Year 6 Weekly Blog- 'Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day'

As we move towards the third week of advent, it seems unbelievable that we have nearly completed our first full term together in Year 6. As I reflect on how much the children have grown, learnt and enjoyed every experience in Year 6, it seems only fitting that the third candle of advent represents JOY. It reflects the joy that comes through Jesus’ arrival, and through the salvation he has gifted us and as we continue to approach Christmas Day, our joy grows more and more.

This week we have had a wonderful week of learning and practice for our Chrsitmas concert next week. The children are speaking out beautifully in church and singing their hearts out- we can’t wait for you to see it.

This week we have looked at two biographies in English- Walt Disney and Usain Bolt. We have collected biographical language, looked up any unfamiliar words and looked at the importance of using choronogy. In computing we have been coding, looking at and planning a game with a timer and score- such good fun problem solving. We have most defintiely been working on our debugging skills, trying to problem solve when things do not run as expected …

We had an extremely fun afternoon during our enrichment with Mr Cornwell- we did a teams game tournament with four different activities, such as ‘finger tip hoola-hoop, the human knot, bench ball and a general knowledge quiz! Points were awarded for each activity, with bonus points going towards teamwork- Mr Cornwell was very impressed with them!

Leading Learners

Well done to Millie and Charlie this week.

Millie, Wow your work this week has been outstanding. You always work so hard but this week you have thrived from the opportunity to work independently and creatively in your RE work. We have loved your maturity and focus, making notes whilst gathering content. Your work has shown such depth and all with a touch of artistic flair!

We love teaching you Charlie, you are so enthusiastic, and focused on your learning in every lesson and all with a huge smile on your face! Your thirst for learning and desire to learn as much as you can is contagious. You seem to possess all the necessary characteristics that help you best learn- we could give you the certificate every week! Thank you Charlie!

Helpers in the mornings:

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

Owen Evan Leon Jay

Notices

Please could you make sure children have a warm coat and hat each day to keep warm.

We have decided as a school not to send individual Christmas cards to each other. Children can if they wish, write one card for the whole class.

Our Christmas performance is in church on Monday 18th December at 2pm and 6pm, for their last ever Christmas Concert at Our Lady’s. Children will be collected from school (not church) at the usual time of 3:20pm and in the evening they will need to be at church for 5:45pm - in full school uniform please- no PE kits this day.

We close for Christmas at 2pm on Thursday 21st December

Tuesday 19th December Key Stage 2 Christmas party. Children can come to school in party clothes and sensible shoes. They can bring a small snack such as chocolate or a packet of crisps. The Christmas film they choose may be a PG, but we will make sure it is appropriate. If this is not something you give consent too, please give me a quick email and we will stick to U ratings.

Have a lovely weekend all of you,

Mrs Harrison, Mrs Webster and Mrs Barker

Year 6 Home Learning 15.12.23

Spelling

This week our focus is on the PREFIXES ‘sub’ and ‘mis’. Both of these prefixes are from Latin origins- can you tell us next week what the meaning of these prefixes are? How does that help you understand unfamiliar words? Next week we will be asking each of you for three words with each of these prefixes.

Please complete the IXL strands U3 and U4.

Your quiz will be picked from random on words with these prefixes so just do your best!

Library books …

On Monday I will be asking you if there are any books for series that you would like to see in our school library- have a think over the weekend what books you want and we will try to get them!

Maths

Please complete the IXL strands on comparing numbers.

A 11 Put numbers in order: up to one million

A 12 Put numbers in order: up to ten million

ENGLISH

It is all about Walt Disney next week. This weekend could you watch a NEW Disney film that you haven’t seen before or even one you have already watched!

OPTIONAL : If you want to write want to write a film review of this and add it to our working wall then please do!

Christmas songs.

Keep practicing the songs for your Christmas Concert and your words- make sure you are speaking them slowly, clearly and loudly enough.

Year 4 homework to be completed by Monday 20th December

This week, all we would like you to do is practice ALL Christmas songs for our performance on Monday. Here are the links below

Year 3 Homework - Tuesday 12th December

History - Ongoing homework challenge due by Thursday 18th December

In History we have been learning all about the Stone Age to the Iron Age. To consolidate and celebrate your learning, I would like you to create, write or draw something you have learned. Here are some ideas…be creative!

• Make your very own model of a Stone Age home (inspired by Skara Brae)

• Make an Iron Age Hill Fort (we are learning about this next week)

• Create a poster about the impact of farming

• Film a news report about an archaeological excavation

We will share our creations on the last day of school, so make sure they are in school by then.

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Christmas Songs to practise at home

part 3 christmas songs from Our Lady Star of the Sea on Vimeo.

Spellings

Homophones
no know where wear meet meat grate great bear bare

Your spelling quiz will be on Monday 18th December

Challenge Can you pick the correct homophone in your book to complete the sentences? How many homophone pairs do you know?

This week...a Christmas Special

Well what can I say, such a special week. I am sure that you will agree the Foundation Nativity was a triumph! I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

The children have all worked so very hard learning lines and remembering songs and their actions (it was tricky for the nursery ladies too!). For such young children to have the confidence to perform to a packed audience is truly amazing.

This week we are dedicating the blog to a celebration of the birth of Christ. During December it is easy to get lost in festivities and lose the true meaning of Christmas, Enjoy looking at the photos and maybe take five minutes to pause and give thanks for the love, hope and joy found in Jesus.

Next week your child’s key person will be emailing any additional Nativity photos that we may have...keep a look out!

Travelling Nativity

The children have really enjoyed taking the Travelling Nativity home. Don’t panic everyone will get a turn. It is so lovely that we are able to take this journey together.

Christmas Bake Off

A big thank you to everyone for your fabulous cakes and biscuits! Prue and Paul would be proud. We enjoyed tasting them all!

Christmas Party

Wednesday 20th of December will be KS1 and Foundation Christmas party. All the children are invited to join in the fun but if it is not you childs usual session can you please bring them at 9.15 am and collect them at 11.45 am.

Please do not bring any snack this morning as we will be having a birthday cake to celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday! The children have requested a chocolate cake with chocolate icing abd Smarties on the top!! Mmmmmm sounds yummy!

Party clothes and dancing shoes please!

School Admissions September 2024

We still have some families that have not yet applied for a school for September 2024, or, returned their supplementary forms etc to school.

It is very important that you apply for school online before January 15th 2024 (www.lancashire.gov.uk/schools or call 01524 581148). You will need to bring to the school office your supplementary form signed by your Parish priest, along with a copy of your childs baptism certificate a.s.a.p. Please don’t leave it too late, time is running out!

Click on the button to access the Supplementary form

After such a hectic week it just remains for me to say…have a good rest this weekend and we will see everyone on Monday.

God Bless

Barbara

Year 1 Homework 8.12.23

LEARNING THE SONGS

We are practising these songs regularly in school but it would really help if you can practise them at home too, we have been learning some actions see if they can remember them. The songs are easy to remember and very catchy - I hope you enjoy singing along too! The Lyrics are attached too so you can practise together.

Reading

We understand in the run up to Christmas it is very busy but if you can please read as much as possible at home. Books should have been changed today, due to the cake sale and our nativity practise a few may have been missed so I do apologise if yours has not. I will check all the books on Monday

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Purple Mash Ongoing

Please continue to practise logging on and off Purple Mash.

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Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond

Year 5 Weekly Blog 8.12.23- ' The true spirit of Christmas lies within your heart'

As we complete our first full week of December, the Christmas spirits have well and truly been present throughout school. On Tuesday morning, the story of our nativity began with our youngest children- who portrayed the story so beautifully. This story will then continue to travel with KS1 next week and then KS2 in Church. Speaking of which, our preparations for our Christmas concert have gone up a notch- with us having our first practice session in church this week.

We finished our week with the much anticipated ‘Our Lady’s Bake Off’. Families across the school have put their baking skills to the test to create some festive bakes. The children were so proud to show off their hard working creations and loved the judging element of the competition (us teachers certainly did). We combined this with a belated Christmas jumper day just to make the day even more festive and exciting for all of the children.

We have used our hetic schedule this week to squeeze in lots of our geography unit of rivers. The children love a no book lesson so we got practical with some chalk to plot the course of a river by separating it into its three courses. We have also been looking at how a waterfall is formed and researching some of the most known waterfalls in the UK/world.

In Maths, the children have been continuing with their angles topic with Mrs Gregan whilst also practicing lots of retrieval with our multiplication and division. This will pay off in abundance after Christmas when we start our multiplication and division topic.

In English, we have come to the end of our legends topic as the children have finished re-writing their own version of the ‘Legend of Gelert’. I have been blown away by the children’s creative thinking and description and how they have put this together as a full story.

Let’s Celebrate

• Arthur for being a reflective learner: This half term you have really taken control over your decision making. You understand when you have made a wrong choice and you have really reflected on how to make the right choices. The shift in your behaviour has been amazing to see. Keep this up!

• Esther for being a creative learner: Your creative thinking and your story writing has really blown me away this half term. This is been seen particularly this week when writing our own legends stories and the description you create through your writing has been amazing.

• Benjamin for being a hopeful and faith-filled learner: You have been a really considerable and careful learning partner this week. To show such patience and care to help your partner is a real sign of maturity and growing up. This was delightful for us teachers to see.

Notices

• Cold Weather- We will be taking regular trips to church to practice our concert so can all children have appropriate clothing such as a big coat, hat and gloves.

• Christmas Concert- Will take place on Monday 18th December. This will take place at church and the children will be performing the concert twice (2pm and 6pm).

• End of Term- School will close for Christmas on Thursday 21st December at 2pm.

• Christmas Dinner- This will be the options for school dinners on Wednesday 20th December. There will be a vegetarian Christmas dinner option for choice 2.

Year 5 Homework- Due Thursday 14th December

Spellings

1. silence

2. absence

3. magnificence

4. intelligence

5. obedience

6. dependence

7. innocence

8. patience

9. confidence

10. evidence

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Christmas Concert Practice- PRIORITY

With only two whole group practice sessions left, it it vital that we are practicing our songs for the KS2 Christmas concert. Here are the videos from our previous practice sessions. Some children have lost their lyric sheets so I have uploaded the lyrics for all of our songs down below.

Year 4 Weekly blog 8th December 2023 "Life is what you bake of it!"

What a beautiful week it has been in Year 4! This week, children have really blown me away with their enthusiasm for their writing! They have written a part of their story based on ‘The Pied Piper’ each day and what they have produced is wonderful! Here are a few snippets! Everyone is trying so hard to use all the new skills acquired.

In RE this week, children have been learning about the true meaning of Christmas, about our Saviour who is three-in-one. They have asked some really profound questions! They created a persuasive poster to show why Christmas is so special.

Today, the children earned a Christmas crafts morning, where they also used their coding skills to create some super programs - and of course we had our amazing Bake Off. WOW! What a super effort - thank you all so much. Here are some pictures of our Christmas fun at the gingham altar!

In other news, we have started with our Christmas Concert rehearsals - and they are going well. Please continue to practise those songs at home.

Let’s Celebrate!

This week, we have two Kiki Chameleon certificates. One goes to Hugo who got better every day on his story and used his creativity to super effect. The other goes to Finley who listened to every bit of advice and put his creative spin on it to super effect too! Well done boys

Faith-Filled and Hopeful butterflies

This half term, our virtues are ‘Faith-filled and hopeful.’ This week our butterfly is Tommy for showing acts of kindness.

Reading targets

Well done to Amelia, Poppy, John-Paul, Teddy, Ciaran, Tilly, Beth and William who have met their reading target already this half term!!

Other stars!

Swimming stars: Sean, Matilda and Toby. Well done!

Music stars: Hugo and Ciaran

Notices

Swimming - no swimming now until after Christmas

Two more church rehearsals next week on Wednesday and Thursday. Please ensure children have coats, a good reading book and water bottle

Key Stage 2 Nativity Monday 18th December 2pm and 6pm in Our Lady Star of the Sea church

We break up on Thursday 21st December at 2:00pm

Have a lovely Christmassy weekend,

Mrs Lyons, Miss Hennessey, Mrs Carter and Mrs Grey

Year 6 Weekly Blog - 'During this Advent season, I will keep alert and awake, listening for you.'

The second candle of advent represents faith. It is called the “Bethlehem Candle” as a reminder of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, and this week I feel we have well and truly started our nativity journey. On Monday, we were blessed to watch our youngest children perform on stage so beautifully- telling the story through song and movement, reminding us of the true meaning of Christmas. Then on Wednesday, the whole of Key Stage 2 ventured down to church to begin our concert rehearsal. As I sat there listening to the children sing their hearts out and say their lines with such confidence, I could not help but smile. Thank you to those that have practized their songs and words so well! Next week, we will be doing our final practises on Wednesday and Thursday, so please can we make sure children know their words by then.

Where has our learning taken us this week?

We have had a lovely week in class. Full of hard work, enthusiasm, laughs - Now that we have completed all the work on our class novel, we can now just sit back, listen and enjoy hearing how the story unfolds- it has been very dramatic! A few gasps were heard in the classroom, as we are learning just what an evil character Vindictus Sharpe really is! We have started our Biography topic this week. We have thought about why people would want to read biography and looked in to the meaning of the words, auto, bio and graph. We have also started to look in to Walt Disney, in preparation for his biography next week, where we will be gathering information. In Maths, we have been looking closely at numbers up to 10,000, finding the mid-point and making representatives. During our RE the children have loved researching the life of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, focusing on how these individuals fought for Justice.

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Our Lady’s Bake Off Special…

There has been a lovely smell of cake filling the air of Year 6 today, it has been extremely hard to concentate on anything else! We have come in our finest of Chrsitmas jumpers and many of us brought cakes of all different shapes and sizes- wow! Mrs Barker and Mrs Webster have been in their element tasting these wonderful creations and I know the children have enjoyed voting for the most aesthetic. It has been very difficult to pick, however well done to Millie for your beautiful brownies in the shape of Christmas trees with candy canes.

You can see below just how wonderful these cakes were and how much we have enjoyed ourselves …

Leading Learners

Well done to Max and Emilia this week.

Max you have such enthusiasm and a thirst for learning, it is contagious! I love the way you ask such curious questions to deepen your learning and do what you can to search for the answers! Keep enjoying your learning and asking questions, it is how we learn best!

Emilia, what a brave learner you have been this week. You felt nervous about your club, spoke up and then planned an amazing art lesson with the help of your friends! We love how when you felt nervous, you didn’t give up - you problem solved, showed true resilience and such bravery! What a testament to your character Emilia!

Helpers in the mornings:

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

Tabby Iris Connor Nicola

Notices

We are out and about a lot next week, doing various rehearsals in church. Please could you make sure children have a warm coat and hat each day to keep warm.

We have decided as a school not to send individual Christmas cards to each other. Children can if they wish, write one card for the whole class.

Our Christmas performance is in church on Monday 18th December at 2pm and 6pm, for their last ever Christmas Concert at Our Lady’s. Children will need to be at church for 5:45pm in the evening - in full school uniform please- no PE kits this day.

We close for Chrsitmas at 2pm on Thursday 21st December

Tuesday 19th December Key Stage 2 Christmas party. Children can come to school in party clothes and sensible shoes. They can bring a non-fizzy drink and a small snack such as chocolate or a packet of crisps.

Have a lovely weekend all of you,

Mrs Harrison, Mrs Webster and Mrs Barker

Year 6 Weekly Home Learning 8.12.23

SPELLING:Another week of CONSOLIDATING the spellings that we have previosuly learnt. This should be easier and give you another chance of getting any incorrect ones another try! We will only quiz you on 10 random ones from this list. Once you have practised there is also a Purple Mash quiz set for you to test yourself at home. I have also set a 2Do on Purple Mash, where you will find some downlaodable flash cards, that may help you if you want to print them off:

Mrs Barker’s Spelling Group

work year again air animal another

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MATHS:

Complete the following IXL strands:

A7 Writing numbers up to ten million in words: convert words to digits

A8 Writing numbers up to ten million in words: convert digits to words

Science

Please complete the ‘Animal Habitats Adaptations’ quiz on Purple Mash.

It’s that time of year again …

URGENT- Please continue to practise and know your lines off by heart. Remember to ensure your speak clearly, loudly and with expression.

Also, please practise and learn this final song for our Chrsitmas Concert…

Year 4 homework to be completed by Thursday 14th December

 Christmas songs for KS2 Christmas performance Part 3

This is the link to Little Drummer boy which we are doing without music in church. Please sing along to it and learn the tune, timings and lyrics.

Maths

This week, we have concentrated on learning and understanding square numbers.

Please put your Multiplication square given, on the wall in your bedroom or kitchen to practice and refer to this year.

Look at it with an adult. Can you spot the square numbers? Why are they called square numbers?

Now complete IXL YEAR5 maths unit K10 about Square numbers.

Year 3 Homework - Tuesday 5th December

Science

In science this week we have learnt all about our digestive system and the journey our food goes on when we eat. Have a look at the bbc bitesize website here and see if you can match th pictures and information in your homework books

History - Ongoing homework challenge due by Thursday 18th December

In History we have been learning all about the Stone Age to the Iron Age. To consolidate and celebrate your learning, I would like you to create, write or draw something you have learned. Here are some ideas…be creative!

• Make your very own model of a Stone Age home (inspired by Skara Brae)

• Make an Iron Age Hill Fort (we are learning about this next week)

• Create a poster about the impact of farming

• Film a news report about an archaeological excavation

We will share our creations on the last day of school, so make sure they are in school by then.

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Christmas Songs to practise at home

part 3 christmas songs from Our Lady Star of the Sea on Vimeo.

Spellings

Silent letters
lamb length sword island should answer February salmon business strength

Your spelling quiz will be on Monday 11th December