Friday 18th March 2022

Science Week

On Monday, a school challenge was set: which class can grow the tallest sunflower? In Year 5, we have been asked to investigate if the type of soil we use can effect this.  We have planted seeds in clay, compost and sandy soil. The children made some great predictions about what might happen and gave reasons behind their thinking. We will be measuring weekly until the end of the summer term so watch out for updates. On Tuesday, half of the class became researchers and found out about a scientist of their choice. They then presented this information this afternoon to share their learning. On Thursday we had a visit from the Head of Science from Dame Alice Owen, Mr Friedlander, who spoke to the children about different types of crystals and the children went on to doing a science crystal growing activity which has tied in beautifully with our Year of Growth.  There was a real buzz in the classroom whilst the children crushed, dissolved the salt and set up a growth chamber for their solution which they added their crystal seeds to.  By Monday, we should be able to see the crystals that have been formed.

Maths

In Maths the children have continued to revise their work on multiplication and have started their new topic on Fractions looking at equivalence.

English

This week we have completed our final stories. I have been thoroughly impressed by their tension filled writing and their cliff hangers. Well done, Year 5 for your hard work on these. You have shown a real understanding of how you can influence your reader with your words.

Busy Year 5!

In addition to their fabulous learning, Year 5 have been involved in a range of other activities this week. Some of the class visited Dame Alice Owen School to take part in a basketball taster session, a selection of boys represented the school in football at Little Heath and the Irish dancers of the class entertained us on St Patrick’s day. They danced so confidently and at lunchtime they joined the many eager children in the hall to teach them some of the steps of a light jig!  We also attended mass for St Louise’s feast day where Caroline read well and the class sang beautifully. This morning, the children were given their reading parts for the Key Stage 2 Stations of the Cross.  Year 5 are leading us in the readings whilst Year 6 are leading us with the drama depicted at each station.  The children will be given their parts to take home on Monday to learn for this prayerful event which is taking place on Tuesday  29th March at 7pm.

Home Learning:

Learn the lyrics for our Way of the Cross service taking place on Tuesday 29th March at 7pm.  (see separate post for the song lyrics)

Spellings- paragraph, paragraphs, calligraphy, calligrapher, geography, geographer, geographical, photographer, photograph, photographic, bibliography, cartography

Comic Relief- Design a poster about Comic Relief. You could include information about:

  • when it started
  • who it helps
  • what is its mission?
  • Who founded it.
  • Ways people have raised money for the charity.

Mathletics

Please log on and complete the set activities.  If there are any difficulties, do not worry.  Just come along to the homework session on Monday lunchtime.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.  We hope that you are able to join us with the special walk on Sunday.  Please see the school newsletter for details.

REMINDER:

Please come along on Monday 21st March at 3pm to look at your child’s workbooks in the Main Hall.

Mrs McNamara and Mrs Lines

Spring 2 Week 4

This week was Science week so we started the week thinking about what scientists do and naming famous scientist. Each class are part of a competition to grow the tallest sunflower. Year 3’s question was Does the size of the pot effect how the sunflower grows? The children planned their own investigation to answer the question. They thought of how they could make it a fair test and how they would record their results. The children have been taking part in different discussions including the odd one out and zoom in zoom out activities to develop their observation skills.

In Maths the children have been solving problems using the skills they have learnt using column addition and subtraction.

In Religion we looked an another picture to build a better world and discussed what we could see.

Our D&T topic is making healthy sandwiches so the children tested different types of bread and described their taste, texture, appearance and smell. Next week the children will be planning their own healthy sandwiches.

On Thursday, we celebrated St Patrick’s Day by making green cakes and watching Irish dancing. Emily, Sienna, Phoebe and Sofia’s dancing was amazing!

In PE, the children were fantastic completing different balances with partners.

It was lovely to speak to parents for parent’s consultation this week and last week. If you did not make an appointment, I will contact you.

Home Learning

 

English Please learn the poem sent home with the children. I have also attached it here.
Spellings Spelling frame

meat, meet, hear, here, there, their, wear, where, hour, our, knot, not

 

Maths Timetable Rock Star and sheet sent home (show their workings out on the back of the paper)

Please also practise the songs for the Way of the Cross Service, by clicking here.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Carey

Friday, 18th March 2022

   

It has been another busy week in Year 4 with Science week and St Patrick’s day just to mention a few.

In English, the class started their final writing pieces of non-chronological reports and wrote lengthy paragraphs based on their plant and animal species. They will write further paragraphs next week about their inhabitants and a conclusion before publishing their reports with diagrams, maps and keys using a book proforma. In Maths, the children investigated equivalent fractions; ordered and compared fractions and applied their understanding when solving one and multi-step problems using bar-models.

In Science this week, following the theme of British Science Week- Growth, we looked at some important questions, like what would happen if we stopped planting trees. We also participated in a school challenge of growing the tallest sunflower simultaneously investigating conditions attributed to plant growth such as temperature. The class discussed ideas then designed individually possible animal species that could live and grow on Mars whilst also completing observations around the school grounds. We tidied our class gardens as well and planting tulips as an addition to our already blooming flower bed.

On St. Patrick’s day we had the chance to applaud our fantastic talents who  performed amazing routines of Irish dancing. It has been a real pleasure watching them in their elements!

In RE, we read Luke’s Gospel of Palm Sunday and drew beliefs from the Scripture whilst in PE we carried on with our Roman themed dance choreography.

Next week, Mrs Carrey and myself would like to lead a crystal growing workshop in class. To support this, please may you send a clean, small (300ml or 500ml) plastic bottle in, labelled.  Thank you for your support with this.

Have a safe and lovely weekend;I hope you can enjoy the sunshine with your families!

Ms Varga

Please see your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 22nd March 2022
Spelling Spelling Rule 20 – Possessive apostrophe with plural words

https://spellingframe.co.uk/

Please practice this week’s spelling words before testing yourselves on them.

Reading https://readtheory.org/auth/login

Please log onto Read Theory and complete two activities. Please update your reading log and be ready to p[resent it on Wednesday.

Multiplication https://ttrockstars.com/

Please log onto your account and spend time practicing your mixed facts. Well done for Eliana, our overall leader! Also well done for everyone who improved on their scores and the number of days played. We shall check again on Tuesday!

Study Ladder https://www.studyladder.co.uk/

Please complete the activities assigned to your pod. They consolidate our learning of mixed factions and equivalent fraction.

Please also practise the songs for the Way of the Cross Service, by clicking here.

w.b. 14.03.22

Spring Term Week 10 14.03.22

Year 1 enjoyed exploring their Big Question for Science Week ‘What do seeds need to grow?’ They discussed, gathered their ideas before planting sunflower seeds. We hope they are going to grow really high so we can win the Sunflower Height Challenge!

They also worked hard to weed and turn the soil over to plant white tulip bulbs.

Year 1 explored what a scientist is, how they become a scientist and all the different types of scientists they could be when they are older.

In History Year 1 identified toys, their material and then sorted them out into what they considered to be old toys and which ones were new.

They also started to learn how things are ordered in chronological order and ordered a timeline of toys.

Then Mrs Heymoz surprised them all by coming in and sharing a childhood doll of hers.

Children are invited to bring in a small cuddly/ soft toy next Monday so we can use them in our History and English learning. I would like to use these toys all week so please make sure you children is okay with leaving their toy in the class Monday- Friday next week.  

In maths Year 1 have been continuing to make numbers with tens and ones and now are ordering and comparing them using the language of tens and ones.
Mathletics to support learning this week:

  • Compare numbers to 20
  • Order numbers to 20
  • Matching numbers to 20

Phonic sounds learnt this week are:

e-e ‘Go Pete, Go Steve!’  delete/concrete/theme/these/complete

i-e ‘Nice smile’ shine/glide/strike/hide/like/spike/rice

Tricky words to read and spell: Mrs, Mrs, here, could, asked, people

Unfortunately, Spelling Frame does not have these sounds. The children have selected a blank game mat template that they will use to generate their own games to play with these sounds such as: Roll and read, snakes and ladders, bingo, flash card, snap, pairs, word search or anything else that they enjoy. Children are invited to bring their games in to play next Friday afternoon.

Please can all children have their reading books in everyday next week so I can change them throughout the week due to staff absences. 

We are on our last box of tissues so any donated boxes would be most appreciated!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the beautiful Spring weather!

Miss Lambie 🙂

Year 6 – 11/03/22

This week, the Year 6 House Captains have been busy organising fundraising events, whilst the Fairtrade Group have been out and about in Potters Bar, spreading the word about the work of Fairtrade. They went to Sainsbury’s to buy Fairtrade goods, and then presented to Year 5 pupils at Cranborne school. They spoke fantastically, and the children at Cranborne seemed very impressed and inspired to look for the Fairtrade logo when shopping for groceries. Excellent job, Fairtrade Group!

Yesterday afternoon, we had the pleasure of watching Year 5 and Year 6 musicians, plus the school choir, perform a plethora of tuneful treats to us. Well done to all performers; you were fantastic!

Today, in preparation for Science Week next week, Year 6 had a science workshop all about air, in which the children took part in some amazing science demonstrations. Thank you to Mrs Carey for organising this.

*For a Science Week activity next Thursday, please could each child bring in a plastic bottle. Thank you*

Friday 11th March 2022

We’ve had another busy week in Year 5.

Today we kicked off Science Week by taking part in a whole school assembly and then a class workshop this afternoon.  This Year, the theme is ‘Growth’ and we will be completing learning based on this throughout next week. Take a look at some of the things we got up to day.  Click here to see the photos that were captured of the children.   I think you may have very eager children wanting to buy washing up liquid and glycerine this weekend!!

This morning, our Fairtrade leaders delivered fairtrade bananas to the children and the class were also reminded to bring in tombola donations for the Toy Tombola taking place on the 25th March.

In Maths, the children have continued with division with remainders and converting the remainders to fractions and decimals.  We will be starting our new maths learning sequence on Fractions next week.

Yesterday, Hebe, Finn, Vihaan and Kian took part in the Year 5 Maths Challenge, an event run by the Hertfordshire Maths Team.  Elle assisted with the timings and equipment that was needed to run the event.  The team worked really hard together to answer some very tricky questions which were allocated into four rounds.  We heard today that out of the 88 schools that took art in the Heat yesterday evening after school, our team came in 2nd place!!  We are waiting to hear if we scored enough points to enter into the final.

As part of our Science curriculum learning, on Monday we explored solutions and ran a fair test investigation to see which temperature dissolved sugar the fastest. Year 5 had to be precise in their methodology. They got water to the right temperature, measured in millilitres and timed with accuracy. Well done, Year 5.

In English, we have continued our London Eye Mystery learning. Next week we will be completing our final write and so we have been preparing by improving our writing skills. To do this, we have varied our sentence length, identified ways of creating suspense and used a range of present tense verb forms. As part of home learning, the children will need to listen to chapters of the text on YouTube for our Monday lesson. This will be in place of their read theory home learning.

We were very lucky to be entertained by our musicians on Thursday. It was a real treat for all of us. Well done to our pianists, violinists, singers and the members of the choir; you performed beautifully.

Photos of this event will be uploaded soon!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lines and Mrs McNamara

 

Home Learning:

Log onto your timestable Rockstars account and practice your tables….as many times as you can!!

Mathletics:  complete the activities on division.

Spag.com– log on to complete the task on verb forms. Watch the link to refresh your memory if you need to.

Spellings-  word roots ‘fin’ and ‘tach’

define, refine, infinite, finished, finishing, finally, attach, attached, attachment, detach, detachable, reattached.

Reading– Please listen to chapters 29- 36 using these two links. For the first video, start at 15:10 to hear chapters 29-31, then the second link to hear 32-36

 

 

Spring 2 Week 3

We have had a fun and busy week in Year 3.

We have lots of amazing singers and musicians in Year 3, it was lovely to see so many of them taking part in the music concert. All of them were fantastic!

On Tuesday we had a talk about Road Safety where we learnt about all the safe places to cross roads.

In Maths we have been subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers with and without regrouping. We used diennes and place value counters to understand how we regroup the tens and hundreds.

In English, we have been following instructions to play games and writing our own instructions using adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Next week the children will be using the instructions that wrote for their homework to write an explanation so please complete this if you have not.

In Religion we spoke about picture and how the people in the picture were building a better world. Then we retold the stations of the cross using our computing skills.

In Science, we completed an activity to see how difficult it is to see things without light and how light makes objects clearer to see.

On Friday, we began our Science Week activities. Professor Bubbleworks took our assembly and we learnt about how important water is. He showed us lots of interesting investigations. Then we took part in a workshop where we held a bubble in our hand with a glove on and we went inside a bubble.

This week was Fairtrade Fortnight, so we learnt about why buying Fairtrade foods is important and we ate bananas!

Home Learning-

Spellings – https://spellingframe.co.uk/

 

Complete spelling frame activities.

Practise the following spellings

interest, island, learn, perhaps, popular, quarter, question, reign, remember, straight, strange, promise

 

Read Theory https://readtheory.org/auth/login

 

Complete two activities
Timetable Rockstars – https://ttrockstars.com/

 

Complete a range of different activities
Mathletics

https://www.mathletics.com/uk/

 

Complete the activities set

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Carey

Spring Term Week 9 w.b. 7th March

Thank you for all your kind welcome back massages, it was so lovely to see the children again and they were so excited to tell me what they had been learning with Mrs Moccia in my absence.

The children shared with me their fantastic knowledge of the different Stations of the Cross this week after they learnt them through various role-playing activities.


In Computing the children learnt about algorithms and how to input data to have a desired output. They played an activity where they wrote their algorithm and their partner had to follow it to see if it was correct.


On Friday Year 1 started their learning on Science Week through a Science workshop all about bubbles. The children were so excited to learn about gravity, evaporation, forces and how to make stronger bubbles!

Thank you for arranging the parent consultations. I have sent home the discussion sheet today or a sleep to invite you to book a telephone appointment if you were unable to book a previous appointment.

I hope you have a restful weekend as we have a busy Science Week to come!
Miss Lambie

Home learning.
English– We are nearly at the end of Phase 5 phonics so I have sent a phonics sheet home that contains every sound and a High Frequency word list. It is end of Year 1 expectation that children are able to read, spell and use these sounds and words in their writing.
• Please use www.spellingframe.co.uk to support the sounds taught this week:
-Spelling rule #21 ‘ew’ Chew the Stew
• -Tricky/ High Frequency words List #16 Phase 5 https://www.phonicsbloom.com/uk/game/tricky-trucks?phase=5
• Spelling Frame does not have any games for ‘oe’ so the Children have a game to play at home- no need to return to school.

• The children have their user to www.letterjoin.co.uk to support in their handwriting and user details were handed out at the beginning of the term.

• We have been playing ‘Hit the button’ at the start of our maths lessons to build our speed at number bonds to 10. We managed to score 25 in one minute. Can you set your score and beat your score?
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

Friday, 11th March 2022

The children in Year 4 had opportunities this week to live out their Mission statement of using their talents to the full. During Tuesday’s music concert, they showed off their beautiful skills playing the piano or the violin. Well done!

The class carried on extending their understanding of fractions in Maths calculating unit and non-unit fractions of different wholes, whilst in English they learnt to apply a specific set of conjunctions, openers and expanded noun phrases to use in their non-chronological reports. In Science, they evaluated common appliances to see what electricity generates/changes in them (like sound, heat, light or movement). In RE, we looked at symbols, words and actions that show we are a Catholic school and linked it with why we Pray the Stations of the Cross today. The children also discussed the third Lenten picture, titled the Dignity of Human Life. They then wrote heartfelt prayers to offer for the people of Ukraine. In D&T, the class painted their shells in preparation for next week’s task- building the simple series circuit.

Today the class took part in an exciting science workshop!

 

Have a lovely and safe weekend,

Ms Varga

See your Home Learning below:

Home Learning Due by Tuesday, 15th March 2022
Spelling Spelling Rule 19 – Words with the /eɪ/ sound spelt ei, eigh, or ey (e.g. eight, they… etc.)

https://spellingframe.co.uk/

Please practice this week’s spelling words before testing yourselves on them.

Reading https://readtheory.org/auth/login

Please log onto Read Theory and complete 2 activities.

Multiplication https://ttrockstars.com/

Please log onto your account and practice your allocated tables. Based on your test results from Thursday, your account will change and new/different tables might appear.

Study Ladder https://www.studyladder.co.uk/

Please log onto Study Ladder and complete the activities in your assigned pod. They are all tasks that will help you consolidate your fraction learning so far.

 

Reception Week Beginning 7.3.22

It’s been another busy week in Reception Class this week!

The children have been focussing on the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and have been getting their own beans prepared for germination. Have a look at the beans on the Reception windows; we are looking forward to watching the roots and shoots grow soon. Amongst other things, the children have had fun making their own beanstalks from a variety of construction materials. They also acted out the story, hot seated the characters and discussed and wrote about what they would like to see at the top of their beanstalk. The class agreed that a land made of chocolate would be fantastic!

In maths learning, the children have been learning about the composition of 9 and 10 and learning to put numbers in the correct order.

This week, Reception put on their wellington boots and went for a lovely, muddy walk in the adjacent farmland. The children saw red kites flying above them, found bones and worked out that the crop growing at the moment appears to be rape seed. We are looking forward to having a bright yellow field next to us!

Today, the children took part in a fantastic science workshop, where they learnt about how different types of weather is formed. They also had lots of fun exploring bubbles!

As we have now taught all of the Reception sounds, we will no longer be sending home the daily phonics book. This is to be kept at home for you to regularly practise the sounds with your child. Instead, your child will be bringing home a writing book on their reading day. This book is for your child to practise applying their phonic knowledge, through writing in it as often as possible. More information will be given to you on your child’s reading day about this.

Have a lovely weekend,

The Reception Team