Year 6 attended the Act of Remembrance at St Mary’s Church and at the Swanage War Memorial on Friday 9 November.
Emmanuel baptist Church put on a wonderful exhibition linked to The First World War including some beautiful pieces of artwork produced by local schools, including St Mary’s.
Three pupils from Y6 represented St. Mary’s on Remembrance Sunday by attending the town’s service at St. Mary’s Parish Church and then marching to the War Memorial with other schools, youth groups, armed services representatives and dignitaries. There were many other pupils from St. Mary’s present as part of the local Brownie, Guide, Cub and Scout groups in attendance. It was a very moving and special service to mark not only Remembrance Sunday, but also the centenary of the end of the First World War.
Pupils from Year 5 and Year 6 have been marking Remembrance by finding out about those men and women from Swanage who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. They have created some rather special poppy wreaths that included the name and age of each of the ninety-nine men from Swanage who died in the First and Second World Wars. Year 6 have also written prayers for remembrance and peace on the back of poppies. The wreaths and prayers are on display in St. Mary’s Church.
This year the Green Team are working on reducing plastic waste at school and in our local environment. We established a link with the local Litter Free Purbeck group in Swanage after a visit from Wayne Dixon, who’s about half way around a litter picking/beach-cleaning walk around the UK coastline. Wayne is the No. 1 Litter Ambassador for Keep Britain Tidy and is also a recipient of one of the Prime Minister’s Points of Lights awards.
Read more about Wayne’s walk here. Photos of him and Koda in school to follow.
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed so generously to our harvest collection for Swanage Foodbank. All of the food will go to help vulnerable people in our own community. We are hoping some of our school council will be able to visit and help sort food and find out about how the foodbank works.
It was also lovely to welcome parents to Mass; you are always welcome to join us – keep an eye on the school calendar for future dates and opportunities for you to join us for our worship times.
Members of the school council went to Durlston for the first day of Beat the Street for Purbeck and Poole.
St Mary’s belongs to a multi-academy trust, Plymouth CAST, which includes 35 Catholic schools from Devon, Dorset and Cornwall. Recently a new CEO, Raymond Friel, was appointed and he has worked on producing a shared Vision and Values statement for the Trust based on the Gospel values. There is a consultation period until 14th October when comments are invited from pupils, parents, staff and governors. The document can be read as a word document or PDF.
If you would like to comment on any of the questions in the document, please either send an email using the form below or call in to school to speak with Mrs Gadston or Mrs Meteau.
We are delighted to tell you about a sporting triumph for our partner school in Uganda. Nakirebe Primary School were invited to represent Uganda, in the netball competition, at the East African International School Games. As you will see from the photos, not only did they travel to Rwanda to represent their country; they won the competition!!! Congratulations to them all on a truly impressive performance.
Breaking news! The Christmas chicks, which were purchased for our Ugandan partner school with the proceeds from our Christmas concerts and carol services, are all grown up and laying plenty of eggs!
Congratulations and best wishes to all our children who celebrated their first communion on Sunday 15 July 2018.
Y5 were VIP guests at the official opening of Swanage Youth Hostel after its £1.5 million refurbishment. They accompanied the mayor and CEOs of the Youth Hostel to cut the ribbon before being treated to a delicious lunch and some enormous ice-creams! After lunch they had a session learning about dinosaurs and fossil-hunting on the Jurassic Coast and even had the opportunity to go panning for fossils. An amazing day and thank you to everyone at Swanage Youth Hostel for inviting our pupils to be part of this event.
