Mr Barnes

Beacon Supporting KEY 2 Life

9th December 2021Mr Barnes

Who are KEY 2 Life?

KEY was the first charity in South Tyneside to run a food bank, when people from local churches began making food bags for young people in 1992. They work in partnership with Churches Together, to collect food donations and distribute them across South Tyneside to anyone who is experiencing hardship. The bags contain enough food for up to 3 days. They also include toiletries and other household items depending on need. In March 2019, the food bank moved to its new home on Boldon Lane and was rechristened KEY 2 Life. They have a team of 35 dedicated volunteers who welcome people, offer support, sort and pack food bags, collect donations from local churches, supermarkets and schools.

Beacon Centre’s New Head Shows His Support.

The Beacon Centre’s new and energetic Head Teacher, Mr Gray, took time out of his extremely busy schedule to help sort food packages with young people from the Secondary site. All involved found the experience rewarding and worth while with one young person stating “It’s nice to be able to do something to help others”.

The group who attended with Mr Gray spent their time sorting packages of food, organiasing products and ensuring that they were in date order and organised to make putting hampers together as easy and staightforward as possible.

The Beacon helps in Santa’s Workshop.

Earlier in the day, a group of young people from the secondary site attended the food bank to support in the sorting of Christmas gifts. Staff and young people spent a rewarding morning sorting LEGO packs for children to open on Christmas day. Again, students found this experience rewarding stating they hoped “the kids like opening their Christmas toys”. The students were so enthusiastic about helping sort the gifts that the job was completed quickly and efficiently meaning that they could do more to help by transporting donations to the storage room.

A huge well done to all involved!

Remembrance Day

11th November 2021Mr Barnes

Primary have been learning about Remembrance Day, its importance and what it means to children and young people today. Art club created a picture to display outside of school, to show that we remember. They painted the background after reading ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae and linked the project to prior learning about plastic waste by adding poppies made from recycled bottle tops too.

What a fantastic project, art club.

Friday’s at Beacon Primary

8th November 2021Mr Barnes

Every Friday afternoon, Mrs Dixon leads outdoor learning which develops our children’s ‘soft’ skills such as instruction following, resilience, listening, turn-taking and evaluating.
On Friday, the children learned how to tie poles together for building dens. The children worked as part of a team to travel across the ‘swamp’ to exchange some den building equipment with a different team.
After the children had completed the ‘swamp challenge’ they worked as a large group to start building a den and evaluated how well they worked together.
The children described each other as good listeners, good communicators, helpful and good at sharing and taking turns.
Bear Grylls has nothing on Beacon Primary!

Outdoor Learning @ Beacon Primary

5th November 2021Mr Barnes

As usual, the children at Beacon Primary have taken part in lots of outdoor learning activities during lesson time and also during breaks and lunch times.

This week, Red Class looked at man-made and natural materials, read in the wooden chair, practiced handwriting and consolidated the whole part method in maths.

During breaks and lunch times they put out the fireworks when thinking about firework safety, investigated measurement in the water trays, worked together to build dens and got physical taking part in an obstacle course and slide.

What a great way to learn, Red Class!

This week Yellow Class brought the outdoors inside and explored art and design using different objects from around the school to create some fantastic texture prints.

Lucas, Jack and James mixed autumnal colours using the paint, compared results and gave feedback to each other about their work.

Well done Yellow Class!

At Primary, outdoor learning is part of the timetable across the whole curriculum.
This week Blue Class have used the outdoor area to help identify different materials in Science.

They used natural objects to help check if mathematical statements are true or false. Millie and Malaki represented ‘tens’ with larger objects like leaves and ‘ones’ with smaller objects like shells or stones.

Today they have uncovered common exception words in the sand area, and practiced writing them and putting them into sentences with chalk.

Great job Blue Class!

Beacon Centre Champions!

12th October 2021Mr Barnes

The Beacon Centre Football team had a fantastic day at the Wanderers Football Tournament today, finishing unbeaten and winning the tournament!

GK – Finn

Outfield – Mark, Kieron, Kai, Mason, Liam

Beacon Primary Bowling

1st October 2021Mr Barnes

On Thursday 30th September the children at Beacon Primary were incredibly lucky to be invited to an inter-school bowling tournament, which was arranged by our friends at Panathlon. The children were absolute superstars.

They were winners of the tournament and their behaviour was so good that other schools complimented our staff. #TeamBeacon

Secondary Enrichment Friday 24th September

27th September 2021Mr Barnes

Aspens and Redwoods went to Blyth beach on Friday 24th September. The visit was inspired by the book ‘Holes’ which Key Stage 3 are currently studying in English; students were tasked with attempting to dig a five foot wide and five foot deep hole just as the characters were made to do in the book. We didn’t make it to five foot deep but we certainly have sympathy for the characters following our experience!

Filming at The Beacon Centre

24th September 2021Mr Barnes

Dear Parents/Carers,

We are writing to request permission to video your child taking part in a series of lessons in The Beacon Centre and this video will then be used for training purposes in other educational establishments.

Young People will engage in a variety of vocational lessons which will help them to get first hand experience of relevant, significant cultural issues. The project based learning will run as an ongoing event on Wednesdays up until Christmas.

If you do not want your child to be filmed in this course of this project please inform school before Wednesday 29th September.

Kind regards

Mrs Hudson

Pastoral Manager

MacMillan Coffee Morning @ Beacon Primary

24th September 2021Mr Barnes

Primary had an amazing turnout for their MacMillan coffee afternoon on Thursday.
Lots of parents and carers, our friends from Asda, secondary pupils and staff, and even governors attended.

School Council were very impressive hosts and our children manned their stalls professionally.
Thanks to everyone’s generous donations we were even able to have a raffle and guess the weight of the cake competition. Overall, we raised a whopping £65!
Thank you to everyone for making it such a special event.