He has visited St Johns twice in the past and due to the success of the sessions was invited back to lead a writing workshop for able pupils, and this was offered out to all the schools across the Trust. James encouraged the pupils to take risks, play with and manipulate language that could invoke powerful images in poetry and the results were fantastic.  

St Johns also took part in Buckinghamshire Schools Cross Country Championships being held at Stowe School. All of the pupils competed and represented St John's to the highest standards. There were over 100 entries from schools all over Buckinghamshire with all of our pupils finishing in the top 30. The girls as a collective finished 4th out of 10 schools. Special congratulations must go to Woody who has been selected to represent Bucks Swans after finishing with an impressive time of 0:06:47. And the success of ODBST schools in the Cross Country Championships did not end there with 5 children from Longwick also being selected to run for Bucks Swans at Market Harborough at the end of March in the National Competition. 

Longwick is also due to hold its annual Longwick Art Show over half term, itch a number of wonderful entries from the talented children at the school. The show also includes the work of 80 artists on sale. The school also had a visit from Phil Williams of plan-it-eco. Phil’s visit outlined the importance of Sustainability and Respect for the Environment and ALL people. Phil made the pupils and teachers think about how our everyday actions impact on the world and from that awareness encourage us to live more sustainably, especially for our future generations. Phil also had his lunch with the schools Eco Councillors discussing ways forward for the school to become more sustainable. 

Elmtree have completed their ‘Take One Picture week’ was based on the painting ‘The Umbrellas’ by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. All children across the school looked at the same painting as a stimulus for their learning. Each Year group was given a theme and a set of skills. All the year groups created a display of their work in the school hall for all to enjoy. In Nursery they started the week by looking at the painting and discussing what they liked about it. Most children liked the little girl with the hoop. They also noticed that one of the ladies didn’t have an umbrella. The theme they decided on in Nursery was ‘rain’ and ‘rainbows’. The children enjoyed making rainbow collage, bubble painting, spray bottle painting, paint dripping and printing. Reception learnt a bit about the artist Renoir and had fun learning some French words. They shared their thoughts about the painting and then made their own umbrellas. They enjoyed drawing patterns on the umbrellas with crayons then painting over them with water colours - it was like magic!

Year 1 had a great week exploring different types of portraits. They loved having the parents into school, where the children and parents drew portraits of each other. They also explored using different types of materials to make the portraits, really focusing on having the symmetry and lining up where different facial features go when drawing. Year 2 really enjoyed learning all about Renoir’s life and wrote some informative reports all about his life. They were inspired by some of the characters in Renoir’s painting ‘The Umbrellas’ to create their own portraits, using the same colour palate as the original painting.