This year, the children at Ox Close Primary School celebrated Safer Internet Day by dedicating a whole week to staying safe online. Starting with a special Online Safety pantomime performance at the beginning of the week, children then took part in a number of different lessons, activities and assemblies to showcase their savviness when it comes to being a responsible digital citizen. We were very impressed with the children’s knowledge and awareness of how to protect themselves on the internet.

Class 3/4C decided to join the #shareaheart campaign and share what they love about the internet!

Houses of Parliament 

On Friday 29th January 2016 our School Council travelled to London to visit the Houses of Parliament. They travelled by train and underground. Children loved walking round Westminster and seeing famous sights like Westminster Abbey and Big Ben.

We had a tour around the Houses of Parliament and children got to sit in the public galleries in the House of Lords and House of Commons to watch debates. Children also met up with a school from Islington called St Andrew’s Primary School and took part in a workshop with them. In the workshop, children learnt about constituencies, manifestos and voting. After some group work, Maddison from Ox Close ended up being voted as Prime Minister!

We had lunch together and made our way back to Kings Cross by tube. The whole trip was a fantastic experience for all of the children and adults!

On Tuesday 2nd February, a selection of Year 4 children represented our school at the Leadership Centre. They were taught a demonstration lesson by Miss Leggett in front of lots of teachers from County Durham. When asked questions, the children were polite and offered very mature and sensible answers! Mrs Harvey and Miss Densham were very proud of all the children who attended!

The Pantomime season continued at Ox Close Primary School, with the children being treated to a magnificent performance of Peter Pan by M and M Theatrical Productions. The children were enthralled and entertained in equal measure, as the pantomime explored a classic tale with a modern twist.

Huge congratulations to Lucy Aston, who has been selected to represent Great Britain in the Under 13’s Tumbling competition in Portugal this coming half-term. This is an incredible achievement for Lucy, who is only 9 years old but obviously has a magnificent talent. We would like to wish Lucy the best of luck and we are sure she will continue to represent Great Britain in the future.

This term we have been encouraging children to take greater care with their handwriting, as well as applying the cursive style across all pieces of writing in every subject. Each class has selected a girl and a boy to receive the ‘Most Improved Handwriting Award’. Many congratulations to the following children.

Class/Set	Winners
1/2S	Sophie Priestley Ben Shepherd
1/2P	Georgia Cooke Joshua Dodds
1/2R	Lucy Woodgate Espen Armitage
3/4C	Clark Taylor Bethany Johnson-Banks
3/4W	Ruby Petch Seth English
3/4P	Lewis Stapleton Evie Sands
5/6T	Olivia Dent Alex Tingle
5/6B	Jessica Chan Ethan Young
5/6H	Liam Lowery Taylor Lindsay

On Wednesday 21st October, something strange occurred at Ox Close Primary School. When the sun set and the air was chilly, a hoard of unearthly, gruesome creatures descended upon the school hall for an evening of Mummy Making and Monster Mashing! There were witches, skeletons, zombies and ghosts galore!

We would like to say a huge thank you to Ox Close Friends for organising the disco, all of the teachers who helped and all of the children for their fantastic effort and participation. A spooky night was had by all!

Following an incident in a primary school where children received inappropriate images and messages, we would like to remind parents to help their children stay safe online.

Both Instagram and Twitter have a minimum age policy of 13. Whilst many parents choose to allow younger children to use these services, we cannot recommend this. To keep their children safe on social media parents should ensure that the correct privacy settings are enabled, and that appropriate adult supervision is provided.
Further information is available at the NSPCC site Net Aware:
http://www.net-aware.org.uk/

Ox Close Primary School has recently achieved the Sainsbury’s School Games Mark Silver Award. This is a fantastic achievement and serves to highlight the level of commitment by the school to developing sports, clubs, competitions and young leaders.

The Sainsbury’s School Games Mark is a Government led awards scheme launched in 2012 to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community.

Further information about this can be found at Sainsbury’s School Games

 

Last Friday, the children and staff at Ox Close took part in their annual Pirate Day. It was incredible to see the amount of time and effort given to each costume. Throughout the day, house teams took part in a number of Pirate based activities in an attempt to gain the most treasure. Well done and thank you to everyone involved, including those who generously sponsored children.