As part of our expedition, we welcomed our second hero – and we couldn’t think of anyone who embodies our core values more than Ben Parkinson.
Before his visit, the children spent time researching Ben’s life and his incredible achievements. This meant they came ready with knowledge, curiosity, and thoughtful questions. When Ben arrived, alongside his equally inspiring mum and dad, he shared photographs and special objects that held deep meaning to him. Listening to his story gave our children the opportunity to show real compassion and respect as they heard about his journey.
The children asked some fantastic questions, which Ben answered with honesty and humour, leaving everyone inspired. To recognise the way Ben embodies all of our school’s character traits, we were proud to present him with one of our Community Champion Awards.
The timing of Ben’s visit was even more special because, during our first week back, we had been selecting crew names inspired by people who show strong character. One of the crews had chosen Ben Parkinson as their role model, so they were absolutely thrilled to meet him in person and have their crew photograph taken with him.
It was a truly memorable and inspiring visit, and we are so grateful to Ben and his family for sharing their time and story with us.
Today our classroom was bursting with capes, masks, and mighty superhero poses as the children arrived ready for our special Superhero Training Day! From the moment they walked through the door, our young heroes were full of excitement, energy, and determination to prove their super skills. We had a busy morning of training ahead, with challenges to test their strength, speed, teamwork, and, most importantly, their kindness.
Class Five kicked off their day with some teamtraining! Outside, we raced through obstacle courses, working together to rescue the cuddly toys before the timer ran out. With speed, skill, and lots of teamwork, our heroes completed their very first mission with flying colours.
Afterwards, we gathered to read our Superhero Pledge. Everyone agreed to sign it, promising to use their powers for kindness, teamwork, and making a difference. With pledges signed, the world already feels like a brighter, safer place knowing these heroes are on the case!
Next up was strength training – and what better way to put our powers to the test than by taking on the mischievous Evil Pea! With our best target practice, we quickly defeated him and saved the day.
We then moved on to agility training, showing off our speed, balance, and bravery. The children impressed everyone with their best superhero poses and thought of creative ways to travel along the benches – leaping, crawling, and swooping to escape any sneaky villains who might be lurking nearby!
Our heroes then moved on to creativity training. First, we joined together for a superhero dance, using big actions and powerful moves to show off our super strength and style. The room was full of energy and laughter as we moved in time like a team of true heroes!
Afterwards, it was time to design our very own superhero logos. Using imagination, craftsmanship, and plenty of care, each child created a unique emblem to represent their powers. The results were fantastic – a gallery of bold, colourful designs that showed just how creative and original our superheroes can be.
No superhero is complete without a sharp mind, so next it was time for braintraining! We put our thinking caps on to solve some tricky superhero riddles, tested our memories with a fun missing object game, and even cracked a secret code using our maths skills. Every challenge was tackled with determination and teamwork – proving that our heroes are just as clever as they are strong!
What an incredible day of training it has been! From strength and agility to creativity and brain power, every child rose to the challenge and proved themselves to be a true superhero. We are so proud of their teamwork, determination, and imagination. To finish the day, each hero received their very own Superhero Training Certificate – a well-deserved reward for all their hard work. The world is definitely a safer (and brighter!) place with these heroes ready to spring into action.
Class Three have enjoyed some lovely stories whilst exploring our crew question ‘How does what I do impact others?’
Working together as a team was so much fun in the sunshine, we worked hard to solve problems by sharing ideas and listening to each other.
We thought about our own families at home and how we are a big family in our crew and class at school. We worked together to create our crew norms and thought about what makes a happy classroom.
Finally we thought about how we could make kindness our own superpower and spread happiness amongst our friends. Year One decorated biscuits and gifted them to the children in Reception to welcome them into school.
This week Nursery have began to learn what Crew is? And how we take part in it?
We have circled up using our special circle song and we have began to become more familiar with our Crew leader’s. Each crew has the name of a bird as their Crew name and a little pet to help the children to understand being kind, helping them to focus and concentrate whilst take turns to speak. We wonder if you can guess the names of our Crews?
Our focus this week is one of our core principles “ Being Kind”. We are teaching this through a host of stories about kindness and friendship, in particular “Kind” by Axel Scheffler where the key character is lion. This links to our characteristic’s of effective learning character’s, where we encourage the children to show kindness like a “Loving Lion”. Being kind underpins everything we do at Norton Infant School, especially in the Early Years as it helps children to build strong bonds and relationships with each other and staff. This character trait is essential for learning those early social skills, how to treat others, how to play fairly and respectfully and how to look after each other and our Nursery. Let us know if you catch your child being kind – Look out for reward stickers and certificates to praise their acts of kindness this week.
Did you guess our Crew names?
That’s right Crew Puffin’s, Crew Blackbirds, Crew Penguins and Crew Robin’s.
This week we dove head first into crew, and have been thinking all about how we can help ourselves and each other be the best versions of ourselves. As part of this, we have been thinking about the question “does crew stop at the school gates?”. We put together little gift packages, and this morning we went our of school and delivered them around Norton.
It has been lovely getting to know Class Six this week, and we cannot wait to start our new expedition next week!!
This week, Year Two have been exploring our new guiding question: “Does Crew stop at the school gates?” We began the term by thinking carefully about what it means to be part of a crew, not just in our classroom but in our wider community too.
Throughout the week, children took part in a range of activities designed to reconnect us as a crew after the summer break. We shared stories, took new crew photographs, created self-portraits for our classroom displays, and agreed on norms to help guide how we want our classroom to look, feel and sound. We also enjoyed team-building games and challenges, reminding ourselves that we are always stronger when we work together.
A real highlight was our work on kindness. Each child wrote a thoughtful kindness poem, which was carefully packaged alongside small treats into gift bags. In the afternoon, we set out together to deliver these kindness bags around Norton. The children were so proud to share their poems and gifts with members of our local community, showing that acts of compassion can travel far beyond the school gates.
This project helped us to see that crew is not just something that happens inside the classroom – it is about how we connect with and care for others wherever we go. We are excited to continue exploring this question throughout the year.
What a brilliant first day we’ve had back at school today! It was wonderful to see all the children arriving this morning with big smiles, smart uniforms and lots of excitement (and a few little nerves too – which is completely normal!).
The children have settled back into school life so quickly. We spent time getting to know our new classroom, reminding ourselves of our routines and expectations, and most importantly, enjoying being back together as a crew.
A big focus for us today was on the character trait of Craftsmanship and Quality. Using the artist Piet Mondrian as our inspiration, the children worked carefully and thoughtfully to create some beautiful pieces of artwork of their own – we were so impressed with the pride they took in their work.
We also shared the story Our Class is a Family. Together, we thought about our families at home and then reflected on what will make our classroom feel like a family too. The children came up with some wonderful ideas about kindness, teamwork and looking after one another.
There were also plenty of opportunities for fun games and team challenges to help everyone feel comfortable and confident. It was lovely to see new friendships beginning to form and old ones picking up right where they left off.
We are so proud of how brilliantly the children have started the year. This is going to be an exciting term filled with learning, discovery and new adventures – and today was the perfect start!
Well done, everyone – we can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings.
This morning, we had a wonderful Stay and Read session in the sunshine, and it truly was a lovely way to start the day. It was so special to see children reading to adults, adults reading to children, and everyone enjoying a quiet moment surrounded by books.
A huge thank you to all the parents and carers who joined us—it was extra special as it marked the final Stay and Read for your child at Norton Infant School. We’re so grateful for your continued support and for sharing these moments with us.
Crew Goodyer enjoyed taking part in some fun crew sessions outdoors this week led by Mrs Jackson. We began by using our senses to explore and describe objects found out in our school grounds.
We then took part in the matchbox challenge to see which team could fit the most objects into a matchbox. Frankie and Eliza were excited to be named champions!
This mornings Crews in Nursery were spent thinking about the building blocks of friendship and being kind. Each crew member were given a block or brick and encouraged to think about what would a kind friend do to help make their friends happy? How can we play nicely together? How can we make sure everyone feels included? How we can manage our feelings if our friends don’t want to play at that moment?
Some of the thoughts that the children offered were; “Be kind”, “Share toys or food?”, “Ask someone to play with you too”, “Give them a cuddle or a kiss”, “Be nice”, “Sharing”, “Ask them to play” and “Play with someone else”. Good thinking Nursery, we’re all friends in Nursery.
