At Ferndale Primary and Nursery School, we operate a House System. All the children and staff are allocated a house when they start school and they will stay in that house for their time at Ferndale.
Our four houses are all named after significant landmarks or places in Swindon:
STEAM (red)
Lydiard (green)
Coate (blue)
Wyvern (yellow)
The house captains are:
Mr Truman, Mrs Mann, Mrs Hulin and Mrs Billingham.
Children can earn house points for their house by earning Dojos. These are earned by showing the values that we follow at Ferndale e.g respect, resilience, tolerance, kindness etc. The house with the most points each week is awarded the Dojo trophy, which will wear their house colours all week.
Children also represent their houses on Sports Day and other sporting/competitive events throughout the year. All siblings will belong to the same house and all our staff and governors have been allocated a house to support.
We held our first house day in October 2022, where the children participated in four activities that encouraged them to work in teams, supporting each other to: build shelters and complete forest tasks; create a house chant; design a coat of arms for their house, and choreograph their own house dance. It was a fantastic day with children having lots of fun working alongside their housemates in different year groups.
Project Gambia house day.
One of our house days was linked to writing. The author, Neil Griffiths, launched our day, talking books, writing letters and Project Gambia. All children in the school then planned and wrote a letter to a child in the Gambia; the winning letters were sent to children in Gambia. As a school, we also ran a colour run event, where children bought T-shirts that were covered in paint of varied colours. This event made £1,100 which is going to help replace the roof on a school in the Gambia.
Ferndale's got talent.
Our last house event was 'Ferndale's got talent', where the children had the chance to show their singing, comedy, dancing, theatrical and musical talents.
2023-24 House term winners.
TERM 1 - Stream
TERM 2 - Wyvern
TERM 3 - Lydiard
TERM 4
TERM 5
TERM 6