Year 5 Weekly Blog 13.02.25- ‘ The love that flows through your heart will purify your spirit’- St Valentine

What an end to our first half term of 2025. With our religious theme being the ‘Pilgrimage of Hope’, as a school, we went on our own pilgrimage to Church to celebrate this and to officially bring in the new year with Father Peter. To spread hope, love and kindness consistently throughout your life can be tricky and to live within all the beatitudes is even harder. Our focus this week in our RE lessons has been Pier Giorgio, known as ‘the boy of the beatitudes’, and evaluating his life into why he later became a saint.

This week, we also celebrated ‘Online Safety Day’. We were lucky enough to take part in BBC’s live lesson which included some interactive tasks along with some very important information. This years theme was ‘Too good to be true’ with us looking into how to spot potential scams online.

Our third enrichment session of the year took place with Year 5 grafting hard outside in a painting/gardening session with Mrs Hotchkiss and Mrs Mather.

This week we have also been learning…

  • English- Writing our independent sci-fi story based on the plot of E.T

  • Maths- using our mastery of number skills to apply these to bigger square number questions and recapping factors and primes.

  • Science- Putting our space knowledge to the test in an end of unit Kahoot quiz.

  • Music- Blending colours with music by listening to the instrumental versions of popular songs and associating these with particular colours.

Conversation starters

My Happy Mind: Now we have finished our ‘apricate’ module in My Happy Mind, is there anything or anyone who you are more grateful for now then 6 weeks ago?

Class Novel: Our class novel takes place in 1950’s Britain in which the children have started to realise that certain rules/laws were different back then. Are there any big rule/law changes that your parents or grandparents have lived through. If so, what do they think of these changes? Have they worked out for better or worse?

Notices

  • Homework- Please check the homework blog and keep helping your child with any work that they are struggling with- especially our spellings. It is important to make sure we are reading for at least 15 minutes a day at home to keep broadening our vocabulary, description and sentence structure.



  • Class Library- After a huge clear-out and revamp of our school library, we have started to rebuild our own class library in Year 5. Book series seem to be really popular and we have discussed some of the children’s favourites. If have any old series of books that you would recommend to read , then we would hugely appreciate any donations. Please ask your parents before bringing any books in to donate.



  • PE Days- Our PE days have changed slightly with our outdoor session being on Mondays and our indoor session on Wednesdays.



  • Fidget Toys- If this has not been discussed with your class teacher, then any sort of fidget toys are not to be brought into school. Please can bags be checked incase these have been left in from the weekend. Trading cards and chewing gum should also be kept at home.



  • Half Term- School will then reopen Tuesday 25th February.



  • Trip to Manchester Friday 28th February- This will take place during the first week after half term. Details regarding payment are live on parent pay. Children will in their normal school uniform and will have to be in school around 8:30am. Depending on traffic, we should be back at school between 3:30-4:00. A text will go out to parents as soon as we get back on the M55 when travelling back to school.



  • Trip to The Grand- During the next half term, we will be going to watch Year 4’s performance of their Shakespeare production at the Grand in Blackpool. We will be using public transport for this trip so the cost of the ticket has been uploaded to Parent Pay.



  • Lenten Boxes- Please check the homework blog in regards to lenten boxes for our Year 1 buddies.

Painting and Mixed Media- Portraits

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media and how we can incorporate this into self portraits.. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and how it can be used to create a piece of art. Through combining painting skills with pastels, crayons, photographs, lots of imagination and acetate, they have certainly enjoyed having fun with their images! Texture has played a huge part in developing our skills, enabling the children to bring their artistry to life and create a wonderful self portrait. Next half term, we will be moving on to Structures and bridge building.

Painting and Mixed Media - Paint My World

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media and all the different ways we can produce a work of art. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and all the tools we can use. From mud painting to collage, responding to music, there has never been a dull moment in art! Through exploration and discussion, the children are developing their skills certainly enjoyed having fun with their all of their pictures! Next half term, we will be moving on to Sculptures and 3D.

Painting and Mixed Media- Light and Dark.

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media in the form of Light and Dark. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and how it could be used to create a 3D effect in their art work. Through their Knowledge of Primary and Secondary colours, the children have been able to use tinting and shading to develop their skills further. We have looked at proportion and why it is so important and how to create a composition to which is aesthetically pleasing to the audience. We finished off with a collaborated still life composition, working in small groups to compile, then painted individually, where the children made their own informed choices as to which media or mixed media they would like to use. Next half term, we will be moving on to electrical systems.

Painting and Mixed Media-Artist Study

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media and how artists use an array of media to produce a finished piece. We have been looking at various artists from David Hockney to John Singer Sargent, studying their inspiration behind their work - there is a story to tell behind every piece of art. To deepen understanding, we have been reasoning why certain colours were used to add effect, shared our opinions on how they make us feel and justifying our reasoning. The children have recreated art works in response to their studies. Group work has aided in collaborative compositions which were photographed and then gone on to form the basis of their own artwork. As we continue this unit after the half term, we will share opinions on how they make us feel and why. They will then draw on the artists for inspiration to plan and compose their own piece using media of their choice.

Once completed, we will then move on to Electrical Systems - Steady Hand Game.

Painting and Mixed Media- Colour Splash!

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media and how we can incorporate this into our work.. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and how it can be used to create a piece of art. We have focused on the three Primary Colours and how they can be used to create Secondary colours. We have experimented in so many different ways as to how this is possible! We have learned that adding more of one colour, will determine the shade of secondary colour. We have looked at works by Jasper Johns and Clarice Cliff to inspire us to recreate their methods used, enabling the children to bring their artistry to life and create a wonderful piece of art. Next half term, we will be moving on to Sculpture and 3D and Craft and Design.

Painting and Mixed Media- Life in Colour

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media and how we see life in colour. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and how it can be used to create a piece of art. Through combining painting skills with pastels, crayons and collage to create textured pieces with in their work. Texture has played a huge part in developing our skills, enabling the children to bring their artistry to life. We finished off with a collaborated collage, working in pairs. Next half term, we will be moving on to sculpture.

Year 5 Half Term Homework- Due Thursday 27th February

Reading

All of the children have been set a target to either reach a certain page of their book or to complete their book over the half term. Let’s start the new half term off strong as we strive towards 12 million words!

Punctuation and Grammar

Each week, the children will complete 10 SPAG questions to keep on top of their reading and writing practice.

Maths

We have just started our new unit of factors, multiples and primes which is heavily times tables based. Make sure to keep practicing your times tables on TTRS- 5 minutes a day is all you need. Complete the following IXL’s

D6- Choose the multiples of a given number

F1- Multiply 2 digit numbers by 10 or 100

G1- Division facts for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10

Lenten Boxes

As we approach Easter, the time has come to get the arts and crafts out and to prepare a lenten box for your Year 1 partner. These will be exhcanged on Ash Wednesday which is March 5th.

Free play gives children an outlet to express their emotions and feelings and helps them develop a sense of who they are. = Joan Santer and Carol Griffith =

I cannot believe that I am writin, not only my third All Stars Blog, but our half way point of the school year! I cannot thank you, the children and staff for all the support you have given us since September. The club, is growing and growing, as we welcome new members. We have had Mr Nay and Mr Murrey join us this term, to provide physical activities. Not to mention, our youngest members of the Our Lady family Nursery, it has been an absolute joy to have them with us. They have joined in so well with the other children and settled in so quickly, it is as if they have been with us since September!The children are such a delight and it is wonderful to have those moments at the end of the school day to relax, wind down and “just be”. Breakfast club, with those chilly,early mornings and the smell of warmed pancakes and toast and a calmness for the start of a new day. We quite often have staff bobbing in to say good morning to the children, whichn is so lovely- we really are one big family.

We have had an action packed half term, starting off with Burns Night- I have to say, I was surprised how many children enjoyed the Haggis! Next came Chineses New Year, where we decorated snakes, had a selection of foods for the children to try. We have developed our Under the Sea display which is looking fabulous! But more importantly, the children can just be, relax and have that all important down time before and after a hard days work.

Painting and Mixed Media- Prehistoric Art.

And so we come to the end of another half term. I cannot believe we are half way through the school year! This half term, our focus has been on painting and mixed media in the form of Prehistoric Art. The children have had so much fun exploring what mixed media is and how it could be used to replicate a cave painting. Through combining painting skills with pastels, charcoal and the creation of their own homemade paint using spices, flour/water base along with lentils, rice and couscous to create textured pieces of art. The use of natural resources, has helped the children no end to understand how and why Prehistoric man created paintings. We finished off with a collaborated handprint cave wall using negative and positive prints working in small groups. Next half term, we will be moving on to craft and design.

Year 1 Tea Dance

Our Year 1 class will be performing at Marine Hall on Tuesday 11th March. We are super excited with what we have put together and cannot wait to share it with you. There are 10 schools who will be taking part. The children will be transported to and from Fleetwood by coach, but tickets are now live for you to book. Click on the button below to book your seats.

Tickets are allocated by Marine Hall and the Wyre and Fylde Sports Partnership - we have no control over those. Last year there was some families who were not successful in getting tickets and we put on a coffee morning tea dance in the school hall for all. We will do this again this year too.

Year 6 Weekly Blog 7.02.25 - 'For never was there a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.'

This week in our RE our focus has been on the liturgy of the word during mass and the significance of this on how Jesus is present through his words, looking closely at what messages he is trying to convey to us. We have deeply reflected on how, through the bible, God is speaking directly to us, telling us how much he loves us and how he wants us to live. This has fit beautifully with this week’s gospel we have read in class, which described how Simon Peter, James and John were compelled to follow Jesus after witnessing a miraculous catching of fish. During the Liturgy of the word, we too can reflect how we can become followers of Jesus and be fishers of mean, spreading God’s love.

I don’t think anybody can say that the Year 6 classroom is not a varied one! From performing Romeo and Juliet, writing footballer profiles in french to tackling long multiplication in Maths, we have certainly had a full and diverse week of learning. Older literature is our focus now, in particular Romeo and Juliet. This week we looked at three different interpretations of this play and we have mapped out the whole plot, summarizing each main event. I will be using the 1996 film occasionally throughout the teaching sequence. This film is a certificate 12, but I can assure you that all of the content that the children will be shown will be suitable and appropriate. Year 6 loved reading and analysing scene 1, collecting all of the Shakespearean insults, making up our own using collected nouns and adjectives and then using them in our drama later that day …

This week the children have attemped grammar and arithmetic SAT’s whole papers. The children have of course have attempted example questions since September, but this is the first time they have seen them as a whole paper. This is not a benchmark for their learning, and their score is not relevant at this time, as we have not yet covered the whole Year 6 curriculum. This was simply to give the children an insight as to what the papers look like, the style of questionning, to come across misconceptions sooner, rather than later, giving the children the time and space to reflect and evaluate in a safe space. They will be getting a bit of feedback on these next week, but please do not at this point focus on scores, instead please ask that important question … what did you learn? We have to teach the children to see beyond the immediate scores and instead see this as a process, a journey of self-reflection and learning.

Delving deeper through talk …

How is God present through the Liturgy of the word?

My Happy Mind…

What character strength are you most grateful for and why?

Leading Learners

Well done to Gabriella this week.

Gabriella- Gabriella, we are so proud of your resilience in Maths this week! You have come in to school each day, fighting to achieve your goals and we love your ‘I CAN’ attitude- keep it up!

Faithfilled and Hopeful Stars

This half term we will be on the lookout for all the children that show our two virtues of the half term in their actions. Children who show great faith in themselves, others and God. We will also be spotting children who are hopeful, who show hope for the future, enabling us to trust ourselves and those around us with the decisions that will shape our future. These children are the role models of the school. This week we thank Niamh for being faithfilled and hopeful.

Lunch Time Awards …

Marvelous Manners awards … Ben B

Role Model of the week … Faye

Helpers in the morning

This week we have the following children helping to take the younger children to their class:

Ben Niamh Isaac Elsie

Notices

  • Please do continue to keep up to date with your child’s homework (particularly spelling). The vocabulary that the children are being asked to spell are getting more complex and they will need your support to figure out the best strategy to use. Learning them over time, rather than bulking them the night before, always seems like the best route to use.

Have a happy weekend.

Mrs Harrison, Mrs Webster and Mrs Barker