St Adrian's Catholic Primary School
To learn, to love, to live
This week, we were excited to welcome the mayor of St Albans, Councillor Geoff Harrison and the mace-bearer to St Adrian’s. After learning about the background to this historic role in our city, our head boy and head girl were dressed in the ceremonial robes and looked very smart indeed!
Hello parents and children,
this is what we’ve been up to this week.
In our English lessons we began to read new book called ‘Weirdo’ by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird. We talked about what makes us kind and unkind and discussed what command sentence means. The children practised their writing by thinking and writing different command sentences like:
Show him around!
Be good friend!
Don’t call him weirdo!
In Little Wandle we continued learning phase 4 sounds and this week the children learned 4 new tricky words. Please take some time to practise these with your child. In the pink folder you will also find a letter explaining in details important rules when learning phase 4 sounds and tricky words.
In Maths this week, the children continued to develop their subitising skills in increasingly complex arrangements. Some arrangements are easier to subitise than others – e.g. a set of 6 dots arranged in a structured die pattern that exposes the double-3 pattern is easier to recognise than a random arrangement of 6 dots. We’ve met Number 6 and had lots of fun playing with him!
We’ve also been busy creating lovely display to celebrate Mary next week. The children learned about the 12 apostles and why May is the Month of Mary Have a look at our lovely art work. We did well, didn’t we?
Things to remember:
Coronation picnic – Friday 5th of May (weather permitting). Children are welcome to come dressed in white, red and blue.
Friday morning is reading morning, so you are very welcome to come and share a book with your child.
Have a lovely long weekend!
Mrs Solakova
We have had a very busy week in Nursery. We have continued to explore ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ in a variety of ways.
The children have been observing the caterpillars and since last week they have grown quite a bit….
This week as part of our Hungry Caterpillar work, the children helped Miss Taylor create something called a ‘Story Map’. The children were very good at explaining what happened in the story making sure everything was in the correct order. Can you draw a story map of the hungry caterpillar story? It would be lovely to have some up in the class. Please see below the one we created in school:
This week Nursery and Reception created some artwork for the Crowing of Mary Assembly we will go to on Tuesday:
Other photos from this week:
We hope you can join us for our Coronation Picnic on Friday 5th May.
Please join us for reading mornings every Friday 8:45-9:00am.
In the bookbags today is a letter inviting you to our Pentecost Party which will be happening at the end of this half term.
Have a lovely long weekend.
Miss Taylor
St Adrian’s Mayoral Visit
Today, we welcomed the Mayor of St Albans, Councillor Geoff Harrison and the Mace Bearer Mark to St Adrians. This was a result of the school council writing a letter inviting him to come and speak to us. The school council wanted to know more about local politics so that we might learn some tips which might help the school council be even more effective within our school.
The Mayor firstly gave an assembly to the whole school in the hall. During the assembly, he spoke about how many mayors there have been since the first mayor in 1553. Councillor Harrison is in fact the 478th mayor of St Albans. The Mayor and the Mace Bearer then showed all of the children how the mayor and Mace bearer are formally dressed by dressing the Head Boy, Aidan as the Mayor and the Head Girl, Emily Jane as the Mace Bearer. We were told that the gold-plated mace dates back to King Charles II and has his initials on it: CR which are the initials of the new King Charles III: Charles Rex.
After the assembly, the school council met with the Mayor, Mrs Gallaher and Mrs Porter in the Macauley room. The school council had many questions for him about a range of issues such ‘does he ever have difficult days and what does he enjoy most about being mayor’. He told us that serving St Albans is a privilege and that being a councillor and on a school council is about volunteering and giving back to the community.
It certainly has been a privilege to have the Mayor visit St Adrians and to learn from him and the Mace Bearer about how we can make a difference. The school council representatives in Year 5 gave the mayor letters from Year 5 which were written to him during their geography lessons when they were learning about Sustainability and ways we can use renewable sources of energy. The letters ask the Mayor to help St Albans to become a more sustainable city. The mayor was delighted to receive the letters as environmental issues are close to his heart. He said he would read the letters and look into what he can do to help.
The event was a great success. The school council is now buzzing with ideas of how we can serve our school and help to improve it in so many ways. Be sure to share your ideas with your school council rep and we will discuss the ideas in future meetings.
We are your voice!
Year 4 have been reusing their sewing skills learnt last year and have really enjoyed making book covers, with fasteners. They look beautiful and I was very proud of the independence and co-operation with which the children completed the task.
The class has also been very creative with their writing, as they started writing a brochure to inform the reader about the lands they have created, inspired by the fantastic book “Weslandia”. The children are now confident, writing interesting noun phrases and starting to use adventurous words from their own reading.
The children have prepared artwork for two different coronations next week – for the Crowning of Mary and for the coronation of King Charles III on Friday.
We have completed the learning about the duration of time and will begin decimals next week.
I hope you all have a very happy May Bank Holiday!
We were delighted to welcome the mayor of St Albans, Cllr Geoff Harrison and the mace-bearer to our assembly today. As well as sharing the background to this historic role in our city, we learnt what happens at the mayor-making meeting of the City and Distric Council.
Our head boy and girl were elevated to new roles before joining with the school council to share refresments with our guests.
This week, we started our new English teaching sequence on the theme of Wolves. We had great fun exploring traditional tales involving wolves and also read non-fiction texts to find out what wolves are really like. We compared the different versions and are keen to learn more about wolves. This term, we will be learning about different habitats and our learning in English forms part of this, which shows just how important cross curricular learning is here at St Adrian’s. Parents can find out more about our learning this term on the termly curriculum overview, which can be found on the Google Classroom.
21.04.23
It is unbelievable that the summer term is upon us! Where did the time go? I really hope that you have had a restful break, with lots of memorable moments and of course chocolate eggs :).
The first half of the term is 6 weeks long with quite a lot of Bank holidays. We are going to be learning about life cycles (the caterpillars arrived yesterday and we are all very excited to see them grow and transform into butterflies). We will also be learning about the royal family and the upcoming coronation. Towards the end of the half term we will take part in an Art week and will produce a piece for a very special exhibition.
In RE we will be talking about The Holy Spirit, Good news and Pentecost and will held a fiery Pentecost party.
In Little Wandle we will continue with phase 4 sounds and tricky words, so watch out for new tricky words in your child’s orange book.
Update on Tapestry:
We are still experiencing technical difficulties with Tapestry at the moment. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Have a lovely weekend!
Mrs Solakova
Welcome back and to the summer term! Year 4 were outside in the sun yesterday, starting the rounders which is one of this half-term’s PE topics. It’s been a short week, during which we started our new History topic “The Anglo-Saxons and Scots”, our new book “Weslandia” and are getting into the plot of “Letters From The Lighthouse”.
The new home learning grid is now on Google Classroom. One of the possible activities is to draw aspects of Anglo-Saxon life. It would be fantastic to have these ready for our History display as it always looks so much better with original artwork.
The TTRS leaderboard is looking amazing – year 4 pupils up at the top, where they should be! Keep up the practice.
Let’s hope the sun stays out this weekend and I hope you all have a great few days.
