The Durham Dales Federation is a federation of small rural primary schools, which was formed in September 2023. Staff from all schools work together to share expertise and to plan and deliver the curriculum. Our subject leaders co-ordinate their subjects across all the schools within our federation, which ensures that we can offer the same high-quality experiences to all pupils in our schools.
The Upper Dales schools of Wearhead and St John’s Chapel work together on a regular basis each week. At the start of the week, each school works in their own building and on Thursdays and Fridays, the schools come together on the St John’s Chapel Primary School site. On Federation days, we take advantage of the opportunities to work in larger groups with other children of the same age, and we often arrange visits and visitors for these days so that everyone can participate.
Wearhead Primary School In our Forest School session today; we looked for the first signs of spring. Using the bow saws, we cut wooden slices and painted them with a spring picture. We cooked pizza pockets on the fire, which were very tasty!
View this PostHamsterley Primary School A couple of months ago, the children in KS2 each made a poster about driving safely through the village for PCSO Bell. The children who created the best posters received an award and had their posters printed to put up around Hamsterley. This afternoon, class 2 went around the village putting the posters up to hopefully encourage drivers to pass through slowly.
View this PostWearhead Primary School EYFS children made a pancake mix this morning and we all enjoyed eating pancakes at break time!
View this PostHamsterley Primary School In EYFS we have enjoyed making delicious pancakes for Shrove Tuesday
View this PostHappy half term from the Durham Dales Federation! Enjoy the break and we look forward to welcoming you back to school on Monday 3rd March.
View this PostHamsterley 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!
View this PostSt John's Chapel & Wearhead In our gymnastics lesson today, the children in year 5 & 6 practised travelling in different ways.
View this PostSt 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.
View this PostSt John's Chapel Primary School In Computing, KS1 have been learning how to create a branching database to identify and categorise different minibeasts.
View this PostSt John's Chapel and Wearhead Schools The EYFS children have had a busy morning in Class 1!
View this PostSt 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!
View this PostSt 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!
View this PostHamsterley 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.
View this PostSt 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.
View this PostSt 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.
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