Year 5 Weekly Blog 02.02.23- ‘ If January is the first month of change, then February is the month of lasting change’

As we approach the end of another half term, we also come to an end of our first month of the new year. Although it is our shortest half term of the school year, in Year 5 it is an significant one as the change of maturity becomes more visible while we enter the halfway mark of the year. Routines and expectations are fully settled in and the children understand the importance of the work.

In English, we are coming to the end of our sci-fi writing unit and we have began to plan for our own independent sci-fi novel. The children have been eager to do this as they can put their own spin on some already famous sci-fi novels and to apply their descriptive skills such as extended noun phrases, personification, relative clauses and similes.

In Maths, we have finished our topic of factors, multiples and primes and have began to introduce our multiplication topic- starting with multiplying by 10, 100 and 1000. Our focus for after half term will be to multiply larger numbers together that are not in our normal times tables such as ‘63 x 8’.

In Science, we have started our planets project by collecting research about all 8 planets in our solar system- including the moon and sun. We will then finish our project next week by adding decoration and making a fan fact file out of these.

In RHE, began to touch base with a continued topic of bullying. This is to retrieve on knowledge that we know and to prepare us for safer internet day- which is next Tuesday. The session focused on social dilemmas that discussed the difference between ‘bullying and banter’ and how the terms ‘rude’ and ‘mean’ are different.

In RE, we have been looking into some inspirational people within the catholic faith who live within the beatitudes and how their actions portray this. This week we looked a Father Damien who later became St Damien after he was beatified.

In Geography, we have looked deeper into some of the bigger countries of North America and found their capital cities. We used statistics to compare these cities based on population and land area.

Let’s Celebrate

  • Luke for being a reflective learner: Over the past two weeks, we have seen such a big shift in your attitude towards your learning and how you conduct yourself in the classroom. You have taken ownership over your learning by increasing your focus to give yourself the best chance to learn. Keep this up!

  • Liam for being a co-operative learner: This week I have seen you be very adaptive. You have worked alongside various people this week and yet your attitude and work ethic is just as high- no matter your learning partner. An excellent learning quality to have.

  • Virtue Butterflies- Our butterfly this week goes to Ruby for being so eloquent around the classroom. You have been going the extra mile in making sure the classroom is in the right condition and you are always helping to tidy the classroom even if it is not yours to clean.

    Lunchtime Certificates

    • Role Model of the Week- Layla

    • Marvelous Manners- Erin

Notices

  • World Book Day- This is fast approaching us and this will take place during the first week of March, giving us plenty of time to think about your costumes.

  • Enrichment Afternoon- Our third enrichment will be on Monday in which the children will be ballroom dancing with Mrs Harrison. If you would like to wear your PE kits on Monday then feel free.

  • Eco Trip-We will be on Tuesday 6th February. We will be going to the sand dunes to plant Christmas trees so the children will require old but warm clothes that they don’t mind getting muddy, including a coat and gloves. For those parents who have volunteered to come, we will be leaving at 9:15am.

  • Trip to St Bedes- We will be going to St Bedes on Wednesday 7th February. We are going to watch a performance of ‘The Lion King’. This will be in the afternoon and we will be back at school between 3:15-3:30. There is a £2 fee to cover the travel costs which is live on parent pay.

Year 1 Homework 2.2.24

Reading

Please keep reading as much as possible and please can you ensure that your child’s reading folder comes in to school every day. As we aim to listen to all children read to an adult at least once a week, change their books and quiz. We are aiming to develop fluency so keep reading little and often. Please can you sign in their reading record if you have read at home.It helps us when we are quzzing and changing books.


Spellings

It’s our big spelling test, these consists of all the words we have learnt so far:

a do I is to

has no so go by the

was she of he his

we full me some they you

Our spelling test is on Thursday 8th February.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond

This week....We're going on a dinosaur hunt...we're going to catch the big one!!!!

Such an eggciting week (sorry about the pun). Our dinosaur egg has finally hatched. Wait till you see what was inside it!

Worship-Forever Friends

This week we listened to a story about Freddy Teddy struggling to share at a picnic with his friends. We then children consider how to resolve conflict in friendships through saying sorry and asking for/receiving forgiveness. Children learnt that when we hurt others, we also hurt Jesus – but that Jesus teaches us how to forgive ourselves and others! Click on the button below for the slides.

Michelle’s blog

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's blog.

We have continued our exploration of all things dinosaur. Finally our dinosaur egg has hatched and we were amazed to watch as a triceratops was filmed in our nursery. Luckily, it was a herbivore so only eats plants. We saw evidence of this on our potted plant it where it has nibbled the leaves.

If you would like to experience having a AR dinosaur in your house I can recommend the app ARLOOPA.

Did you know that if you Google the name of a dinosaur you can see it in 3D?

We also enjoyed practicing our throwing skills in PE.

On Wednesday we made another volcano and watched a short film about volcanoes. We learnt there are volcanoes in parts of the world but none here. 

We continue to practice our counting skills as we had to count out the correct number of plates for the stegosaurus.

What a busy week!

Have a lovely weekend and we will see you all next week.

Michelle 

Emma’s Blog

Alert! Alert! Alert!
What a fantastic week we have had.

Dinosaur egg update... The children have been really good looking after the dinosaur egg in nursery, keeping it very safe. However, on Wednesday morning the children were very shocked to find that the egg was broken on the floor. Before nursery opened, Barbara and Michelle caught the dinosaur, and sent it back to the dinosaur zoo, but they managed to record a video to show the children. When the children saw the video, they couldn't believe their eyes as they watched a baby triceratops hatch from the egg, and saw it eating one of the plants in nursery. We were so lucky that Barbara found the egg. The children then each took a bit of the dinosaur egg shell to colour on and take home. What a exciting morning we had.

Justine has been adding some fantastic skin to our stegosaurus, and it even has a pair of eyes now. The children have been really looking after it and have been on some more dinosaur hunts, exploring all the areas of the garden to see if they can find any more eggs or dinosaurs.
The had their nets and explorer backpacks with pairs of binoculars, and although they didn't find any eggs or dinosaurs, they did find some friends who were pretending to be dinosaurs. They found it so funny being caught.

We have a new exciting area in nursery. Our café has now closed its doors for now, and a shoe shop has opened in its place. The children are so excited about this and are really looking after their shop. They like to take turns being a shoe shop person or a customer, but they especially like trying on all the shoes. The children's role playing in the shop is so nice to watch and listen too. If you have any adult shoes you no longer use and would like to donate to our 'shop' it would be much appreciated.

We have started to join in assembly on a Friday afternoon with the whole school. We have been learning a song that the school children sing in assembly called Shine Jesus Shine. The children are trying really hard to practice it so we can join in with the school. The children especially like singing the chorus of the song. Click on the button below to sing along at home!

The children have been very busy learning to write number 6 on paper, on tubes, or outside on the floor, and we have seen lots of fantastic 6's. Here is the saying used on the Numberblocks programme to help when you are practicing at home.
'Start with a curve, then round with a swish, that's the way to make a 6’.

Have a wonderful weekend. Only one week left before half-term. I wonder what fun we are going to be getting up to.


See you all next week.
Emma 

Here’s the video you have all been waiting for...don’t be to scared, it’s a herbivore!

Isn’t that amazing!!!

I think that is enough excitement for this week! Watch this space to see if another egg appears…and hatches!

Have a lovely weekend and I will see you on Monday.

Stay safe and God bless

Barbara

Year 5 Homework Due Thursday 8th February

Spellings

This weeks focus has been double letter words. The first 6 spellings are our new words from this week and the remaining 6 are previous words that we have learnt this year.

  1. immediately

  2. suggest

  3. marvellous

  4. necessary

  5. programme

  6. recommend

  7. accompany

  8. accommodate

  9. appreciate

  10. attached

  11. aggressive

  12. according

Reading

With only one week left until half term, the children should be aiming to finish their book so that they can get a new one for the half term- including a new target.

Science- daily interaction for the whole of February

Now the children have learnt the 8 phases of the moon, there homework will be to check each night which phase is currently in motion. This homework will begin on Thursday 1st February and the children will track this in their calendar. If you are going abroad somewhere in the southern hemisphere during half term, then make a note of this on your calendar and what the phase is in that country.

Year 6 Weekly Blog 2.02.23 - 'For never was there a story of more woe, than this of Juliet and her Romeo.'

I don’t think anybody can say that the Year 6 classroom is not a varied one! From performing Romeo and Juliet prologe to tackling fractions in Maths to composing our own ground base in music, we have certainly had a full and diverse week of learning.

Look at our work …

The children worked so hard on their Rosa Parks last week and as I took them home to mark, I could have burst with pride! Usually, I love to mark all over their work, highlighting the effective elements, celebrating their work and giving them areas of development. But this time, as I got my highlighters and green pen out, I found myself not wanting to mark their work it was so beautiful. So instead, I read thoroughly, and will be providing the children with whole class feedback next week. The children I know love doing this as it really gives them a sense of ownership of their progress. Here are our wonderful biographies …

Where has our learning taken us this week?

  • English - ‘Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo.’ 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. Next week, we will also be comparing the opening of the play via two films. One for 1968 and one from 1996. 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.

  • Maths - This week we are coming to the end of finding equivalent fractions, looking at how we use ur multiplication and division knoweldge to find these. Next week we will continue this and find the lowest form as well as start our long division work.

  • RE- We have looked at theLiturgy of the word and reflected on how Jesus is present through his words, looking closely at what messages he is trying to convey to us.

‘Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo.’ Drama is a brilliant way to bring text to life and we will be using drama throughout this entire unit. We have filmed and photographed the prologue to Romeo and Juliet. Please enjoy our film below.

Leading Learners

Well done to Tabby and Rosa this week.

Tabby you have shown over the last couple of weeks what a reflective learner you are – you listen to the teaching and strive to achieve the learning objectives. You have listened to feedback and worked your socks off to improve the presentation of your work and goodness me, your work has shone! It has been a pleasure picking up your book, as your work now reflects just what you are capable of. You know your strengths but also the areas you want to develop, which is a very mature skill to have and enables you learning to fly!

Rosa- you are heaven on a plate and we LOVE teaching you! You are such a bundle of energy and enthusiasm, where every lesson you give your all! You hang on to every word and are such an active learner! Thank you!

Eloquent and Truthful butterflies

This half term we will be on the lookout for all the children that are eloquent in their words, that show the language to ask questions, express emotions, speak beliefs, talk about matters of faith and hope, debate points of view, and engage in conversation. Those who are truthful, who speak the truth about themselves and others. These children are the role models of the school. This week we thank Owen for always being eloquent and truthful.

Lunch Time Awards …

Marvelous Manners awards … Owen

Role Model of the week … Besty

Helpers in the morning

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

Tabby Charlie Iris Edi

Notices

  • LEAVERS HOODIES - Over the past 10 years, the children in Year 6 have wanted to have a leavers hoodie to commemorate their time in school; they seem to have become a normal gift at the end of a child's primary school journey. Whenever, our children have had them, it hasn't been school that have organised them, but a group of parents who have taken on the job ready for when the children leave. I have reflected on this and have decided that we will now bring this in school and embrace the need. The children will be able to order their hoodie so that it will be delivered in time for their residential in May. It seems only fair that they can wear them whilst they have fun at Borwick Hall. Once I have a final design, timeframe and costing, we will issue a letter and you will be able to order and pay via Parent Pay. We hope that this takes some pressure off the need for parents to organise

  • 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

Year 6 Home Learning 2.02.24

Spelling

Spelling - this week our focus is on words with a silent ‘t’. There is a Purple Mash quiz set for you annd the flascards should you wish to use them.

Mrs Barker’s Group

large learn letter listen men mother

Reading

Some children have not quized since being back at school after Christmas- please make sure you are reading every night for at least 20 minutes!

Maths

Please complete the TWO practise Maths sheets- one is to consolidate our multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1000 and the other for long multiplication- we have found we need much more practise as we are forgetting the method!

ENGLISH (final week to complete)

On a piece of paper, or typed up, please could you write a biography on an inspirational person of your choice. Please remember all of the tools we need to include in a biography:

Year 3 Homework - Tuesday 30th January

English

In English we have started innovating and planning our own Iron Man stories. We have already created a new Iron character and a character to replace Hogarth. This week I would like the children to write a set of instructions to capture their new Iron character. It should include an equipment list, step by step instructions and a labelled diagram.

Geography

Your challenge is to consolidate your learning about Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. We are building on the skill of communicating geographically; everyone will have the oppourtunity to share their learning with the rest of the class. We will be listening out for key vocabulary (e.g. mantle, magma, eruption, volcano, lava, ash, gas, rocks) and understanding about what happened. You can present your learning however you choose e.g. in your homework book; on Purple Mash; a news report; a poster; as a 3d model etc. Be creative, but don’t forget the learning focus.

Below are some resources to support you, click on the pictures to open the document. Parents, this event was of course devastating and I’m aware that there are photos on the internet that the children may find unsettling. I kindly ask that you monitor their research. Thank you!

You have got until Thursday 8th February to complete this challenge.

Spellings

prefix - super
superhero superwoman superman superglue superstar supermarket superstore supersonic superhuman superpower

Your spelling quiz will be on Monday 5th February


Year 5 Weekly Blog 26.01.24-'Blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they will see God’

As we are coming to the halfway mark of Year 5, the children’s focus, reflection and attitude has really been visible this week in the expectations of upper juniors. We have been using various creative writing techniques in our sci-fi topic to create description such as extended noun phrases, modifying nouns/verbs and personification. In Maths, we have been looking at prime numbers in link to our factors topic and have recapped square numbers to link with our mulitples.

The wonderful Miss Neves came to us with another Art/DT competition- in which each year group was given a different inspirational artist. We had to create a piece of original artwork based on the ideas and techniques used by the set artist.

In RE, we have finished all eight of our beatitudes- the ways in which Jesus wants us to live- in which we reflected on these on how inspirational people in our lives live within these beatitudes. The children were then tasked with the job of creating their own beatitudes and how they want people to live in our world.

We have picked up our French topic again which has been all things space. This links perfectly with our science topic as children are going into the lesson with so much knowledge. We have recently been comparing planets using French adjectives and how to construct this within a French sentence.

In Science, our focus for this week has been the moon. We started the lesson with some commonly asked questions about the moon- in which the children collected research to find the answers. We then looked at the eight different phases of the moon and how these look and transfer from one to another.

In PE, we introduced dribbling to go along with our passing and controlling skills in Hockey- with a little bit of shooting practice to end the session. In gymnastics, we have reverted back to our balancing and transition sequences but with the addition of cannoning movements to go along with our unison sequence.

Let’s Celebrate

  • Rose for being a determined learner: Me and Mrs Mather have been so impressed with your determination in your maths lessons. Regardless of it not being your favourite subject, you get your head down and focus really hard on wanting to achieve each task and improve your skills.



  • Rafe for being a focused and creative learner: In every manner throughout the classroom, you are always setting the right example Rafe. I feel like I don’t praise you enough for this but it is simply because you portray this behaviour every single day. You also apply these positive choices into your learning by using the resources available to get the most out of your learning.



  • Virtue Butterflies: Our butterfly this week goes to Esther and Isaac for representing our school so well at the RSC storytelling event this week. Your eloquence towards your learning really helps with your creative writing and how you apply yourself towards all aspects of learning.

    Lunchtime Certificates

    • Role Model of the Week- Ruby

    • Marvelous Manners- Niamh

Notices

  • Eco-Trip 6th February- We will be going down to the sand dunes to plant Christmas trees with the Fylde Rangers. We are still needing one volunteer for our trip to come with us. This will take place in the morning and we will be walking down to the dunes. If you are available and interested, then please let me know via email- c.cornwell@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk

Year 1 Homework 26.1.24

I would like you to focus on reading and spellings this week, it makes a huge difference if you can read regularly at home. The children are becoming more confident recognising their sounds. You can watch the RWI videos that are in your child’s reading folders, email me if you need the QR codes again. This will help them consolidate their sounds and then they can apply their knowledge when they are reading, you can play games like can you find any words with the ‘ay’ sound in your book etc. This extra reading will help them become speedy readers.

Reading

Please keep reading as much as possible and please can you ensure that your child’s reading folder comes in to school every day. As we aim to listen to all children read to an adult at least once a week, change their books and quiz. We are aiming to develop fluency so keep reading little and often.


Spellings

It’s our big spelling test, these consists of all the words we have learnt so far:

a do I is to

has no so go by the

was she of he his

we full me some they you

As there are 22 spellings our test will be on Thursday 8th February this should give you enough time to practise.

Have a lovely weekend

Miss Drummond

This week.....

A blustery week! Some days we struggled to get outside in fear of blowing away!!

Nonetheless, our learning has known no bounds. In our quest to find out as much as we can about dinosaurs we even incorporated into our PE sessions! Mr. Nay has been so inspired that he bought a book all about dinosaurs and created new dinosaurs games to practice our Fundamental Movement Skills! Click here to find out more. On Wednesday we pretended to move like dinosaurs to the dinosaur song. Have a go at home….click here and enjoy!

Emma’s blog

Hello everyone, 

We have had a fantastic week of fun and brain growing.

We have met new number this week, 6.

We have been very excited as the 'Number Block' 6 has introduced us to a dice and we have been having fun exploring it. From subtising, to copying the numbers with the same amount of number blocks and pom poms, painting dots on the dice and even having a go a writing number 6. We have be so busy. Click here

We have also met some new letter sounds, e, r, h, l, and special friends 'sh'.

The children have really enjoyed meeting the sounds and working hard to learn them. 

We have been continuing to make tricky obstacle courses in the garden with different height obstacles with the children crawling through large hoops, lots of balancing and jumping. They are enjoying the challenge and are also strengthening their muscles, sensory processing and building confidence, and most of all, the children really enjoy doing it.

You may have noticed that the children have brought home a fantastic fossil that they have made. We have been waiting for them to harden before we could add some powder colour to them so the children can see the indentations, shapes and shadows of the fossil. They all look brilliant. 

To continue with our thread learning about dinosaurs, the children have been very busy with Justine, making a very large junk model stegosaurus, adding lots of different materials, boxes, and paint using different colours to give a textured skin effect. The children will continue to add more objects to their stegosaurus and I will keep you all updated on how it's coming along.

The children have also been looking at dinosaur pictures to work out how tall they are using number blocks, by building the blocks to the height of the dinosaur and then counting the number of blocks. It was a bit tricky but the children loved the challenge.

There will be more details to follow soon.

Have a great weekend everyone see you all on Monday.  

Emma.

Emma’s visit to the Museum

Donald Rodney art

We are so very excited to tell you that the school and nursery are going to be entering an art competition with other local schools. It is going to be held at the Heritage Centre in Lytham during February. The competition is about different artists, as the school has been looking at black history, we have decided to focus on The Black Art Group, which was an association of young black artists who were inspired by the black arts movement.

Our art work has been inspired by is by an artist named Donald Rodney. We have explored some of his art and noticed it was monochrome with black and white drips running down his pictures.

We decided to use our ‘feelings’ as a vehicle to create some Donald Rodney inspired art. Like Donald we only used black runny paint and each mark represented an emotion, for example, a wavy line means calm, a swirl; happy, two lines together; sad, a zig zag; scared and lots of dots meant we were excited. The art that the children have done is truly inspired. Each child was able to describe how they were feeling at that moment in time: a snap shot of emotion. Take a look and see if you can spot how we were feeling.

Michelle’s blog

Hello and welcome to this week's blog 

We have continued to explore our topic of dinosaurs and have been testing our knowledge with Andy's quiz on cbeebies. 

We have also explored where dinosaurs lived and gave made our own volcano, this enabled us to learn words such as lava and eruption. Here is how to make your own volcano at home Click here

We have been very busy learning some new letter sounds this week and have been keen listeners as we need d to work out if we had any of the new sounds in our names 

Recognising our names written down is an important skill to learn. Every day the children have to identify their bag by looking for their name tag. Sorry if it takes them a little longer at the end of the day for them to spot their name. Any practice you can give them at home would be fantastic.

We also met Number 6 this week and have been number detectives working out all the different ways to make number 6.

Hope you all have a good weekend and we will see you next week.

Michelle 

Meet our new sounds

Click here for ‘h’

Click here for ‘l’

Click here for ‘e’

Click here for ‘sh’ - special friends

Click here for ‘r’

See what you can find at home using these sounds. Good luck!

Hello Number 6

Click here to meet number six

Counting to 6. This episode give another opportunity to develop counting skills from 1-6. Watch out to see if your child uses one to one correspondence (match one number name to each object) and, know the number names in order.

Subitising Dice Patterns. The children experince reconising the spot patterns on the dice without counting. This is known as subitising. Being able to subitise small quantities has been shown to be a key skill in developing number sense.

Have fun with six.

Click on the button to make a dice at home

Worship - You’ve got a friend in me

This week we discussed friendship and the different qualities of a positive/negative relationships. We learnt to look to Jesus as a role model for being a good friend.

We have tried all week to be part of Team Jesus (one of our friends at nursery though of the name). We have been casting our net to be fishers of people to join our team.

As usual we have been working so very hard. Next week we will continue to challenge ourselves and to learn even more!

Have a lovely rest this weekend.

Stay safe and God Bless

Barbara

Year 5 Homework- Due Thursday 1st February

Spelling

This weeks focus are words ending in -ant, -ance and -ancy.

  1. distance

  2. defiant

  3. hesitancy

  4. assistant

  5. elegance

  6. vacancy

  7. tolerant

  8. relevance

  9. pregnancy

  10. observant

  11. buoyancy

  12. instant

English

We have been creating lots of desciption in our sci-fi writing by using various techniques such as;

  • Extended noun phrases

  • Modifying verbs and nouns

  • Personification (imagery)

  • Similes

The children are to complete a set of extended noun phrases by using the pictures to help them.

Science- daily interaction for the whole of February

Now the children have learnt the 8 phases of the moon, there homework will be to check each night which phase is currently in motion. This homework will begin on Thursday 1st February and the children will track this in their calendar. If you are going abroad somewhere in the southern hemisphere during half term, then make a note of this on your calendar and what the phase is in that country.