What a fantastic week had by all of Year 5 at St Mary’s Primary School! We have all been given such a great chance and on behalf of the whole class, I would like to thank everyone who made it possible! We had the pleasure of hosting 17 children from a school in Northern France and celebrated their arrival on Monday 26th June with an exciting taster session. We shared with them some of the wonderful tastes of England, Victoria sponge cake, Yorkshire puddings, cheese scones and Dandelion & Burdock were just a few samples! It was such an event that even the Mayor of Aycliffe came to join us!
Shirley, the community support manager, from Tesco, also came to share in our day – Tesco very kindly donated bread and fresh fruit, all week, to our visitors which was very much appreciated. As science is not as widely taught in France, we decided that it would be a good idea to share our learning with our visitors. Our teacher, Miss Miles, invited Dave Spensley from Go Ahead Robotics to hold a marvellous day of technology! We were given the chance to use the Makey Makey Boards, and some of us were very creative. We used bananas to play the piano, Play Doh to play Pacman and much more! We were also given another amazing opportunity to build a robot which we then programmed to go round a track. Two children were even given an extra opportunity to take the next step and construct a more complex robot together!
On Wednesday we all took part in PE, teaching our French visitors a few British ball games and found that some of us were very competitive and talented at sports. Thursday was the French children’s last day with us so we thought a great way to say au revoir would be to sing some traditional French songs. We decided to involve the whole school in this by letting every class learn a song and share it with us in an Assembly. Some members of Year 5 have made good friends over the week; no doubt they will be staying in touch! Overall, I think we’ve been given an amazing opportunity and I am very grateful. I hope that next year’s class will be given the same chance and will enjoy it as much as we did! By Jessica Weatherall, Year 5
