Oxford Grove's Blogs

On Thursday 28th November, Oxford Grove will be hosting Lyndsey from Smoothwall who will be running online safety workshops for our families. She is an industry expert, having previously worked with the police on catching criminals who targeted children online. She will be providing the most up-to-date support on managing your child’s time online, identifying misinformation online and coping with the rise of AI.

These workshops will be held on Thursday 28th November at either 9:00am or 2:00pm. Each session will last approximately one hour. You only need to attend one of these sessions as they will be the same.

Come along and find out how to keep your child safe in their online life.

Please see feedback from some of our families who have previously attended: 

Today, Oxford Grove have taken part in a Takeover Challenge! As part of our Investors in Pupils award, the children must have an understanding of the different roles that are carried out in our school. Children were able to apply for different roles throughout the school and had the opportunity to carry out tasks around the school. Each class had their own teachers and teaching assistants who presented a PowerPoint all about the schools budget and how this is spent each year. We also had music assistants who helped Mrs Hudson in her music lessons and helped Mr Bamford in his drumming sessions with Year 5. Our headcount assistants went to each class in the morning and the afternoon to make sure each classes headcount was correct and then reported this to the office. We also had lunchtime assistants and playground assistants who made sure all children were being tidy and playing nicely at lunch. 

Lots of children were eager to take on the role of Miss Harvey so we had lots of children ask interview questions and shadow during the day to understand the role of Headteacher. We also had children interview Mrs Day to understand her role of Deputy headteacher and also interview Mrs Worsley as business manager and Mrs Sharples as Attendance Officer. Finally, to finish off our day, we had some children from Key Stage 2 read a lovely story to our reception children. Overall, 70 children across the school took part in the Takeover Challenge! 

Have a look at our fantastic morning below: 

We have received a very kind ‘thank you’ letter from the Destitution Project, who received your kind Harvest gifts last week. Thank you again to all those families who donated so generously.

A huge thank you to our Year 6 parents for joining us for a SATS meeting to go over the key information in relation to the KS2 end of year examinations. We also covered secondary school choices and transition expectations. I hope all parents found this session useful and enjoyed coming into school this evening 🙂  Please feel free to speak to a member of the Year 6 if you would like further support.

WOW! amazing contribution. We would like to thank everyone who donated food for Harvest this year. Its is very kind of you. 

Today we had the police come to talk to us all about how to stay safe at Halloween and Bonfire Night. We learnt how important it is to not take part in tricks and pranks for Halloween and make sure we are respecting others as we celebrate. We also learnt how to keep ourselves safe at firework displays including how important it is to let adults handle fireworks and stop, drop and roll if anyone’s clothes catch on fire. We learnt about knife crime and what the law tells us about knives and other offensive weapons. What is one thing you can do to keep yourselves safe at this time of year, Year 5?

Our school is currently working towards renewing our Investors in Pupils award. An area that we are currently focussing within the award is understanding the roles of different members within school. We have already discussed the different members of our school within our classrooms and have shown our understanding through completing questionnaires! To further our understanding, Oxford Grove will be taking part in a takeover challenge on the 18th October! We are so excited to be able to interview different members of staff and even take over their role for the day! Remember, your application form needs to be submitted by the 7th October!

This morning our brand new school council led a fantastic assembly all about anti bullying. First, our new school councillors introduced themselves and explained their roles. Next, we recapped the four types of bullying. These include, cyber bullying, physical bullying, verbal bullying and social bullying. We also reminded the pupils at Oxford Grove how our school is a bully free zone. Finally, we explained how we have regular meetings about how we can improve our school, we then take these ideas to Miss Harvey. 

Have a look at our fantastic assembly.

This morning, our families were invited to an Geography workshop, followed by a visit to their child in class, to observe how Geography is taught at Oxford Grove. They got to observe a range of locational and place knowledge being taught through the school as well as see the children chanting key words and knowledge. Our governors also attended to monitor the quality of teaching and learning within Geography. We would like to say a big thank you to all of our families who attended this morning. We hope this was an informative and useful morning. What did you enjoy about the parent morning?

We all know that sometimes things can feel difficult and it can be hard to cope. At Oxford Grove, our staff are always available to support you, as well as your children. However, if you feel you would like to get some confidential help, please see the poster below. You can text them for free and receive confidential response from trained volunteers and experienced specialists, who can offer advice and support on a wide range of issues. This is 24/7, so you can get support at any time of the day or night.

This information is available on all of our parent noticeboards outside our classroom exit doors.

Thank you to all of our families who attended the online resources workshop. This was aimed at families of our younger children in school. Families learned about the wide range of information available on our website. They also learned about the online resources we provide, such as Purple Mash, Spelling Shed and Times Table Rock Stars, and where they can find their child’s logins in their reading record. Finally, we looked at the blog, which is an amazing resources for families to keep up-to-date with events and activities in school and in each class. Families learned how they can leave comments on the blogs. 

Our school is currently working towards becoming a ‘Rights Respecting School’. This means that our school is a place where children feel healthy, happy and safe. It is also a place where we have positive relationships and where children have the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of school life.

The UK Committee for UNICEF works with schools across the UK to create safe and inspiring places to learn, where children are respected, their talents are nurtured, and they are able to thrive, just like at Oxford Grove.

The Rights Respecting Schools Award embeds these values through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) into daily school life and gives children the best chance to lead happy, healthy lives, and to be responsible, active citizens. As part of our PSHRE curriculum we already do lots of work on understanding our rights and how they are met each and every school day.

This is going to be a very exciting journey for our school! Click here for more information.

What a start to the year! Today Rock Kidz UK came to visit Oxford Grove and had the privilege of working with our amazing children. They focused on raising the profile of well-being and PSHRE through the power of music. The Rock Kidz team transformed our school hall into a rock concert for the day, teaching our children a song called “Don’t Quit”- explaining the important message or perseverance and resilience. The children were extremely active throughout the workshops, dancing and having fun! Our teachers even took part in the head to head “Battle Time” challenges. It was a fantastic way to start the year supporting our children’s mental health and well-being, teaching them the importance of not giving up. 

Oxford Grove have had a fantastic day dressing up as our chosen future career. We have all chosen a career that we would like to have in the future and we have been very creative making and wearing costumes that we would need to wear for our chosen careers. Oxford Grove would like to say a huge thank you to the parents and members of the public who have been into school to discuss their career with us. We have found it very interesting learning about careers that we didn’t previously know about. For example, we know all about the job of a midwife, money advisor, comic book artist, business owner, aerospace engineer and osteopath! Now, we know all about different career options that we might choose in the future. Which career did you choose? 

The winners of the D&T competition enjoyed a fun filled afternoon with the Fun Food Chef. First of all we looked at the menu that included all the delicious foods that we were going to make! We started to make the Paella, this was vegetarian and included tofu, courgette, green beans. We prepared the ingredients for the chef by chopping and slicing the vegetables, then they went into a big paella pan. After that we made Coca Con Pimientos (Spanish bread). We mixed the yeast, water and flour then rolled out the dough, then we put peppers, olives and rosemary on top for extra flavour. Then we mixed the Catalan chickpea salad that included vegan chorizo, chick peas, tomatoes and mixed herbs.  Then it was time to make the Spanish tortilla! We broke the egg in the jug to mix with potatoes, herbs and other seasoning.  The Fun Food Chef then put our ingredients into a big pan on the gas hob. It needed a little more cooking so it then went in the oven.  Next it was time to make the sangria smoothie. We blended raspberries, cranberries and orange juice and it was delicious! Finally it was time to eat all the delicious food!!  We had an amazing time and someone even said it was their best afternoon ever!

Thank you to all of our families who came along to our Work Related Learning (Summer Fair) event!

The children of Oxford Grove have really enjoyed working hard over the last few weeks designing and making their products to sell.

We were so lucky to have amazing weather so that we could hold our event outside in the sunshine!

I would like you to create a project linked to a famous inventor which will be showcased on display in school. You have until Wednesday 12^th June to bring it in to Miss Jarvis with your name and class on it.

You could do:

–     A PowerPoint

–     An information text

–     A piece of artwork

–     A video/a song/a poem

–     A piece of writing

–     A timeline of their life

The more creative, the better!

This evening after school our staff enjoyed a flower arranging workshop! A big thank you to Victoria for hosting the session and showing us all what to do.

Congratulations to the two families who won laptops in our online safety workshops! 

Today we have held our parent/carer online safety workshops, hosted by Lyndsey from Smoothwall. Lyndsey is an industry expert; she used to work for the police catching criminals who targeted children online, so she has a wealth of experience in keeping children safe online.

Our workshops were held at 9am and again at 2pm. We were really pleased to have so many of our families attend each workshop, and feedback was amazing. Parents and carers spoke of how useful and informative the sessions were. Thank you so much to all those who attended.

REMINDER OF OUR ONLINE SAFETY RESOURCES FOR PARENTS/CARERS:

As part of our Geography curriculum, we have to think about our Earth and how we can look it.

Earth Day is held every year on 22nd April. It is a day when people take part in activities to help the planet. The theme for Earth Day 2024 is ‘Planet vs. Plastics’. It asks everyone to work together to limit our use of plastics to help look after the Earth. On Earth Day, people take action to make our world a better place. This includes litter picking, planting trees and raising money for environmental charities.

We are asking our children to create a poster, sculpture, model or other type of creative product to promote how we can raise awareness about how harmful plastic can be to the environment and OUR PLANET. Take a look at some examples below: 

Congratulations to some of our fantastic Digital Leaders who worked as a team to create a fabulous online safety video for the Bolton Schools ICT Online Safety competition this year! We are so proud to announce that we won first prize! The Digital Leaders are looking forward to an exciting workshop provided by Schools ICT in May as their prize.

We have been so lucky at Oxford Grove to enjoy a very special smiley reward this week! Our KS1 and KS2 classes enjoyed a very exciting assembly with lots of cool science investigations and mad experiments! Our classes also enjoyed a workshop each where they were able to apply their own Science knowledge to even more fun investigations. Well done, Oxford Grove! You worked so hard to fill your smiley cards in order to earn this reward!

A huge well done to the winners of our Music Competition! They worked very hard to create posters all about their class musicians and class composers. These exciting entries will go on display in our Music Room for all to see. The winning family have won a laptop!

What an amazing night! Our choir performed live on stage at the Bridgewater Hall in front of a huge audience and absolutely smashed it. Well done to the choir, their parents and the whole staff team who came along to support. 

Congratulations to the winner of our Road Safety poster competition! Her detailed poster entry was chosen for the top prize of a laptop! The poster will also be professionally made and displayed outside school to remind everybody to keep safe around the roads outside.

Congratulations to the winner of our Attendance poster competition! Her high-quality poster entry was chosen for the top prize of a laptop! The poster will also be professionally made and displayed around school.

Today, the OG Historians went on a very exciting trip to Bolton Museum to learn about our locality. We spent the morning exploring different artefacts from Bolton’s past. We looked at images that showed Bolton in 1700, 1800 and 1900 and looked at the differences. We explored the lives of Samuel Crompton and Richard Arkwright and found out what they invented. Overall, it was an excellent morning and will really help us when we study our local history units in class. 

We have really enjoyed an exciting Christmas performance today! Our Year 5 djembe drum players and brass players performed songs they have been learning over the Autumn term. Our school choir also sang beautifully for us. We enjoyed celebrating Christmas with this big assembly altogether in the hall. 
We would like to wish all of our families a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We will return to school on Tuesday 9th January 2024.

Today we were very lucky to watch the Cinderella pantomime in school for our Autumn 2 Smiley Reward. The performance was fabulous and we joined in with lots of singing and dancing. Thank you Miss Harvey for this lovely treat!

This afternoon we were visited by Justine who does wheelchair fencing for Great Britain. She told us about her accident and recovery and how she got into training for competitions and events. Her first competition was in the World Championships! She has competed in the Paralympic Games and travelled the world. She is now training for the Paralympics in Paris in 2024. She showed us some of her fencing equipment and gave us a demonstration. 

Christmas Cheer from the Choir. 

The children performed a selection of Christmas songs, to show case their fantastic talents. This morning during the start of the school day. They again wowed us with their beautiful harmonies. 

A selection of our Key Stage 2 children were selected to take part in the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, an international challenge organised in over 60 countries and designed to get students all over the world excited about computing.

Each participant answer questions that focus on computational and logical thinking. It is a very tough challenge, and we are exceptionally proud to have a high number of children who achieved either a Merit or a Distinction. Merit places a child in the top 50% of children internationally who took part and Distinction places them in the top 25%.

Well done to everyone who took part!

This morning our amazing choir performed outside of school. They showcased some of the Christmas songs they have been working on alongside Mrs Hudson over the past few weeks. Everyone did an amazing job and should be very proud!

Children from Year 5 this morning brighten up your day! With an entertaining performance showing you their drumming skills they have been learning this term. I hope they made you smile and put a spring in your step.

This morning, our families were invited to an Art workshop, followed by a visit to their child in class, to observe how art is taught at Oxford Grove. A range of art skills and techniques were being modelled as well as various art strands such as drawing, painting and mosaic. We would like to say a big thank you to all of our families who attended this morning. We hope this was an informative and useful morning.

A big congratulations to our laptop winners! These families won the raffle for the parents/carers who attended our Online Safety workshops last week. We hope you enjoy using your brand new laptops at home!

Today, myself and the OG Historians led an assembly all about Remembrance Day. This is a special day on the 11th November where we stop to think about the people affected by wars. We particularly remember the fallen soldiers from World War One and two  who fought for our country. The OG Historians told the children all about how we wear poppies on Remembrance Day to show our respect. We do this as after the fighting had ended after World War One, poppies began to grown on the battlefields.

How can we honour the fallen soldiers?

We can hold a one minute silence on the 11th November where we can reflect on the sacrifices made by many soldiers in war. Many people also choose to lay poppy wreaths at war memorial site as a sign of respect to the soldiers who have lost their lives.

See pictures below:

How can you show respect on Remembrance Day?

What did you learn from the assembly?

Today we have had a full day of online safety at Oxford Grove! We have held workshops for Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. During the workshops, we talked specifically about gaming, social media, apps and the risks of artificial intelligence.

During the afternoon and after school, we also ran workshops for parents/carers. These workshops tied into the same messages that were given to our children.

Please remember that we have many different resources available for you as parents/carers relating to online safety, including our password protected Parent Area and the Online Safety Hub (please click the links to access these). If you need further support with online safety home, please speak to the School Office.

Today, our families from KS2 were invited into school to attend a Computing Workshop followed by a visit to their children in their classrooms, to watch them taking part in Computing lessons with their teachers.

We had a focus on Computer Science, where children were coding to create their own programs. We also talked about our online safety curriculum and how we empower children to keep themselves safe online in a variety of ways. 

We would like to say a big thank you to all of our families who attended this morning. We hope this was an informative and useful morning to help you understand what children are learning about in Computer Science, and also to support you to keep your children safe online at home.

This week, Key Stage Two have been lucky enough to have high-quality Black History Workshops tailored to each different year group.  First, the children looked at what makes up their cultural heritage. For example: the food they eat, where they were born and the music that they like to listen to. The children have learned all about how black people have been discriminated against in the past and the negative impact that this had on society.

The children in Year 5 and 6  took part in a range of games and activities to learn all about famous, influential black figures in the UK, who have have a positive impact on society and stood up for the rights of black people. The children even got to create freeze frames to represent an influential black figure that their group had.

Year 3 and 4 took part in an exciting quiz to understand their cultural diversity to celebrate the features that make them unique and special!

The OG Historians were lucky enough to attend additional Black History sessions at lunch time where they were able to create songs and play games to check their understanding of what they learned in their workshops.

Questions:

What does ‘discrimination’ mean?

Can you name any influential black figures that we looked at? What did they do to stand up for black people?

What did you lean from the workshops?

Today, our families from EYFS and KS1 were invited into school to attend an Early Reading Workshop followed by a visit to their children in their classrooms, to watch them taking part in reading lessons with their teachers. This was a fantastic opportunity to provide our families with support and strategies to use at home when reading with their children. 

We would just like to say a huge thank you to all of our families who attended this morning and we hope this was an informative and useful morning to support you at home with reading with your children. 

Today, Oxford Grove had a special assembly all about treating people with equality. Equality means treating everyone fairly no matter what they look like, who are they are or what they believe in. We learnt about homophobia and how this is linked to football. This assembly used football as a means to communicate messages of inclusion to our children. 

What did you learn from this assembly? What did you enjoy the most?

We have really enjoyed having Year 6 parents in school tonight for our information session about SATs! We hope all parents have found this session useful and have enjoyed coming into school this evening. 

Welcome back everybody! It has been wonderful to see all of our children back in school.

Here are a few dates for your diary over the next few weeks to help you get back into the school routine.

• Sports Afternoons – every day this week at 2:00pm, starting with Year 6 on Monday 4th September
• Class assemblies – weekly at 8:40am, starting with Year 6 on Monday 11th September
• Tuesday 12th September – EYFS and KS1 interactive resources workshop for parents/carers 3:00pm 
• Thursday 14th September – Online Safety workshop for parents/carers 2:00pm 
• Tuesday 19th September – KS2 interactive resources workshop for parents/carers 3:00pm 
• Monday 25th September – School Photographer and Parent Conference
• Monday 2nd October – SATs and transition meeting for parents/carers 5:00pm 

Please see our website calendar and newsletter page on the school website for further dates and details.

This week, Year 6 have had a fantastic time at the Anderton Centre. We took part in many different activities such as paddle boarding, orienteering, crate stacking and  low ropes. Take a look at some of our pictures… 

Year 6 celebrated their time at Oxford Grove with their leavers assembly. They showcased their memories of their journey through school.   All the children were presented with their record of achievements which is a record of all their amazing work throughout school! Well done year 6 we will miss you 🙂 

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part in our charity walk for WaterAid.  It was lovely to see everyone coming together to raise money for such an important charity. In total, Oxford Grove have raised £1034 for Water Aid – which is absolutely brilliant! This money will go a long way to improve the quality of life for so many families around the World who are less fortune than us.

It was lovely to see some year groups chanting their target words and spellings as they completed their portion of the walk. See pictures below …

What was your favourite part about completing this sponsored walk?