The Durham Dales Federation is a federation of small rural primary schools, which was formed in September 2023. Staff from all schools work together to share expertise and to plan and deliver the curriculum. Our subject leaders co-ordinate their subjects across all the schools within our federation, which ensures that we can offer the same high-quality experiences to all pupils in our schools.
The Upper Dales schools of Wearhead and St John’s Chapel work together on a regular basis each week. At the start of the week, each school works in their own building and on Thursdays and Fridays, the schools come together on the St John’s Chapel Primary School site. On Federation days, we take advantage of the opportunities to work in larger groups with other children of the same age, and we often arrange visits and visitors for these days so that everyone can participate.
St John's Chapel In Forest School, the children in Class 1 went on a minibeast hunt. The children loved looking under stones and logs to see what minibeasts were on our school field. The children also worked together to make a den.
View this PostSt John's Chapel & Wearhead The children in year 5 & 6 really enjoyed celebrating NSPCC Number Day. The children designed their own maths related t-shirt, sorted shapes in different ways using their properties and used the clues to place letters in the right place on a coordinate grid.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Reception have enjoyed making their own moving dinosaurs to help them develop their fine-motor skills. They also followed instructions to make a hotel for the dinosaurs
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Number Day Class one had a wonderful morning taking part in lots shape activities. Reception enjoyed making dinosaurs out of blocks, creating animals out of different shapes. Thanks you for all your kind donations
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Well done to all of the star award winners!
View this PostSt. John's Chapel and Wearhead Primary Schools The children in KS1 have been learning to play glockenspiels in their music lessons over the past 2 weeks.
View this PostSt. John's Chapel and Wearhead Primary Schools On Thursday, the children in class 1 enjoyed playing and completing shape games and activities as part of NSPCC Number Day.
View this PostSt John's Chapel and Wearhead Schools Yesterday, we had a brilliant time celebrating the NSPCC's Number Day! Some of our children enjoyed creating pictures using different shapes as well as going on a shape hunt to find different shapes in their environment.
View this PostCongratulations to This Week's Special Certificate Winners @ St John's Chapel & Wearhead! We are incredibly proud of our special certificate winners this week. Keep it up!
View this PostHamsterley Primary School The children in Class 2 have loved getting involved with NSPCC Number Day, celebrating maths for a very worthy cause. This year we focussed on the theme of 'Shape.' We began the day building a structure using our knowledge of 3D shapes and engineering. The children enjoyed competing against Mr Todd and were successful in building a taller structure than him! They then created their own Pentomino Art. Our last activity was a perimeter trail where they raced each other, in mixed age pairs, to complete the perimeter circuit. A great day! Thank you for all of your generous donations.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Today in Computing, year 3 and 4 went on a scavenger hunt. They needed to find QR codes hidden around the hall and scan them to get a clue. Each clue gave them a description of a computer part. Using their knowledge from previous computing lessons, they needed to work out what computer part they had found.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School This morning, class 2 took part in Skipping School! They had lots of fun playing different games and practicing new skills. They are all super excited to teach class 1 what they learned and can't wait to use the new skipping ropes. Thank you Gail from Skipping School Ltd
View this PostHamsterley Primary School As this week is 'Children's mental health week'. In Forest School, Class 1 took part in different activities all about the different emotions that we feel. We had made emotion jars, colour mixing painting to make the different emotion colours, clay emotion faces, nature jars and wrote how we are feeling on log slices. Depsite the wind and the rain we had a great afternoon
View this PostSt John's Chapel Today we set up torches and shined them onto large sheets of white paper. We then placed dinosaurs in front of the torches so that they cast shadows on the paper. The children were encouraged to describe the shadow's shapes and explore together how to make the shadows bigger and smaller.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Well done to all of the star award winners!
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