Carry My Story 2023

St John’s Primary School is situated in Dewsbury Moor and we are proud to be part of such a supportive community. We are always looking for ways to connect with the community and reach out to our extended St John’s Family. At St John’s, we ensure that our children have the opportunity to learn about our local area and take part in learning opportunities on our doorstep. When we heard about the Carry My Story Project, we knew we had to get involved… 

What is the Carry My Story Project?

Carry My Story is a project running across the Kirklees authority which provides children the opportunity to learn about themselves, learn about others and connect with their community on a deeper level. Children are encouraged to explore their identities and their heritage as well as getting to know their own community. As part of the project, the children will visit other schools to meet other children, they will be visited by people in the community who will share their identities with us and tell us their own stories.   The project provides a range of opportunities in the community as well as supporting us to develop our own identities that we can be proud of.

The project is carried out across Kirklees which gives us the chance to meet children from schools around the area which are similar and different to our own.  The children will make friends, gain confidence and have an amazing time learning to “Carry Stories”.

Who will be taking part in the Carry My Story Project?

Mrs Banham has been very lucky to be involved in such an exciting project.  This is the second year we have taken part in the Carry My Story Project, we have a range of children from key stage one and two working together.  The group meet weekly to work on the project and will continue to do so throughout this academic year.  There are many schools across Kirklees taking part in Carry My Story Project and we loved watching each school perform last year at the celebration event. After the success of last years project,  we have been linked with Diamond Wood Community Academy again so we can continue to get to know them. 

What have we done so far?

Identity Boxes

We have been very busy! We created a beautiful identity basket covered in rainbow ribbons to send to Diamond Wood Community Academy. This included:

• portraits of the group
• photos
• a painting of a rainbow with beautiful gold coins under the rainbow... hiding inside the coins were the faces of the CMS group
• a Golden Ticket
• a Pot of Gold ticket
• a token for our famous book vending machine
• a chatterbox hand held game revealing facts about our school and classes.
• a poem written by the children
• a video made by the children about our school

And much more!

 We received an exciting parcel in the post from Diamond Wood too! We loved opening up the box! Inside it we found:

-  A letter

- Portraits 

- All about me work

- photos

- maps showing how we can get to Diamond Wood

Welcome to St John's Primary School!

On Friday 17th March, we will welcome some children from Diamond Wood into our school. We are going to get to know our new friends, show them our school and have lunch together. 

Photo's coming soon!

To find out what we did next, keep checking the school website!

We will continue to update the page with more information about our Carry My Story Journey.

Carry My Story 2022

St John's Primary School, started the Carry My Story project in 2022. We loved uploading our steps on the School website where our parents, carers and friends could read about what we had been doing.  Take a look below to see what the project looked like last year.

School Visits 2022

Our trip to Diamond Wood Community Academy in 2022.  We had a tour of the school, talked about our Identity Boxes, played some games and got to know our new friends. It was really exciting having lunch in their Art Studio and playing in their playground.

Our friends from Diamond Wood Community Academy came to visit our school too! We showed them around our classrooms, took them to St John's Church for a tour and a talk from Mr Brooke and did some activities guessing the smell and taste of foods from our heritage countries.  We loved spending another day with our new friends.

In June 2022, we are going to meet our friends from Diamond Wood Community Academy in Crow Nest Part for a picnic and to play some games. 

Another exciting delivery 

We received a parcel in the post. At first we thought Diamond Wood had sent us another gift but to our amazement it was from someone else!  The box was carefully wrapped and addressed to us with a Carry My Story label attached. Inside there was the most beautifully decorated, heart shaped wooden box.  The box was completely covered by a collage of images and was carrying a story and an object inside...

Latifa

This beautiful box was made and  sent by Latifa, a refugee originally from Afghanistan and now living in Huddersfield. Inside the beautifully decorated box was a her story and a special object.  Latifa was from Afghanistan and lived there as a child. Her story tells us about happy times, sad times and scary times in her life. She moved to Pakistan as she didn't feel very safe. Latifa's now husband, was a refugee too and travelled to the UK too; he travelled in some dangerous conditions but found safety after a year of travelling. 

A special message from Latifa "Be kind and respectful- You never know what someone has been through".

A Special Visitor in 2022

After receiving the story and box from Latifa, she came to visit us in School! We were so excited to finally meet our link refugee. To make her feel welcome, we put signs up outside and around school in Dari, we made her a heart shape gift using sticks, and put on a spread of lovely food to share with her. 

When Latifa arrived, she told us more about her story, her life now and herself. She was really lovely and smiley. Latifa was really impressed with how grown up we were and how respectful we were towards her box and her story. We showed Latifa around school and introduced her to all the children and teachers. We had such a wonderful time getting to know her. 

Friends Reunited 2022

We could not wait to share our refugee story with our Diamond Wood friends! One sunny day, we met our Diamond Wood friends in Crow Nest Park for a picnic and to play with them. We share our story about Latifa and they shared their story from their link refugee. We also shared a St John's Story with them too. We told them the story of Faizah, Faizah is a parent of one of our Carry My Story children. She told us all about how she moved to Dewsbury from Pakistan. We loved learning about Faizah's story and sharing it with our friends. They loved to hear about how she lived in Pakistan and had an arranged marriage with a Pakistani man from England. After they were married, Faizah waited a year before joining him here in Dewsbury. She said she didn't know any English but everyone helped and supported her. She learnt english in college. 10 years later, Faizah and her husband had a baby and this baby changed their life.