St Pius X Catholic Primary School

To celebrate St Patrick's Day last week, our head girl Darcie took to the stage and demonstrated her amazing Irish dancing skills! It was amazing to see how confident she was to perform in front of the school, especially with very little rehearsal time - a true professional! Check out some of her brilliant dancing below: A big thank you to Darcie for sharing her wonderful talent with us all - it was such a treat! 

One of our goals for the end of the year is to know our number bonds to 5 off by heart! We came up with this song together in class to help us learn them. We have been using numicon shapes, cubes and part whole models to help us understand these bonds.  If you see us around school, ask us what our number bonds to 5 are!  Well done Reception! 

On Friday 10th March, children from classes 5 and 6 walked to Newlands Spring primary school to take part in an ‘International Song Contest’. There were six other local schools taking part, each with different year groups. To take part, we had to rehearse a song in an international language. Our song – Ore mi je ka jo – was from Nigeria. Please click here to watch the children's performance.  Five of the seven performances had backing tracks but the other two, including St. Pius, sang acapella, and were mentioned in comments. After the children had performed the judges retired to consider their verdict. During this time, a teacher from Newland Spring led all children in a playground song. Once the judges returned, the head judge gave feedback to all schools. We were complimented for singing acapella and for singing in three parts. It was also noted that the children were ‘seamless’ and hardly needed the adult to lead. Our children were over the moon when they heard St. Pius had won...

  CONGRATULATIONS St Pius X Catholic Primary School! Your school will soon be receiving lots of wonderful new books for all the children to enjoy, all thanks to you!  We would like to say an enormous THANK YOU and WELL DONE to every child who took part in our sponsored reading challenge during World Book Week this year.  Some exciting numbers  80 The number of children took part.  £410 The total raised through sponsorship! £123 Extra FREE allowance added to the total by Usborne (30%) £533 The TOTAL your school has to spend on beautiful books!  Every single participant and supporter should be immensely proud of this achievement. We hope all those who took part had fun, and that this event has encouraged all of children at St Pius to enjoy immersing themselves in the wonderful world of reading. We look forward to having lots more books for your child to read, share and enjoy! The winners and prizes will be announced during celebration assembly. A priz...

Congratulations to the winners of our comic strip competition that was held last week:  Year 2 - Nicola & Rohan Year 3 - Lisandra, Ivy & Harper Year 4 - Jaeshen, Estera & Anu Year 5 - Roseanna & Kate Year 6 - Ira, Lilyanne & Jessica The children were tasked with creating comic strips that represent mathematics in some way. It was so wonderful to see all of their creative ideas come to life! Please find the winning entries below: Well done to all of the children who took part - we were so impressed with all the wonderful entries! 

 We have loved STEM week! We have enjoyed a range of 'science' learning through play opportunities. The children have mixed materials such as corn flour and water to see how they change when brought together, explored some scientific equipment such as pipetts in the water area and played with magnets exploring different materials.  'When the water is with the powder it makes it sticky - like slime.' - Cassius  We have also enjoyed learning more about growth and plants this week and have grown cress in school. The children have learned how to look after plants and what they need to grow.  'We need to water them to make them grow.' - Norah  We were very lucky to have a visit from  Aurelie Villedieu, a STEM ambassador and Lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Essex. She explained science to the children really clearly and they loved their session with her!  The children loved the visit and asked and answered some tricky questions. ‘Germs are dirt...

Today we have enjoyed our International Day of Mathematics. All the zones in the classroom had a maths focus today. For example we had tills and money in the role play area and measuring utensils in the construction area and large numicon to play with outside. The children have enjoyed using these resources to embedd some of our mathematical learning this year. They have enjoyed relfecting on what they have learned this year.  “We can subitise “ Alex “3 and 3 makes 6. I join in with maths at home and school “ Cassius “Chronological means time order” Nella “I love maths, I keep learning more” S kylah “We are learning about 3D shapes “ Jessie “We have learnt the signs for equal, add and take away” Bow We even took maths into our PE lessons where the children enjoyed making shapes and numbers with their friends.  Can you tell what numbers have been made in these pictures?  We have had a brilliant day! 

We always love learning about mathematics in year 2, especially when it's a day celebrating the subject! We used our prior knowledge of shape to make cityscape art; using triangles, rectangles, squares and sometimes... pentagons! Our current unit is measurement, so we went outside and recorded the length (in meters!) of how far we could throw a bean bag. "Maths is so fun, I was excited to celebrate it!"  Emil

  STEM Did you know that STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths? Year 4 have had some exciting and respectful discussions around stereotypes as well as thinking about the different types of 'Scientists' there are. One of the themes we explored was 'Connections' so we put our ideas together to create informative STEM posters around this theme. Some of the 'connections' around us might surprise you.......! ' Did you know that the Eiffel Tower changes height depending on the weather? It is connected to the seasons! The heat makes the metal expand!' - Seni We became forensic scientists (with Detective names, of course!), looking at fingerprint patterns. There are 3 main types of fingerprint patterns: loop, whorl and arch.  'I wonder if I have the same fingerprint as my twin!' - Angelin In Maths we looked at how Maths can often be closely linked to Art! International Maths Day encourages us to consider how Maths is for everyon...

Year 6 led the school wonderfully this morning in our stations of the cross service. They explained each station clearly and confidently and provided us all with an opportunity to reflect.  "How can we be courageous in showing concern for others? Can we reach out in love to others today?" Brooke "How does it feel to watch someone we love suffer? Think of someone we love who is hurting at this time and speak to Jesus about them." Jason It was lovely to see all the children across the school taking the time to reflect, calmly and quietly, and demonstrating our school value of forgiveness.  "Is there someone we need to forgive? Can we say in the quiet of our hearts: Jesus, I forgive..." Seb As Pope Francis is quoted saying, "Loving God means serving our neighbour without reserve and trying to forgive without limits." A big well done to all of the children and thank you to Father Paul for supporting the St Pius X school community in our service this ...

Key Stage 2 were lucky to have some special visitors in from The Dogs Trust yesterday. The children learnt some important lessons about how to behave safely around dogs, especially dogs that belong to strangers.  It was so wonderful to see the children sharing all of their ideas and displaying just how "dog smart" they were! "I now know that it is important to not hug a dog just because you want to. You need to give the dog a choice and, if they want to, they can snuggle up to you." Ira, Year 6 "You must be careful not to stroke other people's dogs if you don't know them - you never know how the dog might behave!" Cody, Year 3 Well done, Key Stage 2! 

 Lent St Pius X Catholic Primary School community celebrated the start of Lent with an Ash Wednesday Mass led by Fr Paul and the children.   In Whole School Liturgies, Mrs Derbyshire has been asking the school community to think about what they will focus on during Lent, to help them grow in their relationship with God and prepare for Easter Sunday. These are just some of the examples of school values our Year 5 pupils are working hard towards demonstrating: Eva-|Jayne, " I am going to be working on our school value of Kindness." Ivy, "Anyone I see that's upset, I'm going to help them."  (SERVICE) Mia- Rose, "It's hard to forgive sometimes, but  it's true that everyone makes mistakes." (FORGIVENESS) What will you be focusing on?  Try saying this Lenten prayer to help you grow in your relationship with God: Mrs Derbyshire,  Headteacher

This term we have been exploring Traditional Tales. We have really enjoyed learning the story of The Three Little Pigs.  'I use red and white paint to make the different pinks.' - Alex  The children have completed a range of different activities across many areas of the curriculum. We have explored the materials used to make the houses, discussed what uses certain materials have, made their own houses from junk modelling, mixed colours to make pink paint for pigs, written material lists for building sites, created play dough pigs and acted out the story. We have read many versions of the story and one from the wolf's point of view.  The children have been brilliant when comparing this story to other Traditional Tales we have read and have come up with these similarities: - They begin with 'once upon a time' (Aisling) - The characters often come in groups of 3 (Brian) - There are goodies and baddies (Irene) - Some characters cross over stories e.g The Big Bad Wolf (...

 Today, year 5 were given the opportunity to attend a taster day at Saint John Payne Catholic comprehensive secondary school. We started the day from a warm welcome from the headteacher Mr. Coen. We had some interesting lessons, from creating our own medieval battle crest, to learning how  glucose functions in our body, to Drama with Miss Bracknell and finishing off with basketball in P.E. "SJP looks like a fantastic school, I think I would like to go here!" - Joseph " The history teacher is really good, I can't wait to learn more history topics in secondary school." - Jophiel