​Maria from our KS1 class has won a valuable defibrillator for our school.
Maria swims at Waterwings Swim School, Westholme School, Blackburn. Her swim teacher Kath Burton organizes a sponsored swim every year in memory of her friend and brother-in-law David Burton. He had congenital heart and lung problems and died at the age of 44.
The swim is to raise money to buy a defibrillator and one of the participants has their name taken out of a hat and their school is given the machine. This year it was Maria.
The defibrillator will be kept in school in case of emergencies involving children, staff, chapel users or visitors.  

Great news from the Ribble Valley Cross-Country. Due to two teams finishing with equal points in second place it was decided that our girls team would be upgraded to third place and a bronze medal. This also means that st. Joseph's were overall in third place, but unfortunately no medals were awarded for this.

Friends of St. Joseph organised a pyjama day for the last day of our half term. Children and some teachers dressed in their night clothes and paid £1 to help the fund raising of our very supportive parents group. Cosy onesies and super hero pyjamas were very much on show! 

We are very grateful to the friends and family members who are past pupils of the school and are helping the infant children learn about what St Joseph's school was like in the past. The children in key stage 1 have all written letters to a past pupil and are enjoying receiving and reading their replies. On Thursday afternoon we were very lucky to have some of those past pupils in school to answer the children's questions about how school has changed and how it has stayed the same over the years. Many brought in photographs of themselves and others at the school and chatted to the children about their (mostly!) happy memories. We now know that the new chapel used to be a classroom with an open fire and a huge wooden rocking horse, the junior playground used to have a giant see-saw which children loved playing on and children who misbehaved were hit on their hands with a wooden ruler!
Thank you to Mrs Herd, Mrs Bolton, Ms Nutter, Mrs Maudsley, Mrs Nicholson and Mr Wilkinson for giving up their afternoon and sharing their memories with us, the children have learned a lot!   

We are very proud of our cross-country runners who competed in the Ribble Valley competition. Most teams were year 5 and year 6. Our 12 pupils were from all years in KS2 and all ran with great determination and stamina. Both the girls' and the boys' team finished 4th in a competition with 16 other schools.