Seeking forgiveness in Lent

The girls worked hard to prepare a prayer and liturgy session in our new outdoor prayer space which we were lucky enough to share with our governors. They focused on the importance of seeking forgiveness in Lent and asked us to blow our sins away whilst praying and asking God for forgiveness. 

They shared the Bible quote below to help focus our thoughts and prayers...

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all wrongdoing."
—1 John 1:9

PILGRIMS OF HOPE RELAY

Today, OLSR took part in the Pilgrims of Hope Relay with 7 other Catholic schools in South Birmingham. 

We cheered St Peter's who had ran from Bartley Green to our school and then cheered as the children and staff from St Rose set out on their leg of the relay towards St Joseph's. 

To help show our support, we wore our house team colours which are the same as those of the Pilgrims of Hope logo and waved flags to show how proud we were! 

Our Year 5 pupil ran so well on behalf of Year 5 and we are so proud of her and her amazing efforts!

Well done to all involved! 

WORLD DOWN SYNDROME DAY

Mrs Edgington asked everyone in school to wear their silly socks to celebrate World Down Syndrome Day to help raise awareness for people who have Down Syndrome like her daughter Bailey. Year 5 did not disappoint and their silly socks have really made Mrs Edgington smile with pride! Thank you, Year 5! 

Miss Humphrey's Birthday!

Although it is on Saturday, the children wanted to make sure Miss Humphrey's knew that we wished her a happy birthday! They wrote messages and Siah drew a picture of her for the front of her card! The children sand her a happy birthday when she came in after celebration assembly! She was very surprised!

Loaves and Fish

This morning, the girls lead us in our collective worship and centred it around the story of when Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the 5000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. They asked us to think about how thankful the people who ate would have felt and asked us to think of things that we are thankful for. They gave out loaves and fish for us all to write on and we offered them to God as we placed them on the altar. 

It was a real shame that their other team mate was poorly as she also worked hard to help them plan it. 

African Drumming

Today in music, the children learnt about how in West Africa, they use drums to express themselves in music. We learnt that they usually have one person who leads the other drummers called the 'master drummer'. Different children volunteered to be the master drummer to lead us. 

Scan the QR code below to see an example of Year 5 at work!

We have been taking part in CAFOD's Big Lent Walk with the aim of completing over 230 miles as a school. 

Every year group has been taking part and so to help Nursery's little legs, Year 5 were partnered up with a pupil each! It has been truly wonderful to see Year 5 looking after their younger school mates and listening to them chat away as they walk has been incredible! 

South and West African Music 

Today, Year 5 were the first children in school to be able to use our new creative classroom and we started our new music topic! Over 3 lessons, the children worked on learning a song from South Africa which was traditionally sung by men as they worked. During the lessons, they explored singing acapella, playing chords on the glockenspiel and then performing as an ensemble. 

Scan the QR code below to see them perform and for a sneak preview of our new classroom! 

St Vincent de Paul Food Bank Donations

A huge thanks to the families of Year 5 who brought in so many donations for the food bank today. We know that the food is going to help a lot of people less fortunate than we are so thank you so much for sending the donations in. 

Collective Worship - Bubbles

Today's group led today's collective worship that they had planned where they asked us all to consider how all bubbles are different in size and shape, just like we are different in terms of our skills and talents. They reminded us about how we are all made in God's image and that He has chosen us specially to share the gifts and talents He gave us with the world. During the 'response' section of our reflection, the children were given bubble wands to blow bubbles as they said prayers and watch them pop as God heard them. 

The class loved this. 

Mrs Hensman's Birthday!

Today was Mrs Hensman's birthday and the children were very excited to surprise her with the card they had made along with a very enthusiastic rendition of 'Happy Birthday'! She was very surprised and was especially touched by the extra treats and cards that the children had made for her. 

World Book Week - Library Treat!

Ms Elsby-Arnold and Miss Murphy treated all the classes to hot chocolate and cookies to enjoy in their library sessions this week! The children really enjoyed their treats and sharing books with their friends. 

WORLD BOOK DAY READING BUDDIES

World Book Day gave us another opportunity to meet with our Year 1 Reading Buddies! It was also a chance for us to share some of the new books that we were able to buy with the money raised from the Scholastic Book Fair! It was lovely to see the Year 5 children reading to their buddies but also listening to their buddies read to them too! 

Ash Wednesday

This week, we marked the start of Lent by attending Mass and receiving our ashes from Fr Gary. In the afternoon, Mrs Hensman led the children in an Art session where the children could produce a piece of artwork using charcoal.

Take a look at their artistic talents...

African Masks

Take a look at our finished African masks! We think you'll agree that Year 5 did a fantastic job!

ARTISTS AT WORK

Year 5 have loved working with the artist to help create our new school Stations of the Cross! We can't wait to see the finished stations and go on a retreat around school! 

World Book Day

We had a wonderful World Book Day and enjoyed lots of activities to help inspire us to read more! The children played 'Book Bingo' and were able to name lots of books from a variety of genres based on the different criteria! They enjoyed their poetry workshop based on our end of day reading books from last term where they got to create freeze frames of scenes from the book and then use these to inspire their poetry writing! 

They absolutely LOVED wearing their PJs to school and snuggled up whilst listening to some audio books too! 

ROMERO CROSSES

Year 5, like the rest of the school, were asked to create some Romero Crosses. We first learnt a little more about St Oscar Romero and how his friend Fernando Llort had created a wooden cross which is displayed in Southwark RC Cathedral in London after Romero's death. We used his artwork to inspire our own and created crosses which were brightly coloured and reflected our community. 

Using our Computing skills for Collective Worship

In Computing, the children have been exploring how to use different fonts, colours and images in J2Create. In their own time, the children have written prayers to share with others for Collective Worship…

Here is a small sample from Lacey-Mai, Reuben and Kaiven.

Collective Worship - Hope

After our retreat day last week, Year 5 wrote prayers about hope. Today, some of the children led us in a collective worship where they shared them and we reflected on things we hoped for too. 

Their prayers included hopes for a peaceful world, for people to care for God's creations and to continue to receive God's love and guidance. 

West African Art

We have started our studies about West African Art and the children learnt about the Chiwara spirit which the Bamana people of Mali believe helps them with farming. The Bamana people honour the Chiwara by wearing headdresses and performing ceremonial dances. Year 5 completed some sketches of different Chiwara headdresses, showing how they can add detail and light and dark shades to their work. 

We are also preparing to create relief masks which are based around Benin plaques. So far, the children have selected an insect that their relief mask will be based on and completed sketches of them. 

They are quite impressive! Take a look below...

We will go out - Retreat day with Dan & Emily

Once again we welcomed Dan & Emily from One Life Music to lead us in a whole school retreat and it was just as wonderful as we all hoped! The day before, the class had been telling Tiwa what a treat he was in for and the children were not wrong! They taught us all about the Year of Hope and how we are all pilgrims on a faith journey. We played games, wrote prayers, sang and reflected. 

Our classroom might have needed a little air freshener at the end of the day after us all drawing around our feet, but we had such fun and learnt such a lot we didn't mind. 

Bridge Building

As part of our DT topic, the children have been busy learning about different types of bridges. We started by testing the different strengths of them by creating them out of card and seeing how much weight they would hold. The children had lots of fun working in teams to do this! 

Once they had figured out that the truss bridge was the strongest, we started to think about building our own and trying different materials. The children started with spaghetti and quickly learnt that this material was very fragile and took a lot of reinforcement of masking tape to be held together. 

We then set about measuring, sawing and using the hot glue gun to create a class truss bridge. The children took it in turns to saw and with a 'teacher' who talked them through how to do it safely and then who supported them to saw their own piece for the class bridge. We worked in the same way for using the hot glue gun. They were such good teachers and pupils and worked together beautifully to build our bridge. 

The children also had a chance to design a truss bridge that could be printed on our 3D printer. They used Tinkercad and explored the different functions to do this. They had to learn how to layer shapes and combine them to create 'holes'. Again, some of the pupils took on the role of a teacher to share their knowledge and share it with others. It has been such a lovely topic to see them working collaboratively on! Mrs Edgington has been very proud of how they have done this! What a fun topic! 

Forest School

Year 5 have been really enjoying their forest school sessions on a Thursday afternoon! They have been busy exploring the space and helping to tidy it up as it was in a bit of a mess with the building work and with all the rubbish that had built up over winter! Some of the children jumped at the chance to plant some spider plants with Mrs Ruffle and they got to take them home to share with their families. Others have been busy den building and some have had the chance to whittle some willow ready to cook marshmallows over the camp fire! 

Ms Lay has kept them warm with the fire and we cooked some popcorn and made some hot chocolate to share too! 

Islamic Art

The children learnt about the aspects of Islamic art and how they could replicate these to design and create their own Islamic tiles!

We began by trying to follow a complicated step-by-step tutorial on how to draw a geometric pattern to draw the perfect 6 pointed star which led into learning about the importance of geometric and vegetal patterns in this style.

We then moulded clay and produced our own titles that might be found in Islamic temples.

 The Blues

The children began by listening to three short clips of Blues Music and drawing what they ‘saw’ in their minds when they listened. It was quite interesting how each of them saw different things.

We then used the virtual piano to learn Blues chords and then learnt the Moanin’ Lisa Blues. 

Science - Materials

The children have been learning about materials and their different properties. They have been looking at which material would be best for different purposes and why manufacturers have selected different materials – especially when it comes to keeping temperatures insulated. 

In the photos, the children were busy investigating which materials were soluble and  which weren’t.

They had lots of fun and learnt that sugar & coffee were soluble but sand and iron filings weren’t.

Reading Buddies

We had the pleasure of working with our Year 1 Buddies again, but this time we were reading! Both the Year 5 children and Y1 children loved this time to share stories with each other! It was a pleasure to watch them talk about the books they were sharing and to see them taking turns to read. It was especially lovely watching Y5 help Y1 if they found a tricky word! 

Parliament Week 

All over the UK, schools celebrated Parliament Week from 18th - 22nd November. 

To help us learn what it is like to work for Parliament and what the life of a councillor is like, we had an assembly from Robbie Lea-Trengrouse who is a Senior Caseworker for our local MP Laurence Turner. 

Robbie told us all about how he helped Laurence campaign to become elected and what his daily duties are. He also told us about times when he has been able to visit Parliament and what that was like. 

Thank you, Robbie! We loved hearing you speak! 

VR Headsets in Geography

We have been able to climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Everest and take a closer look at the world's oldest lava lake Erta Ale in Africa as part of our Mountains topic in Geography. 

The children have really enjoyed taking a closer look at these amazing sights! 

DT – Stuffed Toys

Year 5 have been learning about how to design and produce their own ‘stuffed toy’. We used the opportunity to produce a Christmas tree decoration that they might send as a gift to someone.

The children had to develop their own templates, learn how to sew buttons and appendages on and then use a blanket stick to sew the front and back of their decoration together.

With the help of easy threaders and a lot of teamwork and patience, they did a fantastic job!

OUR HERITAGE DAY

As a school, we celebrated our heritage day and it was wonderful to see so many Year 5 honouring their family’s backgrounds. The children come from a wide range of backgrounds and proudly talked about their cultures, flags and traditions.

Emmanuel and Soela created presentations that they shared with the class which were incredible and their class mates listened well and asked thoughtful questions to learn more.

A Brew, a book and a bake!

To demonstrate our love for reading, as a school we took part in a reading event where we were invited to share books with our families whilst having a treat of a drink and a cake!

The children loved having time to read with their parents and siblings and it showed their parents just how easy it is to engage in reading while having valuable family time!

St Thomas Aquinas Sports Event

Year 5 were invited to attend an athletics event at STACS where there were 6 other schools. The children took part in  a range of events and throughout the whole event demonstrated their wonderful personalities, manners and sportsmanship. They made us very proud indeed!

Prayer Buddies

Year 5 and Year 1 met together for our 1st Prayer Buddy session of the year.

The children wrote prayers together and then shared them with the group.

Ciara-Lily and Jayden’s prayer

Nazila and Hennes’ prayer

Style in Art

We started Art this year by looking at different styles of Art. This included looking at Rococo, Modernist and Abstract art.

We compared artists and the techniques they used and then designed our own pieces of art inspired by the pieces we had explored.

Here we were comparing the how artists use rough and smooth styles. We used oil pastels to create the rough effect and chalks to create the smooth effect. 

We then looked at the intricate designs used in Rococo style furniture.

After we had studied and compared the styles, we got to painting our own creations.

Faith & Culture Week  - Learning about the Islamic faith

We have been learning all about the Islamic faith which Muslim people follow. They believe in Allah and read the Qur’an. They have six main beliefs, one of which is in prophets. Their most important prophet is Prophet Muhammad. He is so important that they say ‘peace be upon him’ every time they say his name.

Muslim people worship in the mosque. Mosques are usually seen to have a dome and a minaret tower. Before people go inside they must remove their shoes and do Wudu.

Soela did a demonstration of Wudu for us.

Once inside the mosque, Muslims listen to the Imam who is their religious leader. They must also face Mecca so have prayer mats and a minbar which shows them the direction to face.

Muslim people have duties they call the five pillars. These are things they have to do in their lifetime to please Allah.

Shahadah means to declare their faith in Allah

Salah is to pray – they do this 5 times  day.

Zakat is about giving to charity. They give 2.5% of their savings.

Sawm is fasting – they do this during Ramadan.

Hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca which is in Saudi Arabia. This is where the Prophet Muhammad learnt about the Qur’an.

The children also learnt that in times of celebration, Muslim people decorate their hands in Henna and Year 5 designed some Henna tattoos for themselves....