Thank you for visiting our extra-curricular opportunities page. Here you will find all the information you need to know about the additional opportunities we provide to our children to support their personal development and to inspire them to try something new. We are very proud of our commitment to extra-curricular opportunities and ensure we continue to engage and motivate our pupils, developing them into active, resilient life-long learners who have high aspirations for themselves, their community and God’s world.

Please click here to view our Extra-Curricular Clubs & Activities Overview letter that was shared with parents at the beginning of the year.

If you require any information for any clubs/extra-curricular activities, please speak to the school office or Mrs Cooper who oversees all extra-curricular clubs and activities. If your child is in receipt of pupil premium funding, and/or you require support in covering the cost of any clubs, we encourage you to speak to Miss Holt in the school office.

In addition to the clubs that we provide across the year, our children have many opportunities in the school day to get involved in extra-curricular activities, such as our School Council, Planet Protectors, Mini Vinnies and our Mini RDT (Religious Development Team). We also provide a wide range of sporting opportunities (both competitive and non-competitive) for all children. More details can be found on our individual class pages and on our Sports webpage. Click on the links below to find out more about these opportunities.

Times Tables Rock Stars Club

At lunch times, on Wednesdays, the KS2 children had the opportunity to work on Times Tables Rock Stars as part of the club, to learn and practise their times tables. Being able to fluently recall times tables up to 12×12 is essential for future success in mathematics for all children. Times Tables Rock Stars is our online times tables learning platform that makes learning times tables fun and exciting. It is great at boosting the fluency and recall in multiplication and division. The fun element of being a rock star gives children self-confidence, recognition and motivation to improve. Alongside the opportunity to play on the online platforms, we also spent time exploring different times tables patterns and using different ways like Times Fables stories to remember our times tables facts.

Library Club

At lunch times across the year, our school library is open to children of all ages. Our Year 5 Library Ambassadors taken an active role in running the club; they invite children to come to the library and they read and act out stories, choose books to take home and enjoy being surrounded by books! Our Library club has also developed into an outdoor library at lunchtimes which is a very popular option and provides a calm, cooler space for the children away from the hustle and bustle of the busy school day. The children can get comfy with a book or comic and can browse our reading newsletters and recommended reads folder! Please click the button below to see everything that we do to encourage children to read at St Joseph’s!

Yoga Club

We are really excited this year to be holding a yoga club each half term for different year groups. During our yoga club, children are taught yoga positions and skills, giving them an opportunity to try something new, relax and be calm, and possibly develop a new interest or hobby. Children are also taught different breathing techniques which is proven to help children with self-regulation and their overall wellbeing.

Young Voices

Concert – Wednesday 4th January 2023 (Sheffield Arena)

On Wednesday 4th January, many of our Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 children attended the Young Voices concert! It was so exciting to have the concert resume to its usual arrangements as last year we had a long wait for Young Voices, as well as two postponements of the concert! What an incredible time everyone had! It has been lovely to hear from the children, and parents who also attended the concert as audience members, what a wonderful time was had by all! The children sung in a choir of over 4000 children, accompanied by popstar Heather Small and other artists! Thank you to Mrs Cooper & Mrs Harrison for arranging Young Voices and to Miss Holt, Mrs Holmes for attending with us and also to Mrs Marshall giving up her own time to attend the concert as a parent helper. Well done to all of our children for representing our school so fantastically – we are so proud of you all! Take a look at some of the pictures below which were taken on the day of the concert!

Gardening Club

Our Year 3 children enjoyed St Joseph’s very first gardening club as we continue to explore ways we can be more sustainable and environmentally friendly. This club was run by one of our parents, Mrs Arthur! The club involved learning about the life cycle of plants, how we take care of plants, why plants are important. The children then planted their own tomato, potato and herb plants and enjoyed taking care of them every week – making sure the plants had enough water and sunlight. The children really enjoyed the club – it was about being connected with nature, in God’s world, learning about sustainability and growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs and linking to our Science curriculum, learning about plant life cycles and the parts of a plant. The children even made their own watering cans by recycling plastic milk cartons! We look forward to being able to offer this club again next academic year. Thank you once again to Mrs Arthur!

Origami Club

The Year 3 and Year 4 children were all invited to join the art club where we were exploring origami, the art of folding paper. Origami helps develop hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and mental concentration. These arts and crafts activities encourage pupils to think and work innovatively by using their imagination whilst creating their different designs. Our goal was to transform a flat square sheet of paper into a finished sculpture through folding and sculpting techniques.
The children had the opportunity to develop their growth mindset and positive attitudes to learning and creating, by following step-by-step processes, which can be repeated and practised again and again, until success is achieved. Origami promotes various skills, for example attention to detail and focus, patience, sequencing ability, processing ability and mathematical reasoning. Not only does it improve many skills, but it also promotes a sense of achievement and happiness for finishing a design. Check out some of our work below!

‘Take a Chair’ Upcycling Project

We took part in the Henshaws Arts and Crafts Centre’s ‘Take a Chair’ project where some of our Y4 and Y5 children have been invited to explore the theme of inclusion and diversity. To celebrate our differences, raise awareness and acceptance, we will be upcycling a chair. Because a lot of art makers and art lovers have visual impairment or complex needs or disabilities, we are going to make our chair as tactile and interesting as possible. It has been a fantastic way to see things from a different perspective and challenge the perception of ‘disability’. The children named the chair Zebra. We talked about how zebras might look the same but they are all different and special like ourselves.

Spaghetti Maths

At St Joseph’s, we want children to love maths and we continuously look for ways to engage the children further in maths through fun, active and creative ways in class. Spaghetti Maths has been able to offer further opportunities for children to develop positive attitudes towards maths, build their confidence and encourage them to become inquisitive mathematicians in the form of an after-school club.

The children had the opportunity to develop positive attitudes towards maths while building their confidence when working with numbers. The club promotes a positive ‘can-do’ attitude and lets children engage with mathematical concepts in fun and practical ways. Children could create and take home their very own maths items that they made during the club.

STEM -Young Engineers Science Club

At St Joseph’s, we want children to love Science and we continuously look for ways to excite children’s curiosity of the world around them. We strive to make learning as practical and as hands-on as possible, encouraging children to think and work scientifically, through fun, active learning. STEM Engineering Science club has been able to offer further opportunities for children to develop positive attitudes towards Science, build their working scientifically skills and encourage them to ask questions in the form of an after-school club.

The children could create and take home their the items that they made during the club.

Forest School Club

We are pleased to continue with Forest school club which is run by Chris at Go wild outdoors. This club is offered to all year groups across the school year and it gives our children opportunities to learn new and transferable skills in a unique forest school setting with an experienced teacher who is trained to deliver a forest school curriculum. Chris is passionate about geography fieldwork and encouraging children to love and respect the outdoors. The sessions are all active and outdoors in various parts of our school setting.

Chris at go Wild outdoors shares our vision that we want to provide our children with a personalised curriculum. He has considered our outdoor space and conservation and helped teach the children how to protect our wild spaces. Chris also shares our vision to raise self esteem, awareness and self confidence with an appreciation of the natural environment through outdoor adventure, which we do on a daily basis through our active learning curriculum.

Our forest school club has been able to offer further opportunities for children to develop resilience to new skills, make links to other curriculum areas through forest school led activities, develop the children’s team work and perseverance when set challenges out of their comfort zone and also provided our children with the enthusiasm to take their forest school club skills to other curriculum areas inside and outside the classroom.

Here are a selection of photos that show the activities that take place in forest school club.

Debating Club

Six children from Years 5 and 6 created a debating club with Miss Corr and Mrs Baranyai.

We had lots of fun developing our debating skills through games, like ‘If I ran the world’ and Conscience Alley.

We developed our understanding of what debating is and what forms it can take by watching videos of debates at https://noisyclassroom.com/debate-clubs/

We chose our debating topic and split into class teams, to devise arguments for and against!

We practiced presenting our debates in the classroom to our teachers!

Around the World Club

This year at St Joseph’s, Key Stage 2 were offered the chance to take part in our Around the World Club! This club was based all on finding out about different places in the world and exploring their culture. In this club we explored all over including Spain, the Caribbean and Japan! Each week, the children had the chance to taste different foods from around the world. They absolutely loved this part of the club and would be VERY excited to see what they would be tasting that day! In this club, the children also explored different cultures in a range of ways including:

• Burn2Learn to find out facts
• Making spaghetti and marshmallow sculptures of famous buildings
• Painting landscpaes using watercolours
• Assembling their own food such as Spanish tapas and sushi! 

Around the World Club has definitely been a fun-filled hour that always went by just that bit too quickly!

Music Club

During the summer term, Key Stage 2 were invited to join our music club. In this club, the children used their bodies to dance, clap and stomp along to different music to help them develop their understanding of musical concepts such as beat, pulse and tempo. A firm favourite for the children in this club was to compose and perform their own music too. We used both the chime bars and ‘Garage Band’ on the iPad to do this. We had lots of fun and it was great to see the children gain in confidence with their musical understanding!

Football

We are extremely proud to provide our children, girls and boys, with extra-curricular opportunities in football beyond our PE curriculum. This year, the boys have enjoyed a range of matches in different leagues and cups and the girls have had football training club on Friday lunchtimes. The girls are busy in the summer term with their football matches too.

Here are some of our highlights in football this year so far:

• Winners of the Y5 Moran Cup
• Runners Up of the Y6 Leeds Primary School’s Cup
• A Team (- Runners Up Fishers League
• B Team – Winners of the Fishers League

Easter Arts and Crafts Club

An Easter Arts and Crafts Club was organised for the children in school as a fantastic way to celebrate the love of arts and crafts as well as teach our children about the importance of the Holy Week, following Jesus’s last week of his life through to his resurrection on Easter Sunday. All the children were encouraged to take part and could choose to make various Easter-themed creations. We are keen to promote our community links and get involved in various activities that are ongoing. The arts and crafts club was a great way for the children to be able to enter the Wetherby Wombles Easter Egg Design Competition as well as it provided an opportunity for creating Easter-Grams for the elderly.

Young Voices

Children in Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 are invited to join the Young Voices choir each year in preparation for the extremely exciting event of the year – the Young Voices concert at Sheffield Arena! We have had to wait a long time as we haven’t been for the last couple of years and this year’s concert has already been postponed twice but we are finally going in May! Our Young Voices choir rehearse at their after school rehearsals and at home, using the Young Voices children’s room where they learn songs (including the lyrics), the dance moves and other tips and tricks to make the concert run smoothly and most of all, to allow the children to have the most fun possible!

Young Voices Rehearsals

Young Voices Concert – Friday 13th May 2022 (Sheffield Arena)

On Friday 13th May, many of our Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6 children attended the Young Voices concert which was long awaited, after a couple of years with no concerts due to covid restrictions and then another 2 postponements this year. Well, what a time they had! It has been lovely to hear from the children, and parents who also attended the concert as audience members, what a wonderful time was had by all! Please check out the website under ‘School News’ or ‘Extra-Curricular Opportunities’ to see some more photos and find out more about Young Voices, and all of the other opportunities we have at St Joseph’s for our pupils. Thank you to Mrs Cooper & Mrs Harrison for arranging Young Voices and to Mrs Jackson, Mrs Hope and Mrs Hilton-Green for giving up their time to attend the concert as parent helpers. Well done to all of our children for representing our school so fantastically – we are so proud of you all! Watch the video below to experience Young Voices with us!

History Club

During Autumn 1, a group of keen historians from years 4-6 has been meeting after school for a History Club. To compliment our lessons taught in school, the weekly club has focussed on one aspect of life during different eras through History. We have found out what people from ancient civilisations ate as snacks; we even had a go at cooking up some of these. We played games that children would have played in Roman, Medieval and Victorian times. Many of these are still played today. The children also researched punishments, looking closely at ‘stocks’ and constructing their own cardboard versions. By using drama and role play, we learnt more about medicine through the ages and the kinds of weapons used throughout History. This has been a very active club and the children have had great enthusiasm, ideas and learnt a lot.

Mini Vinnies

Our Mini Vinnies this year are made up of 4 Year 5 pupils and 4 Year 6 pupils. ‘Mini Vinnies’ are children who, with the permission of their parents and the support of their Schools, are encouraged to embark on their first steps as possible ‘Vincentians for life’. Our Mini Vinnies have been involved in a number of charitable events, and have fundraised for a range of causes, including our local food bank, the SVP Centre, the Ukraine Appeal and the Franciscan Sisters. They have been to the SVP centre this year to see all the work that goes on there, as well as attending Mini Vinnie masses at the Leeds Cathedral. To find out more about our Mini Vinnies, please visit our Mini Vinnies webpage: Mini Vinnies school webpage

Next year, we are opening up the role of a Mini Vinnie to children in Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. Children are selected at random, after expressing interest and our new Mini Vinnies for 2022-23 will be selected before we break up for summer.

Take a look to see just some of the things our Mini Vinnies have been up to this academic year!

Library Club

As part of our continued vision to ensure all children at St Joseph’s have a lifelong love of reading, we run a variety of library clubs and provide many opportunities to read widely and for pleasure. Our year 5 reading ambassadors, run a weekly library club, where they open the school library at lunchtime to provide a quiet space for children to relax and read. They also take an active role in paired reading and love reading to the younger children. The younger children love listening! We also run an outdoor reading area, where children can enjoy books outside at lunchtimes too!

Please click the button below to see our Love of Reading page which provides lots of information about Reading for Pleasure at St Joseph’s!