By the Pupil Leadership Team: Emilia, Nat, Emily and Zac

On 6th January we celebrated Blackthorn’s 50th anniversary.
The school opened in 1972 with 186 children: 97 infants and 89 Juniors and the Head Teacher was Miss Sharp. We spent the week taking part in lots of activities to commemorate the event. Mrs Neller, our principal, sent us all an invitation to the ‘Hattiest Hat’ parade and we all had to design and create a hat to wear. We took a big drone picture where we went on the field and stood in the shape of a 50. The children were the numbers, and all the staff were an exclamation mark! Afterwards we all came back into school and looked at the pictures and a video of us all.

We spent the week learning about life in 1972. Year 6 created a class newspaper called the Trailblazers Tribune, which was all about life in 1972. We even asked parents and teachers all about their memories of life in the 70s. Year 5 made a scrapbook about life in 1972 and Year 4 wrote fact files and about what Blackthorns might be like in the future. Year 3 compared the hot meals of today and back then while Year 2 looked at what life was like as a child in 1972. Year 1 made party bunting and Reception learnt how to write Happy Birthday signs.

Mrs Moffatt, our music teacher, led us in singing ‘Happy Birthday’ as loudly as we could. On the final day we held our hat parade and Mrs Neller and Mrs Day chose the winning hats.
KS2: Cora Gleeson (Innovators) and runner-up Sophie Lee (Trailblazers)
KS1: Alexa Bryany (Explorers) and runner-up Zachary Miller (Inventors)
Everyone dressed up in gold or 1970s outfits - even the teachers. Then we all had a class party with lots of party food, drinks and games. FOBs, our parent organisation, provided birthday cakes for all the classes in the Blackthorns colours and also presented every child with a commemorative medal to keep forever. Everyone agreed it was the best birthday party ever!