Friday 24th January marked the launch of the Jubilee Year of Hope in our schools. Our church has a Jubilee every 25 years and it is a time when Catholics renew their relationship with God through prayer, reflection and action. In school our Mini Vinnies delivered an assembly telling us all about the Jubilee Year of Hope. When leaving the hall we were all given our CAFOD prayer and sticker. We left through our own Jubilee door. In the afternoon, as house groups, we took part in a pilgrimage of prayer around our school. This involved travelling to different prayer stations in our classrooms. Father Jonathon joined us on our journey and completed tasks with us. Here is a selection of some of our work. Here, we thought about the storms in our lives and how God gives us hope. At this station, we gave thanks for the blessings in our lives and the doors God opens for us. We coloured pause buttons to remind us in our busy lives to take time to stop and reflect on what is important. We all chose and held a stone and thought about our hopes and dreams for the future. We placed it on a path and asked God to guide us on our journey through life. At this station we looked at a variety of doors and thought about who might be behind them. We all wrote a prayer. We made chains of hope by writing the names of people who give us hope and prayers for people who are in need of hope. We will continue our faith journey throughout this year with a series of events. We will keep you updated on our progress.

Well done to our year 5/6 football team who after winning the small school county championship last night will go on to represent the county in the next round.

Year 6 have been exploring techniques for creating different tonal values. We have used charcoal and graphite materials, and also experimented with hatching and gradients for different effects. We aim to use these tones to create varying shadows on a collaged self-portrait.

In the last week, all of our Year 6 children were invited to put themselves forward to become a house captain. House captaincy is a responsible role that requires dedication and we are very proud of our Year 6 children, who all stood up in front of their whole house group, and gave a speech to describe their own leadership qualities. It was also very pleasing to see the children highlighting values of ‘caring for others’ and ‘setting a good example around school’ as key qualities of a captain. We have worked on the writing and delivering of speeches in class, but the children all deserve special merit for the effort they have put in at home as well. Well done all of Year 6! We are all very proud to celebrate: Abigail and Godswill; Joe and Maria; Zachary and Alana; Arianne and Harry; Deyana and Oliver; and Maddison and Mason, as our new House Group captains 24/25 of: St Francis, St Anthony, St Aiden, St Bede, St Cuthbert and St Oswald Houses.

To explore (and demonstrate) how light travels, and is reflected, we made periscopes out of some safety mirrors and some cereal boxes that we had collected. It was lots of fun to get creative but we had to show strong resilience, as many of our models were unsuccessful the first time around. Like many scientists, we had to go back to the drawing board and adjust our experiments, to allow for successful results.

Year 6 took part in a workshop this week, that reminded us of the dangers of using things like apps and online gaming. We covered such thangs as: age restrictions and appropriate behaviour on social media – what we should and shouldn’t share; that the age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 years old – meaning we have a responsibility to make wise choices; and what to do if we see something that we know is wrong. It was a very informative afternoon. We will continue to remind ourselves of key ways to keep ourselves safe online throughout the year.

Our Year 5 children leading our weekly class Celebration of the Word.

As well as enjoying saying a decade of the Rosary each day during October, Year 5 children continue to lead Celebration s of the Word in class.

Good Morning Year 2, we have missed you in school today but hope you have been enjoying the lovely weather. Here are some more fun learning activities for Friday 20th September. Maths: Sumdog Use your log in details in the front of your reading record to log into Sumdog Maths – complete the activities on Place Value – More than and fewer than. Extra challenge – in your red exercise book write some two-digit numbers in numerals and words E.g. 23 = twenty-three English: Simple sentences Look carefully at the seaside picture. Write down the words and phrases that describe the seaside. Don’t forget to use a capital letter for the start of each sentence, finger spaces and a full stop at the end of each sentence. Extra challenge: Write some sentences to describe the seaside image. Spelling: Sumdog There are 5 more trickier ‘Red Words’ to learn to spell on Sumdog Spellings. Write these in your exercise book. Art: Observational drawing Find something from nature to sketch. Don’t forget to add detail and try some shading too. You might sketch a branch, a flower, a leaf or tree.

I hope you all enjoyed Thursday’s tasks. Below is some work that I have attached for you to complete, whilst you are learning at home. Maths: Watch the Hundreds video below: Have a go at these questions: English: L.O. I can use the verb ‘to be’. Read the sentences, then add the correct form of the verb ‘to be’. History: L.O. I can research from secondary sources. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z883g7h#zthtp4j Go to the Skara Brae BBC Bitesize website and look at the information and pictures. There’s also a video to watch. Use the information make notes in the table below.

Good morning, Year 4. Here are some more learning tasks for you to complete at home. I hope you enjoyed learning about the Ancient Egyptian gods at home yesterday. If you complete today’s tasks and want any extra challenges, you can play extra games on Sumdog and Times Tables Rockstars, as well as reading your reading book and practising your spellings. ENGLISH Collective Nouns Recap Task: In our English lessons, we have been learning about different noun types. One area we have worked on is collective nouns. This collective nouns wordsearch task will give you a chance to find out some collective nouns, e.g. the name for a group of camels, then see if you can find these in the wordsearch grid. You could write the answers to these down in your blue book. Perhaps you could try to find a few more unusual collective nouns to add to the list. If I were King or Queen for the day … In our history work, we have been learning about King Tutankhamun who became king when he was aged only nine. Can you imagine what that would be like? Your task is to imagine that you could be King or Queen for the day. What would you do? What would you wear? What would you spend your day doing if you could choose to do anything at all? Would you make any new rules for your subjects to follow? Here are some sentence starters to help you write about your ideas: When I wake up on my day as king/queen, the first thing I will do is… For my royal breakfast, I will have… I would spend my morning… and … For lunch as king/queen, I would choose…with … because… In the afternoon, I would … A new rule that I would give people is… because … I might take a trip to… where I would… To round off my day as a ruler, I would … I will look forward to hearing your excellent ideas! MATHS We’ve been working on place value in class, thinking about how we can partition numbers. For example, we know that we can split the number 2387 into 2 thousands, 3 hundreds, 8 tens and 7 ones. In class, we have used counters and base ten equipment to help us show our understanding of this. Today, I would like you to watch the video below and complete the worksheet by putting the answers in your book. Some of the questions may be a bit tricky, so just try your best. I will also put some similar questions on Sumdog if you would like to do some extra practice on there. AFTERNOON TASKS: SCIENCE AND FRENCH Science We will soon be starting a unit of work learning about electricity. To prepare for that, have a look around your home and see how many items you can find that are powered by electricity. Draw the items you have found in your book and, as a challenge, see if you can group them into items that are battery-powered and those that use mains electricity. French In French, we have been revising colours and numbers, and learning how to introduce ourselves. On the Language Angels website, you can use the log-in below to access songs and games to help you practise your skills. Have fun! https://www.languageangels.com/schools/ Username: Year4StAlbans24 Password: French We’ll look forward to seeing your work when we’re back together in school. Have a great day and a lovely weekend. Mrs Gosling and Mr Gibson

We have been working really hard in Year 1 to make sure we are wonderful writers. We have done lots of activities to focus on or fine motor skills and we have been putting letters together to form words. We are now putting words together to make sentences.