Firstly, thank you very much for the generous Christmas gifts; I am extremely grateful.

I haven’t blogged for a few weeks, so this post will be a round-up of the last few weeks of a very busy half term!

Year 6 had the privilege of watching the dress rehearsal of Reception’s Nativity play. They also helped their reading partners get changed into and out of their costumes, which they did ever so slickly!

At the closure of our 50 Years of Pope Paul celebrations, Bishop John Wilson came into our class to answer questions. It was fascinating to hear how he had met Mother Teresa of Calcutta, his favourite saint.

To coincide with our Science topic on the human body, we welcomed Mr Dalal into our classroom to hear about his work as an osteopath. He talked to us specifically about our vertebrae and explained the importance of good posture. We were intrigued to learn that you slightly shrink over the course of the day due to impact and gravity ‘squashing’ the water from the discs, which then re-hydrate and ‘pad out’ again when we’re lying horizontally at night. Unsurprisingly, we put this to the test and were excited to see that the majority of us were indeed a bit taller in the morning!

In Science, we have also been investigating our pulse. In groups, the children came up with their own lines of enquiry about what might affect heart rate, and then designed their own investigations. Examples of questions included:

• Do nerves have an effect on pulse? (this involved Jan performing Man’s Not Hot to a small group and then to the whole class!)
• Does drinking water affect pulse?
• Do long, slow movements or short, quick movements cause our heart to beat faster?

As the countdown to Christmas continued, Year 6 exchanged Christmas presents with their Reception reading partners.

Everyone enjoyed the Christmas Dinner, with many going back for seconds!

Christmas Dinner was followed by in-house entertainment in the form of Pope Paul’s Got Talent.

Finally, to top off a fantastic week of festivities, the Year 6s accompanied their reading partners to The Wyllyotts to watch Cinderella along with the rest of the school.

It’s been a wonderful term in which the children have pushed themselves with their learning and have excelled in being the leaders of the school. Needless to say, they all thoroughly deserve a rest this Christmas (although I am keeping regular checks on who’s been on readtheory.org!).

Merry Christmas, and I will see you all in the New Year!

Miss Donatantonio

Thank you parents and carers for all your support this term. We look forward to seeing you when we return in January.

We wish you all a joyful and peaceful Christmas.

Ms Chandler and Mrs Hilton

Children of the World

It has been a joyous week in school. We started off the week with our KS 1 Christmas Nativity. Year 2 along with Year 1, acted, sang and danced brilliantly and they should all be very proud of themselves. Thank you to everyone for attending and for your generous donations to The Passage.

On Thursday, we put our Christmas jumpers on and we sat down together for a delicious Christmas meal. After lunch, we gathered in the hall for our annual school talent show. Pope Paul definitely has talent and an extra big cheer came up from Year 2 for Nichola and Charlotte for coming second in the competition!

Year 2 were treated to a wonderful concert on Friday morning. Well done to everyone for taking part and sharing their musical talents. A very special well done to Alice, Sandro and William G.

To end the week, we attended the Cinderella Pantomime in the Wyllyots theatre – Oh no we didn’t! OH YES WE DID!

 

 

 

This week in year 5, we have been thoroughly entertained! We watched the KS1 Christmas show, Pope Paul’s Got Talent and we will be heading off to the pantomime tomorrow afternoon. We had a wide range of amazing talent to pick from to represent year 5 in the school show. Well done to Thomas and Sophie, who were voted to take part by the rest of year 5. They both did us proud, with Sophie coming in joint 1^st place for fantastic magic- I thoroughly enjoyed my time as her assistant!

 

Snow

On Tuesday, we returned to school and were excited to get outside and have fun in the snow. We used the opportunity to plan an investigation about the best conditions for building a snowman.

We also created Haiku’s- a Japanese form of poetry dedicated to nature and seasons. The children followed the syllable rules well to capture the scene.

Science

This week, we became theme park developers and used our knowledge of forces to create new rides.  We thought about friction and weight distribution. Based on our investigations, we made recommendations and considered how to make improvements.

Instructions

We have continued to evaluate instructions this week. Today, we made magnetic putty and tomorrow we will use all we have learnt so far to write a set of instructions on how to make it. The children loved playing with the putty and watching the force of magnetism at work. They are very keen to take it home! They will be able to do so on Monday after school. The putty does require strong neodymium magnets to work and if you would prefer your child to keep it at school, please do let me know.

 

 

Christmas Lunch

Today, we had an amazing Christmas lunch together. The food was fantastic and it was great to spend this time with the children. I offered Dojos for eating all of their vegetables and many rose to the challenge!

Have a fantastic weekend

 

Mrs Lines