Our them in Religion is 'Choices'. We will be thinking about how we can make the right choices in life, by choosing to follow Jesus' example and teachings. We will also be exploring the theme of reconciliation, learning that we can ask for forgiveness and find absolution if we show we are sorry.

In Bible Studies, our text this half term is Matthew 25:31-46 (The parable of the sheep and the goats). We will be exploring the relevance of this parable in our lives and thinking about how we can follow Jesus' example by helping others less fortunate than ourselves.

In Computing, our new Digital Literacy unit is working with Creative Media to create a book trailer using video editing software. We will be learning how to import photos into the software, then add text, music, transitions and voiceovers to create video trailers.

As always, we were amazed by all the wonderful character costumes on display on World Book Day. The children had a fun-packed day of activities related to our love of reading.

In English, the whole school is studying Carol Ann Duffy as part of our World Book Day celebrations. We are focussing on 'The Princess' Blankets' as our phase text. We have been designing products to help the shivering princess to warm up. We will be writing letters to the king to encourage him to choose our product and give us our choice of reward.

Our French unit this half term focusses on 'Weather'. We began by ordering the days of the week and the months of the year. We will use this knowledge to build our own weather calendars by the end of the unit.

Our Beyond the Physical topic this half term is ' Watch, Move, Connect'. This unit is all about the skills needed to work effectively to control a ball. Our first lesson involved playing 'bib tennis' with a range of different sized balls, which was great fun!

Easter 2024

On Monday, we celebrated Palm Sunday Mass in Church with the whole school and we made some beautiful stained glass crosses to take home. On Tuesday, we led the school community, parents, governors, parishioners and our very special guest, Bishop John Arnold, round an interactive, sensory Stations of the Cross. On Wednesday, we had a whole school reflection assembly focussing on the events of Holy Week.

This half term included a second Computing unit, this time, an opportunity for the children to experience block coding with Scratch. They learned how to control the on screen sprites using the coding blocks, working towards creating their own animations and even a simple game. We had great fun trying out the different games which were created.

Our new Religion unit focusses on 'Journeys'. We will be exploring the journey through the seasons of the Church year and then learning about the Christian journey through life. The Year 4 pupils on the Sacramental Programme will be preparing to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

In our Bible Studies sessions, we are reading and reflecting on Luke 8, learning how Jesus healed people through their faith.

In Food Technology, our topic is 'Adapting a Recipe'. We began by completing a food safety activity and designed our own Food Safety posters to encourage others to follow the rules. 

We enjoyed sampling a range of existing biscuit products and describing their appearance, texture, taste and packaging. We also discussed who would be the target audience for each biscuit. Some groups even designed their own rating systems to decide which biscuit was their favourite.

Our third lesson saw us following a simple recipe to make biscuit dough. We had to cream together butter and sugar; separate an egg to use the yolk and add in vanilla essence before sieving in the flour. We then rolled out the chilled dough and used a cutter to create evenly sized and shaped biscuits. Our school cook baked the biscuits in her oven and we enjoyed sampling them before discussing what we could add to the dough to adapt the recipe.

Each group worked collaboratively to choose a target audience and design an innovative biscuit product. They then had to complete a budget to ensure their product could be made for under the given amount of £1.99. It was great to see children using their maths skills in a practical context.

In History, our new topic is Ancient Egypt. We started off by placing the period on our class timeline and then completed our pre-learning activity to find out what we already knew about various aspects of the topic. We are very excited to find out more...

On Monday 15th January, we visited Manchester Museum and spent the whole day completing a 'Takeover the Museum' activity which enabled us to get up close with some of their artefacts and to explore their brand-new 'Golden Mummies' exhibition. 

In our music lessons this half term, we are starting our whole class instrumental lessons. This year, we will be learning to play the glockenspiel, a tuned percussion instrument. In our first lesson, we explored staff notation, learning to name the parts of the musical stave. We also recalled our Science learning to understand why bouncing the beaters off the metal bars produces sound vibrations.

We moved on to learning how to play a rhythmic ostinato - firstly using the notes G, G, A, B then E, E, F, G. We followed the patterns on the staff notation and noticed how the notes were placed of the stave.

The children enjoyed putting the two parts together to create a harmonic ostinato. There was some excellent partner work in evidence as partners worked together to ensure everyone could follow the notes on the staff notation whilst they were playing.

We worked together to design packaging for our biscuits. We thought about how to make our products attractive to the target audience and ensured we included all the ingredients on our packaging.

Finally, each group produced their innovative biscuit designs. We spoke to members of our target audiences to carry out market research. Each group sampled the other biscuits and gave feedback based on the design criteria. 

In Science, we are learning about 'Humans and other animals'. Our first lesson involved exploring the names of different bones in the human skeleton.

In our second lesson, we looked at animal skeletons and identified bones within them. Each group chose representatives to feed back to the class about the animal skeletons they had been investigating. We learned about the three key functions of skeletons and began to link this to different bones.

In our third Science lesson, we carried out an experiment to find out how our bodies use liquid to protect our organs within our skeleton. We used a jar to represent our skull and an egg to represent our brain. We found out that adding water to the jar prevented the egg from smashing when the jar was shaken - just like our cerebral fluid protects our brain within our skull.

In order to explore how our muscles relax and contract in pairs to move the joints in our bodies, we created models. The children enjoyed using these to explore and demonstrate the concept.

Our French Topic this half term is 'School - L'Ecole'. We have enjoyed using interactive games to learn and practice the vocabulary for school subjects. 

During Children's Mental Health week, we held a  Mindfulness Retreat Day. We took part in different activities around the school, learning how we can take time for ourselves and find ways to improve our mental health and wellbeing.

On Party Day, we had a very special visitor. He brought each of us a present to take home and enjoy. Everyone loved visiting the Grotto and it was a truly magical time.

Our LKS2 choir members visited Pemberton Fold to sing for the residents. It was lovely to be able to bring them a little festive joy and to hear the residents joining in with their childhood favourites.

Our annual KS2 Carol Service was a wonderful afternoon as always. it was great to see so many parents, carers and parishioners there to support us and listen as we bore witness to the story of the first Christmas through prayer, song and poetry.

We managed to have fun on our annual Santa Dash despite the dreadful weather conditions that day. Lots of happy #santasmiles were clocked up by the LKS2 pupils. 

We spent a morning in prayerful pilgrimage around our Advent Prayer Stations - each of the eight stations helped us to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. It was lovely to witness how respectful and responsive the children were at each stage of their pilgrimage.

We had a visit from two of Santa's reindeer - Comet and Prancer. The children had some excellent questions and we enjoyed finding out lots of reindeer facts.

In Religion, our topic is Belonging. We are exploring what it means to belong to the Church family and learning how the Sacraments bring us closer to God as part of His family.

Our Bible Studies text this half term is from the book of 1 Kings. We are learning about the miracle of the flour and the oil, where Elijah met the widow at Zarephath and their faith in God helped them to survive in difficult circumstances.

Our second SUMO principle of the year was 'Change Your T-Shirt'. We explored how we can change our attitudes towards things which happen to us in order to be able to move on from events more effectively. We designed out own T-Shirts with positive messages to help us remember to change our mindset.

We have enjoyed our visits to Little Hulton Library over the past few weeks. The children enjoyed exploring the books and they all took the forms home so they could join the library. Well done to the children who have completed the joining process and already been back to the library to get their own books.

In Science, our topic is 'Light'. We began by visiting a pitch-black room in school to demonstrate how darkness is the absence of light. We explored a range of materials and their reflective properties.

In our second lesson, we carried out an investigation to answer the question Which material reflects the most light? First of all, we used ping pong balls and baking trays to model how light reflects off flat and bumpy surfaces differently. Then we tested a range of different materials. 

The Year 3 Maths groups have been learning their 3, 4 and 8 times tables. We have been using a range of different games and activities to practice counting in steps and to help us learn the tables facts.

We have also been learning about division. We started off using concrete manipulatives to share items into groups, then began to make links to our knowledge of multiplication facts to solve division problems.

In Geography, our topic is 'Sustainability'. We completed an enquiry-based task in groups, looking at a range of photographs to explore the concept.

In Computing, we are continuing our Data Handling studies. To begin our 'Investigating Weather' topic, we used the internet to research the temperature in different cities across the world, then recorded this data in a spreadsheet. We then sorted the information into ascending order.

In English, we are enjoying our first Talk For Writing unit: 'Journey to the Lonely Mountain'. We have memorised the text and created our own text maps using symbols.

In PE, our new Beyond the Physical unit is Duel, Win, Lose. We began by playing Spot Swap and Space Shifters.

In Religion, our first topic is Family. We are focussing on what it means to be part of our own family at home, our school family, and the wider Church family. We have also reflected on how Jesus was part of an earthly family with Mary and Joseph as his parents.

Year Three pupils have all enjoyed taking part in lunchtime prayer sessions led by our GIFT team in our beautiful prayer area.

We ended the half term by planning our own short liturgy. Each group was responsible for a different section: We Gather, We Listen, We Respond and Go Forth. Pupils had some excellent ideas and each group led their part of the session beautifully.

In our Bible Studies sessions, we are studying passages from the book of Genesis, which tell us about key events in the life of Abraham and his wife Sarah. We will be reflecting on how this scripture helps us to develop courage to follow what God wants us to do in life.

In French, our topic is 'Ourselves'. We began by learning some simple nouns for family members. We enjoyed playing a matching words and pictures game to practice the new vocabulary.

Our Art topic is 'Growing Artists'. This drawing unit focusses on using different media to create tone when drawing. We began by looking for organic and geometric shapes in objects and using these as a basis for our sketches.

We then learned more about creating tone (areas of light and dark) by shading using our pencils.

We have also been looking at detailed botanical drawings by Carl Linnaeus and Charles Darwin. We produced our own detailed drawings after close observation of some flowers, then added colour using watercolour paints.

Our Science topic is 'Rocks'. We began by examining a range of different chocolate bars and then identified which rock properties they represented. The children drew some beautiful cross-sections of the bars to illustrate the different properties.

We then examined a selection of rocks and discussed their properties. The children worked in groups to use Venn and Carroll diagrams to sort the rocks according to different criteria.

We carried out an experiment to test the properties of different rocks and to find out about the effects of weathering and erosion on different rock types.

We have been looking at fossils and the process of fossilisation. We conducted an experiment to show the process of how fossils are formed.

This half term we are learning about the Stone Age in History. We began by placing the Stone Age on our class timeline and then completed a pre-learning task to find out what pupils already knew about the time period. We then began to learn about the three separate time periods, Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic, and key developments in each of these. Watch this space for an interesting visitor coming to school soon...

We had a wonderful Stone Age experience day with amazing workshop sessions from DanTastic which helped us to discover many interesting facts. We also designed and made Stone Age Jewellery from clay and created some amazing animal art in the style of cave paintings.

We have quickly got back into the swing of our regular reading routine at school. We are enjoying our daily guided reading sessions, our weekly online reading assignments and our weekly visits to the school library.

In PE, we have been practising our Rugby skills with the coaches from Sports Development - we have enjoyed learning how to throw and catch the rugby ball.

In Music, we have been learning the poem 'The Sound Collector' by Roger McGough. We have been thinking about different instruments which could represent the sounds mentioned in the poem.