ST VINCENT DE PAUL PRIMARY SCHOOL
The Return to School – My Views Julia, Year 6 After the long break in isolation I had started to run out of ideas of what to do in the summer days at home. I started to miss the friends I only knew and saw at school. I could not wait to get back to school, even though I knew that only months before I had been itching to leave school and start the holiday: well, not for a while as I still had to do work every day at home to make up for the work that I would be doing at school if not for that irritating Covid-19 taking charge of our lives. Now that I am back at school I can compare what it used to be like before the virus. All the classes are coming to school at different times to make sure that our ‘class bubbles’ – as we call them – don’t mix. The times of our breaks have also changed, so that there are only two classes in the playground. Each class has half of it, so we do not have as much space as before to roam around. But we make do with what we get. I sincerely hope that by next summer we will be able to go on school trips and Year 6 (my class) will be able to go on the traditional week-long class trip to Sayers Croft, which we missed because of the pandemic. I am sure all my classmates cannot wait to pack their luggage and to set off on this adventure.
Another novelty is our new material for Religious Education. Every week, we used to receive a colourful newsletter with the next Sunday’s Bible reading – ‘The Wednesday Word’. It was published especially for children and contained activities for us to complete. But now the school has discovered a new resource called ‘Ten Ten’, which provides daily prayers and Catholic themes for learning in school and at home. We have easy access to this resource through our school website. Due to Covid-19 we cannot use the Cathedral facilities as we normally would. As a school we are hoping to celebrate the Feast Day of our patron – St Vincent de Paul – in a special way. All children from KS2 are keeping their fingers crossed to gain entrance to the Cathedral next door (Westminster Cathedral – you know, the one that you got this very magazine from) for at least a little while. Meanwhile KS1 may do some activities focused on St Vincent and his life. Although our school routine has changed a lot, we try not to lose hope but stay cheerful, even in these hard times.
Something funny has come out of this new routine too. The teachers have found that antibacterial gel is the best thing for rubbing out our class white board – what a coincidence! We need to clean it after a student writes on it or there is no space left, so this was a very helpful discovery. October 2020
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