Head teacher’s blog 22nd September 2017

Next week, Mr Cooke is presenting at a major PE conference in London. Having won a couple of important PE-related awards last academic year, news of some of our innovative approaches to PE is spreading and it will be an honour to share our ‘physical activity’ story so far with colleagues from across the country. There is more to do, however, and I have been delighted to add Mr Little to our team over the summer. Mr Little’s particular passion is athletics and already, after just a couple of weeks, he is having an impact: our six Cross Country teams that entered a competition this week were all ‘on the podium’ at the finish and our Y5 boys and Y5 girls both won their events. We didn’t have individual winners, but we did have strength in depth. Mr Little is designing a range of semi-permanent cross country courses around our grounds and will be running a cross country club on Friday lunchtimes where children can work to beat their personal best times on the various courses. Our football season has started with matches today and I am delighted that we will have four regular competing teams this year: Y3/4, Y5, Y6 and a new girls’ team. There is a section on our website that archives all our competitive sports results: https://www.farsleyfarfield.org.uk/sports-results/

This week, Year 2 have had an enjoyable and informative trip to the Thackray Medical Museum. I love trips but this is one that I didn’t mind missing: I am far too squeamish! We have lots more trips coming up including Y1 to Denso nature reserve. Groups of Year 2 children are visiting the Aire valley each Friday afternoon and finding out about the difference between a river and a canal. Did you know that there used to be a mill down by the old ‘pack horse bridge’ at Rodley and, when the water is low, that you can see the remains of an old weir that used to feed a water wheel at the mill?