1st March 2024

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Welcome back!

This week has whizzed by!

We would first like to remind you that we have a class trip planned next Monday 4th March to Celtic Harmony.  Please see the reminder below:

Year 3 Trip – Stone Age Day, Monday 4th March

The children in Year 3 are  on a trip to a Stone Age Day at the Celtic Harmony Camp, as part of their creative topic for this term.  The class will be travelling by coach to the Celtic Harmony Camp, Brickendon (near Hertford), Hertfordshire SG13 8NY and will be experiencing a range of exciting activities including:

  • Watching the Friction Fire lighting display
  • Gathering food in the forest and cooking with prehistoric herbs
  • Building their own woodland shelter.
  • Seeing the flint knapping demonstration, viewing a range of stone tools and hunting the mammoth!

We will be leaving school at 9.15am and expect to return to school before the end of the school day.

We will be outside all day so your child should wear their PE kit, with extra layers to keep warm.  Your child should have a coat, gloves, a hat and scarf. Children can wear thick socks with their wellies/old trainers. Your child will also need to bring a packed lunch, with no glass bottles or fizzy drinks, and no nuts please.

 

This week in Maths the children have been working hard  on subtraction with exchanging 10s for 1s and 100s for 10s.  In English, we have begun our new unit based on the book Flotsam. The children built up their inference and deduction skills by searching though trays filled with flotsam that gave clues about a character.

In RE the class have spent time explaining what they already know about Lent and Holy Week as well as recalling the three practices of Lent. This week we have also launched our RE focus on the Stations of the Cross and Catholic Social Teaching (CST).  Throughout Lent  we will be emphasising a different CST principle each week, employing art as a medium for exploration. Following a launch assembly about this by Miss Donatantonio, the children contemplated the concept of “Care of Creation,” discussing and reflecting upon the painting below:

It was so lovely to hear how the  children responded to this work of art on multiple levels.

 

 

Home Learning:

TTRs Log on and practise your 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 times tables.

Sing along times tables songs:  3 times tables

4 times tables

Log onto Mathletics : complete the times tables activity and Maths assessment that has been set.

Spelling shed. New Spelling List can be found here:  Spellings spring 1

A SPaG activity has also been assigned on spellingshed.

UPDATE******************************************
Spelling sheet for this half term found here: Spring 2 Spellings

Apologies for the error in initial uploading.

Spring 2- Week 1

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Welcome back! We hope you all enjoyed  your half term  and had a restful break. On Tuesday, the children took part in a special Reconciliation service with Reception class and Year two. The children took time to reflect on occasions when they may have been done something wrong and would like to say sorry for their actions. We reflected on how Lent is a time for forgiveness and how important it is for us to say sorry and repent.

 

In Re this week. we focussed on the practices of Fasting, Almsgiving and the importance of prayer during Lent. Year one talked about how we can help each other to keep our Lenten promises and how we can support each other during Lent. The children wrote messages of encouragement for their friends in special ‘encouragement envelopes,’ as a means of offering support for each other. It was lovely to see the children share their messages together and to see how valuable their friendships and support are for each other.

To finish off the week Year 1 lead us in a beautiful assembly about St David. The children were amazing and we are so proud of them! They practised all week and delivered wonderfully, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Home Learning – due Friday

Mathletics – please complete the activities set.

Handwriting sheet – practice letters sent home. You do not need to send this back as they are also practised daily in school.

Spellings – please practice the spellings with your child for a spelling test next Friday. This also does not need to be sent back.

Reading – 5/10 minutes daily.

Have a lovely weekend!

Mrs Poyiadzis & Mrs Barnes

Spring 2 Week 1

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It has been lovely welcoming the children back to class this week and hearing them share their half term news with their friends.

In Maths, the children have been working hard to solve subtraction and addition word problems.

In RE they have spent time explaining what they already know about Lent and making Lent Prayer Pebbles, which they have ‘planted’ around the school. This week we have also looked at the first three Stations of the Cross and discussed the care of creation using this painting to inspire them.

They also took part in a reconciliation service, where we discussed the act of forgiveness and how important it is to say sorry to others.

In English, the class have been busy finishing their adventure stories, which are now proudly on display in our classroom.

Please remember that it is World Book Day on Thursday 7th March; children can wear their costumes or pyjamas!

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Pringle

Home Learning – for Friday

Spelling and SPaG (noun) – set on spelling shed.

Reading and reading comprehension.

Friday, 1st March 2024

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Warm welcome back everyone!

The children had a really busy first week.

On Monday, we launched our RE focus on the Stations of the Cross and Catholic Social Teaching (CST).  Throughout Lent ,we will be focusing on a different CST principle each week, prompted by an art piece that the children can explore and discuss. Following an assembly about this by Miss Donatantonio, the children investigated the concept of “Care of Creation,”  reflecting upon the painting below:

They also wrote prayers inspired by the first, second and third stations of the Cross, reflecting on qualities such as honesty, courage and strength.

On Tuesday, the class participated in the Ks2 Reconciliation Service with great reverence and maturity, reflecting on their behaviour and relationships in and outside of class.

In Maths, the children revisited their earlier learning about common 2D shapes before extending that with new concepts such as sets of parallel and perpendicular lines as well as acute, obtuse and right angles to enrich their description of properties of shapes. In English, the class began their new unit of work based on Aaron Becker’s beautiful book called Journey. They became picture detectives and used inference to gain information about characters and their feelings, as well as plan dialogues to show character. We also predicted possible destinations for the main character to journey to. If you have access to the book, please wait a bit longer to explore it at home together as we still have some meaningful prediction to do before we can share the whole ‘story’ as a class.

In Re, we learnt about a new prayer form for Lent called the Examen and prayed it in class at the end of the day, rummaging through our experiences to find the presence of God.

On Thursday, we said goodbye to our lovely NHS friends who worked with us in the past 6 weeks, helping us to identify our emotions and teaching us strategies to manage those is different scenarios. The children benefited greatly from these sessions. They have gained a range of vocabulary to communicate their feelings more clearly and tips to ‘be in charge’ of those.

In Art, we moved on to collage techniques to create still life, focusing on composition…

…whilst in Computing, we created ‘loops’ of code snippets using count-controlled repetitions to draw 2D shapes- linked to our Maths learning.

Please remember:

We are attending Mass on Wednesday, 6th March so children will need to come in their school uniforms and have their swimming/pe kits in a bag. Also, World Book Day is on Thursday, 7th March; children can wear their costumes or pyjamas!

I wish you a nice weekend,

Ms Varga

Home Learning Due back on Tuesday, 5th March 2024
Spelling Words ending in ‘-ssion’

https://www.edshed.com/en-gb

Next week’s words: musician, magician, electrician, politician, mathematician, technician, optician, beautician, physician, dietician
Reading https://readtheory.org/auth/login

or alternatively download the attached materials

Senses-text

Senses-questions

Senses-answers
Multiplication https://ttrockstars.com/

https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check
Mathletics https://login.mathletics.com/

Please access your activities based on shapes and angles

 

Spring 2 Week 1

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Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful half term This week we have been reading the story Farmer Duck. The children have been predicting what happened to the farmer next. They have been planting vegetables outside and playing in the farm shop. The children took on the role of the farmer or the duck and the other children asked them questions. We have made farms using boxes. The children have been learning about what a farmer does and what we get from some farm animals.

 

In Maths, we have been learning doubles to 10. The children have been playing games with dice to find doubles, sorting dominoes into doubles and not doubles and making doubles using a range of resources. The children made butterflies and ladybirds to show doubles. Then they wrote number sentences to show how we record a double. Can you practise doubling at home?

 

On Tuesday, we had a Reconciliation Service where we thought about the things we have done wrong and asked God to forgive us. We talked  about how imporatant it is to say sorry and to forgive others.

In Religion, we have been learning about Lent. We talked about how Lent was represented with the colour purple and we had lots of purple around the class and in our outdoor area. We thought about the three practices of Lent. Give, Pray and Fast. The children went on a hunt around the classroom and outdoors to find signs of these practices. They found items for the food bank and clothes and shoes for the charity shop to represent giving. We found chocolate and cakes to represent fasting and the children found candles, prayer books and rosary beads to represent praying. Then the children made a prayer area outside to encourage us to pray more during Lent.

 

In our phonics lessons, we have been revising the digraphs we have learnt this term. Please practise using their phonics books because we will be moving onto some new sounds next week.

This week was the start of Fairtrade Fornight. We learnt about why we should buy Fairtrade products. The children made lunchboxes with fairtrade items in and painted the Fairtrade sign. Can you find a Fairtrade item when shopping this weekend?

In Ten Ten, we learnt about how Jesus is our role model and we should be good role models for the people around us. The children made name cards and decorated them to show that we are all followers of Jesus and he loves us.

 

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Carey and the Early Years Team

Year 5 – 01/03/24

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Spiritual Growth: To honour the significance of Lent and drawing closer to God, the children participated in the sacrament of Reconciliation. They engaged in a Reconciliation service alongside Years 4 and 6, followed by individual confessions with either Fr Shaun or Fr Robert.

Catholic Social Teaching (CST): Throughout Lent at Pope Paul, we will be emphasising different CST principles weekly, employing art as a medium for exploration. This week, we contemplated the concept of “Care of Creation,” discussing and reflecting upon this painting:

It was interesting to hear the children’s thoughts and ideas, linking it to their knowledge of Laudato Si’ and the creation story.

PE: We commenced two new topics: Yoga on Wednesday and Dance, concentrating on the Haka, on Thursday. In our dance session, the children collaborated to devise movements symbolising aspects of war and tribal culture, crafting group motifs.

Maths: Our exploration of fractions began, with this week’s focus on identifying equivalent fractions.

English: Our attention turned to Bubba’s character in The Watertower, examining the dilemmas he confronts through the lens of an internal monologue, and learning how to advance action in narrative writing within the reporting clauses of direct speech.

Emily, Frankie and Finn led us in a Lectio Divina this week, allowing us to find meaning in the story of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple. Well done you three.

Home learning for this week:

Mathletics: Finding equivalent proper fractions (Quest)

Recognising equivalent fractions (Quest)

Spag.com: Direct speech punctuation (C)

Spellings: Words with suffixes where the base word ends in ‘-fer’

difference
preference
inference
preferred
conferring
referring
transference
referee
transferring
reference

Have a good weekend everyone!

Miss Donatantonio