On Wednesday 20th April, Wareham Town Band came to Upton Junior School to share their talents and skills with us. They played lots of instruments including Trumpet, Cornet, Trombone and a drum kit. They played lots of pieces including 'Can you feel the love tonight' from The Lion King. Some pupils were brave and went up to the front to have a play through a hose pipe! Everyone was invited to have a go on the instruments at the end. Some found it easy and some found it a little more tricky but everyone had lots of fun. The day after, Mr Welcomme let us borrow some instruments to take home and have a go in more detail. We look forward to future events with Wareham Town Band. Thank you for coming to visit!

Regan and Alfie 

RNLI- Lifeguard Visits

On14th April, we were lucky enough to have the RNLI come in to talk to us about beach safety and how to react to getting in trouble in the water, changing currents and the different coloured flags. Years 5 and 6 had a talk about beach safety first followed by Years 3 and 4 whereby we learnt about staying safe on the beach plus being careful in the unpredictable waters.  

From the different flags shown, we learnt that… the red flag represents danger; the red and yellow flag is a safe swimming area (the RNLI advise you not to take your inflatables and save them for the swimming pool); the orange windsock is to tell you where the wind is blowing and the black and white flag is to indicate the water sports area.

Interestingly, the lifeguards taught us to use just one arm and wave it slowly above our heads if we are ever in trouble in the water, as waving both hands madly could be seen as waving hello whilst using up more of our energy!

Additionally, we found out that we can get involved with lifeguarding and training as a ‘Junior lifesaver’ which is a fantastic opportunity.

A website that you could look at for more information is shown as a link below.

We thoroughly enjoyed learning about beach safety as well as facts about the RNLI. We couldn’t believe how much it costs for the RNLI to run each day, which has been calculated at around £410,000!

Showing our support for such an important charity, our School Council are going to run a cake tuck shop and hold an after school bake sale, so please look out for cake plates being sent home soon for any donations.

School Council- Zoe Lawrence, Eliott Bell, Charlie Baker

Links

http://www.southbourne.org.uk/junior_life_savers.html

http://rnli.org/safety/respect-the-water/activities/at-the-beach/Pages/at-the-beach.aspx

Pupils enjoyed swapping books, sipping hot chocolate and relaxing reading, wearing their slippers to get into the spirit of World Book Day! Everyone was able to enjoy reading alone, to each other and have stories read to them from other pupils and members of staff.

The hall was transformed into a huge reading lounge complete with lamps, a tall bubble fish tank and ambient music to help bring the pupils reading experiences to life. Some of the pupils from Year 6 were on hand to help with a 'book swap' where donations of unwanted books were exchanged for raffle tickets. The children could then 'spend' their raffle tickets on a book of their choice from all the donations. There was a book surgery for books that were worn or looking a little unhappy to be bought back to life, there were pupils and staff on hand for book recommendations as well as a 'tag' tree where pupils were able to write about their favourite books and authors and display them.

Mrs Wilson created a book hunt around the school. Pupils had to find the different snippets from books displayed around the school (See the pictures- did you find them all?!) We hope that some of our pupils will see if they can take the next stage of the hunt and go from reading the extract of the book to locating it in the Upton Junior School library and then get stuck in reading it!

A huge thank you to Miss Cornelius, Mrs Newton and Mrs Williamson and all the others members of staff for organising the day, Mrs Wilson for the book hunt, and also to the ladies from the PSFA who gave up their time to help out and provide yummy refreshments to enhance the 'reading lounge' experience.

We hope everyone enjoyed the day and that they will continue their reading journey this evening and beyond!

On Wednesday 10th February some of Upton Junior School's finest musicians put their skills into practice as they enjoyed an afternoon of performing at the Pyramid Music Day.  Our pupils joined others from schools within the Pyramid (Lytchett Matravers, Sandford, Bere Regis and Lytchett Minster) to form 2 ensemble groups; strings only and everyone else! The pupils had only seen their section of the main pieces ('Run' by Snow Patrol and 'Make you feel my love' by Bob Dylan) before the day. They enjoyed the challenge of building the jigsaw, fitting their part in with all the other musicians as a larger band and gaining experience of following the conductor!

Everyone had a great time. It was a fantastic experience for them all to gain performing live to an audience and also as part of a larger ensemble.

Many thanks to Mr Painter and the team at Lytchett Minster Music department as always for their setting up and running this wonderful annual event.