Cricket

We have a cricket coach working with us this half term, teaching us about batting and fielding techniques.

Science week

This week, we teamed up with our buddies in Reception to carry out a bug hunt in our Millennium forest area! We then made compostable seed starter pots and planted sunflower seeds ready for our big sunflower growing competition!

Author Visit

We welcomed author Dan Worsley into school today. He entertained us with a fantastic performance storytelling assembly, followed by a fantastic writing workshop, where he shared some of his secrets to great story writing.

Viking Visit!

Yes, you read correctly… we were paid a visit from a real Viking! He taught us all about Viking weapons, battle strategies and eating habits. He also showed us some amazing artefacts, for which we had fun guessing their uses.

Lego Coding Training!

Some of our technology experts from year 5 and 6 have been sharing their skills in Lego Coding with Reception class this week…

World Book Day 2022

We have had great fun today dressed as our favourite book characters! We shared stories with our buddies in Reception class and made our own books about the day our character came to school!

Sweet classification!

We have been learning about classification keys in Science. After using keys to classify some newly discovered amphibians, we created our own keys for Liquorice Allsorts!

Fairtrade Fortnight

Today we welcomed Fairtrade expert Michael into school to talk to us about the importance of Fairtrade. Beacon Class took part in a Fairtrade workshop, where we learned all about Fairtrade cooperatives and how farmers receive a fair deal for their crops.

Creepy Crawly Roadshow!

To launch our latest topic on animal classification, we welcomed John and his Creepy Crawly Roadshow into school. We learned so many fascinating facts about minibeasts and even got to hold some including a Madagascan hissing cockroach, Brian the giant land snail, Sammy the Royal python and a tiny stick insect!

VR experience

This week we took a virtual trip to the Amazon Rainforest, where we saw lots of amazing animals in the different layers of the rainforest, including capuchin monkeys, a tarantula and ants around our feet!

Mars Rovers

We have been designing, creating and programming Mars Rovers! The brief was to design a rover to collect scientific information and samples from the red planet.

Abstract Art Jackson Pollock style!

We loved getting messy with abstract art this week, applying paint with a variety of things including spray bottles and spoons! It was great to experience art on this scale – in true Jackson Pollock style!

Looking to the future

Our school council organised a ‘Future self day’ today, so we all came dressed as our future selves in our chosen career paths! From artists to architects, entomologists and sports champions, we are certainly reaching for the stars!

Aliens?!

Well, what an exciting week! On Monday, we were handed CCTV footage of a mysterious UFO hovering over our playground at the weekend! We investigated further and found metal debris scattered around a possible crash site in the Millennium. We put our expert forensic team to work, collecting evidence and interviewing staff to find out what had happened!

Martian Soil Investigation

We tested three soil samples found at our UFO crash site to find out which was the most likely to be from Mars. We used processes of dissolving, evaporating and filtering to check for properties that would give us clues about its origin.

Safety Week

We have had a very busy week, learning some basic first aid, a visit from paramedics in an ambulance, Online safety and water safety.

Alston Observatory

We visited Alston Observatory, where we took part in a Space workshop and were lucky enough to see two huge telescopes – one of which is among the biggest in Britain!

Solar System Maths!

We have been trying to get our heads around the scale of the planets in our Solar System this week! We measured the relative distance between each planet in relation to the sun, and using various sized spherical objects from chocolate sprouts to footballs we made a human solar system on the playground! We then made accurate scale drawings of the planets (200 000 000 times smaller than the real thing!).

Starry Night advent artwork

We have been working on a piece or art for a virtual advent service with other local schools. Our brief was ‘joy’ so we have depicted the joy of the birth of Jesus in the style of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. We created swirls in the Impressionist style of Van Gogh using a limited palette of blue, purple and yellow, then displayed these with some 3d elements and a light to represent Jesus. We’re really pleased with the result!

Oliver!

In English we have been studying Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and this week we staged our very own performance!

Maths in the sunshine

We took advantage of some rare winter sunshine in maths with a division codecraker treasure hunt!

Van Gogh Alive!

We had such an amazing time at the Van Gogh Alive exhibition this week! It was so mesmerising and emotive to see Van Gogh’s life in paintings brought to life on huge screens all around us. We have been inspired to create some brilliant descriptive writing by imagining we had ‘dived into’ Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.

Children in Need

We have been busy fundraising for Children in Need today. We wore our pyjamas and filled a huge Pudsey bear with pennies!

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Gymnastics

We have been practising different balances in gymnastics and creating our own sequences…

Gymnastics Champions!

Well done to our amazing gymnastics team who soared to victory in a competition this week… 4 gold medals, one silver and one bronze! They were also overall champions in the small schools league. Amazing performances!

Blackpool Zoo

We had a fantastic day at Blackpool Zoo – the perfect end to our Survival topic. We even got to feed nectar to the amazing rainbow lorikeets! It was great to see so many animal adaptations in real life.  Thanks to expert Bex for her guidance and patience in answering our many questions!

Survival Displays

We’re very proud of our class topic displays to showcase our learning about survival. We have crammed so much into this half term!

Our Habitat Corners

We have designed and created our very own species, giving them adaptations to help them survive in specific habitats. We wrote documentary scripts, sculpted our animals using modroc and made habitat corners for them to live in. Using the Puppetpals animation app, we filmed our own documentaries that I’m sure even Sir David Attenborough would be proud of!

Space Week

The focus for this year’s space week was women in space. We researched facts about many of the amazing influential women who have made their mark in the field of space travel and astronomy. We produced pop art style images inspired by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and presented our findings in a class video.

Finished artwork!

We are so proud of our finished pieces of art to round off our project on animals and camouflage!

Camouflage in Art

This week we have been working on some camouflage art using a variety of techniques. We looked at creating texture using different pencil grades, pastels, paint and collage. For our final piece we chose our favourite media and created some amazing animal and camouflage art. Watch this space next week for our finished pieces!

Autumn 2021

What a great start to the new school year! We have launched our new topic, Survival, with some fascinating learning about animal adaptations and evolution of species. Our new art topic about camouflage is well underway and we can’t wait to show you the finished results… watch this space!

Longridge Environmental Group Celebration

A group of children from Beacon Class were invited to Longridge Environmental Group’s Celebration of their ‘Plastic Free Town’ status yesterday. As part of our own Plastic Free School status award, Lucy had distributed newsletters to her neighbours, informing them of the plastic crisis. One of these was delivered to the ex mayor of Longridge, who consequently sent us the invitation to be part of this special event. Well done Lucy! We went along with some of our amazing work on display and presented to an audience of like-minded campaigners. What a fantastic privilege – the children did us proud with their heartfelt poems, speeches and confident presentation of our work.

Amazing Automata!

Today, we built some complex electrical circuits with LED lights and resistors to add a light element to our automata. We persevered in stripping wires, adding connector strips and using fiddly screwdrivers; it was so worth it… the results are fantastic!

Sports Day!

Automata designs

I have been blown away by some of our automata designs in our latest DT/ science project! The children have designed and created automata using cams mechanisms to bring moving parts to life. Then next plan is to add LEDs using our knowledge of electrical circuits to turn them into something worthy of Blackpool illuminations! Watch this space for the finished results…

Crochet Masterclass!

One of our year 5 pupils, Melody, has been sharing her love of crochet and teaching her classmates how to make chains, magic circles and even egg cosies! She has set up her own lunchtime club and has even taught Mrs Rossall (very patiently) some basic skills! 

Shakespeare Workshops

We have been lucky enough to have Lucy’s mum – our very own Shakespeare expert! – running some fantastic Shakespeare workshops with us. We have had a fascinating flavour of some of the bard’s plays, we got to grips with some tricky archaic language, acted some scenes and even hurled Shakespearean insults at one another!

Virtual Reality!

Wow, what an amazing day we have had! We took part in a Virtual Reality workshop and experienced life under the sea with a 360 degree view of some amazing ocean scenes! We saw dolphins, whale sharks, seals and even set foot in a shark cage! We also saw the impact of climate change, viewing changes in our polar regions, forests and views of the Earth from space.

History Day

We had a visit from Ruby Slippers this week, who took us on a tour of British history, from the Stone Age through to WW2! We became Stone Age hunters, wives of Henry VIII and World War 2 evacuees. We also took part in a Shakespeare Workshop, where we took on some key characters, posing in freeze frames to convey key characters and shapes to represent the seven ages of man speech from ‘As you like it’. What a great way to consolidate our History learning!

Photography – plastic in nature

We have been looking at some of Tracey Williams’ photography of Lego and other plastic washed up on beaches in Cornwall and were inspired to try our own!

Lytham Beach Clean-up

We had a very productive morning picking up litter along Lytham Beach. We found a surprising amount of plastic waste.

Weaving Seascapes

We have been creating some beautiful weaving art – transforming our seascapes into textile wall hangings. They are looking stunning!

Move over Greta Thunberg!

Beacon Class have been so inspired by young climate change activist Greta Thunberg and her speeches, they have written their own… and they are amazing! Some of them delivered their speeches in an assembly via Teams and advised the younger children what they could do to help the fight against plastic pollution. The children have also written letters to our local MP asking for his support with our Plastic Free Schools campaign.
On Monday we welcomed Delia Webb from the Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition into our classroom via Zoom. What a fantastic insight into the world of a very passionate marine medic and biologist. She was very impressed with our knowledge and enthusiasm – we look forward to letting her know how we get on with our beach litter pick next week.

Rock Pool Experience

What a fantastic day we had learning about and holding some amazing creatures found in our rock pools! Starfish, anemones, crabs and mermaid purses to name a few. Many thanks to Lee from Aqualease for his expert knowledge and patience!

Plastic-free Schools Trash Mob!

We are on a mission to become a certified ‘plastic-free school’ and this week we carried out a ‘trash mob’ litter pick around the school grounds. Thinking we would come back with nothing, we were astounded to fill two sacks of plastic and non-decompostable waste! From plastic carrier bags buried in hedges to disposable face masks. We have also been writing persuasive speeches inspired by Greta Thunberg, which we are looking forward to delivering to our peers next week to persuade them to help us in our mission!

Sea poetry

I have been amazed by the thought-provoking and emotive poetry that has been created this week in Beacon class! We looked at figurative language and imagery in some sea poems then wrote our own. Some children decided to incorporate their feelings about plastic pollution – our ‘ethical thinking’ topic for this half-term.

Seascapes

We have been exploring and creating seascapes this week, using paint and collage techniques. In English, we have ‘dived into a painting’ and written some fantastic setting descriptions to depict our chosen seascape painting.

Parachute testing!

We tried out our parachute designs to see which was the most effective. We discovered that the bigger canopies slowed down the effects of gravity, but they only worked well if they were well-balanced!

Designing parachutes

Our latest DT project was to design a parachute that will safely carry an egg to the ground, making use of air resistance to reduce the force of gravity!
We chose suitable materials for the canopy, decided on the shape and size of the canopy and thought carefully about how to attach strings and a basket.
Next week we will be testing how effective they are… I wonder how many eggs will survive?!

Hockey Skills

In PE we have been developing our hockey skills. We have practised dribbling and jab tackling. We definitely have some budding hocking players in our class!

Science Week!

We have been investigating forces and friction for Science week. We designed gliders for a Beacon class ‘fly off’, looking at the effects of air resistance, gravity, thrust and lift. Well done to our champions Harry and Elsie!

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We also carried out a series of investigation into the effects of friction… we made CD hovercrafts, observed friction in action in a bicycle and tried picking jelly cubes up with chopsticks…with added oil!

The true meaning of advent

We have been reflecting on the true meaning of advent over the past couple of weeks. We have made Christingles, recorded our virtual advent service and written blogs about our thoughts and reflections about this special time of year. Some of our blogs will be uploaded into the ‘Kidszone’ area of our website shortly!

Christmas Jumper Day and Food bank delivery!

We have been raising money for Save the Children and collecting food for our local food bank as part of our pledge this advent to help others less fortunate than ourselves. Year 6 delivered the food so that we could see what a food bank looks like.

Order! Order!

We held our own parliamentary debate this week, complete with a government party, opposition and speaker! We debated the current issue of housing overdevelopment in our local community. I think we may have some future MPs among us!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

In true St Francis tradition, Year 6 were given the task of decorating our Christmas tree this week. We can’t believe it is going to be their last Christmas with us at St Francis! We have also been practising for our virtual advent service – it has been lovely to hear Christmas carols and festive cheer in school.

Children in Need

Remembrance Day reflections

We have enjoyed looking at the stations created by each class for Remembrance Day, reflecting on the thoughtful poems and artwork and remembering all those who sacrificed their lives in wartime.

How do we see?

We have been modelling how light helps us to see objects using a light source, string and random objects!

Beautiful Poppies

We have made fantastic progress with our sewing skills which we have been showcasing in our poppy project this week. We are preparing a poppy wreath and special display to mark Remembrance Day… watch this space for the final results next week!

Space Week 2020

The theme of this year’s space week was satellites, so we embarked on a mission to learn about how amazing artificial satellites are, and did an mini DesignTechnology project to design and create our own satellite with all the necessary components.

Finished dragon eyes!

We have finally finished painting our dragon eyes with some beautiful metallic paint…. what a result! They look amazing!

Legends and dragons!

We have finished writing our own legends this week, inspired by legends from around the UK and our class novel, Beowulf. They feature famous uk landmarks and some weird and wonderful mythical creatures! We have also been doing some amazing artwork featuring dragon eyes. We started with a study of the human eye, then adapted this to design dragon eyes based on reptiles and made these into clay sculptures. We can’t wait to paint these next week!

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Maypole!

As part of our UK topic, we have been learning some traditional dances around the maypole. The maypole has a long history in Goosnargh, being the focal point of our Whitsuntide festival for decades and since this years festival was cancelled we thought it would be great to continue this tradition here at St Francis!

Welcome back!

We’ve had a busy week already! We have launched our new topic ‘A Kingdom United’. We have been looking at how the Anglo-Saxons came to settle in Britain with an active session on the playground with a huge UK map! We had groups of Romans, Britons, Picts and Anglo-Saxons invading and protecting…

Creation Pictures

After reading the story of creation in the book of Genesis, we designed some artwork based on what we are thankful to God for. We are in the process of replicating our designs using embroidery. They are looking amazing!

New Topic Map

‘An Amazon Adventure’

This is our new topic map for this half term. We will try to mirror some of the learning through home learning activities sent out on Seesaw to enable as much curriculum coverage as possible.

Daffodils

We have been working on our observational skills in art, looking at detail in shape, angles and colour. Our daffodil art have made beautiful Mother’s Day cards!

Sweet classification

We have been learning about classification keys and how animals and plants are grouped. We made our own classification keys for a group of liquorice all sorts and named each ‘species’!

Sharing stories

Year 5 love spending time reading with their buddies in Reception class. Last week they enjoyed sharing stories they had written.

World Book Day

We had great fun dressing up as our favourite characters and also took part in a ‘book tasting’ session – cafe style! Everyone chose a book from five different genres and completed a taster menu to help them decide whether it was a book they would like to read.

Dancing through the decades

 

 

Safety Week 2020

We have had a very busy week learning about how to stay safe both online and in every day life and to take responsibility for our own safety and well-being…

Fireman Dave

Firefighter Dave spoke to us about how to avoid fires in the home and gave us some great tips about how to stay safe in the event of a fire. Thank you Dave!

Mini medics with ‘Heartbeat’

Key Stage 2 took part in ‘mini medics’ first aid training with Sian from Heartbeat. We learned how to administer CPR, what to do if someone is bleeding or choking and how to call for help in an emergency.

 

Dog Trust

Elissa from the Dog Trust spoke to us about being a responsible dog owner and approaching dogs safely.

 

Alston Observatory

What a fantastic morning we had at our local observatory! We learned so many fascinating facts about space, experienced a 3d spectacular show in the planetarium and looked at the super-sized telescopes and the amazing photos they have captured. A huge thank you to Mark from UCLAN for a brilliant presentation.

Creating Planets

We have made some amazing 3D planets using paper mache with tissue to add texture to the surface, and string to create craters. We then painted them using different paint effects inspired by the abstract art of Jason Pollock.

NSPCC Number Day

To raise money for the NSPCC, we dressed as our favourite Times Tables Rockstar or a number themed costume and took part in some number challenges including an alien number scavenger hunt! Thank you to all those who donated cakes for our cake sale. We will be counting the money raised at the end of the week so watch this space…!

Liverpool World Museum trip

We had a great day, learning about fossils, art from different cultures, the history of space exploration and Ancient Egypt!

NSPCC ‘Speak Out’

We had a visit from Jo and Marie (and mascot Buddy!) from the NSPCC, who talked to us about the importance of talking about any worries we may have. We are looking forward to holding a ‘Number Day’ next Friday, where we will wear number themed costumes and holding a cake sale. Children are busy collecting sponsors for taking part in lots of different number challanges on the day.

Martian soil investigation

We were provided with 3 soil samples and information about the properties of Martian soil. We devised tests and observations to investigate which sample was most likely to be soil from Mars, including testing for salt through dissolving and evaporating.

 

Solar Systems of every kind!

We have had some amazing space creations brought into school for home learning tasks this week! Papier mache planets, fabulous posters, painted 3d models of the solar system, a 3d fabric solar system mobile and even edible solar systems and a galaxy cake! How lovely to see the children so engaged in our topic… super effort Beacon class!

Planet art

We have been experimenting with creating texture using a variety of media in art – pastels, pencil and chalk/charcoal. We look forward to transferring these ideas to 3d planets next week.

Alien Invasion!

We started the week with some very alarming news… aliens had invaded St Francis’ millennium woods! There were various pieces of metal debris found at the site and some interesting CCTV footage of what appeared to be a UFO hovering over the playground! The children adopted the roles of journalists and forensic investigators and set about gathering evidence. They have compiled news reports which they are busy editing…

Football Tournament

Some of our fabulous footballers took part in a tournament in Fleetwood today. Despite some very tough opposition and extremely cold weather, spirits were high and as always, they played fairly and were super-polite throughout. Very proud of them all!

Learning about our Solar system

Space topic ‘launch’!

We have launched our new topic with a carousel of activities to test our previous knowledge about Space… and we tasted some real astronaut food! We are looking forward to learning lots of new information about our amazing solar system.

Congratulations Emily!

We are very proud of our amazing artist and book worm, Emily, for this achievement….

Sharing our ‘Excitable Edgar’ stories with our buddies

Gymnastics

Our PE unit this half term, alongside ‘Maths on the Move’ has been gymnastics. We have been practising counter balance and tension in groups and also matched and mirrored balances in pairs. We have composed our own routines and carried out appraisals of other groups’ routines.

Sharing Learning Logs

We have been sharing all the fantastic work that has been done at home this half term. What a great array of activities!

Oliver Twist

We have been studying playscripts in English, including some classics: Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. At the childrens’ request, they performed their own version for the rest of the school. Their performance was fantastic! Videos have been sent out on Seesaw.

Fruit Still Life Art

We have been studying the detail of various fruits sliced in half, sketching and painting them. The results are great…

KS2 Advent Service

Our advent service was a really special event – the children shared the story of Christmas and some lovely reflections about the true message of Christmas. The readers, singers, musicians and soloists were all amazing. We finished with a lively performance of ‘Born in the Hay’!

Christmas Dinner!

History of St Francis’

We welcomed one of our governors – Mr Bryan – into school this week to share his wealth of knowledge about Blessed George Beesley and the history of our school and church. It was absolutely fascinating – what a privelege to hold some special artefacts that were used by George himself.

Watercolour penguins

We have been painting penguins using watercolours this week – to make into Christmas cards. They look fantastic! Packs of these will be for sale at the Christmas fair this Sunday after mass.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Year 6 decorated our Christmas Tree in the hall – a yearly tradition for our leavers… we can’t believe this will be their last Christmas at St Francis’!

Baking bread

Beacon Class has never smelled so wonderful this week! Scents if freshly-baked bread have been wafting through our corridors! We learned about what effect yeast has on the dough as it proves and looked at where flour comes from.

Bikeability

What an exhausting week! Bikeability was so much fun – everyone learned so much about staying safe on the roads and practised lots of cycling skills involving balance and coordination.

Anti-bullying Week

Children in Need

Food Glorious Food!

To launch our new topic, we had a ‘taster’ session to sample what we would be learning about in Science, Geography, DT and Art. We made sherbet and observed what happened when the ingredients were added to water.

Poppy Art for Remembrance Day

We painted poppies with watercolours (inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s poppies) onto handwritten ‘In Flanders Fields’ poems. The finished collaborative art boards were displayed in church for Remembrance Day… they look stunning.

In Flanders Fields Performance Poetry

In groups, we devised a series of actions for each stanza of the poem, then put them together to create a very moving performance on Remembrance Day to introduce our minutes silence.

Seed planting

Every child in the school planted seeds this week as part of our Longridge cluster schools project to plant 1 million trees.

Blackpool Zoo

What a fantastic day to round off our learning about adaptation and evolution!

 

Harris Museum Art Day

We were lucky enough to receive a very special visit last week from staff at the Harris, who brought with them an amazing sculpture – Gloria Victis – and held art workshops.

Our adapted creature habitat corners

We thoroughly enjoyed designing and creating creatures that could survive in our chosen habitats. The sculptures were made using modroc and foil and we made habitat corners for them to live in. We carefully chose features for our creatures, giving them adaptations to enable them to survive and thrive in their habitats. We wrote descriptions on the back of the habitat corners, then in true David Attenborough style, made our own wildlife clip animations using the Puppet Pals app. These have been sent out on Seesaw – we hope you enjoy them!

 

International Space Day

We had an amazing time learning all about space rovers, making our own from lego, then coding them to move, change colour and make noises!

Football & Netball Tournament

Well done to our netballers and footballers – once again they made us proud with impeccable manners and behaviour… and they played well too!

French Day

We embraced all things French this week with a fantastic French Day to mark European languages day. Year 5&6 hosted a French cafe and guided younger children in some basic French conversation. We had a D&T workshop, creating models of French landmarks; an Art workshop where we responded to paintings by French artists and a music session where we learned a French song.

Net and Ball skills in PE

Life Education Caravan

We had a visit from our old friend Harold the giraffe this week with the Life Education Caravan. We learned about friendship, emotions, drugs and choices.

Science: Which beak is best?!

We carried out an investigation into the different beaks birds have to enable them to access different food sources. We learned about adaptation and what would happen to different species if their food source disappeared.

Music: Rocking out to Bon Jovi!

We started a new unit of work in music about rock music. We were ‘keeping the pulse’ and playing along to ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’ with a simple Glockenspiel accompaniment, finishing with singing the song and a bit of air guitar!

Cobble Hey

Year 5 enjoyed their first of three visits to Cobble Hey Farm to see how things change over the seasons.

Welcome back!

Reflection Window

We have been busy designing stained glass artwork for our Reflection window to remind us that we are stewards of creation. Our designs represent elements of creation and reflect some of the amazing gifts God has given to us.

Blackpool Trip

What a fantastic way to end the term… our trip to Blackpool Tower and Circus.

Our new head boy and girl team for 2019/2020

Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies!

Our class production brought the house down! The children were amazing – each one brought their unique personalities to their roles and the singing was fantastic!