Uncategorised – Page 10 – St Adrian's Catholic Primary School

Christmas is coming…

With Advent, carol concert practice and classroom decorations, Christmas is really on its way. The children have their names for their Kriskringles. We have been talking about what we can do during Advent, the period of preparation for Christmas; and the children suggested that doing small daily acts of daily kindness is one way of showing love for one another, in the way that God showed his love for people by sending Jesus. We are practising songs for the carol concert in earnest and looking forward to seeing you at the concert on Monday 12th. We are learning this fantastic Christmas song. Please could you practise it at home. Thank you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lnYDohCNSM

The classroom looks very festive.

The children’s fantastic explanation writing is on display – either on the or in one of two books. This week they completed a very different piece of writing, retelling “FaRther” with a different ending, when they used personification, similes, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials to write figuratively. In both cases every child focused and wrote incredibly well.

In Maths we’ve moved onto applying multiplication and division facts. The children are using the correct terminology for division; and used practice of the facts using manipulatives to make generalisations about division. For example, the class worked out that if the dividend and the quotient are the same, then the divisor has to be one. Or, if the dividend and divisor are the same, then the quotient must one 1. Today they have been constructing sentences like “The product of 8 x 4 is 32” or “6 x 3 is the same as 3 x 6 because of the commutative rule in multiplication.” Can your child explain these terms to you, in different contexts?

Please remember the deadline for the Called RE home learning which is 8th December.

Today was the last session of Gaelic Football which the children really loved. I will send a thank you email to Rory of Herts GAA for providing this first-class coaching to the school.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Loving the Library

The children are getting to know their way round the library and are very much enjoying their time there. The beautiful books there, both fiction and non-fiction, complement the “reading scheme” books. As with the class reading books, the children have completely free choice with the library books. The reading scheme books are carefully matched to their reading age and are to be read independently and fluently (which means with 95% accuracy). The class and library books can be read independently by the children, or shared with adults, or can be read by the adults to the children.

The reading stars sheets have been added to the children’s books and are ready for signatures to be added, which will be converted into housepoints.

Thank you for the beautiful birthday books which have been bought for the library, by Darragh and Gabriel. Children over the years will love reading them.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Children in Need support from Year 4

As you can see, everyone in year 4 looked wonderful in their spots and stripes. There are the art entries from the class. Ralph was a proud school winner with his very jaunty Pudsey Bear! Thank you for all your generous donations to Children in Need this year.

Exciting week in year 3!

Another busy week in year 3! We enjoyed visiting the new library. We were amazed by the selection of books and the cosy areas to sit and enjoy the wonderful books. In our class, we have two fantastic librarians who are very knowledgeable about the library.

In RE we celebrated other faiths, and this year we learnt about Islam. Our topic was Mosques we focused on; the functions of a mosque, the geometric designs inside a mosque and the rules for entering a mosque. There were six keen children who presented this information in assembly.

Financial Information

Please find below a link to our school’s page on the schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk website.

Financial Information Link

All local authority maintained schools are required to publish annually on their websites the number of individuals (if any) earning over £100k a year. This is to confirm no member of staff is paid this figure.

Number of Employees	Gross Salary of £100,000+	Gross Salary of £100,000+ (Increments of £10,000)
0	N/A	N/A

Visiting and spelling “library”

Our first visit to the beautiful new library was very exciting. There was so much to look and talk about, I haven’t got many good photos of enjoying the fantastic, also brand-new books there and I will post more in future weeks. Thursday will be our regular library day so please return any read book then, to borrow a new one, so it’s swimming bag and library book on the same day!

Thank you for the warm outdoor PE kit. All the children were well-wrapped up for Gaelic Football outdoors today and then looked super-smart for the remembrance assembly, during which they behaved perfectly. Beforehand, we discussed what “sombre” meant and the remembrance was an opportunity for all families, from all different countries, to reflect on fellow country people lost in war.

This beautiful wreath was created by a year 4 pupil and looked stunning on the lectern.

The children are doing very well with their times-tables. We will cover the 11s and 12s next week, though the children already know that they have already covered all those facts. They are all sound in knowing the facts, generally, which is a good point to be at at this point of the year. It’s now a question of remembering the trickier ones, using all and any “aide-memoires” at our disposal ! Eg 5 6 7 8 is a useful way to remember that 56 = 7 x 8. We talked about the various ways to remember the 9TT facts. The goal on TTRS is 4 seconds or less and that is within everyone’s grasp! I’m going to post some sheets called “Times TAble Mastry”. This is just to inform you about the depth of knowledge on times tables the children need to have. Instant recall is part of the knowledge, but understanding the relationships between the calculations and how to reason with them is also important. These will be in the autumn learning resources topic.

Practical representation of TT facts helps with the mastery aspects.

Have a lovely, relaxing weekend.

First week back in year 4

It was lovely to see everyone, looking relaxed and enthusiastic on Monday. We’ve made a great start this week and have completed the formal subtraction method with subtracting 4 digit numbers involving renaming. The children are enjoying exploring a wonderful book called Varmints –

There is a film version of the book online if you would like to share it at home.

Sadly, our class reader about a hapless young hero called Odd has come to an end.

There are many other wonderful books by Neil Gaiman, for children. And we are looking forward to startin g “The Polar Bear Explorers’ Club” (by Alex Bell).

On Friday, the children sampled a session of Gaelic Football which they really enjoyed. There will five more sessions, provided free by Hertfordshire Gaelic Athletic Association. Apologies for the slightly muddy PE tops and jumpers! Please could you return cleaned tops by Monday. Thank you. If your child has studded boots, please send them in for Gaelic Football over the next few weeks. If it’s not possible to play on the field without studded boots then the children will practise the skills on another surface.

On Thursday the children will show their respects at the Remembrance Service and I hope to see some of you then. The children have come home with a blank stained glass window for them to use felt-tips to decorate in a theme of Remembrance Day, for display at school, if they would like to. In the meantime, have a happy relaxing weekend.

End of half-term in year 4

Year 4 did a fantastic, happy song about the food we “gather” in the supermarket at harvest. They really enjoyed working together to sing “In my trolley”. Next time I’ll arrange for someone to take some photos to post for those adults who were unable to attend!

In class, the children have also enjoyed building more circuits and seeing what happens when you add a conductor, insulator or switch to them. I have posted “a knowledge organiser” for electricity on Google Classroom. I will post the same or similar for next half-term’s topics. These will be there for you to access if you choose. They contain key vocabulary and explain the concepts we learn at school. If you’d like to share these with your children you are very welcome to.

The children have been improving their percussion skills in music, using the glockenspiels, xylophones and chime bars to accompany “Mamma Mia”.

The year 4 fencers gave a fantastic demonstration at an assembly this Tuesday and will be representing the school at a competition! Well done, boys and we wish you lots of success.

I did a slideshow of more photos from our trip to the cathedral last week, but it didn’t upload. I’ll post some of these below.

I hope you all have a very happy half-term and look forward to seeing everyone a week on Monday.

Netball

This Monday, 17th October, St Adrians played their first netball fixture against Killigrew, in the St Albans area league. It was a glorious autumn afternoon and both teams played very well, with good sportsmanship shown by all the players. Killigrew were the winners in this game and St Adrians is looking forward to playing other local teams after half-term.

Thank you to Miss Cartwright for coaching the team and umpiring; and also to the parents for their good-spirited support. If you are in years 5 and 6 and would like to come along to netball training – whether or not you would like to play competitively – please ask your parent to complete the Arbor consent form and come along on Wednesdays after school ( collection at 4.15).

The First Drawing – English

This week in English, we have started our new book The First Drawing by Mordicai Gerstein. This book links to our history unit Prehistoric Britain. The children wrote wonderful diary entries. Today we worked on exclamatory and interrogative questions. Here are some examples of children’s work.