Nields Academy

21st October 2020 HARVEST FESTIVAL

As we were unable to have our Harvest Festival service at the church this year, the produce collected was given to the Slaithwaite Mutual Aid group for distribution, our year 5 children in Oceania class took them to Slaithwaite Fire Station. The donations were gratefully received and will be given to families in need across the community.

Thank you everyone for the donations of dried food and toiletries.

Slaithwaite Mutual Aid group posted on Facebook a thank you as well for our support.

Here are the children with the bags of donations ready to go to the Fire Station in Slaithwaite.

19th May 2020

National Book Tokens and Puffin Big Dreamers Writing COMPETITION

for budding writers aged 6-18. Win up to £200 of National Book Tokens!

Competition closing date 28th May. Click on the image to take you to the information page about it.

14th May 2020

Design a Book Token COMPETITION

If you win your book token is printed for each child in the class and worth £10.

Closing date 28th June 2020. Click on the image to take you to the information page about it.

Click on this link to nominate our school to win £5000 to spend on books for the school library

https://www.nationalbooktokens.com/schools

8th - 10th May 2020

VE Day 75

Home - VE Day 75

As many of you will have already heard it is VE Day on Friday and this would have been the school May Day bank holiday. VE Day stands for 'Victory in Europe Day' which is a celebration of the British Army's victory against Germany in 1945. This day will be marked in lots of different ways.

When VE Day dawns on 8th May 2020 it will be 75 years since the guns fell silent at the end of the war in Europe. Years of carnage and destruction had come to an end and millions of people took to the streets and pubs to celebrate peace, mourn their loved – ones and to hope for the future, but not forgetting those still in conflict until 15th August when it was announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies, effectively ending World War II.

The 75th anniversary will provide our nation, and our friends around the world, with an opportunity to reflect on the enormous sacrifice, courage and determination of people from all walks of life who saw us through this dark and terrifying period.

At 11.00am - There will be a 2 minute silence to remember the declaration of victory and this silence will mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the 2nd World War.

At 2.45pm - The BBC will mark VE75 which will include an extract from Sir Winston Churchhill's victory speech.

In the afternoon - We are being encouraged to hold 1940s style afternoon tea parties at home.

At 8.00pm - There will be the BBCs 'People's celebration' and Katherine Jenkins/Beverley Knight will sing a rendition of the iconic 'We'll Meet Again', by Vera Lynn.

At 9.00pm - The queen will address the nation.

In lou of this we thought you could begin to make some preparations to celebrate at the end of the week.

VE Day activities

Maybe you could get involved in the Tommy in the window campaign. Whilst in lockdown we are being urged to commemorate the occasion from home by displaying a specially designed image of a Second World War soldier in your windows.

You may also like to try making your own British flags or bunting.

30th April 2020

Have you heard about Captain Tom Moore?

You might have seen or heard about him on the news. Here's a little bit about him:

Captain Tom Moore recently completed 100 laps of his garden to raise Money for the National Health Service Charities. Captain Moore, a soldier during World War II, wanted to raise £1000 for the charities however he has currently raised over £20m! What a tremendous effort! Well done and thank you Captain Tom. Click here for the Post Office link to download a card you can colour in or you can send a message to him.

29th April - LAST DAY for Wormeries competition - send your entries to office.nields@kirkleeseducation.uk

29th April - scroll down to read about our Grow Your Own Potatoes click on this link too to find out more about the scheme, there are resources and activities for you to use.

17th April 2020

WORMERIES PROJECT LAUNCHED click to be taken directly to the project page.

Wormeries 19th March

Wormeries - breaking news! They have arrived

What is a wormery?

A wormery is a place where worms can grow, compost and make more worms.

A wormery will recycle food waste into superb fertilizer for your garden or yard.

First the tubs had to be prepared... see the slide show and then read on below for some interesting facts and information.

In terms of the photos...

Inside each wormery there is a black tray, that allows water to drain to the bottom, so as not to drown the worms. A sheet of newspaper is laid over this to stop the soil and food falling through.

The worms arrived in some special bedding soil. This was placed in the base of the wormery with some additional compost, to give them a bed to sleep in.

The worms were also given a bit of food to start them off.

For the first few weeks, the worms will explore their new home, before settling down and working their way through the food waste. When they have had a good meal, they like to return to their bedding area to rest! Tiger worms aren't like your normal earthworm.

Once these wormeries are up and running, they will turn our kitchen waste into compost within just a few months.

Unlike most pets, the Tiger Worms can cope with being ignored for long periods of time, so should be quite happy until the school returns to normal!

DID YOU KNOW?

Charles Darwin studied worms for 39 years, and concluded that life on earth would not be possible without them. Mainly because they increase soil fertility so efficiently, but also because they reduce quantities of plant waste.

Fun facts about worms

Charles Darwin called earthworms “the intestines of the soil,” since worms can eat up to 75% of their own body weight every day, turning waste into rich and fertile soil. Worms play a crucial role in the environment by breaking down organic matter like leaves and grass into things that plants can use. When they eat, they leave behind castings that are a very valuable type of fertilizer. Here are a few other fun facts about worms that your kids might get a kick out of:

There are over 6,000 different types of earthworms
Worms have no bones or skeletons
Worms do not have ears, a nose or eyes, but do have cells that can detect light
The mouth of a worm is covered by a flap of skin so the worm doesn’t swallow everything
Worms have a mouth, but do not breathe through it – it is just for eating
The worm has 5 simple hearts, a stomach, and a gizzard
The gizzard contains tiny rocks and sand that mash up the worm’s food, because worms don’t have teeth to chew it up
An earthworm can have over 100 segments between its two ends
Each segment has tiny little bristles that help the worm move and hold on to things
All worms have a complete set of both male and female organs on the inside so there are no boy or girl worms

Here's a bit of the history... how and why do we have Tiger Worms?!

The children and staff at school have embraced the recycling schemes we have been running and are very keen to be environmentally a much better school, to reduce our waste and our school’s footprint on the world, but also to learn a very important lesson about our role in caring for our world.

We’ve recently increased our recycling rate by well over 50% through increased council recycling collections and a range of TerraCycle recycling schemes. These TerraCycle schemes turn plastic like pens, toothbrushes and crisp packets into plastic pellets, which can be used to make durable plastic products like our new picnic benches, which the school installed last summer.

Our head of catering Anna spoke to Karen, an Environmental Engineer from our PTFA, and asked about composting on site.

Karen has had a wormery for 10 years and her boys (in Reception and Yr 3) love going to see the tiger worms. They’ve taken the worms into school and nursery and the children have always loved seeing them, so she looked into larger scale wormeries.

A recent study by The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) revealed that the average primary school in England, produced 72g of food waste per pupil, per day.

We have 140 pupils receiving our school meals, although 205 pupils in total, so our daily food waste could be well over 10kg per day! In the study, half of this was found to be fruit and veg.

Karen spoke to our local councillors about the school's recycling efforts and desire to buy some wormeries, this conversation resulted in Nields School being given enough money from the councillors, to buy some wormies.

After discussions with wormery companies, and after looking at the water content of some of the food waste, it was decided that we needed a variety of composting systems to deal with the amount of waste produced at Nields School. So in February, we ordered 5 wormeries and 3 special compost bins.

The 5 wormeries will sit outside the Dining room, to take some of the day's waste (one per day).

Plus we have two anaerobic digesters and a hot bin to take the wetter left-over food and scraps.

Once these are all set up, this should take all of our kitchen waste from the kitchen and peelings from the classroom snacks too, converting it all into great compost we can use on our allotment.

Some of the classes met the worms when they arrived. We are looking forward to introducing the rest of the school to the worms when classes resume.

29th April

Here are some useful links to find out all about Potatoes sent to us by Mrs Hill

For lesson support materials about potatoes, visit www.growyourownpotatoes.org.uk For free resources, teaching about where food comes from, cooking & healthy eating, visit: www.foodafactoflife.org.uk

I hope that you are safe and well and by now have got into a routine for home schooling that is working well for everyone.

Rain is forecast for this week and much needed too for the garden. If you are looking after them, your potato plants should be thriving, so make sure they are topped up with plenty of soil to grow in, and plenty of water to stop them drying up when it's hot.

Over the next 8 weeks, on the run up to harvesting, I will be sharing with you a selection of resources and activities that pupils can do at home. You can also follow the top tips on your GYOP poster to make sure you get the best from your growing crop.

Are your potato plants being home-schooled too?

Not long after planting your potatoes for this years project, schools were forced to close indefinately due to COVID-19. We know, through the GYOP twitter, that while these closures are in place: some potato plants have gone home with pupils or teachers, while some caretakers are helping out keeping them watered and topped up with soil, how are your growing plants being cared for?

Please take a few minutes to complete this quick survey and let us know. Closing date Friday 8 May 2020.

Potato resources suitable for home learning

With schools closed and children learning from home, we appreciate that it's not possible for all pupils to be directly involved in the growing process of your schools potatoes but there are lots of resources available that can help you keep them included.

Here are a few links you might find useful to help educate pupils at home all about potatoes.

Growing potatoes - a set of slides showing how potatoes grow
GYOP Potato Journal a great way to cover all aspects of growing potatoes.
Bug ID cards - get students to go on a bug hunt and create ID cards for the bugs they find
Potato Dot-to-dots perfect for younger pupils
Remote Learning Hub recently added to the Food - a fact of life website - with new resources from now until Septemeber, to help parents/carers, teachers and pupils, with home-schooling. Perfect for all ages.

I hope you find these suggestions helpful to share with your pupils and remember to take the survey before Friday 8 May.

Sue
GYOP Team

Potato Planting update from Alice 19th May

Unfortunately the class 1 potato plant is no longer as it was only supposed to last 7 weeks. Alice created a poster showing the final details of the plant. And amazingly we grew some potatoes!!

Potato Planting 6th March

3rd April 2020 - Thank you to Alice for keeping us up to date with her potato plant, she is looking after it really well. Keep up the good work! (This photo published with permission from her mum).

10th April 2020 - This is the one from the EYU that Mrs Raynor brought out into the sunshine.

Our Key Stage 1 and Early Years children are all learning about growing potatoes. They have joined in a national campaign to see children learning about growing food. This week the children planted their potatoes in the sensory garden and the early years playground. They will need to look after their potatoes until June, when we can harvest them. We are all hoping for a bumper crop that will feed all the children in their classes!

World Book Day 5th March

OUR NEW LIBRARY!

The slideshow below shows before and after the transformation...

Children In Need 2020 - Odd Sock Day

14th May 2020

Fun facts about worms