St Pius X Catholic Primary School

  🎉🎒🔥 What a fantastic way to celebrate the end of Year 6 KS2 SATs! Our students had a blast toasting marshmallows and enjoying a cozy campfire. All the children did themselves proud this week and worked hard to complete the assessments. Here's to hard work, fun times, and great memories! 🏕️

 

 Today in year 1 we set up different stations to aid in our understanding of recognising equal groups! We paired this with our previous understanding of counting by 2s and 5s. Students used multilink cubes and dough to make and sort equal groups and were able to spot differences between equal and unequal groups. "It's a lot easier for me to find equal groups when I can make them on my own!" Olivia By the end of the maths lesson, all students were much more confident in identifying equal groups and making them on their own!

The focus of our IPC topic is 'Buildings' so we thought we would have a look at the local buildings! After looking at our route on a map we were ready to get our steps in! On the journey we could consider why there are so many different styles of buildings, with different purposes and compare the materials, design and age of them. We applied our geographical and historical knowledge from the classroom to real life! The Cathedral and County Hall were impressive buildings! We were also able to visit The Art Place. This was fantastic because we were given a special tour and shown a huge array of different art work including an exhibition all about hair called 'My hair, my crown!' There were handmade products made by local artists including glass-blown jewellery, paper hedgehogs, dog bow ties, wooden toys and galleries of acrylic paintings. There were even artworks made from eggshells! We highly recommend a visit! Throughout the trip we took the opportunities to practice ou

We work on our writing skills every day in Reception. We wanted to show you the wonderful progress our children have made! At the end of the year the children need to be able to write their own sentence using the phonics they have learned in the year.  Learning to write is complex and requires good fine motor skills, good core posture at a table, knowledge of letter formation, knowledge of phonemes and their corresponding graphemes, segmenting skills, knowledge of finger spaces, capital letters and full stops. The children in Reception have had a lot to learn this year but we think they are doing brilliantly with their writing progress!  They have shown resilience in their writing journey this year and this term we have seen some excellent progress.  'Writing is hard, I try really hard to remember my finger spaces.' - Kiara  'I use my phonics and think about the sounds.' - Benjamin 'You have to think about if the letters are the right way round.' - Uriah  Well d

Hundredths and tenths can be a tricky concept to understand, especially understanding that 1 tenth is equivalent to 10 hundredths. So Year Fours experimented with tenths and hundredths, using dienes to switch between tenths and hundredths. Using a hundred square as our whole, Year 4's investigated combinations of hundredths and tenths to create the same decimal number.   

  Extra! Extra! Year 4s are looking at newspapers so to start us all off we looked at real newspaper articles and discovered how we see the features in practice. We saw how a punchy headline grabs the attention of the reader and thought about why that's important for a newspaper. We saw how quotes can be long (several sentences/interviews) or short (one/two words). It was useful to see how professional journalists incorporate the 5 Ws into their introduction. After looking at the features in newspapers, we watched Newsround and discussed how the two mediums are similar and different. 

Year 2 have been working on a very special project!  In preparation for our Class Gallery they have been creating beautiful 'Starry Night' landscape paintings inspired by Van Gogh. This involved a dabbing technique to create the painted background and a black silhouette of buildings in the foreground. There was also a lot of discussion about what they observed and they shared their opinions of the paintings. They then decorated some wooden sticks to make a picture frame and have used the hacksaw to cut each one to the right length. Using tools safely is an important skill. Once they have been glued together, our gallery will be ready.... watch this space!  'This is harder than it looks!' Isaac after sawing! 'I like the swirling patterns in the sky!' - Elena 'You have to keep your fingers away from the saw!' Lexi 'I have tried to copy Vincent Van Gogh's pattern,' Agnes

  The children listened to the Gospel reading this week, where Jesus ascended into heaven.  The children were reminded about the challenge we have all been given, to proclaim the Good News.  One way to do this is by living out our school values, service, peace, kindness, forgiveness, integrity, and fairness. The children were set an additional challenge, which is when praying to ask for the Holy Spirit to join them. Thy Kingdom asks Christians to pray for eleven days, from Ascension to Pentecost, calling for the Holy Spirit to fill the Earth and for people to know Jesus.   Jesus wants everyone to know him through the power of the Holy Spirit.  Each day from Ascension to Pentecost take time to pray and call for the Holy Spirit to come, Mrs Derbyshire

UPDATE 13 May 2024 - the 3 surviving caterpillars have now become chrysalides and have been moved into the butterfly habitat. Hopefully the Painted Lady butterflies will emerge in 2 weeks time! UPDATE 8 May 2024  - the caterpillars have grown a lot and are beginning to get comfortable on the lid of the cup as their cocoon starts to develop... 🐛 29 April 2024 - We are currently looking after 5 tiny caterpillars and are awaiting their transformation into butterflies in a few week's time! 🦋   Check back soon for an update!

  🏏 What an amazing afternoon it was at the  3 Tees Cricket Event! Our talented Year 1 and 2 students showcased their fantastic skills on the field, delivering a superb performance that had everyone on the edge of their seats. 🏆 We are proud to announce that our team has clinched the 3rd place overall, ensuring their qualification for the county finals. 🎉🎉 The dedication and hard work put in by our budding cricketers truly paid off. They demonstrated great sportsmanship, teamwork, and remarkable talent throughout the event. We couldn't be prouder of their achievement! 👏👏 Stay tuned for more updates as we prepare for the county finals and continue to cheer on our talented team. 🤞🏆

 Every day, alongside our focus tasks and whole class learning, our Reception children have the opportunity to learn through play.  Our resources available are carefully selected to develop their vocabulary, skills and knowledge.  Here are some of the things they have achieved through play this week!  The children created a bus using the chairs available in the classroom. They worked together in a large group to play cooperatively together showing resourcefulness and reciprocity. The children took it in turns to be the driver and each enjoyed being a passenger. The children were applying their learning from whole class sessions and acted this out through role play.  During Maths we have been looking at the value of tens and ones. We have made these using cubes during whole class sessions. Here, some children chose to continue playing and creating numbers using cubes. They used the whiteboard to write their numbers practicing counting, number patterns and number formation.  While learni

 

  On Thursday 9th May, the St Pius X children and staff celebrated the month of May by holding a Marian Procession.  Our school statue of our lady was processed out to the playground where parents joined us for a Marian service, with singing and prayers dedicated to Mary, mother of Jesus. Kate and Joe, Head Girl and Boy, crowned Mary as part of our service, demonstrating our respect and love for her as Jesus' and our mother.  Prayers were also dedicated to her. Some of our Year 3 pupils made their first Holy communion a few weeks before and were invited to wear their special clothes for the service. At the service, each Year 3 child was handed their own Good News Bible.  This will stay with them as they continue through the school.  They will take this Bible with them when they leave as a reminder of their faith journey, during their time at St Pius X Catholic Primary School.

 To consolidate our understanding of number we have been applying our skills to a variety of number puzzles. This was also a fantastic opportunity to solve puzzles involving odd and even numbers, using bonds to 10 and checking we had found all the possibilities. Our speaking and listening skills were tested as we tried to justify our answers using mathematical reasoning. Well done Year 2!