St. Catherine of Siena

Feast Day:April 29 

Born:1347 :

Died:1380

Catherine was born at Siena, Tuscany in Italy. Catherine was the youngest in a family of twenty-five children. When she was six years old Jesus appeared and blessed her. Her mother and father wanted her to be happily married. But, Catherine wished only to be a nun. To make herself as unattractive as possible, she cut off her long, beautiful hair. Her parents were very upset and scolded her often. They also gave her the most difficult housework to do. But Catherine did not change her mind. Finally, her parents stopped bothering her and allowed her to become a nun. 

St. Catherine was very honest and straightforward with Jesus and scolded him when he was not around to help her in her struggles and temptations. Jesus told her that because he was in her heart she was able to win her struggles by his grace. In those days the Church had many problems. There were fights going on all over Italy. Catherine wrote letters to kings and queens. She even went to beg rulers to make peace with the pope and to avoid wars. Catherine asked the pope to leave Avignon, France, and return to Rome to rule the Church as it was God's will. He listened to St. Catherine and did as she said. Catherine never forgot that Jesus was in her heart. Through her, Jesus helped the sick people she nursed and comforted the prisoners she visited in jail. This great saint died in Rome in 1380 when she was just thirty-three. She is the patroness of Italy, her country. Hundreds of years later St. Catherine was named a Doctor of the Church. She received this great honor because she served Jesus' Church boldly during her short lifetime.

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Miss Cetinkaya is our class teacher in St Catherine. Mrs Bertolino and Mrs Gusciglio are our Teaching Assistants.

 

 

Reading, Writing, Grammar and Spelling

Through class reading, the children will develop confidence and fluency in their reading skills during lesson time and beyond. In Big Writing, they will develop cohesive paragraphs, varied sentence structures and a range of openers, while improving their descriptive language and use of literary devices.

Grammar and punctuation will include ongoing revision and consolidation of capital letters, full stops, speech marks, commas, semi-colons, colons, question marks and exclamation marks. Weekly spellings will develop the children’s vocabulary, with a different spelling pattern explored each week. Handwriting exercises will support letter formation and presentation, focusing on words from the current spelling focus.

War Letters

The children will write and redraft their own letters as evacuees during WW2. They will use simple, compound and complex sentences, subject-specific vocabulary, relative clauses, reported speech and verbs as sentence starters. They will consider the experiences of evacuees, choose vocabulary carefully to convey emotions and describe events, and organise their ideas clearly using the features of an informal letter.

Bedtime Stories

The children will write their own bedtime story about an adventure with a dragon. They will use literary devices, descriptive adjectives, expanded noun phrases and subject-specific language. They will develop characters, settings and plots, use paragraphs to organise events and create suspense through carefully chosen vocabulary and sentence structures. They will also edit and improve their writing for clarity, accuracy and effect.

Campfire Ghost Stories

The children will write their own campfire ghost stories using cohesive paragraphs, parenthesis, synonyms and a range of openers. They will also write in the active and passive voice. They will explore how authors create tension by controlling the pace of a story, selecting precise verbs and using short sentences for dramatic effect. Their stories will include an effective setting, a clear sequence of events and a satisfying ending.

 

Click on the link below for helpful information and activities which are all literacy based;

Autumn 1

The children will study place value: numbers to ten million, and reading and writing numbers to 10,000,000. They will read, write, order and compare numbers up to 10,000,000, determine the value of each digit, and solve related number and practical problems.

They will explore powers of 10, number lines to 10,000,000, comparing and ordering integers, rounding integers and negative numbers. They will round whole numbers to a required degree of accuracy, use negative numbers in context, calculate intervals across zero, and solve related problems.

The focus will be the four operations. The children will add and subtract integers, identify common factors, common multiples and primes to 100, use divisibility rules, work with square and cube numbers, multiply up to a 4-digit number by a 2-digit number, use short and long division, interpret remainders, solve multi-step problems and use the order of operations. They will also perform mental calculations, including with mixed operations and large numbers.

They will use mental calculations and estimation, reason from known facts, simplify and find equivalent fractions, compare and order fractions, and solve problems involving the four operations.

The children will compare and order fractions, add and subtract fractions with different denominators, and add and subtract mixed numbers.

Autumn 2

The children will solve multi-step fraction problems, multiply fractions by integers and fractions, and divide fractions by integers.

They will answer mixed fraction questions, find fractions of amounts and find the whole, they will calculate with metric measures, convert between miles and kilometres, explore imperial measures and use ratio language.

They will study ratio, fractions, scale drawings, scale factors, similar shapes, proportion, recipes and function machines. They will also use simple formulae, generate and describe linear number sequences, find pairs of numbers satisfying equations with two unknowns, and explore combinations of two variables.

The children will form expressions, use substitution and formulae, form and solve one-step and two-step equations, find pairs of values and solve problems with two unknowns.

 

    

   

     

    

    

    

   

 

 

Energy – Light and Reflection

The children will compare light sources, explain how the eye is protected, describe how light travels and explain how we see luminous and non-luminous objects. They will investigate shadows, use ray diagrams, explore mirrors and reflection, and make a working periscope. Working scientifically, they will make observations, use evidence, draw ray diagrams, pose testable questions, record results in a line graph, extrapolate data and predict missing values. This unit builds on Year 3 Light and Shadows.

Energy – Circuits, Batteries and Switches

The children will describe electrical components, predict whether circuits will work, explore complete loops, power sources, resistance, voltage and bulb brightness, and build circuits containing switches, buzzers and motors. They will draw circuit diagrams using standard symbols, design results tables and identify changed, measured and control variables. They will make careful observations, record their findings systematically and use evidence to explain how changes to a circuit affect its performance. They will also discuss how electrical energy is used safely in everyday devices.

 

Click on the link below for helpful information and activities which are all science based;

Creation and Covenant

The children will explore Genesis 1:1–2:4a, Genesis 2:4b–25 and Genesis 3:1–24, identifying what these passages teach about God, creation, humanity and suffering. They will link Laudato Si with Genesis 2, learn how Baptism forgives original sin and begins new life in Christ, and use the Gospel of John and the Nicene Creed to understand how Jesus, the new Adam, restores our relationship with God. They will study a Catholic scientist and explore faith and science before writing a reasoned argument in response to: “Belief in creation is compatible with scientific accounts of the beginning of the universe and the theory of evolution”.

Prophecy and Promise

Pupils discover how women are true protagonists of salvation history, as Pope John Paul II described them in his General Audience of 27 March 1996. They learn about Sarah Miriam, Deborah, Hannah and Esther. They explore how faith, courage and obedience help to bring about God’s saving plan.

Pupils explore how Mary fulfils Old Testament promises through Luke’s account of her vocation and Magnificat (Luke 1:26–56), while Matthew focuses on Joseph (Matthew 1:18–25). They learn why Mary is called the Mother of God, or Theotokos, and consider the Magnificat’s hopeful message about justice and God lifting up the lowly.

Finally, pupils think about how women respond to God’s call today, including through religious orders such as the Sisters of Mercy. They discuss the many roles women have in the Church and listen to different sung settings of the Magnificat, exploring how each one helps to express its meaning.

 

 

 

    

History

 

Computing

The children will develop online safety skills, learning to use technology safely, respectfully and responsibly, recognise acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, and report concerns about content and contact. In Bletchley Park – Unit 1, they will decompose problems, use logical reasoning, detect and correct errors, design and debug programmes, use sequence, selection, repetition, variables, input and output, and evaluate digital content. They will also use search technologies effectively and present data and information. They will develop their understanding of how instructions are processed and learn to test and refine their programmes so that they work as intended.

2x 45 minutes session taught by external company non-stop action.

The children will explore Surrealist art and how it has developed, focusing particularly on Dali and the techniques he used. They will study how artists combine unexpected images, shapes and objects to create imaginative and thought-provoking compositions. Through drawing and painting activities, they will experiment with proportion, scale, perspective, texture and colour. They will develop ideas in sketchbooks, make purposeful artistic choices and evaluate how effectively their work communicates a mood or idea.

 

 

The children will design and make a waistcoat, generating, developing and communicating ideas through discussion and annotated sketches. They will select and use a range of tools and equipment for their practical task. They will investigate different fabrics, fastenings and joining techniques before creating a design that is suitable for a particular purpose and user. They will take accurate measurements, cut materials carefully, follow a sequence of steps and evaluate the finished waistcoat against their original design criteria. They will also consider how the choice of materials affects the appearance, strength and sustainability of the product.

 

 

SRE

Unit 1 – Religious Understanding- “Created and Loved By God.”

This unit explores the Gospel story of the ‘Calming of the Storm’ (from Matthew, Mark and Luke). Over five story sessions, children will consider experiences of change, growth and development, and the trust that they can have in the person of Jesus through times of trial and tribulation. This is the religious and spiritual foundation for the exploration throughout the rest of the work covered in Module 1: Created and Loved By God.

 

Unit 2 – Me, My Body, My Health

The children will learn that celebrating differences between people is enriching to a community and know that their self-confidence should arise from being loved by God. They will learn about the physical changes that boys and girls go through during puberty and how they should respect and take care of their bodies as gifts from God. Genitals are also mentioned here, but not named and identified.

 

In Hey, Mr Miller, the children will use a variety of instruments to create their own versions of songs and melodies. They will listen carefully to the music, identify repeated patterns and explore how rhythm, melody, tempo and dynamics contribute to a performance. They will rehearse and perform as an ensemble, maintaining a steady pulse and responding to the direction of others. The children will also compose and notate short musical ideas, make thoughtful choices about instruments and evaluate how successfully their arrangements communicate the style and character of the original piece.