To begin our new half term, the whole school went to mass to celebrate the feast of All Saints. All Saints’ Day is celebrated every year on 1st November; it is a holy day in the Catholic Church, celebrating the saints of the church as well as those saints who have not yet been recognised. The 1st of November also marked Our Lady’s School’s 70th birthday, so it was a lovely start to this half term. During mass, Father Frank talked about how the word ‘Saint’ means holy and told the children that to be a saint is to treat others as we would treat Jesus. After mass, Year 5 gave out little notes to the parishioners, that they had decorated, to spread kindness and shine their lights. The parishioners were then invited into school for tea, coffee and biscuits to celebrate 70 years of Our Lady’s school. On display were photographs of times gone by and amongst the parishioners were past pupils and teachers. Happy Birthday Our Lady’s school! 🥳 🥳 🥳
Now our bulbs have all been planted for the Spring Bulbs project for the Edina Trust, Year 5 will be monitoring their growth and each day two children will go out to record the temperature and the rainfall to be uploaded to the Edina Trust’s website.
Our award winners:
Golden Award (LEARN) - Hallie
Writing Award - Alexander
Maths Award - Tommy
Our learning this week…
In English the children have continued to plan their own exploration narratives
In maths we’ve continued to work with numbers up to 1,000,000, comparing and ordering them and rounding them to the nearest 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000.
In RE, the children have used the stories of creation in Genesis to identify what they tells us about God, the World and humans.
In history the children are continuing to learn about the Ancient Greeks.
In Computing the children have completed an activity comparing how different Mars Rovers collect and transmit data and how the size of random-access memory (RAM) affects the processing of data (CPU).
In PE the children are working with PE specialist Erin from Blackpool Football Club Community Trust. The focus of their lessons this half term is invasion games: Rugby.
In PSHE we have begun a resilience programme called Bounce Forward. Bounce Forward, written by Lancashire Mind and Headstart, is a universal resilience programme, which has been designed to increase wellbeing and resilience in children across Blackpool. Bounce Forward will give the children the opportunity to improve and build up their resilience strategies and skills, in a practical and fun way. This week the focus was sharing information about themselves and thinking about what resilience is.
Our Year 5 worship this week was led by Alexander and Kurt. Their worship was on the theme of Reconciliation and Peace. They reminded everyone of the importance of making things right with their friends when upset has been caused. Well done Alexander and Kurt!
15 “If your brother or sister[ sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” Matthew 18: 15-20
At Our Lady's we like to support our parents/carers in Online Safety matters.
Keeping children and young people safe online is one of the biggest challenges facing society today and it is all of our responsibility to ensure that children are educated to make positive, informed choices when they are online.
This month’s online safety guides give helpful advice about…
The social media site X, highlighting the major changes since its rebrand from Twitter and the related online safety risks.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: a suspense-filled horror game which has nevertheless attracted a relatively young fan-base.
We hope you find these guides informative and helpful in promoting the positive use of technology to make the online world a better and safer place for us all.
To read this week’s Good News Gospel reading, please follow the link to share the Gospel at home with your family. These are really child-friendly resources to share at home. Good News Gospel
Please also have a look at this Parent Newsletter linked with our weekly whole school and class worship…
Great start back Year 5, well done!
Mrs McVey and Mrs McCooey
If you need to contact me or have any questions/queries, please contact me on year5@our-lady.blackpool.sch.uk and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks.
