At St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, Personal, Social, Health, and Economic (PSHE) education is embedded within our

overarching curriculum that prepares our children for many different aspects of their lives.  

Our overall goal is to help our children to become well-rounded individuals with strong character, who will eventually go out into the world of adults and be actively and positively involved in society.   In order to do this, we are striving to create a conducive environment around the school and this year we have created our own specific Personal Development Curriculum that is entwined with our academic curriculum.

Our curriculum aims to provide engagement and enrichment and through this, we aim for all children to have equal opportunities to thrive together.  

We take great pride in promoting a range of British Values at St Mary's.

The DfE have recently reinforced the need ‘to create and enforce a clear and rigorous expectation on all schools to promote the fundamental British Values of;

- Democracy

- The rule of law

- Individual liberty

- Mutual respect

- Tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.'

The Department for Education has introduced a statutory duty for schools to promote British Values more actively from September 2014, and to ensure they are taught in schools.  

Shelly Woods Class School of Justice - A Courtroom Visit

To ink with our RE Justice topic and British Values in school, we were lucky enough to visit the mock courtroom at UCLAN.  The children got to dress up and perform a courtroom role play.  We had lots of fun!

We Will Remember 

L'est we forget 

In preparation for Remembrance Day, the children have been selling poppies at break time. This will be discussed in the coming days and members of Shelly Woods class will be asked to represent our school at the remembrance event this Sunday. 

In assembly, Mrs Kowalska announced the new Head Boy and Head girl for this year. Our Head Boy, Syd and our Head Girl, Karolyn were present with their badges. Working with our Head Boy and Head Girl will be our Deputy Head Boy, Kobey  and our Deputy Head Girl, Ralica. 

Mrs Bottomley present our new sports leaders with their badges. After joining together in our house teams, the children persuaded their team to vote for them. The children in each team voted for who they would like to be their leader. 

The school gathered in the hall on Friday to listen to the year 6 children present their speeches for Head Boy and Head Girl. The children did an amazing job! They were smart, confident and very persuasive! Each child then voted for their choice of Head Boy and Head Girl. We will find out the results next week. Good luck to all the year 6 children. You were all amazing!

Merckx Class have been writing their own speeches to persuade the children in class to vote for them to become either the year 3 or the year 4 school Values Ambassador. The children thought about the qualities they had that would make them a good choice. They talked about how they are a good role model, smart and sensible, kind and caring, hardworking and determined. The children who wanted to become a Values Ambassador presented their speech to the rest of the class. The class then voted for one year 3 child and one year 4 child, who will be responsible for promoting our school core theme for the half term. This half term, our theme is 'POSITIVITY'. The Values Ambassador's will reward children who they see displaying a positive attitude throughout this half term. We will find out who the class voted for as their Values Ambassador in next weeks assembly. Good luck to all the children!

Today we had Caroline from the Lancashire Library Service visit the reception and year 1 children. She came with some special stories to share with the class to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee. The children enjoyed listening to the stories with their teddy bears that they brought from home and taking part in some fun activities. 

Bly Class have been learning about rules and why it is important to have them to keep everyone safe. Together, we agreed on a few rules that we will focus on this half term. 

The children in Bly class have been learning about Saint Patrick and why we celebrate St Patricks Day. They enjoyed joining in with some lovely activities. 

 Rob showed them a story about everyone being fair, they then wrote rules to keep happy and healthy and then played an instructions game.

Today, we had a visit from Rob, from Healthy Heads. We discussed one of the British Values - Rule of Law.

We shared what it meant, the job of a judge and why we have rules. We reflected on rules we have in school and what would happen if these didn't exist.

As a class, we played a game where rules were given but one rule was missing, the children had to watch carefully to see if they could guess the missing rule. We thought about how it made us feel not knowing all the rules and the impact it had on the other rules having one missing.

Today Garrido class looked at personal hygiene. We discussed the meaning of this and completed a sorting activity in pairs. They then looked at pictures of celebrities and said what was good or bad about their hygiene.

The children in Bly class listened to the story ‘Mr Wolf’s Pancakes’. Nobody would help Mr Wolf make his pancakes so the children decided it wasn’t fair to get to eat them. They talked about fairness and why it is important to be fair. The children were asked what we could do to be 'fair' when making our pancakes. 

They made a list of ingredients they needed and then helped each other to make pancakes. Everybody helped and all enjoyed eating them!

Shackleton class linked their reading comprehension revision to The Queen's Jubilee today - it sparked some interesting discussions!

For children's mental health week, Drake class talked about how they can sometimes feel sad even though they don't know why and as a class discussed how they could 'Grow together'. The children thought of ideas of how they could grow as children in a positive way by trying new things and reading a book.

This week, week commencing 7th February, Shackleton class marked Children's Mental Health week by listening to some calming music when completing their work. They talked about the importance of looking after their own mental health and what they could do to support this. They created a mind map to show ways in which they can support mental health.  They also worked in teams to complete a 'Growth Mindset' activity which gave the children ideas as to how they can change their own perception of things.  The children also completed a positivity word search, which included plenty of key words, at the same time as having a chat to their friends!

The children in Bly class have enjoyed learning about Chinese New Year. They have participated in lots of different activities this week linking to the celebration. 

Garrido class have been learning about China and watched some videos about Chinese New Year. They then completed beautiful colourings of a tiger as this year is 'The Year of the Tiger'. 

Shackleton class had a look at the Chinese alphabet, discussed the meaning of the year of the Tiger, identified that most of  the class were born in the year of the Tiger and we made a book mark with their names on in Mandarin. 

The children in Drake class listened to the story of Chinese New Year and why it is celebrated. They then designed their own Chinese dragon.

Some of the Key Stage 2 children took part in a sponsored 3 mile walk this week to raise money for an important cause. 

Shackleton class played a loop card game about influential black people and did their own research on famous black people who have made an impact.

The children in Bly class have been learning about the Hindu celebration of Diwali. They enjoyed learning about the celebration and joining in with some of the traditions such as making Rangoli patterns. The children created their own Diya lamps using clay and decorated them with bright colours. They also made their own firework paintings to celebrate the festival of light. 

We have been remembering those who fought and lost their lives during WWI as part of Remembrance Day. The Head Boy and Head Girl have been selling poppies and attended the Remembrance service at the Memorial Park at the weekend. Classes all took part in a two minute silence and thought about those who lost their lives. Classes created drawings, wreaths and paintings to symbolise the poppy. 

Voting for the new Head Boy and Head Girl took place after the year 6 children had finished their speeches on why they thought they would make a good leader at St Mary's.