Author: Mr Roundtree

Fortnite – staying safe

As you know, we like to keep you updated as much as possible with how you can keep your child safe when they’re online. This is an ever-changing world and, unfortunately, it’s impossible to keep up with all current issues but there are some ways we can help. Over this year, we’ll communicate to you some factsheets about popular games and apps with some hints and tips about how you can support your child in staying safe.

The first one is some guidance around the game, Fortnite.

As always, if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns, please chat to someone in school.

Writing: taking on a character

We’re going to write a character description of a pirate this week so, to get us in the mood, we got ourselves into character through some drama.

After a few warm-up games, we started to move around the room slowly, with big strides, like a clown and then we posed as different characters we read about last week.

We were Peter Pan. We were The Evil Stepmother
We were Fantastic Mr Fox

We were Cinderella.

To get us into a piratey mood, we then thought about what our pirate was like and created scenes as a group of our piratey adventures.

We sailed across the seven seas.We attacked any boats that got in our way.

Some fab drama from Year 4 who are now very much looking forward to writing their pirate character descriptions. Watch this space.

Living and learning in our happy and healthy school

Although it’s not yet in primary schools’ National Curriculum, most primaries provide pupils with learning around aspects of Personal, Social, Health Education (PSHE), and also citizenship (in fact, sometimes, you might see or hear the abbreviation PSHCE) and financial education (I’ve even spotted the abbreviation PSHEE – Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education). Sex and relationships education (SRE, although sometimes the terms are swapped around: Relationships and Sex Education – RSE) also falls under this PSHE umbrella term. As you can see, all these abbreviations can get really confusing!

At Moortown Primary, we cover all this in a weekly subject which is popular with both pupils and their teachers: Living and Learning.

Read more about Living and Learning on our Health page and in our age-related expectations. You can also check out the weekly Living and Learning theme in our calendar – they show for each Monday during term-time.

Living and Learning: Anti-bullying Week

This week is anti-bullying week so hopefully, given our homework, you’ve had the opportunity to discuss bullying at home. In class, we’re making sure that everybody understands what STOP means:

Several Times On Purpose

This helps us to understand what bullying is and therefore ensures we can all recognise what is and what isn’t bullying.

Start Telling Other People

This helps us to know what to do if we think we’re being bullied or if we think somebody else is being bullied.

We’ve also been discussing the different types of bullying so see if you’re child can give you an example of:

  • emotional bullying
  • physical bullying
  • cyber bullying

Creating Characters

This half term, our focus in writing is description. This week and next, we’re learning about character descriptions. Today, we read some character descriptions and we even designed our own character to describe to someone else and see whether they could recreate it.

We realised that we had to:

  • use comparisons
  • use adjectives
  • describe bit by bit
  • go in a sensible order

Talk about your favourite characters at home and see whether you can take on the character description challenge too.

08 November 2019

This week’s spelling activity focuses on the spelling rule, double up for a short vowel sound.

The following double consonants are common in the English language: gg, ff, tt, ss, pp, ll, bb, dd.

How many words can you come up with that include these double consonants? Once you’ve got your list of words (at least 20), tick the ones that have a short vowel sound before the double consonant.

08 November 2019

This week’s homework is Talk Time and will be discussed on Thursday 14 November.

I know how to STOP bullying.

At home discuss what bullying is.

  • Can your child tell you what STOP means?
  • Does your child know the difference between being mean and bullying?
  • Do they know what to do if they think they, or someone else, is being bullied?

Next week is Anti-Bullying Week so see whether bullying is being discussed elsewhere too. Maybe it’s on Newsround or in First News – see what they’re saying about it too.

Skylar’s Missing Note

What an exciting first day back Year 1 have had!

This morning, we welcomed Sam and Jen and we were engrossed by the performance of Skylar’s missing note. This musical story was all about Skylar’s prized piano and how one of the notes (middle C) became lost as the piano was transported to their new house. The note did appear in the mouth of a pigeon but unfortunately, despite Skylar’s best efforts, the note could not be reunited with the piano. Nevertheless, Skylar continued to enjoy her piano and she found other ways to use her piano to create music.

 

Following the performance, Sam led a workshop where we continued the story but this time based on the pigeon. Along the way, we learnt many musical terms.

  • Dynamics – loud or quiet
  • Pitch – high or low
  • Tempo – fast or slow
  • Rhythm – the pattern of the music