Starting the Year off with a Bang!

Monday 6th - Thursday 9th

To kick start our new Science topic, we focused on the way we classify living things by focusing on the life and work of Carl Linnaeus - a Swedish Scientist. We discussed how features and characteristics of animals made them stand out from one another, especially those from the same families! We created branching databases focusing on these differences!

In our Literacy, we focused on what skills we have by creating a story from nothing but a visual prompt in our Cold Write! We had 1 hour to create a story using all of the skills we already have and were given no help whatsoever! We created some amazing short stories and were then able to use a criteria to see what we had done well, and what we needed to focus on moving forward.

Finally, we began our Branch 3 topic of RE - From Galilee to Jerusalem by looking at the map where these events took place! As an entire Progression Step 3 - Year 4, 5 AND 6 all worked together to create the map of the region. We all had a different tile of the map to work on, and when they get pieced together, will create an amazing, interactive wall display! We had so much fun completing this and it shows what teamwork can achieve!

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Skills, More Skills and even more Skills!

Monday 13th - Friday 17th 

To start our week, our First Ministers joined a meeting for our Year 6 Expedition with Cardinal Newman. Each school within our feeder group met to discuss ideas centred around our topic of Diversity. It was a huge success and Miss Hughes was very impressed!

We started our streaming groups for Literacy and Numeracy and already they have been a huge success! In our Literacy, we focused on our description skills for story writing using AI to create weird, wonderful and whimsical worlds! We then focused on character development and how our level of description is super important!

In our ICT, we are focusing on video editing and creating informative content! We are using Adobe Spark to help bring our ideas to life. Today, we explored the tool, using pre-made videos and music to make a video all about ourselves!

To finish off the week, we got ourselves ready to celebrate our class Saint's feast day - which for us is St. John Bosco and his day is 31st January! We made videos in small groups focusing on why his day is special and what he is known for! Check out some of our work below!

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Expressing our Faith, Action, Success!

Monday 20th - Friday 24th

Where to begin for this week?

Start at the very beginning!

So, as part of our Enterprise work with CNS, we are developed our own Haka - taking inspiration from the New Zealand Rugby Teams. We have created our own using Wales as our glorious inspiration, and in small groups developed actions to help us perform it! We're still in the practise stage, so we will show off our work when it's ready for action!

To round off the amazing STEM Club delivered by Ambassadors from USW, they came back for one final hurrah by showcasing everything done during the 6 weeks and to celebrate our epic pupils for the work they've done!

Following this, we continued our learning all about Carl Linnaeus, a world famous Swedish scientist who is responsible for the taxonomy we use to categorise living things and how everything gets its name! We worked in small groups to create posters explaining this process!

On Friday, we were blessed with a visit from our Nursery Buddies! They have invited us to spend the day focusing all on Chinese New Year as we enter the Year of the Snake! So, next week we will be able to show off the amazing things we get up to! Diolch yn fawr, Meithrin!

Lastly for this week, St. Michael's took part in the Jubilee 2025 Launch centred on us being Pilgrims of Hope and how we can spread the good word!

We took a deep dive into the Jubilee Icon for 2025 and used it as our focus for a Class Collective Worship, using it and all of the wonderful features as inspiration for our tasks!

To begin, we started with an opening question:

"What does 'Hope' mean to you?"

And we created some excellent pieces of work with very loving and thoughtful answers!

Finally, we created our own watercolour paintings using the prompt of "Pilgrims of Hope" and how we could convey that in an artpiece. We created some incredible pieces of work with very poignant details and features for you to feast your eyes upon!

A fantastic week!

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Working Hard and Rewarding It

Monday 27th - Friday 31st

In the week we started our tests, we have shown an amazing attitude to our level of commitment and focus. We have done so well and all of our hard work is paying off!

To continue our work for Enterprise, we have continued to make moves on our Haka! It's getting the blood pumping!

We celebrated the Chinese New Year as we move into the Year of the Snake, we got crafty and reflective as we wrote lists to focus on goals and targets for the rest of the school year! We also created our own Chinese dragon design using our own handprints to use as the scales! They look amazing!

To finish off the week, we had the afternoon with our buddies in Nursery as we had a meal of noodles, rice, prawn crackers, chicken balls and different sauces! We had so much fun! We then had a traditional Dancing Lion and had a mini-competition!

Lastly, Miss Davies kindly gave us a fortune cookie and hongbao with a gold coin inside! What an awesome way to finish off January, with so much to look forward to in Feb!