St Pius X Catholic Primary School

🌏 COMPETITION 🌏  Wow - we certainly have some creative pupils here at St Pius! We wanted to celebrate Earth Day , thinking about why our world is precious and how we can be responsible citizens by looking after our environment.  We have been overwhelmed with entries and the quality, effort and important messages that have been included is just amazing. Thank you to everyone who participated in the competition.  It has been incredibly difficult to choose a winner from KS1 and KS2! Every entry has been awarded 20 house points and all posters are proudly displayed around the school. KS1 Winner - Joelle!   Her 3D Earth was decorated with beautiful watercolours and some reminders on how to look after the Earth! KS2 Winner - Austin!   His 3D save the earth poster had lots of important messages!  

  Year 1 R.E – Learning Focus 3: The Holy Spirit Helps Us Change This week in Year 1, we explored a very special question in our R.E. lessons: Why do Christians believe the Holy Spirit can help people change, like the apostles did? Across two thoughtful and creative sessions, the children learned about Jesus’ promise to His friends and how Catholics believe the Holy Spirit continues to guide, strengthen, and inspire people today. The week ended with a joyful celebration as the children made their own “God is Here” badges to remind them that God is always close. ✨ Lesson 1 – The Promise of the Holy Spirit We began with a fun retrieval game, “What am I?” , using props and images from earlier stories such as Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, and the Resurrection. This helped the children reconnect with the events leading up to Jesus’ final promise. 📖 Scripture Focus – Acts 1:1–5 We shared a child‑friendly version of the moment when Jesus told the apostles to wait in Jerusalem for the Ho...

 It's been so much fun exploring the forest school area as part of our learning!  The children are loving all of the activities provided by our forest school leaders: Karen and Caroline.  There has been lots of bug hunting, mud kitchen cooking and tree climbing. The children love being outdoors and the lovely weather we've been having has helped massively.  ‘My favourite part was everything!’ Clare ‘ I liked playing with my friends and climbing trees with Archie and Jeevan’ Da’Jean ‘I liked looking for bugs’ Jesse-Joy 'I've been cooking dinner for all my friends'- Kiana 

This afternoon Year 2 had a try at printing using foam sheets. The aim was to create a cityscape like the ones we have studied previously, but only using black paint. This made for a dramatic monochrome masterpiece! They watched a demonstration before trying to create a 'building' print. This involved lots of skills including: listening to instructions and watching the demo, fine motor skills - pressing into the foam hard enough to leave an imprint but not too hard that it went through the foam sheet, precision - placing the print on the paper carefully and peeling it off without it smudging, criticalal thinking - if something didn't work, how could they fix or improve it? Some of this involved trial and improvement, considering what hadn't worked so well and trying to improve it next time. This activity also gave the children an opportunity to share and collaborate by mixing and matching their prints with their peers. This meant their prints were used multiple times, s...

As part of our new science unit Year 5 have been investigating how materials can change when put together. We were exploring our original thoughts that some materials seem to 'disappear' when placed into water.  We put some salt into water and we noticed that we couldn't see it anymore. We knew from our life experiences that if we tasted the water it would taste salty so it wasn't that the salt had disappeared. This intruduced us to the scientific term 'dissolving'. We learned that when a substance such as salt or sugar is mixed into water it dissolves and creates a solution.  We decided to test this further with an experiment. The scientific question we posed was 'Does the temperature of the water change how quickly a substance dissolves in water?' The children used their enquiry skill of observation and stirred salt into water that was cold, warm and hot and then recored their results.  ' The hot water dissolved the salt the quickest.' - Janae ...

 As part of our human body unit in IPC, we've been looking at teeth. We found out about all the different types of teeth we have, what their characteristics are and what their purpose is. We looked at herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, examining their teeth and seeing which teeth are liked to which animals.  However, we also need to know how to keep our teeth healthy. So we've created an experiment to find out which liquids have the biggest impact on teeth. We've put eggshells in bags and put different liquids each bag (water, milk, cola, orange juice and vinegar) and observe them over the next couple of weeks. Many in the class think that cola or vinegar will have the biggest impact. Let's wait and see...

 This week, we have been learning all about different types of boats as part of our transport topic. This meant we spent lots of time outside playing in the water trays experimenting with different size boats.  The children became very interested in how the boats could float, especially cruise ships and ferries when they are carrying lots of people and cars.  We decided to carry out our own investigations to discover which objects would float and sink.  The children used the new vocabulary to guess if various items would float or sink. They learnt that 'sinked' isn't a word and we have to change it to 'sunk' but 'floated' is. How confusing we thought!  ‘Sink means it goes down low’ Macie ‘Float means when it stays on the top’ Amelia ‘I think the cube will sink because it doesn’t have water on it’ Archie We tested a plastic bear in the water too. ‘ I think it will sink because it has a small hole in it’ Jesse Joy A wooden duck was tested next. Most of the cla...

  Year 1 R.E. - The Road to Emmaus This week in R.E., our Year 1 children have been exploring one of the most joyful stories from the Bible — Jesus appearing on the road to Emmaus after the Resurrection (Luke 24:13–35). Through creative storytelling, discussion, and hands‑on activities, the children have been learning that Christians believe Jesus is always with us, even when we don’t immediately recognise Him. Lesson 1 — Recognising Jesus We began with a lively “What am I?” game using props from earlier stories — Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection — to help children recall what they already know about Jesus’ journey. Then we read a child‑friendly retelling of The Road to Emmaus , discovering how two friends walked with Jesus without realising who He was. Children created a story map to sequence the story, showing each key moment — walking, talking, breaking bread, and finally recognising Jesus. This helped them understand that sometimes we don’t s...

  Our Year 4-6 girls football team put in a fantastic performance this week against a very strong Great Leighs side. Although the final score ended 6-1, the scoreline did not reflect the effort, determination and teamwork shown by the girls throughout the match. From the very first whistle, the team defended resiliently and never stopped working hard for one another. Great Leighs proved to be an excellent team, moving the ball well and taking their chances, but our players continued to battle right until the end with great attitude and commitment. There were some brilliant moments of defending, strong tackles and excellent teamwork on display, with the girls encouraging each other throughout the game. Their resilience and positive spirit were outstanding and they should all be incredibly proud of themselves. A special well done goes to Fran, who scored our goal with a fantastic finish to reward the team’s hard work and determination. Matches like this help teams grow stronger, ...

We have some new (temporary) class pets! Year 2 are currently looking after 10 fuzzy, wriggly caterpillars! Over the next few days and weeks, we will observe as they go through their life cycle! We are excited to watch as they turn into chrysalides, making a special cocoon before transforming into Painted Lady  butterflies! We are amazed at how much they have already grown in just a week!   !

 

 To conclude our recent topic 'Buildings,' Year 2 have been extremely busy preparing for their class art gallery! They recently finished their Van Gogh inspired paintings and have been learning new skills in order to create a wooden frame for their artwork! The children were shown a demonstration of how to use the hack saw safely to cut their wood. They measured their pieces of wood so they would fit around their painting, decorated them and then used the saw to cut them to size! The children then had a chance to walk around the class gallery to see what everyone had created! Gershlene said ' we might be inspired by someone in our class!' Finally, they gave positive feedback to a classmate, commenting on their artwork, frame or overall finished piece! This reciprocity was lovely to see - well done!!

This week, our Year 5 explorers took to the "skies" to investigate one of the most invisible yet powerful forces on Earth: Air Resistance . The Question : Does the size of a parachute change how fast an object falls to the ground? Before we started, the class made their hypotheses . Most of our scientists predicted that the larger parachute would be slower, but they needed the data to prove it! The children made their own parachutes of contrasting sizes and attached a paper clip to them to test them.  The results were clear! The large tissue paper parachute consistently drifted slowly to the ground, while the small parachute plummeted much faster. Why did this happen? It all comes down to Surface Area . As the paperclip pulls the parachute down due to gravity , the tissue paper has to push its way through the air. Large Surface Area: The big parachute hits more air particles as it falls. This creates more air resistance, which pushes up against the parachute and slows the ...

This half term, we are learning all about transport and vehicles and this week, we started by learning about cars and the road. We had a visitor join us from Safer Essex to deliver a road safety talk and interactive session to the children and parents.  The interactive session allowed children to identify different vehicles we might see on the road and taught them the Green Cross Code.  We learnt an accompanying song to help us remember the rules to 'Stop, Look, Listen and Think'.  During the session, children and grown ups were given the chance to practice crossing a pretend road using the Green Cross Code.  'We must look before we cross the road or we might die'- Lydia  'Look both ways'- Brian  'Some cars can even reverse and might not see us'- Ethan  Then throughout the week, we made our own road safety posters explaining the rules of crossing the road and sang the song lots of times!