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The Good Shepherd
Catholic Primary School
“I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me”. John 10:14"
Year 4 - St John Bosco
School Musical 2021: The Little Mermaid
For our final Computing lesson of the year- Sphero Racing!
Year 3 and 4 Girls’ Football Tournament
Spooky Story!
Years 3 and 4 Cricket Competition
Electrical circuits!
We have been learning about electricity in science. Here, you can see us creating our own electrical circuits. We needed wires, batteries and a bulb to create our circuits. In the end, we were able to explain how electricity flows through our homes and around the country.
The Good Shepherd’s newest member!
Meet the newest pupil at the Good Shepherd, Rocket. Mrs. Lavelle very kindly made a surprise visit to our classroom so that we could meet him. We all fell in love and have promised to look after him really well.
The Good Shepherd Summer Fair
Luckily, we managed to have our annual summer fair at the Good Shepherd. We each received a set of tickets and could use them on activities and to win prizes! There were lots of fun activities set up for us throughout the day, like a super slide, hook a duck, a photo booth, a treasure trail and whack a mole. We could also cool down with an ice cold drink or an ice cream from the ice cream stall.
The Lost Happy Endings
We have been studying the book ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ by Carol Ann Duffy this half term. The children have really enjoyed getting to know the main character, Jub. Here, you can see examples of our ‘role on the wall’, in which the children came up with words to describe Jub’s appearance and inner thoughts and feelings. Also, a big thank you to Annie-Rose who did a fantastic job at taking on the role of Jub in the hot seating activity, where children got to meet Jub in person. We had lots of unanswered questions for her!
Exploring body measurement
We found that the length of our forearms was equal to the length of our feet!
Water Cycle Projects
We have been learning about the water cycle in science. Over half term, we created projects based on the water cycle, Here, you can see some of the children’s recreations of the water cycle.
Birthday Bash!
Over the past year, all of the children (and staff) of the Good Shepherd have missed out on a very important celebration – their birthday party! To make up for all of the birthday parties that have been missed in the last year, we threw a massive birthday bash! There was a silent disco, a bouncy castle, a super slide, cupcake decorating and party games. We even had the chance to win prizes. As a class, we were rewarded with a movie afternoon, a whole class game and 10 extra minutes of play!
Art from Ancient Rome!
This term, we have been learning about ancient Rome in art. We have learned all about the power of the Roman Empire and have studied some monuments which were built in ancient Rome. So far, we have learned about the Pantheon, the Colosseum and Trajan’s Column. Here, we are working in groups to recreate the Pantheon. We used cardboard and lollipop sticks to create the base. Then, we created the dome from ModRoc. We had to leave a circular space in the top of our dome. This represented the oculus, which the Romans believed was a pathway to the Gods. Finally, we used wood and cardboard to create the portico. We finished by evaluating our monuments.
Club 144 Summer Meeting
What secret things were they up to this time?
Clue: there was lots of adding up of decimals and it was something to do with the European Championships...
Timing Our Escape!
For our last Spheroraptor lesson we wanted to time how long each escape took. We did it five times and found the mean average. We wondered if there was something about the way the fastest escapes were coded that made them so quick.
Fun with decimals!
We have been learning about decimals in maths. Here, we are using number flippers, counters and place value charts. This way, we could show the value of decimals in a variety of ways.
Spheroraptors: Debugged!
Year 4 had a problem. Last week, Spheroraptor kept getting stuck against the wall of its enclosure when trying to escape. Following a collision with a wall, we decided to make it reverse before trying to turn and roll. This seemed to stop it getting stuck, so we had a lot more Spheroraptors escaping this week! We also coded some great dinosaur matrix animations.
Spheroraptors on the loose!
We have a new challenge: code Sphero to escape from a rectangular pen. We imagined the Spheros were raptors escaping from Jurassic Park after a power failure opened the gates to the raptors’ pens...
While some Spheroraptors successfully escaped, we found some problems with our code which we will work on next week.
Coding Bumper Cars with Sphero
We wanted our Spheros to act like bumper cars so we coded them to roll forwards and react to a collision with the benches by:
-saying ‘Ouch!’
-turning around
-rolling back again
Some of us added an LED matrix animation.
We raced our Spheros to see which performed the movements the quickest.
Tudor Projects!
We have been busy this half term working on our Tudor projects. We had three sessions to complete our projects, so it was important that we planned them carefully. In week one, we completed lots of research about the area we were interested in. In weeks two and three, we were busy working on our designs and creating information leaflets, posters and videos about the pieces of work we had completed.
Easter Egg Hunt!
Skip Week Champions: Blue Team!
Keeping fit with circuit training in P.E.
World Book Day!
Today, we celebrated World Book Day. We all dressed up as our favourite book character and listened to some lovely stories throughout the day!
Christmas Dinner!
Christmas Fun Day!
To mark the end of this Autumn term and to thank the children for all of the hard work they have put in, we had a Christmas fun day. There were many fun activities set up on the day, like pin the nose on Rudolph, beat santa in goals, tinsel pull, card games and hook a duck. We also got to decorate our own cookies and warm up with a tasty hot chocolate from Etain!
Club 144 Meeting: The Egg Drop Challenge!
We explored the physics of dropping an egg from a height of 3 metres. We worked out that we needed to:
Increase the time over which the egg was brought to rest.
Decrease the egg's velocity at the time of the crash.
Achille, Julione, Mason and Michael's team came second, and Dara, Jude, Michael and Ferdy's team came third. They succeeded in protecting their egg, designing a parachute with padding to absorb some of the force of the impact, but their eggs still did sustain some damage! Well done to them!
I'm sure there will be more Club 144 members from Year 4 for our next meeting!
Christmas Crafts Day
On the 3rd December, years 3 and 4 had their Christmas crafts day. We began the day by creating cross stitch bauble decorations to hang on our Christmas trees. We also created pop up Christmas cards, had our photo taken for our 2021 calendar and decorated our classroom with personalised bunting and an advent wreath.
Block Coding with Sphero
Year 4 have been using our new iPads and Sphero Bolt programmable robots and thinking about our latest Science work on classifying animals.
We coded the Spheros to follow a path over photos of different arachnids, insects and molluscs and broadcast a fact about each animal as they passed over them.
Guided reading
We have been taking part in weekly guided reading sessions, exploring the text ‘My Best Fiend’ by Sheila Lavelle. In a session, each child reads a passage of the text and then completes an activity based on what we have read. In this lesson, we were looking for examples of pronouns in the book and then generating our own sentences about the chapter using pronouns.
Now Press Play!
We have been using our new resource 'Now press play' to actively engage with the topics we are learning about. Each child wears a set of wireless headphones and is sent on a journey to explore a topic. In the above lesson, we were learning about climate change and the effects of global warming. We travelled in time and looked at how the world might look 42 years from now if we continue to burn fossil fuels. We started in London, where the Thames was flooding, and there were no cars or planes because all of the petrol had run out. We then met Dr. Eco, who took us to Uganda and to the Arctic. In Uganda, there was no life left, because it had gotten too hot and there was no more rain for humans or the animals to drink or for the crops to grow. In the Arctic, all of the ice was melting, and the polar bears were dying and becoming extinct. It was very sad! We then returned to today, where we wrote a letter to the Prime Minister asking him to change.
We have been having weekly computing lessons with Mr. Davis. Our focus this term has been coding. We started by using Beebots and Lightbot 2.0 to code simple movement sequences and moved on to block coding with Scratch online. This allowed us to create our own games, including a times tables game which was designed as an educational game for Year 3 children. It's been lots of fun!
CAFOD family fast day
We wore bright clothing in aid of family fast day to help us raise money for CAFOD. We reflected on the impact that COVID-19 has had on people living in poverty around the world, and how it has only made circumstances more challenging for the many people who are already living through emergency situations. We identified the difficulties that many families and individuals have in countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia in Asia and Kenya and Sierra Leone in Africa. We talked about ways in which we as a school can help and discussed the better world we want to move towards in the future. We then made posters in pairs, titled ‘the world we want’ and placed some of our ideas on them.
Medium Term Curriculum Maps
First Holy Communion celebrations
Today, we celebrated the fact that most of us have now made our First Holy Communion. This afternoon, we dressed up in our First Holy Communion outfits and went to mass as a class. Dara and Jude did a wonderful job at reading. When we returned, we had a party to celebrate. We had drinks, snacks, music and lots of dancing.
Beach Day!
At the Good Shepherd, we recognise that coming back to school was not easy for a lot of children. To mark this, we had a beach day on Monday 14th September. We put our curriculum subjects aside for the day and celebrated coming back to school with a day full of fun and laughter in the sun. We had the best day ever!
Year 4 2020/2021
Welcome back, Year 4!
2019 - 2020 ARCHIVE
Our Little seeds
We planted tomato seeds to take home with us over the break. We will look after them until we come back and make sure we water them every day and watch them grow.
We thought about all of the children who weren’t with us this week and prayed for them as well as our school and ourselves. We hope that we get to see everyone again very soon.
Kind hearts are the garden,
kind words are the roots,
kind thoughts are the flowers,
kind deeds are the fruits.
Take care of your garden,
And keep out the weeds,
Fill it with sunshine,
Kind words and kind deeds.
I will miss every single one of you very much and can’t wait to hear all about what you got up to while we were away,
Miss Jackson x
Dinosaurs and fossils workshop for National science week!
We really enjoyed our science workshop for national science week. We found it extra interesting because we have been learning about rocks and fossils in science this term. We learned all about the dinosaurs that lived millions of years ago. We also learned the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. The best part was the archaeological dig - we found lots of really cool dinosaur bones and teeth!
World book day
We had a great day on world book day. We all dressed up as book characters and painted potatoes to match our fantastic costumes! We heard lots of lovely stories throughout the day and even had the chance to write our own mystery stories which we will be putting in the reading corner for everyone else to read!
World Maths Day!
We spent this morning playing maths games for world maths day. We played addition and subtraction snakes and ladders, multiplication bingo, addition and subtraction connect 4 and crack the code. It was lots of fun!
Animal Day!
We dressed up as animals today in aid of the Animals that were involved in the bushfires in Australia. We raised lots of money and had lots of fun! Thank you to everyone who donated!
Half term homework - research on Ancient Egypt
Sock monkeys!
We have spent the last 6 weeks making sock monkeys in our textiles class with Ms Skinmore. In the beginning, we learned about all the different stitches and practiced them on material. We also had to learn about the safety precautions to take while sewing. Then, we were ready to start. All of our monkeys were so unique! At the end, we had to make sure our monkeys were up to a good quality so we helped each other to point out what could be better - this was really helpful. We really enjoyed our time with Ms Skinmore!
Welcome back to year 3.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are well rested. I have attached the curriculum map for this term below, it includes an overview of some of the things we will be learning about this term. I look forward to another busy term with you all!
Christmas fun!
We've had lots of fun preparing for Christmas. We made cards and headbands. We reminded ourselves of the true meaning of Christmas this week and made sure to think about all of the people who are in need this Christmas. We will be remembering them and praying for them over this Christmas period.
Our new reading corner!
We love our new reading corner! A massive thank you to all parents and guardians who have already donated cushions and bean bags to make our reading corner more comfortable 😊 It is very much appreciated!
Stone Age day Friday 6th December
Tennis trip to Bishops Park Tennis courts!
Homework 22nd November
Spellings 8th November
Homework 1st November
Our Roman Feast!
October half term homework
Roman Feast - Friday 18th October
Year 3 will be hosting a Roman Feast on Friday 18th October. Parents are invited to the school at 2:30pm on the day to join the feast.
Homework 11th October
Homework 4th October
Spellings 27th September 2019
Say hello to our new Mini Vinnies!
Homework 20th September
Year 3 Homework, 13th September
Year 3 Autumn Curriculum Map
Welcome to Year 3 2019 - 2020!
Year 2 2018-2019 archive
November Numeracy Challenge 2018
2017-2018 archive
Just some answers to some of the questions brought up during this afternoon's brief meeting: 
- Where to buy uniform ( ties/ jumpers) will a form be sent out? Uniforms can be purchased from the school office. When we return in September if it is very warm children can wear short sleeved shirts or their yellow tshirts.
- How to support your child over the summer holidays? I have linked some fun and exciting websites for phonics . I ve also attatched a letter formation and number formation worksheet to help practice writing over the summer term ( this is not compulsory). An excellent activity would be asking your child to dress themselves, or to practice writing with a pencil at a table or a desk.
- Information about what your child is learning / will be learning? I will update the class web page at the end of each week with a weekly review to give an insight into what we have been up to during the week! A curriculum map will also be on the webpage in September.
- Any differences in play/ play times ? Year 1 have 3 playtimes during the day- one at 10:30-10:45, an hour at lunchtime from 12-1, and 15 minutes in the afternoon around 2 pm. They will have access to an abundance of equipment, blocks, lego, ball games and apparatus in the main playground.
I hope everyone has a wonderful summer and feel free to send a postcard back to our classroom Teddy in school! Happy Summer!
Ms O'Leary
Maths
End of Year Review Year 1 2017-2018 
We have had an extremely busy final few weeks in Year 1! On Monday we had a fantastic day at our school sport's day! We all had a fantastic time and really enjoyed ourselves :)
Last week we had our KS1 Windrush concert. For anyone who missed it there's a video of our practice run below. Year 1 were fantastic at singing! We had a pizza party to watch some world cup games and even had our own mini world cup!
Here's a look at everything we've been up to Year 1 over the last 2 weeks:
Religion: In RE we heard about the Wedding at Cana, where Jesus performed a miracle and turned water in wine. We also had a very special meditation time in the Mary Garden with Leanne and Linda. We imagined ourselves meeting Jesus in a meadow, and we had a really nice chat with Jesus.
Maths:In Maths we have been revising everything we learnt this year! Today we even finished our second maths workbook!!
English: In English we wrote a letter to Isobel from Animal Aid, a charity who did a workshop with our class a few weeks ago. We thanked Isobel for all the lovely things she taught us about animals We have also finished our handwriting books and now some of us have even started joining up our letters when we write! We are definitely ready for Year 2!
Topic: In Topic we learnt about a really interesting explorer called Tom Crean. He comes from the same place in Ireland as Ms O'Leary! He went to the South Pole with Robert Falcon Scott- the explorer we learnt about a few weeks ago aswell! Our Journey topic this term has been really interesting!
I would like to take this chance to wish every child in Year 1 the very best in Year 2! You were an amazing class to teach and I will really miss you all!
Happy Summer!!
Ms O'Leary
x
Our week in review - 11th-15th June
This week in Year 1 we all wore green to mark the anniversary of the tragedy at Grenfell Tower We all took part in a minute's silence on Thursday for the people who wore effected.
#GreenForGrenfell
This is what we have been up to in Year 1 this week :
Maths: In Maths we had a very busy week look at space and how we talk about space. We learned about describing positions and describing actions!
Religion: Our focus in RE this week was looking at how we can help people. We discussed at the stories about when Jesus helps other people. We know that it is important to help one another. We made promises to try and help other people more!
Topic: We had a very interesting week learning about Neil Armstrong. He was the first man to walk on the moon! We even watched a video of the moon landing! It was a very long time ago!
Guest visitor : Finally we had a very special visitor this week! A past pupil of our school David came in to talk to our class. He told us all about what our school was like when he was there. Can you believe when David was in school every classroom had a fire to keep the pupils warm! He also said our Year 1 classroom wasn't even built! David know lives in Australia . We learnt about Australia during International Week so we found it really interesting ! David showed us a brilliant presentation with photos of all the animals that can be found in Australia- we had a lot of questions! Thank you so much for coming to see us David !
That's all for this week - Happy Father's Day to everyone !
Our week in review - 4th June -8th June
We have had another wonderful week in Year 1 this week! Take a look at everything we've been up to!
English: In English this week we have been writing a recount of our half term break. We were very busy!
Religion: In school this week we participated in a very special assembly with Fr Mark. We celebrated Adoremus in the hall. Fr Mark brought the host which had been blessed at mass and placed in in the monstrance
Maths: We have been learning all about fractions this week in Maths! We have practiced making halves and quarters out of strips of paper.
Topic: We have been studying a great explorer this week and his name is Robert Scott. We learned about his expeditions on The Discovery and Terra Nova! He went all the way to the South Pole!
Art: We created a seasonal display board this week. We worked together as a team to make the scenes from each season!
That's all for this week ! Check back next Friday
Our Week in Review: Monday 21st -Friday 25th May
Maths: In maths this week we have been learning all about division. We have been working with sets of objects and seeing how many different ways we can divide them , so each group is equal. Today we read a story called 'The Doorbell Rang' by Pat Hutchin which was all abut division.
Religion: We participated in the May Procession in school this week. It was a wonderful expereince and we loved celebrating Our Mother Mary.We created leaflets in Religion which tested our ICT skills! We created leaflets to help explain why we celebrate Easter as Christians. They turned out great!
Science: We have had a very exciting week with our butterflies! The chrsyalis turned into butterflies during the week and we have been feeding the sweet fruits like mango and orange. We released the butterflies into our Mary Garden. We thought this would be the perfect spot as Mary could look after them and they would love all the flowers from the May Procession!
Phonics: In phonics we have been busy practicing our split digraph sounds - o_e like in 'hope' / a_e like in cake / i_e like in bike / u_e like in tube ! We have been working really hard in our phonics and we are becoming great phonics experts!
Topic: To celebrate the wedding of Prince Harry and The Duchess of Sussex we made a news paper article on the laptops in school! We researched the wedding and found where it was held, some people who made the guest list and how many people tuned in to watch it! We had a lot of fun making it!
That's a round up of our week! I hope everyone has a wonderful, fun and safe half term and I look forward to hearing all about once we're back!
Ms O'Leary
Our Butterflies!
Our Week in Review - Monday 14th May - Friday 19th May
We had a very busy week in Year 1 this past week! We went on a class trip to the Science Museum in South Kensignton! It was a brilliant day and we had great fun!
We also celebrated International Week in school this week. Our country of study was Australia. We had an Australian citizen come in to talk to us about life 'down under'! We even tried some Vegimite! A taste which divided the class !
We also had a workshop with a group called Just Enough. We did activities based on inclusion and learning to work as a team! We made models of our buddies using playdough which we really enjoyed- check out our creations below!
Maths: We have been learning how to multiply. We have been working on making sets and groups of equal value.
English: We wrote a recount of our trip to the Science Museum. We also wrote interview questions to ask our 'Aussie' guest.
Topic: In topic we celebrated learning about Australia as part of International Week . We created some Aborginal Dot paintings based on the animals and landscapes of Australia Our creations are on ourclassroom window- why don't you check it out!
Science: In science we have been observing and investigating our caterpillars. We are currently observing the caterpillars in the stage of Chrysalis where our caterpillars are wiggling and shaking a lot! We have attached the caterpillars to a piece of kitchen paper- a soft introduction into their new airy home!
International Week- Australia
Just Enough Workshop
Our Week in Review- 7th May-11th May
Maths: This week in Maths we have been working on addition and subtraction word problems. It's a bit tricky but we're doing lots of practice!
English: We started reading the story of Jack and the Beanstalk this week :) We made ads for Jack to sell his cow. We practiced writing captions for the picture of Jack's cow! We reckon we would have been better at selling the cow !
Topic: We started a very interesting topic this week about Journeys. We discussed the ways we travel on journeys in our own lives.
Religion: We have been learning about Jesus appearing to his disciples. This week we introduced some drama into our lessons by making a short role play scene of when Jesus appeared. Check out our video below!
Sport: This week we had our first ever cricket session of Year 1 ! Coach Jonathan said we were a pleasure to coach :)
Science: We have been watching and recording our caterpillars all week. They are eating all their food and getting very fat !
Our week in review - 30th April- 4th May
We have been very busy in Year 1 this term! Let's take a look at everything we have been up to ....
- Maths : We have been very busy Mathematicians in Year 1! We have been learning a lot about place value and counting ten's and one's. We have been using fun games on our whiteboard ( there is a link below if you would like to try it for yourself !)
- English: We have been focusing a lot of our phonics this term. We have written about our Easter holidays which was great fun! This term we also started dictionary work which helps us when we need to spell a tricky word!
- Religion: This term we are learning about The Resurrection and the life of Jesus. We also composed our own Mary prayers this week. We learnt that May is the month of Mary Our Mother.
- Topic:We have been very busy learning about castles and knights! Using recycled toilet and kitchen rolls we made our very own round towers! ( check them out in the pictures below! :)
- Sport: Year 1 recently started tennis in school. Every Wednesday afternoon we have tennis lessons with our very own tennis teacher! It is great fun ! Every Tuesday we have Multi Skills with Coach Adam.
- Extra Curricular:On Thursday afternoons we have been going to Drama.It is so much fun!
Our Round Towers !
Summer Curriculum Map
Supporting Maths at home
Letter formation handwriting support.
Song Lyrics- Year 1 Assembly
CHICK- this out !!! 
