Welcome to Piano Class

(Year 4/5)

“Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.”

- Tom Lehrer

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit in the school hall to reflect on the story of Good Friday, with our class representations of the Stations of the Cross made by the whole school. We walked around to retell the story of Jesus' last day and to reflect on the sacrifice we made for us.

During Lent, our Easter Box has travelled around our families to remind us of the true meaning of Easter, having the opportunity to retell the story and spend time in prayer as a family.

We welcome ex pupil Leon Jones back to St Mary's, now aged 17, to share is passion and talent for music. He performed several songs for the school including his own song 'Mutual Feelings'. The children loved it and he also kindly gifted a guitar to the school.

We've had a great half term linking our History learning of Vikings to our dance work in PE. We developed a class routine using Viking words to inspire our movements to create a routine together: axe, farming, invade, longboat and many more. The children also worked on their own small group routines to involving mirroring, travel and balance.

St Mary's CAFOD Big Walk was a great success! We did as a sponsored event (we will let you know how much money once it is all collected). We had 172 people involved - 140 children and 32 adults including 20 volunteers from our families. We all walked 2.5 miles (430 miles in total) and met Year 7 from Cardinal Allen (150 pupils and 8 staff) on the promenade. Luca (the Pilgrims of Hope mascot) joined us, with our two big flags, and mini flags for our KS1 children. 

We had a lovely afternoon out in the sunshine (26.3.25) with parents and carers who could join us for our Lenten Liturgy. We went onto The Mount and shared our liturgy with prayers and a gospel reading about Jesus' death on Good Friday. After, the children worked in their small groups to complete a nature walk collecting or taking pictures of what they could find. Each item represented part of one of the stories from Holy Week.

Lovely to see so many children in Piano Class succeeding and enjoying their cookie and milkshake this week for reading at least 3 times - with so many reading much more. Great committed to improving their reading skills and developing their reading for pleasure.

World Book Day was a great success at St Mary's (as always). The children thoroughly enjoyed our parade and World Book Day activities.

The diocese arranged for a statue of Our Lady to visit the Catholic primary and secondary schools. We had the statue delivered by St Wulstan's at Ash Wednesday Mass and then we had the opportunity to engage in prayer with her. We had prayer stations set up in the hall around her and had time to reflect before ending with a farewell liturgy.

To begin the season of Lent, we joined together with St Wulstan's at St Mary's Church to participate in Ash Wednesday Mass.

Rob invited us back to Emmanuel Church to celebrate the start of Lent. We discussed the meaning of Lent, Jesus' time in the desert and the meaning behind Shrove Tuesday. The children made their own pancake using art resources, as well had the chance to eat one too, with their chosen toppings!

In Maths, we have been learning about area and perimeter of rectangles and compound shapes. We created shapes on the tables and used rulers to accurately measure the sides to then calculate the area and perimeter. We also, created compound shapes that weren't measured to scale and had to use the information we had available. 

We began our half term with our class mass with Fr Stephen. The children were, as always, a credit to the school and read beautifully.

Break the Rules Day went down as a big hit! The children thoroughly enjoyed choosing what rules to break - crazy hair, bring a teddy, choice of snack, extra break, own clothes etc. I think they will definitely be wanting us to do it again!

Piano Class have had a busy few days, finishing the end of term with our DT project. We made our own pop-up book with the theme of Jack and Jill but with our own twist and using different types of mechanisms including a slider, step and lever.

To complete our materials unit of work, we planned and conducted an investigation to test different materials and how well they insult heat.

Piano finished with a game and the aim of the game was to score points by getting a small soft ball to land or be caught in one of two targets.

We finished our unit on poetry by performing a chosen A. F. Harrold poem on our own or with a partner - adding actions and movement to the performance.

After our PE lesson this week, we took to The Mount to enjoy the sunshine and try and run a mile round the The Mount.

The children have been enjoying our PE topic of net and wall games by thinking about their balance, hand-eye co-ordination and use of equipment.

St. Mary's are promoting and supporting Children's Mental Health Week and on the 7th February we wore our scarf to represent - Safety, Caring, Aspiration, Resilience and Friendship.

To complete our work on A.F. Harrold's poetry work and studying many poems by this same poet, the children had the opportunity to create their own character and using our grammar focus of nouns and relative clauses to create their own unusual/funny poem following his style. Here are some great individual examples above.

As a part of our RE lesson, we visited Father Stephen at church to learn more about the Sacrament of Reconciliation from Father's point of view and to revisit our learning from the previous day. Father spoke about how when we sin it pulls use away from God because we aren't showing love which are the theme of the two first commandments. The children visited the confessional booth and Father spoke about the process of what happens before, during and after confession.

During the visit out onto Lord Street, the children collected data showing how the population impacts the amount of traffic and litter in an area. Once we were back in the classroom, we analysed the findings and made suggestions to improve a situation.

On Wednesday 22nd January and Thursday 23rd January, Year 4 join the Emile website to participate in their MTC (Multiplication Tables Cup) against other school and use the game created like the check in June with 6 seconds a question and 25 questions, at random, provided.

Well done to Year 4/5 - they read beautifully, sang well and joined in with reverence to the responses and Father Alf's homily. They were complimented by several parishioners who came to tell Mrs Sewell how great they were! It was lovely to see Fr Alf again too who was filling in for Fr Stephen.

A group of children from our class had the opportunity to visit the Library Bus which came to school to swap out the 100 we get to borrow as a school. The children now have an additional 20 books in our reading corner that we've borrowed from this great service.

In Piano Class we have been using bible references to find different scripture (stories) that give evidence to prove Jesus was the Messiah.

To begin our new term, we have started our work in English on our unit of 'Poems by the same Poet'. We have begun to share, read and comprehend poems by poet A. F. Harrold. The children had a turn at performing, how the wished, the poem 'A Poem About Some Food'.

To support our understanding of multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000 we used resources like place vale charts and sliders for us to be able to see the digits moving to left and getting 10 times, 100 times or 1000 times greater.

Autumn Term

Well done Piano Class and all of KS2 for a superb Christmas Carol Service held at church.

As part of our Science work, we created a model to show how a torch (as the Sun) can be used to model how day and night happens with a globe. We then discussed the advantages and disadvantages of this model after having a go ourselves.

We had a great afternoon (as always) with Rob, one of the church leaders at Emmanuel Church, with his volunteers. Rob discussed the Christmas story with the children, we even had a visit from one of the shepherd who the children questioned. The children made a Christingle after discussing each part of it and their own biscuit designed with Jesus in the manger.

The children complete their last lesson of the term! The have made such great progress in the last 12 weeks and they were complimented on it by the swimming teacher. They enjoyed the last part of their lesson with a fun swim in the small pool.

What a fab way to spend a Friday afternoon in the run up to Christmas - a Santa Dash! The children in KS2 ran/jogged/walked the circuit set up which included Highbury Stadium twice! Christmas music was playing, Christmas jumpers were worn and we all had a great time!

Mrs Ashworth and Mrs Ward did us proud once again by putting on the best Christmas Dinner/Party. All of the teachers served the children on their tables which were decorated for them and we enjoyed a lovely dinner whilst Christmas music was playing. Once we finished, we had a dance and singalong together. 

We had a great morning watching Aladdin the pantomime at the Pleasure Beach - great way to continue our festive celebrations, with so much more planned...Christmas dinner, Santa Dash, Christmas party and the carol service.

On Monday 2nd December, we had our Advent liturgy where we welcomed parents and carers in to take part in our Advent workshop. The children prepared a liturgy on the true meaning of Christmas; we completed our own 'Jar of Hope' with this week being the theme of hope in the first week of Advent, and had a mini competition with an Advent word search.

We have begun our work on multiplication and division with a focus on knowing our multiples and finding factors to begin with.

As we begin our book 'Flotsam', we started with items related to the story and six images from the book. The children had to work as a group to put the illustrations in order and generate what they thought the storyline could be.

Here is sample of three of the children's version of the story of a girl called Alma. The children worked incredibly had to produce a 'slow write' where we planned, drafted and edited each paragraph thinking carefully about applying our writing focuses: fronted adverbials, parenthesis and 'uplevelling' our adjectives to better synonyms.

The children were superb in their 'Odd Socks' in support of the day and being against bullying, ensuring they are supporting the fact it is ok for us all to be different and we need to embrace our differences.

As part of our 'The Joy of Moving' project the children are doing with Ryan from Fleetwood Town, he got two of the players to come and join the children to talk about their fitness and how they keep active. They also had the chance to be active out on the playground, sign photos and ask them some questions.

I am so proud of the whole class for their reverence and participation in our class mass; they were brilliant but in particular those who read did an excellent job at sharing their reading and prayers with the rest of the congregation. 

Congratulations to Laila, who was selected by the Mini Vinnie Team to be awarded the Footsteps of God Award out of the whole school for her happy personality, infectious smile and thoughtful nature to everyone and anyone who comes into our school.

We had our first session today (7.11.24) with Ryan from Fleetwood Town. The children concentrated on what physical activity is and what we can count as physical activity and for how long. The children learnt how to take their pulse and saw how it got faster depending on the activity they did.

We had out second session with Lee on developing our playground games that we will be doing with Year 1/2 next week. After recapping on what makes a good leader the children worked hard on working as a group to create their own game that they will explain and play with the children next week.

The children worked really well together tackling subtraction reasoning/problem solving questions and having discussions as they applied their skills and knowledge of subtraction.

Step 1 - draw a self portrait. Some of the children used tracing paper to help them or used a photograph to help draw their own in their sketch book.

Step 2 - Create a poem portrait. We created a list of adjectives to describe ourselves and then went around to each other sharing compliments about each other. The children then used these words to create a poem about themselves and around the outline of their portrait.

Step 3 - Creating a background. The children then used water paint or coloured paper to create a collage to create and develop a background for their poem portrait to be written on. 

Piano Class had a reflective pilgrimage to Ladyewell in Preston today. We visited the Ladyewell shine which has beautiful with its gardens, Way of the Cross, the well and different statues. We visited the chapel, the church shop and had mass in the garden chapel with Fr Augustine. The children's manners, behaviour and reverence were compliment by volunteers at the shrine. 

Piano class have learnt how to do basic first aid, how to deal with a casualty who was unresponsive but breathing; how to make sure we stay safe; how to check for breathing, and how to put someone in the recovery position. We also talked about how we would call 999 and what information we would need to give.

As part of investigation we made different sized parachutes and tested them from the same height so see which one would fall to the ground the fastest and prove how air resistance works. The bigger the parachute, the longer it took to fall, due to there being greater air resistance.

During our Science topic, we looked at air resistance and use a flat piece of paper and paper in a ball to see which would fall to the ground the quickest.

We thoroughly enjoyed our last sessions with Helen and her team from BSYW, who completed the stories from the Old Testament in her usual fun, active and engaging way with song, videos and role play.

On World Mental Health Day, we had Steve join us from Life Education to work with Year 4/5 of the theme of 'friends'. We discussed our bodies and how clever our body and brain is as well as how are body will respond to different situations. The children watched a video regarding a situation between two friends; we discussed how we can respond. We reflected on different outcomes, depending on our reactions then role played how we can resolve conflict.

We have completed our enquiry question by completing a beach collection and clean on Fleetwood beach, on Monday 7th October, as part of our Geography unit: Why do our oceans matter? We completed a tally chart, took photographs and analysed what we found.

We had a great time at Emmanuel Church (3rd October). Rob, one of the church leaders, welcomed us with his volunteers to take part in prayer stations. The children shared their knowledge on prayer and took part in praying in different ways.

Super proud of Piano Class completing their 4th Active Mile around The Mount (2 laps). Even Mrs Sewell joined in for one lap! We enjoyed the Autumn sunshine and didn't give up!

Congratulation to Lacey on becoming Piano Class' ambassador! The children had the opportunity to put themselves forward to be voted for as our class ambassador. They shared what they would do and reasons why they felt they were suitable for the role. They had the chance to then vote for who they wanted. Lacey was announced in our Star of the Week assembly. We know she'll represent school and our class brilliantly!

The children thoroughly enjoyed week 3 of Walk through the Bible with Helen as we learnt the next 8 stories of the Old Testament. 

We took part in a sustainability event where we learnt about an artist who visited the Artic on a plastic expedition where she learnt about impact of plastic pollution. Next heard from an artist who works for Colgate (for 22 years), designing toothbrushes but also is an artist, reusing plastic to create art pieces. His work is on display in local art studios in New Jersey where he is based. He shared how he walks on the beach to collect his plastic and he shared some of his creations – one sold for $800.

This year we are trying to promote physical fitness, keeping healthy and using the outdoors at home and in school so we can be physical and get our bodies moving more. Here are some photos from some of the children in Piano Class being physical with their families.

A great second week with Helen from Walk the Bible, learning the next 8 stories in the Old Testament and exploring the book of Exodus, which mean exit! The children thoroughly enjoyed dressing up again to act out the stories and learn about God's 10 commandments.

We had a brilliant first class mass together. The children read confidently and showed great reverence in their responses. It was lovely to meet Fr Stephen for the first time, who is the new priest in charge at St. Mary's but it was sad to say goodbye and happy retirement to Fr Alf. He loved the card made by school, for him.

As part of a reward in our class, if you have read three times a week we have Cake and Shake Fridays. The children enjoyed milkshake and a cake after working hard on ensuring their reading was completed at home but their homework too!

At the end of our first week of maths, the children worked together to solve the puzzle where they had to convert numbers to Roman numerals and vice versa to piece the puzzle together. The children worked superbly together and applied their knowledge that they'd learnt with handling numbers in the 1000s. 

The children completed their first Active Mile of the year. They had to run around the loop near The Mount. The children showed great resilience - no one gave up, some completed two laps which meant they ran 1 mile in the 10 minutes they had. How far will they get next time?

We’ve had our first walk through the Bible session from BSYW where we are learning about the books and stories in the Old Testament. The children thoroughly enjoyed joining in and listening to the stories. 

Great efforts all round - even if the classroom did look a mess at the end!

The children worked incredibly hard to use what they'd learnt from their investigation and apply to their own unique product of an electrical doodler. They had great fun but had to be patient and show some resilience too!

We started out DT unit about electrical doodlers. The children began with recapping on what a circuits is, the components needed and how to link this with using a motor instead of a bulb.  We then investigated doodlers that were premade and had to test them and report back their findings of what worked and what didn't. This can then inform the next lesson where they will be designing and creating their own.

To begin our year together, the children drew a piano; we followed step by step to draw our own. The children showed great resilience and were so proud of their final piece.