Happy Birthday Cressida Cowell!

Pupils from Oakridge School would like to wish Cressida Cowell a very happy birthday for today! They have fond memories of meeting her a couple of years ago at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. At the time, the children were reading the wonderful Wizards of Once, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting her and having her sign their copies.

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Meeting Cressida Cowell was just one of the highlights from a jam packed day! They were also treated to some outdoor street circus entertainment…

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…which they all found hugely enjoyable!

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Their day was rounded off with a very special workshop from Cressida, where they got a sneaky peep into the world of her imagination!

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The arena was packed as the children listened intently as she told them all about the inspiration behind her stories. Let’s hope they were all inspired!

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Eco Warriors

Before Covid hit, Oakridge school had been gearing up efforts to become one of a small handful of Gloucestershire primary schools to be awarded with a prestigious Eco Schools Green Flag Award. Sadly, during the pandemic, focus shifted and the project was put on the back burner.

Two years on, and thanks to the determination of our wonderful staff and pupils, we’re going for it again! Applications are open and the school is putting together an action plan, led by a team of 9 eco warriors.

Our students care deeply about environmental issues and have a strong desire to actively protect our planet. However, environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity-loss or plastic pollution are huge global issues and the thought of tackling them can be intimidating, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and wondering ‘Where do I begin?’

The Eco-Schools programme provides a simple, seven-step framework that answers this question whilst empowering young people to make a difference in their school, local community and beyond.

Schools connect their activities to three or more of the Ten Eco-Schools Topics. These topics break large, global issues like climate change into more manageable and directed themes that prompt young people to consider environmental changes that they can make in their school and everyday lives.

STEM Week 2023

Last week, to celebrate STEM week, class 2 were treated to a crazy morning of amazing science activities. The workshop was led by the brilliant Diatom Dave, owner of Fun Science, providing science edu-tainment to children aged 3-11. Their aim is to foster within children a life long passion for learning and a desire to find things out for themselves through access to high tech equipment in a safe environment.

The theme for the workshop was ‘communications,’ and it began with a very informative slideshow that involved a few unusual items!

The children were then invited to get involved with a variety of different hands on activities, including making their own megaphones!

Pupils also had the opportunity to make string telephones, to help them understand how sound waves travel. They had a lot of fun!

There was also the opportunity to try their hand at flag semaphores, used to convey information by means of visual signals with hand-held flags, rods, disks, or paddles. Information is encoded by the position of the flags; it is read when the flag is in a fixed position.

World Book Day 2023

Last Thursday, class 1 welcomed a very special visitor to help them celebrate World Book Day! Their topic for this term is knights and castles. The little ones enjoyed spending the day dressing up as real life knights and learning all about the life of a knight.

Despite the school strikes, Oakridge School remained open, allowing the children to continue with their learning, uninterrupted, and what a wonderful World Book Day they had as a result! A big thank you to all the teachers for their amazing efforts.

Community Knit

The children recently took part in a community knit as part of the school’s involvement with WWF’s Show The Love week. Show The Love is an annual celebration of all that we love but could lose to climate change and tied in well with the children’s topic for the term - Our Wonderful World.

The knitting marathon took place during the course of a school morning. Children, teachers, parents and grandparents all sat down together to chat, knit, teach. That’s what’s so lovely about Oakridge: it’s all inclusive, everyone is welcome to get involved with the children’s education.

Some of the children had never picked up a pair of knitting needles before, but with careful guidance, they soon got the hang of it. It was so successful, there’s now talk of starting a knitting club on Friday afternoons!