Gallery

YEAR 3 VICTORIAN DAY!

Year 3 got to experience a day in the life of a Victorian school, today! There were lots of strict staff, cruel punishments and even a visit from Mrs Woodward who shared some of her own Victorian artefacts. We spent the afternoon learning about the games that children played in the Victorian times and made some spin tops, had a go at hoop and stick as well as marbles, diablos and lots more. Well done, Year 3!

Year 4 Samba Lessons

Year 4 are lucky enough to have a set of samba lessons from an 'outside of school, samba specialist.' 

In the lessons we looked at beat and played drums to different patterns 'coffee, tea'; 'coffee, coca cola, coffee, tea'; 'coffee, tea.'

We also played the game 'Don't play this one back'. We had to listen to the pattern that the teacher played and make sure that we didn't play back 'Don't play this one back!' 

We are learning how to play some different instruments too- the surdo, agogo bells, shakers and tamberims. 

Here are some pictures of us in our lessons. 

Reception - Wonderful Winter!

For the past couple of weeks, the children have been enjoying the topic ‘Wonderful Winter.’ We have been carrying out lots of investigations such as ‘how many times can you dunk a biscuit before it breaks’ and ‘how can you rescue an animal stuck in the ice.’ The children have been using observational skills and new vocabulary to make predictions.

We have been practising our fine motor skills by cutting, making lines, painting and scrunching tissue paper. We have been given the tricky challenge of accurately counting cold and slippery ice, and also tried to make an igloo in the classroom. 

Our Year 2 Learning

We would love to share a selection of photos with you that show some of learning in maths, art and science from the Autumn Term!

Year 5 Picture Frame Project

Year 5 have been hard at work designing and creating picture frames in our DT project this half term. They worked hard measuring and sawing the wood, as well as assembling and joining the parts together. They reinforced them to make sure they were rigid enough and really enjoyed adding the decorations. The final step will be to evaluate their frames against their original designs and to see if they fit the brief. We think they look fabulous and we hope you enjoy looking at them. 

In Year 6 this term we have learnt all about Natural Disasters. We started our topic by working in groups to create posters about different aspects of our topics, here are some pictures!

In literacy, we have applied our topic knowledge to write for a range of purposes. During our Natural Disaster topic. We wrote our own stories about the process of a volcano erupting. During our planning of this piece of writing, we focused on developing subject-specific vocabulary and powerful adjectives to heighten the effect on the reader. We also researched New Zealand and wrote balanced arguments about the pros and cons of living there. Here are some examples!

In outdoor PE, we have been playing Football. We focused on passing, dribbling and shooting and we applied these skills into game scenarios. We finished our football unit with a house tournament, where the winners were St Bernadette’s! In athletics, we developed our running, throwing and jumping skills. We finished our athletics unit by holding a 'House Olympics' where we found the top 3 athletes for each event!  

Before half term, we performed our World War 1 dances to our Reception and Year 3 prayer buddies. We focused on incorporating the dance techniques of canon and unison within our dances to suit the theme of the music. Some of our dances were very powerful and our prayer buddies were certainly entertained!

In DT we have focused on using hydraulics to make natural disasters (volcanoes and earthquakes). For both, we started by doing some research, then designing our model, followed by making the model and then evaluating it after. Here are some pictures of our Natural Disaster models, aren’t they fantastic!

In maths, we have covered a lot of content, including: place value, the four operations, BODMAS, common factors/multiples and even fractions! We have focused on using a range of concrete, pictorial and abstract methods to embed our mathematical understanding. Our highlight was our multiplication and division Code Breaker challenge in the playground!

The children in Reception have had a fantastic first half term at school. They have quickly learnt the routines of school and have enjoyed exploring their new learning environment. We have based our learning on some super books to think about our feelings especially at times of big change like they have experienced recently. 

The first book we used was 'Our School is a Family' where we learn about our new 'school family' and found out lots about our friends. We created our own picture frames and made a portrait gallery of our new friends and explained why we were glad they are in our new family.

We then spent some time thinking about 'The Colour Monster' and learnt how to name and explain the many feelings we experience each day. The children really enjoyed lots of creative activities including printing and colour mixing and have also started using their phonics to write simple words. 

We are so proud of how settled and independent the children now are, and what a super start they have made to their school life!

We marched down to the hall and around the hall before settling down to our evening around the campfire! 

We performed our testudo in two groups and moved in unison around the hall led by our centurions Nell and Bianka. 

Ready for battle, the Romans faced the vicious Celts in a battle to end all battles. 

We had victory poses to end our session.

The children had a great time. Thank you for all your support with making the shields. 

Year 5 Earth and Space

As part of our Earth and Space topic, Year 5 have been using the playground to create scaled models of the solar system. We used toilet paper to measure how far from the sun each planet should be placed; each sheet of paper represented 20 million kilometres. The children had to collaborate in teams to work out the correct measurements, carefully place each planet and stop the paper blowing away! 

We have also been investigating the question 'Can shadows show that the Earth rotates on its axis?'. On a sunny day, the children set up stacks of cones and we tracked the length and angle of the shadows to see if we could notice any patterns and use the measurements to answer the question. The children noticed the longer shadows  in the morning and the shorter shadows at lunch time and the change in angles and were able to use this to draw conclusions to answer our question. They confidently explained that even though the sun appears to move in the sky, it is the earth's rotation that causes the shadows to change.  Great investigating Year 5's!

Year 1 - Our First Week!

Below are a selection of pictures from our first week back at school.

Year 3 - Final Week Fun!

We have had a great (and hot!) week. Our trip to Avon Heath on Tuesday, and our Year 3 talent show on Wednesday afternoon. We also had a visit from the Wessex Heartbeat Charity who awarded Year 3 with a 'heart' of recognition for their amazing fundraising for the charity. Well done, Year 3! What a great year. 

YEAR 6 PLAY

Year 6 enjoyed performing their play 'What's the Crime, Mr Wolf?', which told the story of the Big Bad Wolf standing trial for his many crimes against fairy tale characters. The play saw many familiar faces, including the Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood, as well as some new characters such as the Naturalists. The children all did a fantastic job of learning their lines, as well as some complicated song lyrics!

Year 2 - The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch

We have been reading The Lighthouse Keeper's Lunch in year 2. We wrote our own fantastic stories about the Lighthouse Keeper. We also made healthy sandwiches and sent a packed lunch down a zip line just like Mrs Grinling does for Mr Grinling in the story! 

YEAR 3's ITALY DAY!

Year 3 had a fun DT day making Italian themed food! They made pizzas and chocolate truffles, as well as trying freshly made lemonade and olives. They have been working hard all week, designing pizza restaurant logos and creating their own pizza boxes to package their food to take home. Well done, Year 3!

Year 1 Creature Teachers

Year 1 were so excited today to welcome Creature Teachers into class. We learnt so much about a variety of animals ( including the fact that millipedes eat poo!) and their habitats.  We were able to handle a millipede, a corn snake, a bearded dragon lizard, a blue tongue skink lizard, a pigmy hedgehog and we saw a barn owl in flight. We couldn't handle the tomato frog because it is venomous. 

5RM had a fabulous time on Sports Day. You can see the determination to do their best on their faces as well as a lovely spirit of encouragement towards each other. We're proud of you all!

KS1 SPORTS DAY - YEAR 2

23.6.21

We had a fantastic time at our KS1 Sports Day, even though it was very different to normal.  The sun was shining for us, too!  We practised lots of skills such as throwing, aiming, balancing and jumping, and scored loads of points for our School Houses.   A BIG thank you to Mr Yarrow and his super team of Year 6 Sports Leaders for organising and running it all for us!

Year 6 Sports Day

We had a great morning on the field competing in races, including sack race, sprinting, egg and spoon, and skipping. Well done to all the children who took part - all winning points go towards the House Cup.

YEAR 1 SPORT DAY

We had a super morning doing a selection of different activities. Activities included speed bounce ( side  jumping with feet together) and sprint; throwing a bean bag into a hoop; balancing a ball on a racket; weaving in between cones with a bean bag on the head; skittles and a  mini assault course. It was great fun and the sun shone! 

Year 3 Sports Day!

We had an exciting morning down at the field competing in our all of our Sports Day races! The events were:

- 50m sprint

- 60m sprint

- 75m sprint

- egg and spoon race

- skipping race

- sack race

We had a great day!

Year 2's Pirate Day

To finish off our topic of 'Pirates and Smugglers', year 2 had a fun-filled day of pirate activities. The hall was transformed in to a pirate adventure as we climbed the rigging, swabbed the deck and coiled the rope. Blackbeard didn't think we did a very good job so he made us walk the plank where we ended up marooned on an island! We had to cross shark-infested waters, build a shelter and fish for our food!
In the afternoon we made cutlasses, flags, 'hardtack' biscuits and grog - all whilst finding time to sing sea shanties and dance a pirate jig. 

It's a hard life being a scurvy seadog. Arrrrr! 

YEAR 6 ACTIVITY WEEK

Last week, Year 6 enjoyed a week full of activities. We started the week with a trip to Moors Valley to do Go Ape! On Tuesday, we went to Fairthorne Manor, where we tried abseiling, kayaking, fire-lighting and took part in team challenges. When we arrived back at school, we went home to have showers before returning for a BBQ and sleepover. Wednesday was a quiet art day in school. On Thursday, we watched an online Pantomime 'Alice in Wonderland', and Friday consisted of a trip to Rockley in Poole Park to take part in a range of water sports, including kayaking, paddle boarding, giant paddle boarding and raft building. 

YEAR 5 LEARNING

This term our topic has been WW2 and we have been basing our reading lessons around 'Carrie's War' by Nina Bawden. We have explored how the author expresses personality through body language and expression and how she used language to create atmosphere. We have also looked at 'Friend or Foe' by Michael Morpurgo and have used the two texts to look for similarities in themes and characters. We finished this unit by using these techniques to write our own Evacuee stories and book reviews.

In our Topic lessons, we designed posters to encourage parents to evacuate  their children from the big cities to the safety of the countryside. We also looked at the important role intelligence and code breaking played in bringing the war to an end. The children really enjoyed using cipher wheels to send and decipher messages.

                                     Reception-Julia Donaldson Stories

 Reception have really enjoyed our topic based around the stories of Julia Donaldson. We have listened to lots of her stories and done some fun activities based on these! We have created our own cave drawings based on the story " Cave Baby", made Gruffalo faces, dug in soil for treasure like Superworm, learnt how to skip, explored colour mixing like the Smeds and Smoos and used Atlases to explore differnt locations around the world and thought about where we would travel if we were the snail on the whale's tail! We also looked for footprints in the playground of animals from the Gruffalo story and have really enjoyed watching some tadpoles grow into frogs !

Year 4 are learning to play Samba music

Every Friday we are lucky enough to have Samba music lessons from a specialist teacher. We have learnt about the origins of Samba and about how it is celebrated around the world today. We also get to play lots of games to help us understand the need to listen in music.

There are lots of interesting names for the different drums and other musical instruments used in Samba.

So far, we are really enjoying it.

YEAR 1 MEDIEVAL DAY

Year 1 enjoyed celebrating everything Medieval! The children attended Knight school or Princess school for the morning. The knights learnt archery; throwing spears; how to control a 'horse'; how to bow; woo a lady with a poem and a Medieval song! Princesses learnt how to curtsey; walk with good posture; calligraphy; design a gown; recite a poem and sing a song. The children then experienced the opposite school. They also performed a Medieval dance and enjoyed a banquet where they ate peasant stew and bread rolls, all of which were prepared and cooked by the children. Year 1 even grew their own onions, garlic and chives, which they harvested for the banquet.

Year 2 Great Fire of London Day

23.3.21

As part of our Great Fire of London topic we have a day of fun where we dress up and really get in to character. We baked bread as Thomas Farriner the baker would have done - although we did not start a fire like he did! We were also visited by Samuel Peyps and his maid, Jane. We had lots of fun time travelling back to 1666 and experiencing all the things we have been learning about. 

Year 5 Greek Plays

Gather round citizens to witness tales of bravery and valour, tragedy and trials as Year 5 perform their own Greek myths! 

Year 5 spent time immersing themselves in many well known Greek myths, reading and performing tales of Zeus, Hermes, Aphrodite, Athena and many more.  We explored what makes these myths so special  and were inspired to write our own plays. Our acting skills came to the fore as we performed them to each other as the culmination of our topic.

Bravo Year 5!

YEAR 1 NATIVITIES

Year 1 overcame coronavirus restrictions and the British weather to stage outdoor Nativities in this unusual year! The children enjoyed learning Christmas songs and acting out the Christmas story to their family. Well done Year 1. What fantastic performances!

                                      Amazing Autumn!

     In Reception we have been enjoying exploring the season of Autumn! We have learnt about which animals hibernate and how nature adapts to the changing seasons. We worked in pairs to create a hibernation nest for a hedgehog using Autumn objects such as leaves, pine cones and conkers. We created some interesting artwork using paint and forks to make spiky hedgehogs! We explored the artist Arcimboldo who made face portraits using fruit and other objects. We continued and created repeating patterns using Autumn objects and leaf printing.The children used Autumn objects to make their own face portrait. We also enjoyed taking part in music and movement activities relating to Autumn. 

The Worship Council worked together to make our Advent Wreath, and lead us in a special assembly to mark the start of our Advent journey.

The wreath is round, to remind us that God's love is never-ending.

The wreath is made with evergreen leaves to remind us that Jesus brought us the pormise of eternal life.

The first candle is the candle of Hope.

The second candle is the candle of Peace.

The third candle, a pink one, is the candle of Joy.

The fourth candle is the candle of Love. 

Around the World with Year 2

We really enjoyed learning about different artists and techniques in our Around the World topic.  We started in South America and looked at lots of different patterns and colours.  We then moved on to North America and had a go at decorating our own totem Poles with bright colours and patterns.  In Europe we learnt about Georges Seurat and his famous pointilism technique.  We used cotton buds to paint small dots around the Eiffel Tower.  We learnt that in Australia there is a similar technique - we had a go at painting Australian animals.   Finally we practised our sketching skills by drawing an African elephant.  We evaluated our first effort and then tried to improve on what we had done.  We hope you enjoy looking at our small gallery!

Year 6 - Natural Disasters

Year 6 researched different natural disasters in groups and created posters based on what they found out. 

YEAR 4 ROMAN BATTLE!

This half term as part of our topic - THE ROMANS - we designed and made shields. We learnt about the Roman soldiers in battle and how they used their Testudo formation. This week we have had mock battles!  We took it in turns to be Roman soldiers and Iceni warriors!

We hope you enjoy the photos!

OUR LEARNING SO FAR IN YEAR 6

LITERACY/TOPIC

Our topic has been WW1. For our main text we have been reading War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. We have explored the language used and looked into writing as the 1st person. This inspired us to create our own stories from an animal's perspective! We looked at a range of war poetry and planned our own, creating a class anthology. 

COMPUTING

We were planning and creating algorithms for our Beebot floor robots. In one lesson, we created trenches and the beebot had to be accurately programmed to move through the exact trench that was designed. In another lesson, we used felt tip pens attached to the beebots to create a piece of artwork. The final lesson looked at assessing how much the children knew by showing clips of beebots and the children identifying the algorithm or debugging in some cases. 

DESIGN TECHNOLOGY

Once again, using War Horse as our theme, we explored the model making behind the puppet Joey. We watched the clip of him being operated around the stage and looked at the structure within him. We used this as inspiration to create our very own sculptures using modelling wire. We designed, made and evaluated our models suggesting improvements.  

DANCE

We used Romeo and Juliet as our focus during this half term and learned about time signatures, 3-4 and 4-4 rythms and counterpoint dances. We explored the characters in the play and worked with a partner in unison and a group through canon exercises. We constantly reviewed and evaluated our performances and made improvements. 

MUSIC

We looked at graphic notations and different ways that these could be presented. The children worked in small groups to compose a piece of music following a graphic notation. They had the opportunity to perform, appraise and improve their music. 

Year 1 have thoroughly enjoyed preparing the vegetable patch, ready to plant next week. As well as weeding, the children found lots of minibeasts and they were brave enough to try the chives that were planted by Year 1 last year! Yum yum! 

30.6.20

Paralympic Wheelchair Tennis Player Lucy Shuker reveals St.Walburga's winning house for our Sports' Day at Home!

Please see video clip below...

Key Stage 1- Disco Friday and Chalk Fun

WORLD BOOK DAY

5th March 2020

The children got a big surprise when they arrived in their classrooms this morning....  all the doors had changed into book covers!  We hope you enjoy looking at them.  We all had great fun dressing up, children and adults alike.  We are also using World Book Day to start off one of our Lenten almsgiving activities.  Every child has been given a sponsor card for a READATHON in support of a wonderful charity called Read for Good.  They provide brand new books for seriously ill children in every major hospital in the UK. We look forward to seeing how much we raise.

All the Fun of the Fair -  Year 1

We had a really fun and busy week designing and making our horse carousels and fishing games for the Funfair. 

It was great to start off the week with creating Medieval 'coat of arms' bunting for our classrooms - there were so many great designs, our classrooms were full of colour! 

We then designed our carousels, thinking really carefully about the materials and tools we would need and how exactly we were going to make them. There were lots of discussions and lots of lovely ideas. We made 1 carousel per group, it was very fiddly! It was interesting to see everyone's evaluation on the group project and to see what everyone liked and what they would change.

We also made magnetic fishing games - these were great fun and we had lots of time to play with them!

At then end of the week we got to visit all the other classes to see what they had made.  It was lovely to see all the different types of bunting and funfair games that had been made.

All the Fun of the Fair Year 4

We had a fabulous week. We had written to McDonald's prior to the event so we all had a box to make a pneumatic toy.We designed our own toy and had lots of noisy fun once the toys were made!

We used a band saw to cut a bunting plaque from balsa wood, sanded down the rough edges then painted our own design. The bunting is on display in our rooms.

We made hoopla games created in groups and finally our own fairground rides from the materials we had left.

We shared our creations with the other year groups and our parents.

Our teachers were very proud of us.

Check out the photos.

All the Fun of the Fair -  Year 2

We had a really busy week designing and making our food trucks for the Funfair.  We started by making our own bunting to decorate our classes.  In Year 2 we had to use recycled materials to decorate our card bunting.  This was good fun to make and the result was really colourful.    We then thought about what kind of food stalls there might be at a funfair so that we could make food trucks.  The trickiest bit was getting the wheels on and reinforcing the sides of the trucks so that they didn't wobble!  The best bit was making cake pops to go in our trucks!  

At then end of the week we got to visit all the other classes to see what they had made.  It was lovely to see all the different types of bunting and funfair games that children had made.

                                           Year Reception- Chinese New Year

  We have really enjoyed this topic where we have learnt all about the exciting festival of Chinese New Year! The children have done lots of creative activities including crafts, music, dance and singing. They have used ipads and books to find out information about the festival and also found out what their Zodiac animal sign is. We finished the topic with a Chinese New Year party. The children cleaned the classrooms before the party as is tradition, to clear away the bad luck for the new year. On party day, the children all wore red and gold clothes as they are the lucky colours. We played some traditional Chinese playground games and everyone had a turn at being part of a lion or dragon dance! The children really enjoyed trying some Chinese food including rice, noodles and prawn crackers. The parents enjoyed visiting on party day to watch the children perform a Chinese new year song.

Year 6 - All the Fun of the Fair

In Year 6, we used different stitches to sew our own bunting. We also designed and made fairground rides, which were powered by electrical circuits.