This week has been a week of fitness and reflections.
Firstly, the sponsored bounce, which was organised by the PTA, was great fun. It also involved working as a team with stealth and strategy to enable successful outcomes.
All the hard work which we have done throughout the year was celebrated at the open evening, with past DT, art and science work being on display as well as some of the children’s newspaper reports. It is incredible just how much we have done since September 2021.
Our final St Adrian’s Sports Day on Thursday was a highlight of the week. The children cheered and worked hard for their teams. The results were very close but eventually St Matthew were the clear winners.
The hard work and fun doesn’t end there. Next week, Year 6 will show their production of Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies to the rest of the school on Tuesday12th July and then to their parents on Wednesday 13th July at 7pm. We look forward to another memorable week.
When we visited Ashridge, we found many exciting minibeasts in the woodland and grassland habitats there. As part of our learning in science, on our return to school, we were keen to create a microhabitat at school where we could explore minibeasts every day. Our bug hunts have shown that minibeasts like spaces that are damp, dark and in the shade, and we have had great fun this week finishing off Bugingham Palace, a bug home for all kinds of creatures. We will enjoy finding out what creatures will move into their new home over the next few weeks.
It was lovely to see so many families visiting school, for our first Open Evening in three years. The children have worked incredibly hard this year and it was a wonderful way to celebrate their amazing learning. Thank you for sharing the evening with us.
Everyone is welcome! Whether you are the parent of one of our lovely children, or you are thinking of sending your child to our wonderful school, come along to celebrate all of the learning that has taken place this year, meet the teachers and visit the classrooms.
This week we focused on mass, in more ways than one. On Wednesday, we attended a mass for the Feast of St Peter and St Paul. It was a great experience to be back at St Barts and walking there and back with the Year 6s.
We also started our new topic in Maths, mass! We really enjoyed comparing the weight of everyday classroom objects, using words such as ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’ to describe their mass. We look forward to continuing our mass learning next week.
We finished the week by starting our new book in English, Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love. It is a heart warming story of a boy who dreams of being a mermaid. We started our first lesson with a ‘wow moment’, an old letter encased in a treasure chest, adorned with jewels. We are looking to learning more about Julian and his dream next week too.
The week started off with much excitement as year 3, with year 2, relived The Great Fire of London. Master Jonathan, from History off the Page, came to school with crates of resources and activities. A well was recreated in the hall! The children were apprentices for the morning, experiencing some of the crafts they may have practised had they been alive on 2nd September 1666. The children had remembered the reasons for the fire and the circumstances well, from their year 2 learning and now – just a bit later than would otherwise have been the case – they got to learn it more deeply that only a well-resourced session, with meaningful activities and an expert like Master Jonathan can bring. The afternoon involved a “mini-dig” excavating finds from a property to establish who had lived there and explaining how the evidence showed this.
We’ve had three lots of visitors, from across the curriculum, the last few days and year 3 showed excellent listening skills and behaviour during all the sessions.
This week the children learnt about “seasonal food” which means different things to different countries. We found out which foods grow in which season in the UK, cooked with some and designed a “fruit plate” with seasonal berries. Thank you to Mrs Solakova for organising the equipment and helping us with the cooking. The children loved preparing the tarts and fruit and tidied and cleaned up well afterwards, too. There is no need to cook an evening meal this weekend – just ask your son or daughter to do it for the family!
The children have been practising races for Wednesday’s sports and look forward to seeing some of you then (weather permitting).
On Wednesday morning we walked to church for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. I hope the children passed on the message from me that they all behaved impeccably and sang beautifully during the service. It was a lovely service and the children were credits to their families.
Our theme in RHE is living with and loving others. Today we talked about being like God which means aspiring to qualities such as wisdom, kindness, mercy, compassion. (The children thought of their own words to describe God.) We thought of examples where we could very practically live these out in our daily life, such as in the dining hall or classroom. Maybe you could ask someone to sit at your table? These are the sort of actions which helps other people else feel good about themselves. We also watched a youtube version of a book called “Have you filled a bucket today” which covers similar themes. It also discusses “filling someone else’s bucket” can make you feel good. The story is available via this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EuemNAo6XE if you’d like to share it with your child.
Next week will be another busy week. At open evening on Wednesday you can come and see what the children have made recently – some things have been sent home already. Thank you for remembering reading books and diaries on Thursdays and also keeping them in book bags on other days. It’s great to see more regular reading of school books happening and – importantly – children taking ownership and recording what they have read themselves.
During this term, the children have learned about nets in maths and electricity in science. This week, they designed an electrical steady hand game which relied on having a complete electrical series circuit, placed within a box made from their net with a wire obstacle protruding from the box.
After designing and decorating the nets, an electrical circuit was constructed and attached to malleable wire which would act as an obstacle for their metallic hook to manoeuvre around. If the hand and hook is unsteady, a light bulb will flash.
The whole process was complicated and relied on there being cooperative teamwork, careful listening to instructions and at times some adaptations if at first it didn’t work as expected. Nevertheless, for the bold and attentive, this was no problem and some successful electrical games were assembled.
These will be on display at our open evening next week.
We began a new RE topic this week called Common Good, where we will be learning more about CAFOD and the work they do to support injustice around the world. To initiate the topic, we played a game where the children were in groups which represented different continents around the world. They then learned what percentage of the world’s population each have and then how the world’s wealth, educational, health and food resources are distributed around the world.
The results were shocking and it was clear there is an enormous divide between the richer and power countries of the world.
We will learn how God expects justice for all and how we can do our bit to stand up against injustice.
Last week, we had a fabulous day at the Royla Botanic Gardens, Kew – It was our first school trip in ages and we reallyu enjoyed ourselves! Thanks to Mrs Coupland and Mrs Pickering for helping us to have a great time.
We also enjoyed learning about the Jewish faith as parts of our ‘Other Faith’ learning in RE. We learnt about the Jewish Holy text, The Torah.
As part of our whole school learning about our sister faith of Judaism, we took part in a workshop that taught us all we needed to know about the Jewish day of rest called Shabbat. The workshop took us back to our autumn RE, where we had learned that God rested on the seventh day and the Jewish people do this as part of their Shabbat on Friday, going onto Saturday at sunset.
Whole school assembly to launch Judaism Day
What do you know about Shabbat?
We will set our table ready for Shabbat.
We used the yad to read the Torah.
What do you think about this mystery object?
We recognised some stories from the Torah.
Dressed up in a kippah and tallit!
There were so many kippahs to choose from!
Can you find the Hebrew ‘C’?
Hebrew is read from right to left.
There were so many things to learn!
We ended our morning with a liturgy.
The children had great fun exploring the Jewish resources, such as the kippar (cap), Torah (religious text), yad (pointing stick) and tallits (prayer shawl) and showed great respect as they learned about this fascinating religion which has so many connections with the Catholic faith. Our morning ended with our own liturgy where we enjoyed grape juice and challah bread, followed by a whole school assembly where we taught the rest of the school a Shabbat song and found out lots of new things from other classes.
Shabbat candles, shabbat candles. Burning bright, burning bright. Challah on the table, challah on the table, it’s Friday night, Friday night.
On Monday the children sculpted Tutankhamun’s death mask from clay
On Thursday the children painted the tiles, using brilliant blues and golds like in Ancient Egypt.
The finished results look stunning; and are mounted, ready for you all to view on Open Evening.
Learning can be a sedentary affair, increasingly so the older children get. You need to be still when concentrating hard on equivalent fractions, for example. It’s also important, and fun, to break this up with movement. The class likes to dance to i-moves tracks in-between other sessions. This week we’ve all enjoyed dancing to “Count on Me” and “Celebrate”
On Thursday and Friday, year 3, like the whole school, was treated to fantastic interactive learning to help understand Judaism. After a couple of years’ absence, Ruth returned and helped year 3 understand all about the synagogue – what it looks like, contains, what Jewish people do there. The children were able to wear Jewish clothes, explore Torahs (artefacts), learn about Hebrew letters and even eat and drink some traditional Jewish cookies and grape juice. The children created their stained-glass windows, remembering that they must not contain images of God or people. Today, Vincent and Pauric shared what they had learnt with the whole school, presenting their knowledge in confident, expert ways. Year 3 listened beautifully to the contributions by other classes today, too.
Pollination was an important theme this week. In Science we learnt what flowers are for. And on Friday Dr Lyal came in to talk about minibeasts, which is what he spent his career studying. To be specific, he spent his career at The Natural History Museum collecting, categorising and naming weevil beetles.
These are some of the pieces of equipment Dr Lyal uses to collect insects, which has taken him to all sort of exciting places like the jungle in Belize, Indonesia and…. Hertforshire…
Yesterday, he went on safari in his own back garden and collected some minibeasts to show us and talk about. Amongst the huge amount of knowledge shared, the children learnt about the number of legs minibeasts have, the names for different types of minibeasts, why minibeasts are certain colours; and much more.
We talked about the fascination and wonder of nature. There is always something new to learn, question, discover and rediscover. Professions working with animals, plants and other aspects of nature are open to anyone who is interested and commits to understanding the world around us, both by working hard at Science and also in taking any opportunity to explore and understand at home – for instance by doing a bug hunt at home. A magnifying glass or plastic tub with magnifier at one end is a cheap way to explore local minibeasts more easily.
The children have drawn and written a card to say thank you to Dr Lyal which I will post.
The homework is on Google Classroom. Please also remember the RE homework on the Quicklinks.
I hope to see you at the school fair tomorrow. Have a lovely weekend.
As a whole school, we have been learning about the Jewish faith In particular, Year 6 have learned about Rosh Hashanah (The Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur ( The Day of Atonement).
As well as learning about these special and significant Jewish days in class, we took part in a workshop with Ruth, a Jewish teacher who used artefacts and told us of her experiences as Jewish person who celebrates these days.
Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, which will be celebrated this year on 25th September. It is an opportunity for a fresh start. Before Jewish people ce;ebrate their new year, they ensure that anyone the yave wronged through the year, they apologise to so that when they start the new year they can have a completely new beginning without dragging past wrongs with them.
The day is spent in a celebratory manner with prayer and family time enjoying sweet foods such as apples dipped in honey. This is a symbol to remind us that God’s love is sweet and He provides for us. Pomegranates are used as the seeds represent all the good things we can do for others and to serve God.
The children enjoyed sharing the pomegranate seeds and sharing bread and apples dipped in honey together.
Yom Kippur is ten days after Rosh Hashanah. It is a more solemn day, spent in prayer and fasting for 25 days. The prayers ask God to forgive our sins and to remember the rules He wants us to follow.
A celebratory assembly on Friday, allowed Year 6 to show the school what we had learned. Some children even used the shofar (a ram’s horn) to demonstrate how one of the world’s oldest instruments is used to signal God, the King, is approaching. The shofar is in fact blown 100 times each day of Rosh Hashanah.
Learning about Judaism, a faith in which our own faith is so deeply connected is fascinating. The children were very respectful and interested in knowing more about this religion and culture.
