Once again, our pupils have enthusiastically taken part in The Great British SpringClean. Thanks to the local council, who provided everything we could possibly need, pupils were able to safely move around their school community litter picking.
Berwick Class made a plan for where they were going to litter pick and were so impressed by the litter picking already done they had to find somewhere else to go! Thank you Castle School pupils for taking time to improve our environment.
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A huge Thank You to The Widows Sons Masonic Motorcycle Association who visited Castle School yesterday to meet the children and kindly brought an Easter egg for every child.
We also have to say a big thank you to Julie, representing the Co-op, who donated all of the Easter Eggs. We felt very privileged to be included as they resumed their annual Easter Egg Run to a few selected special schools in Northumberland.
What a fantastic morning for our pupils – they thoroughly enjoyed the visit and it was a very special experience seeing all of their amazing motorcycles – some of us even got to sit on them too!
The visit was made even more special by the genuine kindness shown to us by a group of true gentlemen who went out of their way to ensure that every child felt included.
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I cannot express how grateful we are to the The Widows Sons Masonic Motorcycle Association who visited our school with their amazing bikes and the very generous gifts of Easter eggs from the Co-op for all our children brought to us by Julie. Our children got so much pleasure from seeing, hearing and sitting on the bikes and speaking to the lovely gentlemen. It was such a joy to see the excitement and sheer joy on the faces of all our children – and our staff! It was such a treat at the end of term for everyone at Castle school
Thank you so much once again – Caroline Vardy (Assistant Principal, Castle School)
Through a non-uniform day and the sale of official merchandise, we’re delighted to share that Castle School raised a fantastic £162.70 for Red Nose Day!
Many of the classes across the school got involved in the Comic Relief challenge to ‘build a Lego habitat for your red nose’ while our Enterprise Team worked together to make some shortbread biscuits to sell to raise additional funds. Check out our Facebook post to see some of the fantastic Lego habitats built by pupils!
At Castle School our aim is to provide all of our pupils with some insight/ understanding into the world of work at whatever level is appropriate to the needs of the individual.
Last week was National Careers Week and so on Thursday, we had a designated Careers Day!
Each class decided on a job or skill that they wanted to learn about and put up a widow display, some were sensory or interactive, for example pupils had props that they could have their photos taken with or you could take your fingerprints for the police. Our younger pupils had a ‘People Who Help Us’ theme and our older pupils focused on different jobs and the skills they used. We had window displays about gardening, working at McDonald’s, hospitality, the police, Royal Mail, education, attention skills, nurses and doctors.
During the day, classes moved around the school looking at the different displays. Some classes took part in job hunt tasks as they were going around. There was great fun and learning had by all. Feedback from our pupils was really positive and some asked when the next Careers Day would be!
Pupils at Castle School had a wonderful day celebrating World Book Day. Some of our pupils came into school in fancy dress as their favourite book characters whereas others just enjoyed a day in their uniform or non uniform – whatever they felt most comfortable in. Each class enjoyed activities based around some of our favourite books in school. In the immortal words of Dr Seuss, “You can find magic wherever you look. Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”
Pupils at Castle School have been working with a fantastic football coach, Steven, from the Newcastle United Foundation this half term.
Focusing on making football accessible to all through a range of fun activities and games, everyone has thoroughly enjoyed and really benefited from the sessions.
Jack, Teacher at Castle School, said: “As well as developing their football skills, we have seen our pupils grow in confidence, build new relationships and embrace a real sense of team spirit.”
A massive congratulations is due to last year’s Norham Class at Castle School who not only made it through the regional finals for their group art and craft entry for the Riding for the Disabled Association’s (RDA) annual competition, but went on to WIN the NATIONAL COMPETITION!
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 Castle School, 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.
We hope you all enjoy our Christmas 2021 festive highlights.
The Christmas Story
All classes in Castle School have decorated their class windows again this year, but this time to re-create the Nativity, with each window adding to the story as pupils make their way around school.
The window displays have immersive elements so that all children are able to experience the Christmas story, with lots of visual and tactile items to see, feel and explore, as well as the scents and sounds to bring the story to life.
All of our classes enjoyed a walk around school to explore the displays – we had a few modern twists that were a big hit – such as a ‘star selfie station’ and nativity photo booth (not sure we would have found one of those in Bethlehem but we sure had fun!)
Festive Fun!
We have also enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch and had lots of fun at our Christmas parties. We booked the Singing Hands Virtual Christmas Show as a treat for our pupils and we also had the pleasure of watching this years Christmas for Kids digital show, ‘Phoebe’s First Christmas’.
Makaton Advent Calendar
Throughout December, we have also been learning a new Christmas Makaton sign each day. With the help of Castle Makaton tutor, Stef and some of our signing superstars, we put together a series of 4 short videos to share the signs with our families via social media.
On behalf of all the staff here in Castle School, we would like to wish you all a very Happy and safe Christmas. We look forward to welcoming all pupils back to school on Wednesday 5th January 2022.
Last year, we set a weekend challenge for Christmas and it was such a big success, we decided to do another one this year! This years theme was ‘Festive fun’ – check out what our pupils got up to in our ‘Castle Christmas Challenge 2021’
A big thank you to everyone who joined in, we have loved seeing all of your photographs. As it is Christmas, we also had some prizes to award, randomly selected from a hat by Sara Wild (Principal). We have 10 x £10 Amazon vouchers up for grabs, watch the video below to see who the lucky winners are.
