C - 1st Lent

Resisting with Christ

We welcomed in the season of Lent this week, marking Ash Wednesday with a liturgy led by Deacon Francisco . He encouraged us to adopt an attitude of gratitude this Lent by saying, "Thank You" every time we recognise that others have made sacrifices for us. We also looked ahead to the First Sunday of Lent with a visit from Roy Peachey of Mary's Meals. Roy explained how we can pray, fast and give more this Lent by supporting the work of this brilliant charity, which feeds children in schools across the world for as little as £19.15 per year. The children came home with their personal collection boxes to start making their Lenten almsgiving a reality.

Death at Dunsinane!

This week Year 6 have been channeling their inner journalists and writing newspaper reports based on King Duncan's murder at Macbeth's residence. After interviewing eye-witnesses and questioning key suspects, they pulled together their reports in the hope that this terrible crime would be solved. We spent the week looking at the layout and format of a newspaper and how to effectively weave direct and indirect quotes into our work. We also drew on previous skills making sure to remain unbiased and present the information factually. All in all, some very impressive writing.

Occupational Therapy with Scarlett (the dog)

Our OT Team have been putting Scarlett to work in their fine motor skills sessions: practising cutting skills to provide Scarlett with a small apple treat, rehearsing fine motor skills by opening and closing the tricky clasp on Scarlett's collar and warming up their hand muscles by giving Scarlett a head scratch!

Sportshall Superstars!

This week some of the children in Year 2 represented the school at the Guildford Spectrum Sportshall event. There were a number of activities such as jumping, running and throwing. The 24 children were in two teams, each team working fantastically together to achieve points. We were incredibly proud of the effort the children put into everything they did. The encouragement they gave each other was a true representation of the ethos of our school. Well done to all involved!

Story Time!

The Nursery children took part in World Book Day on Thursday 6th March. We had an array of colourful costumes. The children talked about their favourite stories, ranging from dinosaur books to the traditional tales of The Gingerbread man. This nicely lead us onto the following week, listening to the following stories; The three little pigs, Goldilocks and the three bears and the Gruffalo. To help embed the stories and their structure, we used various props to make the stories come alive. Stories are a fun way to help children learn new words, learn how stories are structured, develop an understanding about the world around them and support their imagination skills.

Book Week

This week the school has been buzzing as we celebrated all things reading! Each year group took part in a workshop, varying in themes according to what they had been learning about. We had dancing Willy Wonkas and escaping Gingerbread Men, as well as all sorts of other immersive movements! Another highlight of the week was the 'Drop everything and read' day on Wednesday. The sound of a bell being rung around the school meant everyone had to stop what they were doing and read. This could have been at Active Play or even during lunch time! World Book Day on Thursday saw the whole school dressing up to celebrate their favourite books. All sorts of different creative activities took place that day, including music, art and dancing. The week finished with the popular book fair, which helps us be able to earn free books for our school. Thank you everyone for your support this week!

Getting the measure of Year 1

Year 1 have been exploring length and height in Maths. We used non-standard units (cubes) to measure and compare lengths and heights of different objects and looked at the accuracy of cubes for this task. We concluded that cubes were a good way to measure, but became difficult if the object wasn't exactly that length. From this, we will be exploring rulers and cm in our next lesson.

Creative Carousel!

Year 3 enjoyed many exciting activities during Book Week including a Roald Dahl workshop where children participated in drama exercises around several Roald Dahl books. This included reflecting on thoughts and postures of certain characters. They also enjoyed bringing their current class reading book, Harriet’s Hare, to life with three activities to help deepen their understanding of the book. Miss Moore led a music workshop whereby children composed their own piece for Wiz, the Hare, coming down from the planet Pars; Mrs Gonella led an art workshop whereby children created the setting with various materials and Mrs Portelli led a dance workshop where children choreographed their own space dance to help them reflect on how Wiz would have come down from space. Of course, a favourite was dressing up as a book character on Thursday-and we were blown away by the effort they made! Children enjoyed telling the class about their character and showcasing their costumes!

London comes to Guildford

This week the children used their imagination and turned our Reception play area into London! Using the loose parts they built London Bridge, Big Ben and the London Eye. They even made a Thames boat to row down the river on. We loved seeing them add labels to their creations using sounds they know.

Listening to 1W

In response to the 2nd Sunday of Lent, St William's Class led a beautiful worship where they reflected on the importance of learning to listen. It can help to keep us safe, it ensures that we learn new things and, best of all, listening to someone can show that we love them! The children taught us how to listen carefully to each other but also reassured us that God wants to listen to us. We don't even need to talk out loud - he listens to our thoughts and worries, not just our words. Thank you 1W for helping us to listen closely to your message and and for making it so enjoyable to listen to.

Champion Listeners

Congratulations to this host of expert listeners! All of these young people have been heralded by the adults in school for their remarkable efforts in listening and responding to the needs of the school around them. Thank you children for making St Joseph's an even better school by your excellent example. God bless you!

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