This week, Year One’s spellings are words that have the suffix ‘es’. Adding ‘es’ on words that end in s, x, ch, th and z makes them plural (more than one).
| witches |
| boxes |
| benches |
| bushes |
| dishes |
| dresses |
| matches |
| classes |
Author: Mr Roundtree
29 June 2018
This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and doesn’t really have a specific due date.
Know your lines, what you’re doing and the songs for Bugsy Malone.
We’re fast approaching performance dates for our production, Bugsy Malone. Rehearsals are going well but to improve further we need everybody to know their lines, if they have them; to know when to come on and off; and to know all of the lyrics to the songs.
Here are some links to the songs online so make sure you get them playing and learn the lines, particularly of the ones that are trickier to remember. See whether your child can show you the actions that go with them too.
Ocean Awareness Day
The whole school took to the seas on Wednesday 20 June, exploring the world’s oceans for the day and what is currently happening to them.
Reception created some fantastic art using plastic bags and some of them chose to do some writing set in the ocean. Here’s a taster of Freya’s story for you:
Once upon a time there was a whale called Shamoo. She loved being in the water especially in the sea and making friends. She loved going on adventures around the whole sea…
Year 1 and 2 investigated how salty our seas are working with our Polar Ambassador, Terry Kirk.
They also created some fantastic wave art using watercolour and wrote some lovely ocean shape poems.
Year 3 and 4 also wrote shape poems and they learnt about what lives in the deepest parts of our ocean, even creating their own weird and wonderful deep ocean creatures.
Year 3 and 4 thought about the effect of plastic on our oceans and use the bottle tops we’d collected from the milk we have every day to create their own plastic ocean art in order to raise awareness of just how much plastic we get through as a school.
In Year 5 and 6, they investigated how we explore under the sea and debugged some coding in order to make a submarine automatically photograph underwater creatures. They also learnt about what plastic does to our ocean and the creatures that live in it. Over two days, Mr Catherall and Miss Rushbrooke collected an alarming amount of plastic from school and the adult who work here. Using this, Year 5 and 6 created a collage of an ocean creature, again to raise awareness of just how much plastic we use everyday.
Year 6 also worked together to write a letter to Kirkstall market asking them to stop using plastic bags as it’s a great place for people to shop without plastic but the bags they provide make this difficult.
It was a great day which taught us a lot and got us thinking about what we could do to help look after our planet and the other creatures that live here.
22 June 2018
We all know Roald Dahl’s wonderfully odd made up words. Create a dictionary of 8 words that we could try and use in class this half term (obviously without offending anyone). Think about the most sensible way to spell them, how their meaning might link to their root words, how you could use latin and greek roots to create them and what word class they are.
Here’s my suggestion (and how you should lay your dictionary out):
stulty – (adjective) a bit stupid
Stultus is latin for idiot which is what gave me the idea for the word and we could use it in class if somebody suggested a ‘stulty’ idea.
22 June 2018
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Thursday 28 June.
I understand how money is made, spent, saved and stored.
As we’ve starting our Enterprise project soon, we’re going to be discussing making money and how money is spent. For this Creative homework, the children could:
- Present different ways people make money – employment, charities, starting businesses
- Investigate where people keep their money
- Think about what they’d like to save their money for – now or in the future
- Give themselves a budget and decide how to spend it
- Go shopping with you can then present how their/your money was spent and why
Assessing
At the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage each year, schools must report how each child has achieved across 17 different areas. Whilst the government plans to introduce a statutory assessment on a screen, at the moment this assessment is based on teachers’ (and other adults’) observations of what a child can do, and anything the child might do on paper and in books.
Because it’s teachers assessing, there’s obviously room for different judgements and interpretations. That’s why Mrs Burke and her team attend lots of meetings across the year to share assessments with other schools – we call this ‘moderation’.
Every four years, Leeds City Council also carries out some moderation, and it was Moortown’s turn this year. The meeting went well – teacher assessments were agreed. Here are the conclusions of the report:
The provision in the setting was well thought out and provided a variety of challenges for a range of abilities. The wood work station was a particular strength and gave the moderator some solid evidence around moving and handling [one of the 17 strands] and shape, space and measure [another strand].
Floor books were used to encourage children to contribute their ideas in the construction area.
Practitioners that participated in moderation had a sound knowledge of all the children discussed and could identify the next steps in their learning.
The profile of [a child with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities] included some effective examples showcasing the learning journey of that child and how provision is planned for his specific needs.
From a floor book based around ‘the world’, it was clear that practitioners plan a wide range of experiences to move learning forward such as hatching chicks and potion making.
There are two ‘next steps’, neither of which relates to the quality of our provision: to gather greater evidence for children in a particular strand, and to continue to involve parents / carers:
It was agreed it would be useful to capture more responses and comments from children to add in to the maths floor book together with more of their mathematical graphics. This would provide useful additional evidence for both strands of maths throughout the year. The moderator suggested keeping a note, for example, on a class list of which children had contributed so that the book provides evidence for all learners over time.
The reception teacher is considering other ways to involve parents and gather additional evidence from home.
Well done to Mrs Burke and all her team – and to our wonderful 2017-18 Reception children.
Role Play
Over the past few weeks, Year One have been learning lots about traditional tales. To help us remember the main events of Little Red Riding Hood, we acted it out in small groups. Take a look at our amazing acting skills.
And more… Fab feedback!
Just a day after a lovely email from a parent, we’ve received another. This one (also anonymised, so ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’) is from a Y5/6 parent commenting on the rich curriculum at Moortown Primary:
I just wanted to say a huge thank you to you and your team for making [my child] so happy at school. This month in particular they are buzzing about the fantastic opportunities they and their class are experiencing. What a fabulous curriculum!! …Sailing at Yeadon Tarn where they laid across the bow of the boat and touched the water, being selected for [a competitive event] and then finally to cap it all off a day at…Headingley cricket ground.
It is so joyful when your child gushes to tell you about their school day and the things they are looking forward to. Thank you!
Fab feedback (again!)
We’ve recently received a lovely email from a parent whose children will soon be moving on to a new school. Here’s an (anonymised) extract:
I and my kids have thoroughly enjoyed our time spent at Moortown… I will certainly miss the daily commute, playground banter and friendly faces, especially some of the teachers who were around [for all my children]. I thank you and all the staff for allowing my children to grow and develop in a wonderfully healthy school environment and I firmly believe that the robust primary education they received has helped them to flourish and become the lovely little people they are today.
A Moroccan Feast
Year 6 are back in the kitchen this half term and our first dish was falafel, hummus and flatbread.
We used chopping skills to get the onion and garlic ready.
We create breadcrumbs to coat the outside of the falafels.
A group of us were in charge of preparing the flatbread which are made simply of plain flour, butter, coconut milk and a pinch of salt.
For the falafel, we whizzed our onion, garlic and chickpea together using a hand blender.
Then, we added parsley, coriander, lemon juice, cumin, a pinch of salt, plain fllour and some harissa paste and whizzed it again.
Then, it was time to get our hands in there to make the falafel balls, coats them in breadcrumbs and place them on the baking trays.
We then tried it altogether along with our homemade hummus: classic, sun-dried tomoato flavour and olive flavour. The sun-dried tomato hummus was a favourite with the olive a close second.
If you want to make some flavoured hummus at home, it’s really simple. Place all of the following ingredients into a bowl and blend. (You can use a nutri-bullet too.)
Sun-dried tomato hummus
- tin of chickpeas
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 tbsp lemon
- a pinch of salt
- 5 sun-dried tomatoes
- 2 tbsps of the oil from the sun-dried tomato
Olive tapenade hummus
- tin of chickpeas
- 1 clove of garlic
- 2 tbsp lemon
- a pinch of salt
- 50g black olives
- 2 tbsps of pil