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 & Wearhead Thank you to everyone who came to our Harvest Festival today. All donations of food will be given to the Weardale Food Bank.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School In computing, Year 3 and Year 4 were looking at packet data and how the internet sends information in smaller pieces, directed by routers, and put back together again by servers. We exemplified this by creating pictures, cutting them into pieces, adding coding instructions and asking others to piece them back together again. We had a very enjoyable lesson with some great understanding!
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Thank you to everyone who was able to come to the Harvest Festival yesterday and to those who brought donations for the food bank. The children all did a fabulous job and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
View this PostWearhead Primary School In Art, the children in class 1 have been mixing primary colours to create secondary colours.
View this PostWearhead Primary School Today Class 2 used their story dice to create dialogue based on the characters in Stig of the Dump.
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Reception have been listening to the story 'Squirrels Busy Day'. Today they re-enacted the story using the props in our tuff tray. They took it in turns to be the different animals in the story whilst collecting all the lost acorns.
View this PostSt John's Chapel As part of our English lesson this morning, the children have been acting out part of Stig Of The Dump.
View this PostSt John's Chapel Primary- Class 1 In Computing, Class 1 have been learning to program a Bee-bot. We worked in groups to practise making the Bee-bot move forwards and backwards, as well as making it turn left and right. Then, we completed some challenges including making the Bee-bot make a full turn and manoeuvring the Bee-bot under a bridge.
View this PostChapel Tots is on today at St John's Chapel Primary School from 1.30pm - 3.00pm. It is open for all children aged 0 - 3 years old and is FREE! Refreshments will be available for all. We hope to see you there!
View this PostWearhead Primary School In our Forest School session this afternoon, we have enjoyed building dens, playing Ninja Squirrel, making popcorn and toasting marshmallows.
View this PostSt John's Chapel Primary- Class 1 In Art, we used powder paints to make secondary colours by mixing two primary colours together. After, we used the paints to complete a colour wheel.
View this PostSt John's Chapel Primary- Class 1 In Maths, KS1 have been using a part-whole model to help us understand that a whole group of objects can be composed of two or more parts. We have also used the part-whole model to help us add numbers together.
View this PostWearhead Primary School Our KS2 children always enjoy spending time with their friends from Class 1 and Class 2 at lunchtime
View this PostHamsterley Primary School Halloween party in Forest School! Class 1 enjoyed listening to 'Winnie and Wilbur - The Amazing Pumpkin' story They made 'Winnie's potion', 'Winnie's broomstick' pumpkins mud pies and a disco! To finish off a fun party we had yummy 'witches fingers' and blood
View this PostSt John's Chapel Class 1 had a wonderful Forest School session this afternoon. We made toasties and cooked them on the fire, the children cut some sticks for the fire and they created a giant squirrel collage using leaves.
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