their final piece of artwork in the style of Inuit art.

St John's Chapel Primary This week in Forest School, the children made bird feeders using cereal, made friendship bracelets and cooked hotdogs on the fire.

St John's Chapel & Wearhead In Computing, the children in year 3 & 4 went on a scavenger hunt. They had to scan the QR code to find the clues and work out what the different parts of a computer are.

St John's Chapel & Wearhead In preparation for the innovate challenge in Science, the children in year 5&6 have been learning about programmable technology.

Hamsterley Primary School Class 2 have had a brilliant DT day! We started the morning by cutting and chopping different vegetables for our ratatouille. Then, we looked at the different ways we can cook potatoes and tested them to see which was our favourite. After lunch, we designed a taco and made it by following a recipe.

Hamsterley Primary School Today in Computing, the children in year 3 and 4 dismantled a tablet. Using their knowledge from previous lessons, they identified the different parts and looked at how they work.

Please have a look at this week's #WakeUpWednesday.