Latest News

Netball team victorious at Dore Trophy

On Monday 19^th March, teams from Garway primary school participated in the Dore Trophy netball and football tournament. Open to all primary schools in the Kingstone and Fairfield clusters, Garway pupils faced teams from much bigger primary schools. The Garway A netball team won convincingly all the matches in their half of the table: (9-3) against Much Birch A team, (10-0) against Madley B, and (9-0) against Kingstone & Thruxton A team. This meant automatic qualification for the semi-finals where they beat Madley A (4-0). In the Final, the girls met the Much Birch A team once more, this time winning narrowly 4-3. They scored 36 goals in all and only conceded 6. A tremendous performance all round. Well done girls! Our netball team has competed in both tournaments this season and has won both trophies.

Not to be outdone, the Garway football team finished runners-up to Much Birch (0-3); their only defeat of the tournament.

School trip to @Bristol

Our whole school trip to @Bristol on 20th April was a huge success. Both KS1 and KS2 enjoyed workshops connected with their current topic: Human Body and Healthy Eating. In addition they had the opportunity to enjoy numerous "hands-on" science exhibits. A full set of images can be found at the bottom of the Latest News section of the website!

SUPERSTARS

Mr "J" teaching the children how to use the drum kit in music on Wednesday.

GARWAY LENTEN LUNCH

Year 6 pupils continued the recent tradition of helping out at the village Lenten lunch on 16th March. They made bread rolls for the event and helped to serve on tables. This year the event was held in aid of JENGA, a charity working in Uganda which focuses on providing water, sanitation, health and education to the most needy communities. JENGA derives from a Swahili work meaning "to build".

NEW DENTAL SURGERY AT GARWAY SCHOOL

As part of the science topic in "Teeth & Healthy Eating" year 3/4 pupils set up their own dental surgery in school last Tuesday. Each pupil took turns to be the dentist, dental nurse and receptionist, examining each other's teeth and giving advice on dental hygiene.

FILM CLUB NEWS

The first FILM CLUB session will be held on Friday 16th March at 3.15pm. The film to be shown is Ponyo (2009) U certificate, 100 minutes. This is the ninth film from the master Japanese animator, Hayao Miyazaki. This is a magical Japanese animation about a fish who transforms into a girl after being discovered trapped in a jar at the seashore.

EISTEDDFOD 2012

This was a whole school event and children from both KS1 and KS2 participated in a cross section of performance and creative activities to celebrate the artistic, written and musical culture of the school. This year the classes were inspired by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Further photos of the event can be found under the Gallery section of the website.

LAUNCH OF FILM CLUB!

Some of the parents are launching a new Film Club which will be starting in March!

They are looking for volunteers to help run the club aftern school on Fridays - a rota could be arranged.

The club will run approximately fortnightly initially. Children are to bring their own snack and drink. Because not all films will be suitable for all ages, a letter will go out before each film club session and any children wanting to attend will need to bring back a completed permission form.

GARWAY FOX VISITS SCHOOL

The photograph below was taken at 11.15 am on the morning of 8th February after several sightings earlier in the week. There were a pair of foxes but unfortunately the vixen moved out of camera shot.

MUSEUM ON THE MOVE

The Museum on the Move recently paid a visit to the school (kindly paid for by the PSA). The children were given the opportunity to become palaeontologists and investigate fossils, dinosaurs and other creatures. The visit was hugely successful and enjoyed by all.

"It was great, really exciting and interesting!" Luke

"We got to dress up and look through a clever microscope." Jake

"There was loads to look at and read." Keziah

NATIVITY 2011

Mary and Joseph

Narrators

RAT INFESTATION AT GARWAY

On 6th, 7th and 8th December, pupils from Garway school performed their Christmas production of The Piper to packed houses. The children delighted everyone with their singing and acting. Some photos of the production are below for you to view:

The Pied Piper

The children of Hamlin

The Rat pack

The Mayor of Hamlin

The rubbish men of Hamlin

The cats of Hamlin

The cats of Hamlin

GROUND FORCE AT GARWAY

A HUGE thank you to all 23 enthusiastic volunteers who turned up at school last Saturday morning to help with work on the school grounds.

The school polytunnel and top pitch garden were transformed. Fourteen silver birch saplings (grown from seed donated by the Woodland Trust) were also re-potted; tubs were tidied and bulbs planted. The children did a sterling job sweeping up leaves for composting.

Everyone's efforts were rewarded with bacon butties, tea and coffee. Though hard work, it proved to be a very enjoyable and rewarding morning.

RECYCLING IS ON THE MENU AT THE GARWAY MOON

On Tuesday 8th November, Garway school Eco committee visited the Garway Moon pub to find out more about the problems businesses face when recycling their waste.

On arriving at the pub, we were welcomed by Bjorn, Georgie and Christie. After enjoying our sandwiches in front of a roaring fire, we were shown the amount and types of waste produced by the pub in just 2 days. This included: cardboard, tins, plastic, glass bottles and paper.

Georgie explained that the glass bottle box is filled every day. The bottles are then sorted according to their colour and disposed in one of three council recycling bins: these are then emptied once a fortnight by the council.

Vegetable peelings are fed to the pigs of a local farmer.

The remaining recyclable rubbish (which fills two x 600 litre bins a week) currently goes to a landfill site. Bjorn explained to the children that 33 of the 44 million tonnes of waste sent for landfill is generated by businesses. 95% of this could be recycled. They also discovered that it uses 100 units of energy to produce a new "can" BUT only 5 units to recycle one and that for every tonne of waste sent to landfill, 7 tonnes of CO² is released into the atmosphere.

Finally, after a very interesting tour of the pub, the children were shown the bottle recycling bins and the other bins filled with the recycled waste that is currently sent to landfill.

The Eco committee then returned to school determined to find a way to help this local business with its recycling dilemma.

Thank you Bjorn, Georgie and Christie!

SHOEBOX APPEAL

Richard Ademey, a volunteer from the Hereford branch of Operation Christmas Child, came into school this week to tell the children about the shoe box appeal.

This year, for the first time, we know in advance where out shoeboxes will be going to - Belarus.

Below is an article written by Jamie Stearman (year 2 pupil) about the shoe box appeal:

This story is rot by James Edward Stearman (KS1).

Wonts a pon a tiyme there wos a litall boy from afrika. he was verea por. same wiv his mum and same wiv his dad but he wos the porist of them all. so he didunt have much stuf. luckile some wun had sent him a shoo box for cristmas. he felt so hapy he jumpt up and down with ixitment. the end.

NETBALL TEAM TRIUMPH AT GOLDEN VALLEY KNOCK-OUT TOURNAMENT

Congratulations to the girls' netball team on winning the above tournament held at Kingstone & Thruxton primary school on 18th October. A thoroughly well deserved result!

ARCHENFIELD ARTS AT GARWAY

On Friday 14th October, pupils from St Weonards school visited Garway primary school to enjoy a festival of arts and music courtesy of the Archenfield Arts group. Pupils enjoyed musical, drama and art workshops during the morning before walking down to St Michael's church in Garway for more activites during the afternoon. Please find attached photos of the event.

WORLD BOOK WEEK

Well, didn't we have a lot of fun! We began the week with Kate Ganderton from the Courtyard. Class 1 had lots of fun with The Tiger Who Came to Tea, while KS2 children worked on Kensuke's Kingdom.

On Thursday the children came to school dressed as their favourite book character. A lot of work went into thinking about the character, putting the costume together and delivering their speeches. Each class chose a winner. Well done to Harry, Shelby, Errol, Jake, Joe and Charlotte who were the class winners. Congratulations to Errol who impressed all with his costume, knowledge of the character and delivery of his speech.

HOLLYWOOD COMES TO GARWAY!

On Friday 23^rd September, year 5 pupils from Garway primary school celebrated the start of their film making careers by attending the “world premier” of their film at the Odeon cinema, Hereford.

The children, accompanied by their class teacher, Mrs Eynon, and teaching assistant, Kate Nott, dressed up for the occasion and travelled in style, hiring a stretch-limousine, just like “A” list celebrities.

At the cinema launch, pupils walked on the official “red carpet” before joining other schools inside for a private viewing – at the end of which they met the Mayor of Hereford and received an award for their efforts.

HARVEST CELEBRATION AT GARWAY PRIMARY SCHOOL

As part of their harvest celebrations, KS2 pupils at Garway primary school spent the morning of 23^rd September making bread. The activity also linked with their Literacy work on “instruction” writing.

Pictured, are just four pupils with some of their loaves.

BIKEABILITY COURSE

Congratulations to all Year 6 pupils for successfully passing their Level 2 Bikeability course on Monday 12th September, in spite of the incredibly windy weather conditions.

Year 6 receiving their Bikeability certificates.

DRAMA WORKSHOPS

Both KS1 and KS2 pupils recently enjoyed a morning of drama workshops courtesy of the Hereford Courtyard Theatre.

SPORTING SUCCESS CONTINUES

Congratulations to the Garway rounders team for some outstanding batting and fielding at the recent Golden Valley rounders' tournament. Finishing top of their league (defeating Ewyas Harold "B" 12-3 and Much Birch "A" 9-5) they progressed to the semi-finals where they won their match against Kingstone & Thruxton by 9.5 rounders to 4.5. They saved the best for the final, however, defeating the Much Birch "A" team again in a very close match - 9 rounders to 8.5.

This completes a fantastic year of sport for Garway:

Winners of the Girls' football trophy
Winners of the Tag rubgy shield (2 consecutive years)
Winners of the Boys' football shield
Runners-up in the Girls netball shield

Well done everyone!

THE ROYAL WEDDING

The whole school recently watched a fabulous reinactment of the Royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Invitations were issued and replied to and the guests (children and staff) took their seats in Westminster Abbey (class 1 minus the trees) and watched engrossed as keystage 1 pupils acted out the wedding ceremony.

Photographs of the whole event can be viewed in the Class 1 section of the website. We hope you enjoy them!

The royal bride, Kate Middleton

LINKED-UP AWARD SCHEME

The LinkedUp Award Scheme is funded by the DfE as part of the Links into Languages initiative and managed by the Association for Language Learning. The scheme offers financial support for innovative curriculum development projects that help to transform the language learning experience of pupils.

Well done Ruth!

GARWAY PROVES IT'S TOP OF THE CLASS

The future is not just bright for Garway primary school – it’s green!

Environmentally friendly children from the school have shot to the top of the award stakes by securing their fourth Eco-Schools Green Flag award.

The pupils and teachers have worked hard for the last 8 years to transform their school’s daily routine into one that benefits the environment and saves the school money.

Managed in England by Keep Britain Tidy, Eco-Schools asks the children to set up a committee involving pupils from all years. They then set to work on a school audit that highlights areas of the school that could be made more environmentally friendly.

Eco Co-ordinator, Karen James, said, “Obtaining the Green Flag award is something that the whole school and its surrounding community can be proud of. Each pupil will be able to take away some degree of satisfaction in the knowledge that their actions have significantly altered their local environment. Eco-Schools is a fantastic initiative for all involved – the greater challenge now is to maintain what we have achieved so far and look towards ways of improving even further.”

The benefits of working towards an award such as the Green Flag extend beyond the improvement of the environmental quality of the school. The programme gives the pupils a sense of responsibility and pride in what they have achieved. With this comes the hope that the pupils will continue this behaviour in the wider community.

Garway school has also been recently awarded the New DECC Energy Award for Eco-Schools from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The award recognises schools which have made a 10% or better reduction in their carbon emission. This is a fantastic achievement which highlights how the Eco-Schools programme can result in significant and measurable improvements!

RIDING FOR THE DISABLED DONATION

William and Hamish handing over the cheque

On Monday 28^th March, pupils at Garway primary school had a surprise visit from Bobby, a riding for the disabled horse, and his minder, Janet.

Janet explained about the important work Bobby and his friends do. The children were also given the opportunity to ask questions before year 6 pupils, William Jones and Hamish Beaumont-Russell, handed over a cheque for £200.

Each pupil had helped raise the money by “growing a pound” for the charity which provides riding lessons for disabled children and adults.

A further donation of £200 was also made to the Air Ambulance service.

Dore Shield Success

Not to be outdone, the Garway boys' football team (A) finished overall Shield tournament winners. Finishing top of their league in the qualifying rounds, they met Much Birch A in the semi-finals and despite falling behind early in the game and having an equaliser disallowed, they fought back to win 3-1. In the tournament final, they played against Longtown and finished well-deserved winners! In summary, they played five matches, won five, scored 14 goals and only let in one!

The school is also current holder of the Golden Valley tag rugby shield and Girls' football trophy.

Not bad for a small school of less than 50 children!

Left-right: Cathy, Alice, Jasmine, Georgia, Charlotte and Ella

Back row - left to right: Andy (coach), Hamish, Harry, William, Jonathan, Rhys
Front row: Fraser and Ryan

Garway Girls' Football Team Trophy Triumph

On Tuesday 15th March, the girls' football team travelled to Dorstone to participate in the Golden Valley tournament. With their spirits high and accompanied by their fantastic coach, Andy Bevan, the girls played and won all of their group matches, beating Kingstone & Thruxton (2 - 1), Madley B team (2 - 0) and the Much Birch B team (3 - 0) to finish top of their group.

This meant that they qualified for the Trophy competition (usually held for the larger primary schools who enter 2 or more teams).

Their first team in the "knock-out" stage was Clifford primary school and thanks to a fantastic goal by Alice in the dying seconds of the match, the Garway girls triumphed (1 - 0).

The final (played against Much Birch A team) proved to be another tightly fought match. Another goal from Alice, however, 3 minutes from full-time was enough to secure victory.

After winning all five of their matches, scoring 9 goals and only conceding 1 - the Garway girls returned to school as the Golden Valley tournament winners!

Well done!

Video footage of their celebrations can be found in front of the PGL Liddington photos at the foot of this page. Be warned, that it does take a couple of minutes to load.

Coach, Andy Bevan, with the winning team
(left - right: Daisy, Cathy, Jasmine, Ella, Alice, Lizzie) and Georgia (front)

Captain (Georgia) lifting the trophy!

Link to Sunnyportal website!

At long last, I am delighted to announce that I have successfully established a link to the website that gives real time energy generation from the school's PV panels and wind turbine. Please look under Useful Links section of the website.

Karen

Little Steps into Languages for Little Learners

Since the second half of the summer term I have been taking part in a pilot scheme in Herefordshire called Little Steps into Languages for Little Learners. The aim of the scheme is to introduce MFL to Key Stage 1 children in a fun and innovative way. MFL are increasingly been taught to younger children but as this is not a mandatory part of the school curriculum there has previously been no guidance or advice on how to deliver the lessons. Little Steps into Languages for Little Learners is built upon ‘Story Packs’ (very similar to the literacy story sacks that we have in school) with each pack containing a traditional story in the target language and various resources. I am trialling the German story packs and have so far used ‘The Three Little Pigs’, ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’ and ‘The Gingerbread Man’ with (I believe) great success. Apart from the obvious advantage of enabling MFL to become an integral part of the curriculum the story packs are aimed at improving listening skills and will hopefully contribute to the children becoming more social learners.

Ruth Maskell

CHRISTMAS PRODUCTION OF EBENEZER SCROOGE

Young Scrooge and Belle

Mrs Fezziwig

Mr and Mrs Fezziwig

Little devils

The angels

Victorian cool dude!

Trader

Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley

The Cratchit family

The ghost of Jacob Marley

The Ghost of Christmas Past

The Ghost of Christmas Present

Marley visits Scrooge to warn him about the visitations by the three spirits.

Mrs Fred and guests

Mr Fred and guests

FUND-RAISING FOR CHILDREN IN NEED

On 19th November, Let's Get Cooking club and School Council organised some fundraising activities in school - a sponsored bake and "wear something different" to school day. Both activities raised in excess of £187 with money still being collected. Well done to everyone who took part.

GARWAY TEAM TRIUMPH AT TAG RUGBY TOURNAMENT

The triumphant tag rugby team with the winner's shield after successfully achieving first place at Kingstone High School on Tuesday 5 October.

PUPILS AT GARWAY SCHOOL SAY "LET'S GET COOKING"

Class 5 pupils from Garway primary school served tea, coffee and home-made cakes and biscuits to parents and friends of the school at their recent Macmillan coffee morning.

The school's Let's Get Cooking club helped by making warm cider punch (non-alcoholic) and apple cake for visitors to sample as well as holding an apple tasting session with different British varieties of apples. To complete the apple theme, both pupils and guests could enjoy some of the school's very own pressed apple juice made from apples grown in the school grounds.

Let's Get Cooking is a £20 million Lottery-funded programme that intends to set up a national network of 5,000 cooking clubs with the aim of teaching new cooking skills to more than 1 million children and their families. Garway school successfully qualified for full funding of their cooking club last year and are hoping to refurbish part of an existing classroom with better cooking facilities.

The morning was extremely successful and the pupils hard work paid off as they managed to raise over £220 in aid of the Macmillan nurses appeal!

THE OUTDOORS - A GREAT INSPIRATION FOR LEARNING

AT GARWAY SCHOOL

Year 6 pupils at the school have recently been enjoying a series of “Forest Schools” sessions on Garway Hill. The purpose of Forest Schools is to encourage and inspire children through outdoor play and activities. Garway pupils have enjoyed building shelters, pond dipping, fence repairing, making wooden charms, treasure hunts, activities involving looking at the environment from animals’ perspectives to weighing lambs. Pupil, Hannah Wood, described toasting marshmallows over a campfire as one of the best experiences!

More fantastic photos are available under Class Pages - Class 5!

Class 5's residential trip to Liddington PGL

On Wednesday 22nd June, year 5 and 6 pupils left school at 9.30 am for their residential trip to Liddington PGL. They were accompanied on their adventure by Deputy headteacher, Celia Almond and HLTA, Karen James. During their time away, the children enjoyed a range of activities including: aeroball, trapeze, initiative challenge, giant swing, jacob's ladder, open canoeing, rock climbing and quad biking.

A fabulous set of pictures of their visit can be found at the bottom of this page. Enjoy!

Short break at Birdlip

Rock climbing

Aeroball

Aeroball

Trapeze

Giant swing

Giant swing

Jacob's ladder

Open canoeing

Official opening of school library by local author

On Monday 26th April, local author (Shoo Rayner) joined children, staff and parents to officially open our brand new school library. The new library facility is fully computerised and will be run by year 6 pupils. The room was formerly a small ICT suite but following floods, our headteacher (Lorraine Lloyd-Williams) seized the opportunity to have it converted it into a dedicated library facility. Laptops replaced the old PCs and parents and friends of the school helped the dream become a reality indexing and cataloguing all the books.

During the course of the morning Shoo Rayner entertained both KS1 and KS2 children with his dynamic story telling and illustrations. His "blog" account of his visit to the school was very complimentary.

Some of the kind volunteers.

Shoo entertaining the children with his drawing.

Shoo being interviewed by the school journalists.

Growing Local Vegetable Bag Scheme

The eco committee are thrilled with the number of families participating in our new vegetable bag scheme. Feedback has been extremely positive. If you would like to order a trial bag, please contact Karen James at school. All fruit and vegetables are grown locally! As well as supporting local growers, the vegetables are fresh and have not spent days being transported across continents.

Garway School Eisteddfod 2011

The Eisteddfod tradition is very old. The original meaning of the word was "a gathering of people" to celebrate the art, musical and written culture of the time. It is a competitive festival of the Arts. We think that it gives children a chance to show their talents and use their imagination. We have celebrated this tradition at Garway for many years.

Below are details of the performance and creative activities the children have enjoyed this year:

Performance

Instrumental: piece of own choice

Poetry recitation (by heart): YrR/1 -Hen's Song by Rose Fyleman
                                       Y2 - Tiger by Ann Hoberman
                                       Y 3/4 -Kitchen Sounds by Richard James
                                       Y5/6 - The Sound Collector by Roger McGough

Reading (excerpt provided): YR/1 - Extract from Baggy Brown by Mick Inkpen
                                      Y2 - Extract from Baggy Brown by Mick Inkpen
                                      Y3/4 - Extract from "Alex and the Glass Slipper" by Amanda Graham
                                      Y5/6 - An Extract from War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

Solo singing: YrR/1 - Own choice
                  Yr2 - Own choice
                  Yrs 3/4/5/6 - Own choice of song (school play)

Creative

1. Cooking - Cup cakes fit for the Jubilee celebration

2.  Painting/Drawing - A member of the Royal family

3. Photography: "Family celebration"

4. Poetry writing: based on a celebration

5. Story writing: A story titled, "A Royal Visitor"

6. Collage: The Union Jack flag

7. Model Making: The Crown Jewels

Photos of the entries can be viewed in the Gallery section of our website after 2nd March. We hope you enjoy looking at them.

Wind Turbine and Solar Panels Installation

Update on Wind Turbine and Photovoltaic Panels

Some great news about our sustainable energy sources at school. We are pleased to announce that to date (4 February 2011) both wind turbine and photovoltaic panels have saved over 4,000 kilograms of CO2.

Regarding financial savings, both systems have generated just over 10,000 kWh of energy which equates to a financial saving of £1020.

Apparently, our turbine is one of the most efficient turbines to be erected by Greenearth Energy!

Let's Get Cooking at Garway Primary School

Let's Get Cooking is a national network of cooking clubs across England for children and their families. The initiative was launched in Herefordshire on 14th October and we are pleased to announce that we have successfully been awarded full funding for setting up a cooking club at Garway school.

This means that we will receive £2,500 over three years toward cooking equipment and club running costs together with free training for 2 adults and a small group of children in March 2010. As one of only six primary schools to achieve full-funding status - we are very excited about this opportunity.