International School Award 

We are pleased to announce we have been awarded the Intermediate level of the International School Award. Thank you for your hard work Mrs Freeman in putting the application together and creating the links with other schools. We now have links in Uganda, Germany, London and Derby City and are looking to link with other schools in the near future, hopefully collaborating with Tanzania via Connecting Classrooms. 

Hartshorne Primary School

Developed via the Derby Schools Linking Project, Hartshorne Primary is a school in a similar locality with whom the children have already shared 'I am' poems to introduce themselves. The class have created some 'Curiosity Questions'. They are going to Pride Park in mid November to meet the children from the other school and share in team building and ice breaker activities with them. After that, they will write in a whole class reflection book and will meet and engage in project work this year.

Grundschule Trier Quint

The link was developed with the help of UKGermanConnection. The schools took part in the UK German Connection Bears Project with Mrs Freeman teaching all children from Y2-6 German in language lessons for at least three weeks and for some, the entire half term. The children also learned about Germany and our link school, exchanged video and powerpoint presentations about their schools, letters about themselves, posters comparing aspects of life and culture and even sent each other their favourite sweets to try. The school had a Tshirt competition to design a T-shirt for Alex the German bear highlighting their favourite aspects of English culture and values and the children researched and investigated their own questions about the school and Germany - we then sent a bear with 4 exchangeable t shirts representing British culture so the pupils had a package for the start of the new academic year in September 2018.

Derby School Linking Project

It was great for the Year 4 and 5 class to get to meet their link class at Pride Park. Lots of activities took place around team work and getting to know each other. They even got a tour of the Stadium too! Now time to get lots of linking work completed back at school...

St Lukes CE Primary School 

During last year academic year 2017-18, Walton school was invited to take part in the Kindred Spirits Shared Values Project with the Global Learning Programme. Every term Jo Lane, Walton y6 teacher and a lead teacher from the partner school would receive training through the scheme then go back to their classes and plan activities to complete with the other school. So far, we have: researched the other school’s location and socioeconomic background; we have created a video about our school including our school rules and values; we have watched their video about their school rules and values; we exchanged Christmas cards; we shared work on a book called Skin Again; w created mini identity books with the message of 'don’t judge a book by its cover' (in these, we have described our values, personalities, hopes and dreams for the future and the meaning of our names). The link continues this year: Richard Griffiths from St Lukes has visited and the classes are sharing RE work this year.

St Barnabus Primary School, Uganda

In summer 2016 Mrs Sarah Rowe, Walton Primary School's headteacher, met Daniel, a member of the Masaai tribe in Kenya and invited him and some of his friends to visit our school to share with the children some of the traditions of the Masaai tribe as well as to elements of Kenyan culture. During the first visit from the Masaai, they explained that the nearest government school was 7km away from their village and that the route to this school was along wild animal trails, too challenging for the younger children to manage, so, in order that all children have access to education, they built their own village primary school in Oloika, a simple tin hut with no doors or windows; they fund this school through the money that Daniel and his group collects during their visits to the UK. Mrs Rowe and Daniel kept in touch and Daniel and his friends visited again in Spring 2017 after which the school did a PE activity carrying water over a set distance in which we also raised funds for the Oloika school (see thank-you message below). Over the course of the past academic year, our year 3-4 class wrote emails to Uganda, asking them questions about their school life and telling them about ours on a daily basis. They also painted Ugandan landscapes in the style of Vincent Van Gogh. This introduced the children to a less stereotypical image of Africa and the animals that live there. They did their own research using books, atlases and the internet about Uganda and wrote information texts based on their findings. The link school in Uganda hand wrote some letters back to us, which we received at school. The letters answered our children’s questions and gave us more information about what daily life is like for the children in Uganda. This year the children are comparing Water use, sharing diaries about what their families use. The children in Owls class have shared their questions with the children at St Barnabus. In Foxes they have learned Djembe drumming this term and have shared this with our friends in Uganda. This term Foxes are learning Samba and we will invite our Ugandan friends to share their musical talents with us too.

Maasai Message of Thanks

We all helped to raise money for the Maasai villagers who came to visit us last year. Kenya is suffering from a drought and the local school needed a supply of water and food to remain open for the school children. We held a sponsored walk carrying buckets of water and our water bottles around our school field. We raised over £300!

We received this note of thanks from Daniel, a Maasai village warrior.

"We are so humbled to know we have very special friends, all the money you collected went to a very special project, on behalf of all the children you helped, directly or indirectly, I say thank you very much, you may not be there to see the impact you made in their lives, You have changed their lives positively forever, your gift of food and water allows the school to remain open during the drought, and the education you gave them can never be stolen or wear out, you have opened their eyes for them to see a brighter future, most of the families could not have managed this by themselves that’s why I am so touched, this is a gift for the whole maasai community, again on behalf of all those children and their families who otherwise could not access the internet, I again say a huge thank you, this will remain with us for ever"