St Adrian's Catholic Primary School
To learn, to love, to live
We’re awash with Roman artefacts as Year 4 have learnt more about life for people in Roman Britain.
As well as an impressive array of weaponry, the children have created replicas of everyday items such a cutlery, earthenware and coins. We also have some beautiful mosaics along with brilliant recreations of a Roman hypocaust and baths.
Great learning, Year 4! (And a big thank you to mums and dads who helped with this challenge).
The children in Year 4 joined classes across the UK for the NSPCC fundraising Number Day.
As well as dressing up for digits, we learnt about the huge impact that maths has on our lives and on our history.
We learnt about the work of Alan Turing and the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, whose mathematical skill brought an early end to the second World War and saved millions of lives.
We then became code-breakers ourselves to puzzle out the riddles and break the cipher.
The design of the Bank of England’s £50 note features the mathematician Alan Turing.
In RE, Year 4 have been learning about the Jesus’s call to his disciples and how catholics answer this call in our lives today.
As part of this learning, we thought about the different communities to which we belong and the commitment that is needed to make these groups work well. We made posters at home to share our learning.
We were stunned today to find that a wall had appeared in Year 4 and cut some of us from the rest of our class.
Not only were we separated from our friends, some of us couldn’t see the board and no-one knew if we had our hand up. There were certainly lots of questions about the unfairness of the situation and we even wrote letters to our friends on the ‘other side’ to share our feelings and ask for help.
Now that the wall has gone, we are looking forward to sharing another story about a wall that keeps people out, Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant.
It was lovely to welcome the children back to school for the start of new term.
We began the spring term together by learning about the feast of the Epiphany where we remember the visit of the wise men to the infant Jesus.
We learnt about the significance of the gifts: Gold was a precious and expensive gift, and showed that Jesus was born to be King. Frankincense is a sweet perfume which was often burned in the temple to worship God. It was a sign that Jesus should be worshipped. Myrrh was used to keep things fresh, and it was used by the women to anoint Jesus’ body when he died. By bringing it as a gift to Jesus, the wise men foretold his suffering and death.
The Epiphany is important in our Christian faith as it marks the moment that God as man is revealed to the wise men. The wise men were gentiles (non Jews) and this reminds us that God sent Jesus as his Gift for all the world.
As we look forward to the term ahead, we aim to keep Jesus at the heart of what we do and follow his teaching with the same commitment as the wise men followed the star.
I hope that you all had a happy Christmas and are looking forward to the year ahead.
Thank you so much for the kind Christmas wishes and lovely gifts.
This term, we learn what it is to be part of a community in RE. Check out the RE Learning post from the menu for more information.
In science, we learn about the changing states of materials and about the work of significant scientists and inventors.
We learn about the features of the earth in geography, whilst our history learning focuses on the Roman empire and its impact on Britain.
In DT, we will be designing our own book covers and in art, we will be learning about printmaking and the work of William Morris. Our learning in music will help us to understand how music improves our world and helps to teach us about our community.
I am looking forward to seeing you all again and welcoming you back for the start of the new term.
We started this week with an unusual discovery: a strange silver object on top of the PTA container on the field. Once we had brought it back into class, the children speculated on what it might be. Thankfully, the answer to the question, ‘Is it a bomb?’ turned out to be, ‘No.’ but it certainly got us thinking before we started to read ‘The Iron Man’ by Ted Hughes in English.
In maths, we have been learning about numbers to 10,000, counting in steps of different sizes and getting to grips with place-value and ordering numbers.
In other subjects, we have been learning about the geography of Europe in relationship to other continents and designing our own slingshot cars in DT. In RE, we are learning about families as an introduction to learning about the ancestors of Christ.
The children have made a great effort through their first full week of year four and I am looking forward to the weeks ahead.
Have a great weekend!
It was great to welcome the children back to school and to year four this week. Whilst we are still encouraging plenty of hand-washing and ensuring lots of ventilation through the classroom, much of what we have missed during the pandemic has returned and school is getting back to normal. The children have really enjoyed going out to play without the barriers and bubbles! It’s also lovely to have the children working in groups rather than sitting in the rows of desks of the last eighteen months.
This week, we have learnt about strategies for learning and reflected on what our school mission statement and our golden rules mean to us. We’re looking forward to our full timetable in the week ahead and beginning swimming lessons on Thursday.
The children should each have brought home their school reading book today. I would encourage them to read this alongside their own choice of book from home/ the library/ the class library, etc. and invite them to use their reading record as diary of their reading. It would still be great if the children had the chance to read with someone at home and talk about the books they are enjoying too.
We will start our formal home learning via the Google Classroom next Friday.
English is at the heart of everything we do.
It opens up endless worlds and helps us share and achieve our dreams. English knits everything we do together and gives us our voice. In our learning across the curriculum, we gain the confidence and skills to use our voice effectively: to share our ideas, to stand up for what is right and to achieve our goals and ambitions.
Reading unlocks new avenues of knowledge, fires our imaginations, enriches our vocabulary and helps us to understand and value the diversity of the world we live in.
There are two skills we need in learning to read: word reading and comprehension.
Skilled word reading involves swiftly recognising the printed words that we know, whilst rapidly working out how to say those words that are less familiar. To do this, we need to understand that the letters on the page are linked to sounds in spoken words. This is why phonics is so important in our early teaching of reading
Good comprehension brings together our knowledge of language and our knowledge of the world. Our teachers use their skills to help us develop comprehension skills through our shared reading, our reading lessons and through discussions of stories, poems and non-fiction.
We teach phonics and early reading through Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised, which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme. You can find out more about our approach to phonics and early reading here.
In key stage two, we teach reading every day. Our learning is rooted in high quality texts and shares the thematic approach of our learning in English. This supports children to become critical readers and encourages them to make comparisons and connections between the books that we explore each half term.
We think it is important to read widely across fiction and non-fiction. Collins Big Cat Phonics for Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised is our reading scheme in foundation and year one, and Collins’ Big Cat is our core scheme as we explore and extend our reading preferences beyond phonics in year two and throughout key stage two.
Our reading scheme helps us to grow as fluent readers. Everyone has a reading book selected from the reading scheme. Our teachers choose the colour band of the book carefully to match the instructional level of reading. This is the level where we have the ‘right’ amount of challenge for developing and practising new reading strategies.
In tandem with our reading scheme, we choose our own books to read and share from our class and school libraries, from home and beyond. This gives us the chance to explore different story-worlds, topics and authors and to find out what kind of books we really love.
We know that reading for enjoyment is important. We know that there is a strong link between reading for pleasure, how well we do at school and our emotional well-being. The adults in our school read to us daily and this helps to spark our different interests and fuel our love of reading.
By the time we leave St Adrian’s, teachers make sure that we can read fluently and with confidence in any subject.
Across each half-term, our English lessons are based on a wide range of significant and high quality children’s literature. The books we learn from are are chosen to engage, challenge and support us to become confident and informed writers.
We are taught new skills at the start of each year that reflect the expectations of the national curriculum. The cyclical approach of the teaching sequence for writing enables us to practise, secure and master these skills across the year and to build upon the foundational learning of previous year groups.
Children’s progress through the curriculum is summarised in the following documents.
Year 1 – Progress through the curriculum
Year 2 – Progress through the curriculum
Year 3 – Progress through the curriculum
Year 4 – Progress through the curriculum
Year 5 – Progress through the curriculum
Year 6 – Progress through the curriculum
Through shared reading, we are immersed in the world of the author. Through our talk and through shared writing, we learn to imitate the authors we read and to innovate with the ideas we encounter. As we grow in confidence, we use our ever-expanding writer’s tool-kit to invent, create, edit and author our own texts.
Our Strands Tracker tracks the development of our writer’s tool-kit across the key stages.
During this academic year, from September 2023 through to July 2024, we are reviewing our long-term plan for English to make stronger links with our learning in other areas of the curriculum. We will also be sharing some brilliant books as a whole school. The first of these is Oliver Jeffer’s ‘Here We Are.’
As we make these changes, the texts that we root our learning in may not correspond with those linked below.
Click on each year group’s bookshelf to view our curriculum intent for each year group.
We learn to spell by knowing the link between letters and sounds and by understanding how words and spellings are structured.
We start teaching phonics in Nursery/Reception and follow the Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised progression, which ensures children build on their growing knowledge of the alphabetic code, mastering phonics to read and spell as they move through school. You can learn more about our approach to phonics teaching here.
Following phase 5, we use ‘No Nonsense Spelling’ which has been written to meet the spelling requirements of the national curriculum for year two through to year six.
Our spelling pathway details the learning for each year group.
When we first learn to write, we learn to print our letters. Our learning in phonics helps us to learn the correct letter formation for each grapheme and make the link between the mnemonic of our phonics programme and the letter.
Once we have learnt to form each letter correctly, we begin to learn how to join digraphs. This is usually in Year 1.
In Year 2, we begin to learn to join all of our writing. We learn to join our letters using a script developed by Debbie Hepplewhite. This is a style with two main joins: a diagonal join, which starts on the line, and a washing-line (or smile) join.
By the time we reach the end of key stage two, we can write confidently and legibly in joined handwriting when writing at speed
You can find more about our handwriting style here.
Our Grammar Glossary details the grammatical concepts taught in each year group. You will see that new learning for each year is identified and sits alongside learning from previous classes.
Year 1 Grammar Glossary
Year 2 Grammar Glossary
Year 3 Grammar Glossary
Year 4 Grammar Glossary
Year 5 Grammar Glossary
Year 6 Grammar Glossary
The national curriculum in England: English programmes of study
French is introduced in Year 3 and studied weekly with a French specialist teacher until the children leave at the end of Year 6.
At St Adrian’s we endeavor to make lessons stimulating and enjoyable and build confidence through lots of praise. We aim to foster an interest in language learning by introducing children to the French language in an inclusive way that is accessible to all pupils.
We aim to develop children’s confidence in speaking in the target language by encouraging them to join in songs, rhymes stories and games, which enable them to practise the language in an enjoyable and non-threatening way.
We strive to help our pupils develop their awareness of cultural similarities and differences. We seek to lay the foundations for future language study by our pupils whilst supporting linguistic understanding of their first language.
Key documents
St-Adrian’s-long-term-plan-for-MFL
Topics at a glance
*Coming soon
Recommended resources for practising French at home
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primarylanguages/french
For mobiles and tablets: Mindsnacks French – fun interactive French games on a downloadable app.
