Latest News

All square at St Marks

Tue 20 Mar 2018

St Mary’s played St Marks away on Monday in a match that could determine first and second place in the league.

First all season that had St Mary’s trailing at half time 1-0 to an own goal.

With the wind behind us, we scored a great solo goal from Liam which was followed up by another wonder goal by Luca. Another unfortunate own goal levelled the match at 2-2.

Man ofthe match was Ryan – solid defending.

Dear Parent/Carer,

We have recently subscribed to Purple Mash, which is a creative educational website for children. Purple Mash is a cross-curricular resource covering everything from Maths and English to Computing and Art. Your child can access Purple Mash from home on a laptop, desktop or a tablet.

Purple Mash is a safe environment that doesn’t require any downloading or allow interaction with people online and children cannot make any financial transactions.

We will be encouraging the children to further explore the subjects and topics they enjoy from school at home and Purple Mash is a great resource for this. Your child will be taught how to use Purple Mash in school and will be able to use it without supervision but you may want to take a few minutes to explore it yourself so that you can help them with their work.

Creative Tools & Games

There are 20+ open-ended creative tools and games inside Purple Mash. They range in complexity from simple painting programs to sophisticated coding tools. If you’re using something for the first time it is a good idea to watch the help vidoes which can be found by clicking the monitor icon.

Saving and Sharing Work

Purple Mash lets your child save their work online. It’s very easy just look out for the floppy disk icon on the toolbar and follow the simple instructions. To access saved files go to the ‘Online Docs’ tab. Once saved you can also ‘share’ work. Just look out for the globe icon on the toolbar. This will give you a link that can be used to view the work by people that don’t have Purple Mash.

Topics and Themes

Purple Mash has over 2,000 ready-to-use themed writing and painting projects. They cover everything from aliens to the Victorians. You can either use the ‘Themes’ tab to browse by subject and topic or alternatively use the search bar in the bottom right of the screen to look for something specific.

2Code

2Code puts children as young as five on the path to becoming computer programmers. Everything is broken down into step-by-step lessons with video instructions. Coding is now a part of the National Curriculum 2014. If you wanted to find out the kinds of things that your children will be learning then having a go at 2Code yourself is a great place to start.

Serial Mash

Serial Mash is all about getting children to read for pleasure. New books are released each half-term as a weekly serial. The chapters come with a range of fun and educational activities. Serial Mash is great for solo or guided reading and can be read on tablets. You can take a look the current books in the ‘Serial Mash’ tab. The books are aimed at children aged 7-9 and 9-11.

Purple Mash On Tablets

If you have an ipad then there are several free apps that you can download as part of Purple Mash. These include Mash Cams, 2DIY and 2Create a Story. You can download them from the App Store and sign in with your Purple Mash username and password. Alternatively, you can use Purple Mash on a tablet by opening it up in a browser window on your device. Not all of the tools work on tablets but there are lots that do.

Want to know more?

If you’re keen to get to know Purple Mash inside and out there is a video trainer that will lead you through the whole of Purple Mash and explain exactly what it can do. You can view the video trainer using the link below.

http://www.purplemash.co.uk/app/videos/videotrainer

Your child will receive a letter with their personal login and password. If you have not received it by the end of the term, please contact the school office or your child’s teacher.

Hedge Planting at St Mary’s Forest School

Wed 14 Mar 2018

Some of the children in Year 5 assisted Mr Sabatino today with some more planting at the school. Part of the Eco-drive at the school the children have been planting hedges to mark out the Forest School area. There are various species of hedge which we hope will make a fantastic, colourful and wildlife rich boundary for the Forest School area.

St Mary’s V St Boniface

Fri 09 Mar 2018

What a start to the football season!

St Mary’s visited St Boniface for their first football match of the season, and walked away with a 5-1 win.

St Mary’s quickly took a hold of the game scoring a great team goal from Joe within the first few minutes. This was followed by a wonder solo goal by Liam.

Halt time: St Mary’s 2 – St Boniface 0.

An inspiring half time talk gave St Mary’s the inspiration to dominate control of the game. Three quick goals from Liam, Gabriel and Bobby put the game to bed. A late consolation goal end the match at 5 – 1 to St Mary’s.

Full time score: St Mary’s 5 – St Boniface 1.

Man of the match: for being a ‘rock’ in defence – Jack.

Novus Solutions sponsors the new St Mary’s Football Kit

Fri 16 Feb 2018

Today St Mary’s received a visit from Nigel Linger and Emma Wood of Novus Solutions who have kindly sponsored the new St Mary’s Football Kit. At the end of the Year 6 assembly Mrs Raynor introduced our guests and a selection of Year 5 children proudly showed off the new design.

Novus Solutions are a family based company based in Salford who undertake a lot of their work with Social Housing Groups across the borough. Currently Social Housing is a major focus and we welcome the partnership with Nigel and Emma. https://www.novussolutions.co.uk/

Hopefully the kit will spur the team on to even more success. A big thank you again to Nigel and Emma from all the staff and children at St Mary’s.

St Mary’s achieves the Modeshift Stars Bronze Accreditation

Fri 16 Feb 2018

St Mary’s are very proud to have achieved the Bronze Accreditation from Modeshift Stars.

Modeshift STARS is the national schools awards scheme that has been established to recognise schools that have demonstrated excellence in supporting cycling, walking and other forms of sustainable travel.

The scheme encourages schools across the country to join in a major effort to increase levels of sustainable and active travel in order to improve the health and well-being of children and young people.

The school have introduced the Walk To School initiative, set up the park and stride location at Aldi supermarket, spoken with the Mayor of Salford about traffic calming initiatives for around the school, enjoyed participating in the Road Safety Week campaign, had Safer Cycling training for Year 5 and much more.

As of Sepember 2017, 64 organisations representing around 13,000 schools in England are signed up to Modeshift STARS.

We are very proud to have achieved the award but will now press on with even more initiatives to achieve the Silver Level. Please support the school and where you can cycle or walk to and from school.

St Joseph’s Penny Lenten Appeal

Mon 12 Feb 2018

Today we began our St Joseph’s Lenten Appeal with a very special visual display of charity. Each class, from Nursery to Year 6, spent a short time in quiet reflection. They were then invited to place their silver coins inside a wooden symbol representing the St Joseph’s Penny Charity. The whole day was beautiful and had a huge impact on the children’s understanding of the poor and vulnerable and how we need to help people in our community. We raised an amazing £64.43 towards our appeal. We hope to raise lots more through the St Joseph Penny boxes too! Thank you for all your donations.

Year 5C – Kensuke’s Forest School

Fri 09 Feb 2018

In English Year 5C have been reading Kensuke’s Kingdom and learning all about how Michael had to survive on his desert island. We learnt that being on an island with a storm hitting isn’t the best place to be without supplies.

So, with a twist, the children were today given the task of having to build their own shelters using anything they could find or scavenge from around the grounds. They certainly lived up to the task with a few wanting to ask the builders for any spare bricks they could use!

The wind started picking up and at one point it looked like a couple of the groups might be spending their ‘desert island night’ in the cold air with nothing over them at all. But they pulled together and at least we had some form of shelter.

Well done to all teams who worked really well together and even had the luxury of a few coconuts.

Yr 2 Dance Explorers

Tue 06 Feb 2018

Year 2 are currently looking at ‘Excellent Explorers’ in their history and we have linked this to our dance classes with Miss Jane to create our very own exploration dance! We are exploring land, space and sea using moves on different levels, some in unison and some in canon and travelling movements.

Year 2 Lowry Artists

Tue 06 Feb 2018

Year 2 were recently looking at local history and linked to this our local artist L S Lowry. We discovered how many of his paintings showed life in Salford in the 1900’s and we learnt a lot about the landscape and buildings of the time just by looking at them. We took a close look at Lowry’s “Railway Platform” (1953), as Lowry had sketched it at the local Pendlebury train station, and compared it to a local metrolink stop today. These are our versions of Lowry’s “Railway Platform”.

Dear Parent/Carer,

Awards