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St Mary's Catholic Primary School

Working Together for the Good of Each Other

The Cove

Welcome to The Cove

New this year is...The Cove. This space used to be our school library but now we have developed the opportunity for reading in our learning zones in KS1 and KS2, plus our reading areas in the classrooms. Therefore, we have created a space where small groups of children, with Mrs Sewell, will be working, supporting the teaching and learning.  Then, in the afternoons Mrs Sewell gets to teach the Year 4s for the foundation subjects - PSHE, History, Geography, Art, DT, RE etc.

A picture paints a thousand words.

Check out some of the learning...

Celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee

To celebrate the Queen's jubilee, the children in Year 4 discussed what this event meant, watched some of the Queen's coronation and created poster to share and celebrate facts about our Queen. The children then had individual crowns to paint, decorate and take home with them.

Year 4s Egyptian Work

Here is a selection of some of the work the Year 4s have completed this half term on their history topic of the Ancient Egyptians where we have looked at: the importance of the River Nile, how the Egyptians wrote, the discovery of Tutankhamun, researching topics such as food and drink, clothing, religion etc and the process of mummification.

Carnival Float Preparations

On the 18th June, we see St. Mary's join in with Fleetwood Carnival, after 2 years of it not being on, and we can't wait. Some of the Year 4 children kindly helped out, contributing to some of the preparations.

PSHE - Valuing Difference

As part of our lesson in PSHE on 'Valuing Difference', we discussed how we have similarities and differences with those we share our world with. Differences including culture, religion, who we live with and abilities. After we compared different types of children: name, age, pets, religion, hobbies and favourite subject, we watched a clip from BGT from a Golden Buzzer act called Born to Perform and then shared similarities and differences between the children with disabilities in this group and ourselves. We finished our lesson with defining the term respect, linked it to our work on valuing people's differences and how we can show respect.

Egyptian Research

During this half term, Year 4 having been learning about Ancient Egypt. We have learnt about the importance the River Nile had on the Egyptians, Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the Egyptian alphabet and researched specific areas of their life using books and the internet to help us learn about religion, their homes, food and drink, clothing, jewellery etc.

Yoana leaves St.Mary's

Yoana had a little gathering with Year 4 to say goodbye as she moves back to Bulgaria. After 4 years of being at St. Mary's, Yoana is leaving so we enjoyed some music, juice and cake together. We wish her lots of luck as her and her family move to Bulgaria and she will start school there too for the first time.

Emmanuel Church visit

Year 4 were invited back to Emmanuel Church for an Easter workshop. The children had a great time recapping the Easter story, working in a  team to protect an egg from a fall, discuss the meaning of Good Friday and the resurrection, as well as making their own Easter garden with a tomb out of biscuits. The children thoroughly enjoyed getting to it eat it afterwards!

Easter Egg Raffle

A great St. Mary's tradition is back - our Easter Egg raffle. The children could buy tickets to enter the raffle and win an egg of their choice. All the money raised will be going towards helping the Ukrainian families in needed.

Theatre trip - Gangsta Granny

To finish the Spring Term, Years 3, 4 and 5 visited the Grand Theatre to watch Gangsta Granny; we had a great time!

Jelly Bean Prayer

During Lent, Year 4 gave up dojo points and took on the Jelly Bean Prayer. Each colour in the prayer represented an action from Jesus so we linked this with our work ethic and behaviours in school - listening, being respectful, helping others with their work, showing improvement, having their name mentioned positively by another adult or peers. The children had their own jar to fill from Mrs Sewell's. As a well done, the children received their own pack of M&Ms with the Easter M&M prayer (we use another M&M prayer sometimes in our worship). 

Stations of the Cross

On Wednesday 30th March, we created our own Stations of the Cross in the hall to help us retell the events of Jesus' death on Good Friday. The children had the opportunity to respond, pray and reflect. 

Healthy Heads - character

The children discussed their character in today’s final healthy Heads’ session. At first, we began with what character means and what are good and negative characteristics. The children drew themselves and wrote 6 positive characteristics they have. Outside, the children played different games where if they were out, they had to say something positive about themselves and if they got someone out, they had to say something positive about the person they caught out.

Computing - Animation continued

As part of Year 4s work on animation, we looked at the work of Nick Park who created Wallace and Gromit using stop motion. The children used their skills on the onion skinning tool, sound and background to create their own stop motion animation.

Healthy Heads - Teamwork

The class worked on teamwork, what it means and what makes a good team mate. In the classroom, they were set a task to get into height order in silence using other methods of communication (they managed this with ease) and then to get into age order (they found slightly more difficult to communicate). Outside they played a game of space invaders, where 1 person in the middle of the group (space ship) was the commander, they had to manoeuvre the group around the playground to find a dodge ball that they then used to eliminate commanders in the other teams. When their commander was eliminated, they had to make their way back to the space station (area of the playground) and change commanders. The game rules were then changed up so the eliminated commander had to join the other team. The team with the most people at the end won.

Computing - Animation

We have begun our animation unit this week! We began by discussing animations, where we see it, the skills needed and how it can be on paper and using computing software. The children first of all used some 'post its' to create their own mini flip book with a 'moving' object and then used 2Animate to create an animation of a changing face.

What happened on Holy Thursday?

As part of our work on Holy Week, we studied the events of Holy Thursday - Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane and Peter's denials. The children rewrote the story in their own words from what they understood and remembered in detail.

Healthy Heads - Honesty

The session began with discussing what honesty is. The children worked together to discuss a scenario of someone being dishonest and how it makes another person feels. The class discussed that it’s not just about telling lies but its how we behave in situations. Outside, the children played a game where they had to be honest in following the rules and be honest if the ball went through their legs.

Jesus is truly human and truly God

The children worked together to use a Bible, following a Bible reference, in our RE lesson to find evidence from specific stories that Jesus is truly human, but that he is also truly God.

Artist in Residence - session 4

We had our last session with Henry today (9.3.22), the children had the opportunity to use Henry's pinhole camera and work in his studio to develop the photographs they were in using a dark room and chemicals. The children had to stay still for 4 minutes, each time to help the photo be clear - this was tricky!

Healthy Heads - Respect

The session began with a class discussion about respect – how it shown, how it makes us feel. The children wrote down a list of people who have shown them respect. The children then took their respect into a game of dodgeball where they needed to work as a team. The demonstrated respect to each other and protected each other from being hit.

World Book Day 2022

Year 4 loved dressing up for World Book Day. We got to have our WBD parade back after two years; the children got to go up on stage and show the rest of the school their costume.

Artist in Residence - session 3

In our third session with Henry we discussed the weather, how it was predicted in the past and how it is now. We researched the weather for the afternoon and then walked to The Mount to use digital cameras to take pictures of the surrounding area, which demonstrated the weather.

Artist in Residence - session 2

In our second session with Henry, we recapped on how an old-fashioned camera would take and develop a photo. We then visited The Mount and collected leaves from different plants that will be printed on to fabric to make our own class flag for The Mount. When we got back we talked about the importance of flags and how they can help and keep people at sea safe. We looked at the maritime signal flags and created our own name with the flags to represent each letter.

Ash Wednesday Mass

On Wednesday 2nd March, as a school, we went to church and participated in Ash Wednesday Mass to celebrate the start of the season of Lent. We all received Ashes on our forehead and celebrated Mass together. We reflected on how we make a Lenten promise and prayed to God to help us in the next 40 days as we prepare for Easter.

Healthy Heads - Resilience

The children discussed resilience – How can we show resilience? Can you give any examples of when you have been resilience? Outside, the children ran outside the lines on the outside edge of the playground and the coaches would catch the children out by tagging them, freezing on the spot and other children couldn’t over take so to had to find another way to avoid the coaches. This made the children think – do I give up and allow myself to be caught or can I find another way and keep going?

The Rule of Law

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.

Emmanuel Church - Lenten visit

The children in Year 4 had the opportunity to visit Emmanuel Church to participate in activities linked with Lent - what is it, how we prepare and why its important. The children played games flipping pancakes, learnt the history of Shrove Tuesday, ate some pancakes with a topping of their choice and wrote their own Lenten Promise.

Spreadsheets - maths game and line graphs

We have completed another two computing lessons on spreadsheets by looking at different features on a spreadsheet with a timer, random generator and strolling option so we could then complete the maths game. We then moved onto entering data into a table; we then used the bar chart option and it was put onto a line graph. We then edited the title and x and y axis labels to match the data presented.

Spreadsheets - formatting cells

Year 4 have begun their work on spreadsheets by discussing when they are used and why. We recapped on how to copy, cut and paste and how this can be used on a spreadsheets. As a class, we used a spreadsheet on spelling scores and learnt how to format cells to percentages and use Formula Wizard to calculate the answer.

LEGO creative builders workshop

What a great, creative, fun afternoon we had! Linking to our Science day, the children joined a creative building workshop all filled with Lego - 10,000 pieces of Lego! The children had to make their own building that would need light, then build the surrounding areas, then join their building together and create roads for their buildings to be on. The children then connected their house, with the bulb, to a battery to light it up as it sat 'on the street' they'd created with their peers.

Children's Mental Health Week

To raise the children's awareness of Children's Mental Health week this week, Year 4 discussed what does mental health means and how it is different to having mental health problems, we thought about how people's mental health isn't always negative but if/when it is what activities we can do help: take a bath, go for a walk, speak out, colouring, cooking and many more were suggested. We also watched the Place2Be charity's assembly online and completed one of the activities they suggested. The children drew a hot air balloon picture where they wrote down the names of people that 'life them up' and support them to grow and develop emotionally.

Artist in Residence - session 1 - photography

In our first of four sessions, with Henry an artist photographer. During our first session today, we discussed the history of The Mount, how the eye can see and how this impacted on the invention of the first camera. The children made their own ‘camera’ to see how the pinhole at the back showed the image inside upside down.

Explosive Foods

To mark British Science Week, the children were treated to an assembly with a difference today. The theme was ‘Explosive Food’ and it really did help the children to see food in a new light. The children learnt about the incredible amount of energy contained in the food that goes in their mouth and the show was packed with exciting chemistry and physics demonstrations to illustrate this. It was a thrilling and informative watch. There’ll be plenty more Science based activities happening throughout the week across school so watch this space for more details.

Symmetrical drawing of the Taj Mahal

As part of our work on famous building we studied the Taj Mahal. Its history, purpose and design. The children completed their own symmetrical drawing step by step using tracing paper.

Child-led Prayer and Liturgy

Hristiana, Ruby and Yoana led worship on their chosen theme 'Good News'. The girls gathered everyone with the song 'Where is the Love?', lit the candle and made the sign of the cross. They told the story of the fishermen being called to be disciples, they asked the children to share good news they have and finished with saying a prayer.

Area and Perimeter - who can solve the jigsaw?

Mrs Sewell's Year 6 Maths group finished their work on area and perimeter of shapes by solving and matching questions to their answers to create and complete the puzzle.

Child-led Prayer and Liturgy

Well done to Jessica who was the first person in Year 4 to plan and deliver her own worship session. She chose her theme of 'Peace and Nature' and chose the Creation Story and focused on forgiveness after the actions of Adam and Eve. The children had to reflect on what they'd ask God to forgive them for and why they want God's forgiveness. Jessica wrote her own prayer and chose someone to read it. 

Our European Neighbours - how do we identify a country?

We began our lesson discussing different ways countries can be identified - government, royal family, flag, language and currency. We had a selection of flags and names of countries; we matched the flag to its country. Next, we used ipads to research missing facts about European countries.

Our Sponsored Walk for Isabelle

On Thursday 27th January, 18 children from Year 4-6 participated in a sponsored walk to raise money for Isabelle, a local girl who needs to go to America for Cancer treatment. The children completed a 3 mile walk on the promenade in Fleetwood, with a stop off at the Beach Park before heading back to school. We are looking forward to seeing how much we have raised.

Puzzle Time with Roman Numerals

In one of our Maths lessons this week, we solved a tri-jigsaw, converting numbers into Roman Numerals and vice versa, even numbers over 1000! The children worked really well together following the patterns we'd discussed.

Testing our brains with Picasso's artwork

The children have tested their brains! Using a drawing by Picasso, turned upside down, the children had to draw what they could see. The left-hand side of our brain finds it difficult to recognise what the image is and makes us want to turn the drawing around the right way. If they were to copy it right way up, the children would not observe every detail and would rely on what they know. This way they can focus on the lines and shapes. At the end, they could reveal the picture, the right way around and turn theirs to see the results. This exercise made them concentrate on what they could actually see.

 

Check out some of the children's artwork, including the original to compare them too. 

Who is Sir Christopher Wren?

Here is some art work from Year 4 on our topic about 'Famous Buildings'. The children drew aspects of St. Paul's Cathedral after learning about Sir Christophe