Some children in Year 5 have been taking part in a VEX IQ Robotics After School Club. Funding through the Reece Foundation has enabled the school to purchase a set of robotics building equipment which has offered children various STEM opportunities such as engineering and coding. The club has been fun and engaging and has allowed the children to design, code and build a robot from scratch. The children were able to test their engineering and programming skills both in the club and competition they entered hosted by Nissan Skills Foundation.   All the children in the club contributed in helping with the success of the robot, however we were only able to take 9 to the competition which consisted of the builders, coders and drivers. This provided the children with valuable life skills such as teamwork, communication skills, and sportsmanship. The children thoroughly enjoyed their day and out of the 18 schools in the competition, St Joseph’s came an impressive second!

This week in nursery, we continued our learning about birds 🐦. The children had lots of fun making bird models 🎨 and, in maths, counting the correct number of worms 🪱 to feed the birds. We also created our own bird feeders 🪹, which are now hanging in our outdoor area 🌳. In phonics, our older children learned the sound ‘t’  🔤, and our focus story for the week was The Go Away Bird  📖. We had so much fun and enjoyed a lovely week full of learning and creativity 😊🌟

This week in Nursery, we have been very excited as we prepared for Chinese New Year ! 🎉 We learned all about traditional celebrations and explored the different ways people come together to get ready for the festivities. In Maths , we played a fun game rolling the dice 🎲 and dishing out the correct number of noodles 🍜. We even practised using chopsticks , helping to develop our fine motor skills 🥢✋. We counted the correct number of pom-poms and focused on the number 5  ⭐. We had so much fun serving our friends’ orders in our new role-play Chinese restaurant  🏮🍽️. Our older children also worked hard learning the sound ‘p’  🔤—well done everyone! 👏😊

This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming our lovely nursery families into school for a pre-phonics workshop 🏫💛. Together, we explored the different skills children need to support them on their phonics and early reading journey 📚🔤. We also shared and explored a range of fun activities that children can enjoy at home to help develop these important skills 🎲🎶. What a fantastic morning of learning and partnership with our families! 🌟😊

Children in Year 2 have been inspired by Picasso to colour and paint portraits. They explored his abstract paintings and developed the knowledge of primary colours in order to mix and use the colours they made. They also drew and painted various shapes using different brush strokes and markings seen in his paintings. The pupils were then inspired to draw a Picasso picture using an APP for painting. Application of skills •      Develop knowledge of the colour wheel •      Mix secondary colours using paint •      Paint a colour wheel with primary and secondary colours •      Explore abstract portraiture

Each class from St Joseph’s Primary School attends All Saints Church on a weekly rota. During these visits, pupils have the opportunity to participate in Mass and worship alongside parishioners. Father Maridas, our parish priest, leads the Mass. This week was the turn of Year 2.

Inherited traits are physical or behavioural features that are passed from parents to offspring through genes. Can you identify the inherited characteristics in Y6’s imaginary families?

In PE Year 1. have been developing movement skills by focusing on the big parts  of their bodies. Through playful exploration and guided activities, children have been learning how to move, balance and create shapes using areas such as their backs, tummies, shoulders and legs. A key part of the lesson involved listening carefully for the sound of the tambourine. Each time it was struck, children were challenged to freeze and create a still balance  using a big  body part. This helped to develop body control, spatial awareness and listening skills, all while having lots of fun. It was wonderful to see pupils showing creativity, determination and imagination in the shapes they made.

Today in Year 1, we had a fantastic maths lesson all about the number 10! Our challenge was: “How many different ways can we make 10?” To help us, we used tens frames and cubes. The children worked in pairs to explore number bonds like 6 + 4, 7 + 3 and so on. They recorded their ideas and shared them with the class. Once we had lots of examples, Mrs Wilson put them on the working wall – but one was missing! The children had to be detectives and spot which combination wasn’t there. This was so much fun and really made us think carefully about our work.

This week Year 1 became history detectives ! Our big question was: “Who is George Stephenson and what does he do?” To find out, the children examined old photographs and paintings as clues. They looked carefully at details like clothing, objects and settings to make predictions about the person in the pictures. We asked questions such as: What can you see? What might this tell us about his job? Why is he important? Through our investigation, the children discovered that George Stephenson was an engineer who built one of the first steam locomotives and helped design railways. His work changed how people travelled and connected towns across Britain.

We explored an exciting science enquiry question this week:“Do the oldest children have the longest feet?” To investigate, the children worked in pairs and drew around their feet on large sheets of paper. Each child recorded their age and month of birth and we compared the results across the class.   The children were fantastic scientists! They noticed that while some older children had longer feet, it wasn’t always true – there were exceptions. This led to a great discussion about how scientists look for patterns but also think about other factors that might affect results.

This week in Nursery, we have been busy learning all about birds! 🐦 Our focus story was Hooray for Birds , which helped us to recognise and talk about different colours 🌈. In Maths, we sang Five Little Ducks 🦆 to practise our counting and number recognition 🔢. In the creative area, we made bird crafts using primary colours 🎨 and explored a range of materials to create bird nests 🪹. We also used our fine motor skills ✂️👐 to make bird models. Our older children learned the ‘a’ sound during phonics sessions 🔤. In RE, we discussed celebrations 🎉 and enjoyed sharing our own celebration photographs from home with our friends 📸. What a fantastic week of learning! ⭐😊