Christ's Invitation
We looked ahead this week to the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A) and the theme of invitations. We hear in this week's parable that God offers a free and open invitation to all people - we are all welcome to join him at the banquet table in the kingdom of heaven.
Jesus helps us to understand that the inclusive invitation is important - every human being is loved and known and invited. However, we all have the capacity to make choices about how we respond to that invitation. The manner in which we choose to live reveals our response to that invitation.
In the same way, our school offers a warm and inclusive invitations to all our children. Equally, we hope that children will accept and respond to that inclusive invitation by the manner in which they choose to engage with their lessons and play - paying particular attention to our two school rules.
Signs of the season
This week Nursery have been looking at the theme autumn, particularly talking about harvest. The children have been looking at food items related to harvest, then using these to do some painting and printing. The children have been on a scavenger hunt on the school field, looking for signs of autumn. We have collected various autumnal items to explore further.
Stone Age Lessons
To enhance our history topic of ‘The Stone Age’, Year 3 visited Butser Ancient Farm on Wednesday 4th October. Enjoying the autumn sunshine, the children spent all day outside taking part in fascinating, hands-on activities. We began by sitting around a real fire in a Stone Age roundhouse and looking at the materials used to build it. After this, the children loved being archaeologists; digging in the soil and identifying what they had found: bones, bits of pottery, rocks etc. Crushing chalk was also a popular activity as the children carefully used wooden hammers to create a fine powder. This was then mixed with soil and water to make ‘clunch’. Rolling up their sleeves, children were able to use the ‘clunch’ to help build a wall. Everyone was very sensible when using flint to smooth a piece of chalk and collecting a leaf to make the chalk green. We then used the flint again to carve in a picture. The final activity of the day was moulding a clay/mud pot and decorating it using a feather. The children showed impeccable behaviour and impressed the staff at Butser with their knowledge - well done Year 3!
The road was a ribbon of moonlight...
Year 5 have been studying 'The Highwayman' by Alfred Noyes in English over the past three weeks. To celebrate World Poetry Day on the 5th October the children immersed themselves into the poem even further with a year group performance! This performance has supported the children's understanding of this particular style of poem, ready to replicate these features in this week's English lessons.
Year 5 The Highwayman.mov
Aiming for success
In Athletics, the children in Year 1 have been mastering a number of skills including jogging, sprinting, jumping and throwing. This week, we have been focusing on two different types of throw - underarm and overarm. The children were then challenged, through a number of different throwing stations, to decide which throw was best for which targets. We were very impressed with their aim and accuracy. Well done, Year 1!
Macmillan Magic
Congratultions to Alek and Misza for their tremendous effort in supporting a recent coffee morning at St Mary's Church, raising over £350 for Macmillan Cancer Care. The boys offered a warm welcome and generous slices of cake to guests from across the parish who came to support this worthy cause. To thank them for their service to the community, the children earned a Golden House Point each - well done boys!
Celebrating Harvest
Our thanks to the PFSA for supporting the beautiful arrangement of harvest goods, kindly donated by the families of St Joseph's. Bags were carefully packed to ensure recipients were offered a range of essentials and a few sweet treats too! After sharing a poignant liturgy together, thanking God for the precious and fragile gift of creation, our Year 6 ambassadors set out to deliver the harvest goods to local residents. The remaining donations were then shared with the North Guildford Food Bank.
Custodians
As part of poetry week, using the theme of refuge, Year 6 explored the poem 'Custodian'. We went outside for a nature walk and explored our home, making notes on our surroundings. We then asked the children to link the idea of looking after our world, to the fact that our world provides refuge for so many living things - animals, plants, large and small. They all need a safe place to live and human actions can make or break this. The children then used their ideas from the walk and together with their beautiful use of figurative language, created a poem based on the original.
Wellbeing Witnesses
The RRS School Council led a lovely Witness Assembly yesterday introducing the wonderful well-being garden they have been working so hard on! We also had Jackie from Surrey Gardens Trust talk through her role and how she helped the garden with funding.
They were all surprised with being presented a witness award at the end of the assembly to celebrate the fruits they have produced over this last year. The time and dedication they have given meant it was well deserved! Well done.
Playground Problems
This week Year 2 have started their new Maths topic on addition and subtraction. A great way to kick start the topic was with an active lesson, something we do to help the children become immersed in their study and allow opportunities to represent their learning in different ways. As we learned about adding three single-digit numbers, the children got into teams and raced to find spaces in giant tens frames on the playground. The different coloured bibs allowed them to see how we can work through problems one step (colour) at a time. The children had great fun and the playground was full of number sentences by play time!
Misunderstood...
In English, the children in Year 4 have begun a new unit of work on the alternative story of The Three Little Pigs. We find that - contrary to popular belief - the big, bad wolf was just misunderstood! He hadn't meant to huff and puff the houses down, but had a terrible cold and a habit of sneezing at unfortunate moments and was only visiting the pigs to borrow a cup of sugar to bake a cake for his Grandma. To help the children's imaginations and to inspire vocabulary for the taste of Grandma's cake, they were treated to a selection of three different types and thoroughly enjoyed them all! The effect on their writing was amazing as you can see from this extract: "Ever since she was a little pup, the wolf's grandma had cherished chocolate cake with vanilla icing and a cherry on top. She wanted the chocolate fudge because she craved the sensational feeling of the delightful icing, the sugary spone and the rich overall taste." With this standard of vocabulary, we are very much looking forward to the children's independent writing about the wolf next week.
An Invitation from 4M
What a spectacular showcase from St Martha's Class!
By taking on the role of others throughout history, the class reminded us that all are invited into God's Kingdom: Biblical Saints, Modern Day Saints, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, humble children and ordinary people doing ordinary things!
Their beaming smiles, expert rehearsal of the script, in-character delivery and beautiful singing voices made us all feel invited to join them in celebrating God's invitation to us all.
Congratulation, St Martha's Class!
Inviting Witnesses
Congratulations to this week's Witnesses of being inviting to those around them. Thank you for going the extra mile to make others feel welcome.
Janessa, Erykah, Olivia, Jack, Oliver, Jeden, Akki, Mariana, Stella, Maya, Emily, Dora
What's on locally?
St Joseph's School.pdf2023 Christmas Card Competition.pdf
Halloween workshop 2023.pdf