Blog

On Monday 19th October, all of our KS3 students watched an entertaining and engaging performance all about STEM entitled 'The Material World.'

Materials Science and Engineering is the study of all substances — from the metals in a bridge to the plastic in a phone case — and the creation of new…

We are very fortunate to have access to the Read, write Inc virtual classroom and share clips with families to support children's reading at home. 

In addition to sending the clips home we also use them in class to provide extra booster sessions and 1:1 bespoke teaching, helping every child on…

At Alston Primary School we work hard to foster a life long love of reading and have our RWI mascots Fred and Fredwina to help us with this mission. Over the past half term Fred and Fredwina have been extremely busy visiting a range of children and have really enjoyed sharing cosy story times and…

At Alston Primary School early reading is taught through our school's chosen programme, Read Write Inc.

The children are grouped according to their current level of development and are regularly assessed and re-grouped to ensure that they are taught at their individual challenge point.

Our…

On Monday we welcomed in local musicians Nick and Helena Bazley to perform various pieces of folk music on their instruments.  They were also joined by a special guest, Maya in year 7! Thank you for playing for year 8 and helping us to understand how folk music has evolved over time.

Mrs Sutterby and I are very excited about our up and coming trip to Dove Cottage in November with year 9.  We'll be exploring The Gothic for the day, touring William Wordsworth's cottage and getting inspired with an exhibition and some creative writing.

We love writing in Cross Fell and it is great to see our learners taking charge of their writing and self assessing it to make sure they have all of their must haves!

A did a fantastic job of being a mini teacher and using her checklist to mark her own work before sharing it with us.

We loved getting hands on with pumpkins today hooking us into our new story Pattan's Pumpkin. There was lots of discussion work about how the pumpkins felt and what they were like inside, experiences like this really help us to build our vocabulary and will help us later on in our work when we…

Modelling our bird boxes in card to find any issues and to refine the designs. 

National Forest School Week!

We’ve had a fantastic time at Forest School celebrating National Forest School Week! We learned lots of interesting facts about badgers and then got creative by designing our very own badger necklaces. 

What a lovely time of outdoor learning, exploring and…

Alongside our KS4 students, Year 8 and 9 pupils also got the opportunity to watch a presentation about New College Durham.

Stephen and Tom from NCD delivered an engaging session about college life, the state of the art facilities available and the wide range of qualifications on offer including…

To help them plan for their post-16 next steps, Year 10 and 11 students listened to a presentation by Rachel Mirfin from Gen 2. 

Established in 2000, Gen2 is a leading training provider specialising in the Engineering, Nuclear, and Manufacturing sectors.  

Rachel told students about the…