It was great to welcome so many of our families into school this morning to share our class assembly.
We travelled back in time to learn about the life of Catherine McAuley. We also learnt about the beginnings of the Sisters of Mercy, who founded our school. The children shared the Mercy values of Dignity, Excellence, Justice, Service and Stewardship and reflected how we continue to live these everyday through our golden rules. The children did a fantastic job: working together to act out the stories and share their message. They should be proud of what they have achieved together.
To mark National Poetry Day yesterday, we wrote cinquain and haiku on the theme of God’s unconditional love. The children neatly captured profound ideas in just a few syllables.
It’s the end of our first full week and the children are settling in to their new classroom and their new role as Year Six.
It was good to meet with many parents at the ‘Meet the teacher’ morning. If you weren’t able to make it, I am always pleased to meet with parents after school (excepting Tuesdays). You can find a copy of my presentation on the Google Classroom – but I am a visual person, so my prompts may not make complete sense without my narration!
The children have worked together, this week, to learn about our class saint, St Paul. One of the outcomes of this has been a new sign for our classroom door.
Although we have only been back at school for ten days, the children are rising to the challenge of their new topics across the curriculum.
On Wednesday, our hard work together paid off when we shared our performance of Craig Hawes’ ‘Porridge’ with our friends in school and with our families . The children did themselves proud and it was a joy to watch their performances, their singing and their dancing. Here are some photos of the cast.
After visiting our new secondary schools on Thursday, we were back on Friday to get our end of year reports and SAT results. We are very proud of all of the children – their hard work and progress has been amazing!
It is hard to believe that we are heading in to the final week of the summer term and the final week of primary school too. There is still lots to look forward too and we hope that our parents will join us for the leavers’ mass on Wednesday and our graduation assembly next Friday.
So much has happened this week. Have produced some wonderful work on the pioneering ladies who feature in the film ‘Hidden Figures’ . Much of the work will go on display for our celebration of Black History Month. This will alsoset us up nicely for next week when we take the book ‘Hidden Figures’ as our class reader ( originally, I had planned for ‘Coming to England’ ). In RE we started to learn about St Maximilain Kolbe and will be continuing to focus on him next week.
27th September 2024
The week started with the Mercy Mass. We were able to say fond farewells to Jackie Harrison and Ed Behan who have been stalwarts in their devotion to the school as governors. Later, we were able to let off a bit of steam in PE with some Volleyball practice.
While some of the girls in the class were putting on a fantstic display at the Tag Rugby, the rest of the class were honing their printing skills in art.
AS part of the RE work on the Ourselves Topic, we have learnt about the Sernon on the mount , producing our own mini plays to illustrate the learning. The week was finished with a pupil-led act of worship.
13th September 2024
There has been a whirlwind start to the term and we have hit the ground running. The children are already established in their reading groups and some of them have started the YARC reading focus ( my intention is that all children will have their turn at this over the year). We have learned about Catherine McAuley in RE and also found out about our new class saint (St Josephine Bakhita). In maths, we have completed the first topic (place value) and there is some additional revision support on the Google Classroom to prepare for the forthcoming assessment. In English, we have written fables inspired by The Midnight Panther and the works of Aesop. We are now learning about the daring exploits of Philippe Petit (The Man Who Walked Between the Towers).
In art, our studies have taken us to the rather niche ‘Viking Art’ – here are some photos of us designing Viking Jewellery in the Osberg and Jelling style.
Summer Reading Challenge
In our assembly this morning, our visitors told us all about the Hertfordshire Libraries’ Summer Reading Challenge.
Over the school holidays, the children will not be bringing books home from school, so this is an ideal chance to visit your local library and join the library challenge.
You can register for the challenge in your local library and all you have to do is read six books across the holidays. The children will find a huge selection of books to choose from and earn stickers, a certificate, a medal and a special pencil as a reward for their holiday reading. You will find out more here.
Joining the library is free and children are able to borrow up to 30 items! This is a great way to try out different authors and different types of books.
We hope that as many of you as possible join in and we look forward to hearing all about your reading adventures when you return to school in September!
The term is racing by now and we are busy rehearsing for end of school production – the children have worked hard to learn lines, songs and dances and now we have taken our practices to the stage to try our hand at acting!
Despite all of this, we have still found time to complete the Bikeability course and bake biscuits in maths and set up our class to show off lots of our learning from the year so far. It was great to be able to welcome so many families to our class on Wednesday evening. If you weren’t able to make it, here are a couple of photographs of our class.
In our French lessons, we have been expanding our vocabulary to talk and write about things ‘dans ma ville’. The children made triaramas to show what they have learnt with Mme Dembek.
We hope that many of you were able to join us for the Father’s Day assembly on Friday and that the children continue to show their appreciation for all who care for them, especially their dads, this Sunday.
Next week, we are looking forward to both the district sports and our Bikeability lessons. We will also be busy baking in maths and continuing to rehearse for our end of school production. In learning about other faiths in RE, we will also be learning about Sikhism. There’s never a dull moment…
The start of the final half-term is always a funny time for year six – the SATs are finally behind us and we have enjoyed the school journey that we had been looking forward too for so long, and whilst the children are naturally beginning to look forward to the adventure of secondary school, there is still so much to do and enjoy here.
The end of key stage assessments for writing are based, not on tests, but on the writing the children do day-in and day-out, so high expectations and good effort are still as important now as they have every been. We have finished the content of the maths curriculum and so we are keeping our maths understanding ‘fresh’ through a number of projects: this week, we have been making plans for our bakery and look forward in the coming weeks to putting on our masterchef hats and cooking up a treat, using our data handling and measuring skills to make this happen.
We also have to begin looking towards the end of term and planning to go out with style and so, to that end, I have completed the worst job I have to do each year and cast our leavers’ production. We have our scripts and parts to learn: this is always an ensemble piece, where the children can enjoy putting on something special and memorable which can only be achieved by working together. I do not doubt that they will have a blast and that they will do themselves (and us) proud.
I plan to share the limited photos from the Isle of Wight at the open evening towards the end of this month as part of our celebration of our learning. For now, here is a taster from the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.
Pope Paul VI reminds us in his Encyclical on the Month of May that this “is a time when Catholics in every part of the world offer up to Mary from their hearts an especially fervent and loving homage of prayer and veneration. In this month, too, the benefits of God’s mercy come down to us from her throne in greater abundance”
In school, this week, we have marked the beginning of May by joining together for a liturgy to celebrate the Crowning of Mary. Children across the school worked together to create posters to proclaim Mary as Mother of God and Queen. In year six, our poster recognised Mary as Queen of the Most Holy Rosary.
This week, we have celebrated Earth Day and explored the theme of ‘Planet vs Plastics’.
As part of our geography week, we have used our field-work skills to conduct a survey of packaging in our packed lunches. Our analysis of this data has shaped our thinking on what we can practically do at St Adrian’s to reduce our plastic waste.
In English, we have learnt more about the issues facing our planet, reading Georgia Amson-Bradshaw’s book ‘Plastic Planet’. We are putting this expertise to good use as we combine it with what we have learnt through our field-work to prepare speeches for the school council’s ‘Talk It Out’ competition.
We have also shared our knowledge by creating a class website in Computing to share some of the issues that we face living in an increasingly ‘plastic planet’.
In other learning, we have enjoyed exploring light in science, using our understanding of reflection to make periscopes.
As we reach the end of the season of Lent, our year six chaplaincy team led the school in solemn reflection through the stations of the cross.
Following our solemn Passion assembly, we got ready to celebrate the joy of Easter with the Easter art competition, organised by the chaplaincy team. Well done to Archie and Rukksika on your winning paintings!
The class have also been busy this week completing their playground design project in DT. I have been very impressed by the creativity and careful construction!
After such a short whirlwind of a term, year six are heading towards their final term of primary education: there is still much to learn and lots to look forward to.
