Welcome to Balgowan Primary School
Balgowan is a very friendly, high achieving and heavily oversubscribed academy in Beckenham. There are 678 pupils taught in 22 classes. The academy follows a creative curriculum which is designed to engage and excite all the children whilst also ensuring the acquisition of key reading, writing and mathematical skills…
Eco Warriors
Eco Warriors! ‘The Eco Warriors have had a very exciting few weeks! We have been very excited to get the opportunity to work with Veolia to look at how we can be ‘Recycling Heroes’. Veolia kindly shared a presentation with us via Zoom where we discussed how we recycle at home and school, the importance of it and the message we want to get across to others at school and home. We were really encouraged to see Balgowan is already contributing well to this recycling scheme, but will be looking towards planning an exciting ‘Go Green Day’ to share the message and encourage everyone at school to become ‘Recycling Heroes’ too. We also applied to renew our Green Flag Award and are very excited
Balgowan make the National Finals in Maths (twice!)
This term, both a year 5 and year 6 team battled through a regional competition and qualified for the National Finals in two separate, year group-based competitions. Year 5 team: Adrian 5NS, Julian 5CW, Eva 5NS and Leo 5SC. Year 6 team: Abigail 6NG, Marley 6NG, Imogen 6AS and Alana 6AS. In the National Finals of Quiz Club Maths there were six rounds, each with five questions. Every round you would move to a different place on the leader board. The year 5 team maintained a joint top 5 position until the final two rounds where some extremely difficult questions came up and, even though they logically eliminated incorrect answers, were unlucky with their final answers. The team ultimately ended
National Science Quiz
On ?Thursday 29th April 8 children from Balgowan (4 children in year 5 and 4 children in year 6) took part in the National Science Quiz! This year was a little different – teams had to compete in their year groups via Zoom! We were asked some challenging questions about all areas of Science and were placed 11th (Year 5) and 12th (Year 6) out of all the schools that took part. A huge well done! Miss Rob
Football Tournament
On Wednesday 12th May, our school took two Girls Football teams to our first ever tournament! In our Balgowan teams there was a mix of year 4 and year 5 girls. From year 5 we had: Leila, Grace, Hannah, Orla, Sophia, Josephine, Elodie and Momo. From year 4 we had: Daisy, Katy, Han O, Flo, Ruth, Jasmine, Jessica, Beau and Emily. For our first ever tournament, we did brilliantly! We got into the semi final and only lost 1-0, the game was so close! All the other schools were amazed we were only year 4 and 5 as many of their teams were all year 6! We all had loads of fun playing and we really hope we can keep getting better
BYMT Music Lessons
We are lucky to have a range of Bromley Youth Music Trust (BYMT) peripatetic teachers at our school who teach piano, violin, drums, flute, saxophone, clarinet, double bass, guitar, brass and cello. After half term, BYMT will be demonstrating and performing in assemblies and talking all about the benefits of learning a musical instrument. If you would like your child to learn a musical instrument, the quickest and easiest way to apply is directly through the BYMT website https://ukbromley.speedadmin.dk/registration#/courselist/48. Violin, flute, saxophone and clarinet currently have spaces and do not have a waiting list.
Balgowan Buccaneers
Our before and after school club, the Balgowan Buccaneers has grown in popularity over the two years that it has been running. We are currently accepting applications from parents whose children will be starting at Balgowan in September 2021. If you would like a place at Buccaneers from September, to avoid disappointment, I would encourage you to submit an application as soon as possible. Places are filling up on a number of evenings. Information regarding the club as well as an introduction letter, registration forms and booking forms can be found on the school website under ‘Balgowan Buccaneers’. If you have any questions please email the club at buccaneers@balgowan.bromley.sch.
World War II Day
We came to school dressed up as evacuees ready for WWII day, everybody was really excited!!! Firstly, we did Make Do And Mend and in it we did bunting, we sewed using patterns and fabric such as felt (people did crowns and flags) and we used beads and bows to decorate our masterpieces. When we came in from play, we made postcards as if we were an evacuee from the country side/seaside. We were told by Miss Willis that we needed to keep it as positive as possible so our parents wouldn’t worry about us. After lunch we all changed our shoes and set off to the field. Discovery and Endeavour started by lighting a fire using flint and seal.
Science Week
On March 8th, we celebrated British Science Week at Balgowan and what a week it was! Each class took part in an activity based on this year’s theme which was ‘Innovating for the future,’ such as classifying types of plastic by their properties so that we can recycle them correctly, creating robot bugs to help the future and playing heard immunity Jenga to understand the effects of passing germs on to others. We also had some help from our amazing parents who offered to virtually talk to the children about their jobs in STEM – this was a great way to raise the profile of science and challenge children’s stereotypes as to what scientists are! There were also some activities held at the
