Knighton Church in Wales Primary School
Caru Duw, Caru Pawb, Caru Dysgu
Larry Wright visited our school on 20th March 2023 to lead a collective worship session explaining his role within the Knighton & District Refugee Support Group. We discussed what a ‘refugee’ is and what we can do to help. We found out that Knighton & District Refugee Support Group welcomes and supports people seeking refuge in the UK. Larry continues to lead fortnightly assemblies with a values based focus focusing on offering sanctuary to people facing forced migration.
Children from Year 2 upwards have been learning a special song about the rights of children.
We enjoyed another great Pyjama session last week with Louise. We created a story about being evacuee children and we thought carefully about some of the games that they would have played.
We enjoyed dressing up and celebrating all of the fantastic work that we have done this term relating to our Mantle of the Expert theme of Journeys.
We enjoyed welcoming parents back into class to look at our work.
We worked with Peter and Sharon to create another story based on ‘The Last Garden’. The story was based in Bosnia in 1996 and told the story of a girl that had to leave her home and her beautiful garden. We travelled back in time and met Slev who had taken refuge in the garden. He had no home and was looking after lots of children that had lost their families. They also met Zara’s mum (a character from the story ) who had returned back to her home after many years away from the garden. The children had the opportunity to hot seat her and ask her questions about her life and what it was like being a refugee.
The children decided that they would like to help Slev, Zara and her mum rebuild the garden. So they went back to the future and gathered resources that they would need to grow the garden again. When they returned to the garden and rebuilt it, they welcomed Zara back and they all had a party.
We worked with Peter to complete our story. We talked about Les Nabb’s identity card from last week and that it was his birthday today. We created a book to help him and the other evacuees from Liverpool. The book included a map of Knighton, pictures of the town and rules of the countryside. We also made him a birthday card. We travelled back in time to 1939 to deliver his card. When we arrived we were at Les Nabb’s 9th birthday party. We gave Les his book and birthday cards and we played ‘Stations’, a game from the 1930’s.
Then the sheep escaped from the field and we had to help the evacuees and the local children find them. Then it was time to return to 2023 just in time for home time.
Today we were visited by Peter Duncan who worked with the children to create a shared story. When the children arrived back into the classroom after break they were greeted by a tunnel and a letter. They investigated the area and read the letter. The letter contained identity tags and a letter. The children concluded that the letter and the identity tags must have been from an evacuee. So they decided to go through the tunnel and step back in time to 1939. They were all transported back to Knighton Train Station when a train of evacuees were arriving from Liverpool. They were met by Mr Thompson who was a busy man trying to arrange host families for the evacuees to stay with. Luckily, the children had time to interview Mr Thompson before they returned back to 2023….just in time for lunch!
Following our whole school assembly celebration of World Religion Day, Year 2 children enjoyed focusing on the Hindu Creation story. They discussed the story, the characters and the similarities and differences between the Hindu creation story and the Christian creation story. Some of the children created dances to depict the story, some composed music o accompany the story and others created a collage of Vishnu and Brahma.
Children in Jac-Y-Do and Gwennol met Daisy at the train station in Knighton. Daisy was an evacuee and she had just arrived in Knighton from Liverpool. She had been sent to Knighton during World War 2 to keep her safe from the German bombing in Liverpool.
The children will be studying the theme of the journeys made by evacuees to Knighton during World War 2 through the Mantle of the Expert approach to the new curriculum.
Miss Rees and Mrs Fielding would be very interested in hearing from you if you have any information regarding evacuees during World War 2. Their email addresses are:
Mrs Fielding – MorrisJ313@hwbcymru.net
Miss Rees – reesl544@hwbcymru.net
Diolch
The children have also been finding out about Harvest and looking at the Jewish festival of Sukkot. They enjoyed working in groups to create their own sukkahs using LEGO, junk materials and natural materials in our forest school area. Ethically informed citizens