With Christ at our side to guide us,
we shine in all that we do.
Some of the children in Year 4 celebrated their First Holy Communion on Saturday 10th June. It was a wonderful service: the children looked amazing, read well, and were supported by a packed church of family and friends.
The children enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the church hall and then carried on their celebrations elsewhere.
Please keep all of the children in your prayers as they continue their journey of faith!
As part of their History work on the Romans, year 4 had a fun and interesting day at Arbeia Roman Fort. After a brisk march to the Fort, the children enjoyed their first workshop which was an object-handling archaeology investigation. The children rifled through the leader’s ‘rubbish bag’ to find out what the items told them about life in 2023, then went on to handle Roman artefacts using their observational skills to discover what the objects told them about the life of the people who lived and worked at Arbeia Roman Fort.
Our second activity of the day was an interactive tour of the site utilising real and replica artefacts to bring the history of Arbeia and the lives of the Roman soldiers to life. The children visited the Fort, looked at the site where the granaries were, the barracks (soldiers’ and centurion’s quarters as well as the commanding officer’s house) and the latrines!
After lots of research and lots of walking, the children were ravenous and tucked into their lunch with gusto!
The afternoon was spent in the museum, looking at various artefacts, quizzing on them and drawing them to create a beautiful frieze that we took back to display in school.
During the month of May we honour Mary, the mother of Jesus. On Wednesday, we held our May Procession and service in Mary’s honour, offering our prayers to her. We were blessed with beautiful weather, processing from the school grounds into the hall where the service was held. Father Bill welcomed the children at the start of the celebration and gave us a blessing at the end.
Year 4 led the celebration, with children from each class bringing flowers to place in the vase at the focal point dedicated to Mary. The children shared a reading, prayers, a litany, sang some beautiful hymns, and one of the children crowned Mary with a lovely garland of flowers.
It was a joyous occasion, and we were impressed with the children’s engagement and beautiful singing throughout.
It was wonderful to take part in our first cricket tournament since 2019 today, at the beautiful Whitburn Cricket Club. I’ve been delighted with the interest in Cricket over the last half term, where we have managed to develop three squads of girls from Year 3 to Year 6.
Today all of our girls had a great day and performed superbly in their first District cricket competition. The St. Bede’s A team won their first five games to storm into the semi-finals! They eventually lost a close, chaotic semi-final, but many of our young squad will get the opportunity to play again in future seasons, where it will be very exciting to see their progress.
Thank you to the girls for your dedication in training over the summer and for the brilliant parental support at Whitburn CC.
Year 4 enjoyed a fantastic retreat at the Emmaus Youth Village. The retreat was based around the ‘Adventures of St Paul’ with various activities designed to bring alive his story.
The weather was great, so once we’d arrived, we headed for the playing fields within the Youth Village and played football, some games and just enjoyed being outside. We then went up to our chalet, Bishop Kevin, settled in, ate dinner, and had our first activity. The children enjoyed the session and were also very excited to watch a movie, spend time in their rooms and enjoy their sleepover, for many the first time away from home on their own.
After a ‘restful night’, the children were up early and raring to go. We ate breakfast together in the chalet, being waited on by Mrs Kennedy, Mrs Welsh and Mrs McDonald and then enjoyed a wake-up activity with the leaders Jamie, Becca, Mary and Ryan. There was a carousel of activities: a blindfolded team challenge – “We walk by faith, not by sight…”; a craft activity during which the children made friendship bracelets; a CAFOD activity thinking about our neighbours around the world; and an art activity with the children making a banner about themselves and their unique gifts and talents.
After lunch, we went for a lovely walk across the fields and into the woods. The leaders did a meditation exercise with the children focusing on their senses then they played some games and explored scripture to crack the code to escape the YMT Escape room in time for dinner.
The Thursday evening session involved exploring St Paul’s most famous letter, 1 Corinthians 13, and what it means for us today. We are all born with an incredible potential to share God’s love with our own gifts and talents and help make the world a better place. Each one of us has been chosen and called by God to be a unique and important part of His plan and as St Pope John Paul II said of Christ, “His power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”
On our last morning, the children did some artwork, a little bit of writing and lots of drama (re-enacting the life of St Paul).
Intermingled throughout the retreat, there was plenty of free time – the children ran around, played football, gymnastics, and rolled down hills.
We were so proud of the children – they were very knowledgeable, learnt a lot, were well behaved, polite and got on very well!
Thirty Y3/4 St. Bede’s athletes had a wonderful time competing in the District Athletics Championships at Monkton Stadium. During the presentation, it was amazing to discover that not only had our B team finished 5th, but our A team were crowned District Champions! They will now go on to represent South Tyneside in the County Finals on Tuesday 20th June.
I was so proud to see our children achieve personal best performances; while they keenly supported each other throughout the day. It was also great to see so much support for St. Bede’s from our school community inside the stadium, which really helped inspire our teams.
It has been a great pleasure training our squad of 30 players this year, as their attitude in training has been brilliant. Meanwhile, their behaviour at the tournament was absolutely exemplary. Congratulations to our whole squad on a great day’s athletics, and good luck to our A team in the County Finals!
Year 1 have enjoyed a week of activities celebrating the coronation on King Charles III. The children started by writing a story called The Runaway Crown, based on the story of the Gingerbread Man. We made collage images of the Kings head and crowns and even designed some royal underpants. The class have also written a special card to The King, wishing him well on his coronation day.
Year 1 went to the Open Zone @ The Word to learn more about coding, algorithms and debugging. We used the Lego WeDo equipment to build moving items, and controlled them through the iPads. The children then had a try of creating their own basic animations on the laptops, using the 2 Simple programme.
On Friday, Marie delivered a workshop for our Year 6 children and their parents. They discussed the upcoming transitions and how we deal with worry. Marie gave us all some helpful strategies that we can adopt in and outside of school. Thank you Marie and thank you to all the parents that attended – we appreciate your continued support.
© 2025 Bishop Chadwick Catholic Education Trust.
