Our Autumn Newsletter is packed with all your ‘need to knows’ about Warkworth!
We’re back for a new school year and we can’t wait for what’s ahead this year.
Find out details about the Summer term in our latest newsletter.
As Summer term starts, we welcome our new Headteacher, Mr Booth!
Read the latest newsletter below and see all the fantastic things planned at Warkworth this term!
Following our # Strive Together as One worship, Amelia, Arthur, Zara and Fleur from KS2 decided to set NCEA Warkworth Primary up as a weekly drop off point for Amble Food Bank. They went around to each classroom and presented their idea to collect one item of food each week from each family and then organised for the whole school to make posters to advertise the collection to the community. Year 3/4 will be distributing these next week.
All items have been counted and last week, 110 items were collected but the new challenge for this week is 150 – watch this space!
Once again, we have been blown away by the generosity of our local community at NCEA Warkworth Primary.
After announcing that we were to become a collection point for donations of essential materials to support the humanitarian effort in Ukraine, we were quickly inundated with bags of clothing, toiletries and medicines which filled the school hall!
We’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who contributed and to those parents and friends who also helped to transport the goods to our drop-off point. A special thank you also goes out to our pupils across the whole school who made a beautiful prayer wall for staff and visitors to enjoy. # Strive Together as One
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Our pupils in Years 5 and 6 have also been raising awareness and support for Ukraine through art. Reflecting on the work of MyDogSighs and Charlie Mackesy, the children created their own artwork inspired by current events in Ukraine. MyDogSighs even commented on some of the artwork shared on our school Facebook page and retweeted the post from our school Twitter feed, which is very exciting!
Pupils at NCEA Warkworth Primary School have finally been let loose on their exciting new Forest School area!
During lockdown, the school’s original forest school site located away from the school premises was sadly destroyed by vandals. The community and innumerable local businesses stepped in to help crowd fund and donate supplies to rebuild the Forest School within the school grounds and we’re pleased to announce that it’s finally finished! From the looks of things, our Reception class had a fantastic time getting messy earlier this week! #Strivetogetherasone
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Pupils from NCEA Warkworth Primary School have enjoyed another week full of exciting STEM sessions held at the Trust’s Robert Stephenson Campus in Ashington.
The Year 3 and Year 4 pupils had a fantastic time designing and making a maze game in Design and Technology using saws and other tools to perfect their designs and then making their own burgers and flipping them too in Food Technology!
A huge thank you to all of the staff involved in making these sessions possible.
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Dear parents/carers,
It has been brought to our attention by a parent from one of our Trust schools that a suspicious looking email, seemingly sent by members of staff within the Trust, has been issued. The emails have a ‘zip file’ attachment and password to use to open it, however, this is not a legitimate email so please do not click on the attachment.
While a thorough investigation is still being carried out by our IT team, we can confirm that this is part of a wider cyber security issue which highly likely originated from outside of NCEAT, but is now having a direct impact on our own communications systems.
We have increased our internal online security as far as possible and are working with providers to ensure that as many of these potentially harmful emails are ‘filtered out’ of our network, however, if you do receive any suspicious looking emails, claiming to be from NCEA Warkworth Primary, please do not click on any links or attachments and mark the email as ‘spam’.
To help you to identify a potential scam, please see some guidance below:
- The “sent by” address will either be a jumble of random letters and numbers or have an unusual domain (not .com or .co.uk)
- The email will contain links to click to ‘confirm your details’ or ‘make a payment’
- The email may have an attachment which looks strange or unsafe to open
- The email may give you a limited time to reply
- There might be spelling mistakes, bad grammar and sentences which don’t quite make sense
- If the email contains any logos or images, these may appear ‘pixelated’ or blurry
- If requesting money, the amount will usually be quite specific, not rounded up to the nearest pound/pence to try and make it seem legitimate, eg £692.88 instead of £700,00.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We are working as quickly as we can to resolve the issue. If anyone has any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
In recent years, the subject of people’s mental health and wellbeing has become rather a hot topic.
Following in the footsteps of celebrities and even royalty, more and more people are becoming comfortable with sharing their thoughts and feelings around their mental health and using platforms like social media to raise awareness for conditions such as anxiety and depression, which affect far more people across the UK than you’d imagine, including a startling number of school-age children and young people.
This new cultural awakening has challenged employers to consider their own policies and provision around staff wellbeing and mental health, but what about schools?
Laura Ritson, Headteacher at NCEA Warkworth C of E Primary School shares her insight into the importance of mental health education and the provision of wellbeing support in schools.
Mental health in the curriculum
Mental health and wellbeing plays a central role in the curriculum at Warkworth Primary, so much so, that in March 2021, the school was awarded the School Mental Health Award by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools – one of just five schools nationally to achieve the prestigious Gold standard.
The body of work to achieve the award was extensive and incorporated multiple strategies and approaches including mindfulness clubs, yoga, the construction of mental health and wellbeing areas in each classroom and the introduction of a school therapy dog, to name a few.
The logic behind all of this? With good mental health, pupils and staff are more likely to be motivated and engaged therefore more likely to reach their true potential.
“Our in-school wellbeing provision was informed by a lot of research from sources such as The Church of England Education Office and the Place2Be charity which all made links between good mental health and improved learning outcomes,” Laura said.
“By educating pupils at the earliest opportunity about the importance of looking after their mental health and encouraging others around them to do the same, we hope to create an environment where both our children and staff feel safe and supported. As well as making mental health and wellbeing awareness central to our PSHE and RSE curriculum, we try to create as many opportunities as possible throughout the school week for pupils to talk about their feelings – no topic is ever off limits as understanding is key.”
Mental health in the community
The Covid-19 pandemic saw the school’s wellbeing practices start to transcend the school itself and have an impact on the wider community around Warkworth.
“Lockdown was a difficult time for many people – stuck in isolation, kept apart from friends and loved ones, the entire nation’s mental health took a bit of a knock,” Laura continued.
“At Warkworth primary, our school vision is #Strive together as one, so we wanted to do something to help maintain a sense of ‘togetherness’ while we had to stay apart. We organised a community heart campaign where our children designed and delivered a series of paper hearts to residents for them to display in their windows. We also sent wellbeing bags containing activities and resources home with pupils to help support pupils and their families, and organised weekly live wellbeing sessions to provide a safe space for pupils and their parents to discuss their thoughts and feelings.
“The feedback we had from the campaign was absolutely incredible, it just goes to show what a little bit of time and communication can achieve.”
Raising the profile of mental health
Sunday (10th October) was World Mental Health Day and all across NCEA Trust, staff and pupils have been taking part in activities to raise awareness of the importance of mental health as well as vital funds for organisations such as Young Minds, who provide vital support to vulnerable children and young people.
“There has never been a more important time for us all to start looking after ourselves a bit better,” Laura concluded.
“By teaching the importance of self-care and helping children to understand their thoughts and feelings from an early age, hopefully we can help to curb the upward trend in mental health conditions affecting young people.”
You can find out more about the mental health and wellbeing programme at Warkworth Primary at: https://warkworth.ncea.org.uk/key-information/mental-health-and-wellbeing/
