Have a great Christmas

The last day of term is upon us. Children have worked extremely hard, not only at their academic endeavours, but also on their production and our various seasonal activities, such as carol singing at Bayview Garden Centre. They all need a good rest (and so do we), but we are very proud of them. They have worked hard and have maintained excellent attitude and behaviour. Well done!

Christmas Production

Just a reminder to all that our Christmas production will be on December 10th. There will be two performances, one at 2.00pm and the other at 7.00pm. Rehearsals have been well under way for quite some time and all is going well. Don't forget to send in your requests for tickets asap. Each family is allocated two tickets and if there are any spares, they will be distributed amongst those who request them.

Remembrance

The festival of remembrance has become very important for me since I learned to appreciate the sacrifice a member of my own family made amongst the small villages of the Somme in 1916. Patrick, my grandfather's brother, was born to a soldier. His father had fought at the battle of Tel- el-Kebir in Egypt in the 1880s. Patrick was born in the early years of the 1890s and when he grew up he became a porter. Shortly after the First World War started, he joined the Royal Munster Fusiliers and was posted to France in November 1914. He took part in many of the important battles of the war in France and later, in 1915, he joined the Machine Gun Corps.

He was seriously wounded at the Battle of Pozieres in August 1916 and died of his wounds a day or so later. The family really knew very little about what had happened to him and what his life was like in the midst of what we now call the Great War. Some years ago, I began to research his war record and was filled with admiration for what this young man from the same area in which I grew up went through. In the next few weeks, I will share much more of his story and the story of the brave comrades, including many Australians, who fought alongside him.

Today, on Remembrance Sunday, I think of him, as I do very, very often and I think of those who lie in the many great and small burial grounds which dot the landscape of the Somme. It is a time to honour them and to stand in awe of their sacrifice.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

The US Election

This morning in our Key Stage 2 assembly we discussed the momentous events which unfolded in the US during the night. Pupils have taken an extraordinary amount of interest in this election and many of them watched this morning's news reports on the election results. It has been a very good exercise in highlighting the importance of voting and in demonstrating that every vote does count. I hope that it will lead our pupils to engage with politics in this country as they grow up.

Viking Lancashire

Thanks again to Mrs Lamb for the following article, written by her after the Year 3 / 4 trip to Lancaster Maritime Museum for an excellent morning spent learning about the Vikings in the North West.

Last Tuesday morning Years 3 and 4 visited the Maritime Museum in Lancaster for a Viking morning. We met a Viking farmer, Kraka, who had settled in this area and his father Crock, as well as the storyteller Linden. Linden invited us into her house and the children worked for her by grinding the wheat, weaving fabric for sails and embroidering a tapestry.

As well as learning the Viking battle cry, which was yelled with great enthusiasm by everyone, we also learnt:

Boys and girls were considered adults at 12, when they were old enough to marry;
Human ear wax was used to coat the flights on arrows to prevent insects nibbling them;
Vikings needed 7000 calories a day to survive;
Every part of an animal was used, as meat to eat, skins for warmth and bones to make needles and combs;
The men were not allowed to sit down until they had checked that all the ladies in the room were seated;
Torrisholme is a Viking name.
One of the stories we were told by Linden was of a brave warrior who had sustained a serious stomach wound during battle. She had travelled to him and administered herbs to aid healing. After some time when he was not showing any signs of improvement she slit his throat to send him on his way to the gods and prevent a long and painful death. Then she had to visit the stone masons to arrange for the hogback to be carved. This is the gravestone used by the Vikings, it is carved with pictures which tell the story of the person’s life.
This story reminded me of my holiday this year when I visited a remote graveyard on Shetland and saw the hogback grave markers. What struck me about the place was the remoteness of it and that the hogback stones were alongside modern present day gravestones. In the days of the Vikings they used boats to access the graveyard, nowadays the coffin travels by tractor. As I wandered around that day I marvelled that the graveyard had been used for so many years and that two so very different styles of stones, and people separated by so many years of change were resting side by side on that remote headland.

A glimpse of Canada

Toronto



The Wilderness




Canada, as these pictures show, is an amazing country of great contrasts. Moving from Toronto to Nether Kellet is quite a change, and Adam in Year 6 writes below about his life in Canada:

My name is Adam and I was born in Toronto, Canada, and lived there with my Mum and dog until I was seven years old. Toronto is a very big city built next to a lake. Toronto is famous for the CN Tower, moose, Canadian geese, beavers and the Rocky Mountains. It is very hot in Summer, so I used to go to cottage country with my Mum and some friends. We stayed in a cottage next to a lake and went on a seadoo or went boating and swimming. If we stayed in the city, we would go to the local pool or splash pad to keep cool. In Winter, it is very cold with lots of snow. I loved Winter because I would go sledging and ice-skating with my Mum and friends and play hide and seek in the snow because it was so deep. I used to play ice hockey at the local arena. My favourite thing in Winter was the Santa parade with lots of amazing floats and Santa with his reindeer at the end. School is very different because the first year I spent half the day at pre-school and the second half at school. The second year, I went to school.

Fell walking

Thanks to Mrs Lamb for the following account and pictures of her walks this week in the Lakes.The memorial in the pictures is in memory of the crew of a crashed Halifax. It is on the col between Great Carrs and Grey Friar, and the view in the vista photographs is looking towards the west from the summit of Grey Friar, with Dow Crag on the left.

Mrs Lamb herself writes:

My friend and I regularly walk in the Lake District on a Thursday and
although we have spent hundreds of hours there and walked hundreds of
miles there were areas that we had not yet visited. So earlier this year
decided to start visiting all of the tops named by Alfred Wainwright in
his books, a total of 214. Yesterday was another of our regular days out
together, with fantastic views over to the sea and also inland to the
higher mountains. We will continue to slowly whittle away at the total,
each day having its own memories of the weather conditions we encounter
and sometimes battle against, the navigational challenges and the people
we meet and chat to on the way. These days make me appreciate how very
lucky I am to live in such a beautiful and peaceful area.

The new computer revolution

Many thanks to Prof. Mathy for the following article on changes in computer technology. Nowadays, schools use technology all the time and very soon we hope to be video conferencing with schools in Canda and elsewhere. It is a very different world even from ten years ago. The use of interactive whiteboards in classrooms is now routine and it is not at all unusual to travel the world via the web in a single morning. More on this anon...in the meantime, over to a true expert.

.............................................................................

If you look at a computer that’s a few years old, and at a brand new one in the shop, they both look like big metal boxes. However, on the inside, some very big changes have happened.

The main part of the computer is called the processor. The processor mostly contains a clever piece of electronics called the core. This can do all sorts of maths operations. And it can do these operations very fast too. When you see an advertisement telling you that a processor operates at 2GHz, it is a rather complicated way of saying that the processor can do 2 billion maths operations per second. You’d soon be done with your maths homework if you could go that fast, wouldn’t you?

The processor and the core inside it are a little bit like your head with your brain inside. Or at least, that’s the way it was for old computers, because for new computers things are different. You see, engineers have been inventing more and more clever ways to build processor cores, and because of that, the size of these cores has become smaller and smaller. They are about as big as one of your fingernails. So as computer brains are taking up less space, not so long ago, someone had the bright idea to put two cores instead of one inside the processor. All of a sudden, the processor was like one head with two brains. At the supermarket, that would be called a “buy one get one free bargain”, but in the world of computers, such a beastie is called a “dual-core processor”- but now you know this simply means that the computer can do 2 maths operations at the same time.

People say “the more the merrier”, don’t they? So engineers decided to put more and more cores inside the processor, filling the computer’s head with more and more brains. Today, you can find computers with 8 brains. In fact, you may already have one in your house: the PlayStation 3 has got 8 brains inside it.

In a few years, processors with 32, 68, or even 128 cores (that’s a head with a lot of brains) will be quite common and with each of these brains being capable of doing several billions of maths calculations every second, that’s an awful lot of maths! Processors with more than two cores are called “multi-core processors”.

So new computers have more brains than old ones, and that is why old computers seem very sluggish compared to old ones.

Oh, and be thankful that children are not like computers, because your younger brother or sister would have more brains than you have…Wicked!

The Box

It might seem a project which someone with too much time on either his or her hands thought up, or as something conceived as a hobby by someone with no social life at all, but the BBC project 'The Box' does capture the imagination and the curiosity.

We looked at the information site yesterday during our KS2 assembly and discussed the progress of the container in question. It gave us a chance to speak about globalisation, and, let's face it, how many times in a KS2 assembly do you get the opportunity to discuss such a topic?

Have a look at the site and find out where the box is now here

Celtic awakenings

Inevitably, until others start to contribute, this blog will have something of a Celtic flavour to it. Perhaps it is even more inevitable since the teaching staff of NKCPS has not only an Irish presence, but Scottish and Welsh as well. The various national elements which make up the British Isles are well represented!

Recently there has been renewed interest in the many native languages of Britain. Yesterday saw the launch of a daily Gaelic news service for Scotland on BBC Alba and Welsh, of course, has long been a language which has enjoyed a major revival. However, other regional languages have also been the focus of activity. On the Isle of Man, Manx has seen a strong upsurge of interest and recently the first school teaching the Manx language was established. An extremely interesting interview with those involved in the revival of Manx amongst the youth of the island can be found here.

Then, of course, the Cornish tongue, Kernewek, has enjoyed a major degree of interest over the past few years. The Cornish Language Partnership homepage provides extremely useful information.

In recent years, Northern Ireland has seen an increase in interest in Irish Gaelic. However, with this has come a renewed desire to see a greater interest in learning and speaking Ulster Scots. The Ulster Scots Agency gives valuable information on this much neglected and long forgotten tongue.

On this day...

On September 22nd 1955, commercial television began in Great Britain. The rules said that only six minutes of ads were allowed each hour and there was no Sunday morning TV permitted.

A September Sunday

These pictures were taken this morning, a beautiful September Sunday, at Dalton Crags, near Burton-in-Kendal.

Beauty all around us

Living in North Lancashire and near South Lakes, it is easy to take for granted the beauty that surrounds us. This weekend has been particularly nice and we could enjoy the area in all its glory. The photos in this post were taken earlier this year around Silverdale and Arnside. The Morecambe Bay sunsets are legendary, but the views in these pictures are truly spectacular.

Our sponsored walk

Our annual sponsored walk around the school field took place this afternoon. Parents and children walked a combined total of 1,275 laps of 265m around the field, which means that we walked a total of 338 kilometres. Well done to all who took part and a big thank you to those who sponsored them.

The Sack of Baltimore

Speaking of books and of West Cork in the last two postings reminds me of a fantastic book which I plan to eventually read in full in the next few weeks. 'The Stolen Village' by Des Ekin tells the incredible story of an attack on the tiny coastal village of Baltimore in West Cork in 1631 by Algerian pirates. Most of the population was carried away to Algiers. We tend not to think of pirates from the Barbary coast travelling so far north in those days, but this daring raid shows that they did and with devastating effect.

The Nether Kellet Reading Group

The reading group meets at the school once a month. Each month, we all read the same book and gather to discuss it over a cuppa. It is a very informal gathering of people from a variety of backgrounds and with differing tastes in books. If you are interested in attending, just get in contact with the school and we will let you have the details.

We are entering into our fourth year of meeting now and we have read quite a few books over that time. We tend to go for pot luck and take whatever the library service can give us from a selection which we are offered. Some of the books we have loved, some we have hated and a few have left us bewildered, but we always enjoy the challenge and we have found that because of the group we are reading books we never would have read in the past. Our current book is 'Lucky Jim' by Kingsley Amis.

Nether Kellet CPS is keeping its eye on...

I doubt if anyone reading this has heard the story of the Skibbereen Eagle and the Tsar of Russia, but it is worth a brief telling. Skibbereen is a small, provincial town in West Cork, Ireland. It is regarded by city folks as a rural backwater. However, the town’s newspaper, the Skibbereen Eagle made headlines worldwide in 1897 with its warning, in a thundering editorial, to the Tsar of all the Russias that his every move was being watched from Skibbereen and that he had better mind his ways. "The Skibbereen Eagle is keeping its eye on the Tsar of Russia." It seems that the Skibbereen Eagle had taken exception to his policy on China. In Ireland, the Eagle is the perfect example of ‘the mouse that roared’. What the Tsar thought of it all has not, to my knowledge, been recorded. That is probably a good thing.

Well, here at NKCPS, in the true tradition of the Skibbereen Eagle, the pupils of KS2 are keeping their beady eyes on Barack Obama and John McCain as they compete with each other for that most powerful of positions, the US Presidency. In some of our recent KS2 assemblies we have been following news of the primary elections and discussing this fascinating race to the White House. Many of our older pupils like to watch BBC’s Newsround and some of them have a keen interest in what is happening in the world. So, like the Skibbereen Eagle, we may be small in number and we may be from rural North Lancashire, but we are keeping our eye on McCain and Obama!


The town of Skibbereen in 1900, just three years after the Eagle issued its warning to the Tsar!



The front page of the Skibbereen Eagle

Play time

This picture was taken just before we broke up for holidays in July. We are very lucky to have extensive grounds and to have some wonderful play areas. The children love the adventure playground and each week the colour group with the highest amount of housepoints gets an extra play time on this equipment.

Welcome

Welcome to NKCPS Extra, the new blog of Nether Kellet CPS. We want this blog to be our way of sharing what is happening in our school and local community with the outside world. It sits alongside our website but has a wider function. It gives us an opportunity to share thoughts and to muse a little on events. It will enable various members of our community and wider school family to share some of their advice, thoughts, opinions and wisdom. We hope to have comment, articles on items of interest and reports on activities within the school and our community.