Author: Mrs Taylor

Cross Country Leeds Final

*** UPDATE*** Congratulations to our Year 3 girls team and one of our Year 4 runners who have qualified for the West Yorkshire Cross Country Final.

We were very proud of our eight Key Stage 2 children who took part in the Leeds Cross Country Final at Temple Newsam this week.

In muddy, slippy, wet conditions they all put in 100% effort in their races and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing against the best runners from across Leeds.

We’ll wait to hear if we have any qualifiers for the next round, the West Yorkshire Final.

Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.

New school meal menu

After February half term, we start our new menu which runs to the end of the year. It can be viewed here. Please review this with your child to help with their selection at the start of the day. We continue to offer meat free Mondays.

Like most schools in Leeds, we use Catering Leeds to provide our school meal service. Cooked meals, including a vegetarian option, are prepared daily in our kitchen and children are offered a choice of main courses and desserts. Fruit is always available. Catering Leeds provides food which meets national Food Standards criteria.

The cost of a school meal is £2.75, which should be paid in advance on the School Gateway app. We’re happy to accept payment for the week, month, half term or term. We prefer two weeks’ notice to change lunch arrangements.

All children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 receive free school meals. If your child is in Year 3 to Year 6, and you are on benefits or a low income, your child may be eligible for free school meals.

Some people like to choose a mix of school dinners and packed lunch for their child – that’s absolutely fine, as long as it’s a the same pattern of school dinners and packed lunches every week. Just let office staff know which days you’d like to opt in for a school meal in the week, and which days you’d prefer to provide your child with a packed lunch.

We continue to gather feedback from children on our school meals. Shortly, we will be reviewing our vegetable choices to help to eliminate waste.

If you have any feedback. please do get in touch.

 

PE: gymnastics at Leeds Gymnastics

Today, as part of our involvement with the Leeds Well Schools Partnership, we all had the opportunity to visit John Smeaton Leisure Centre to take part in a gymnastics session led by Leeds Gymnastics.

We explored the different equipment trying some new skills and also skills we had learnt in our recent PE gymnastics learning.



A highlight was having a go on the air track, practising some of the jumps covered in the warm up.

What a great active morning. The children behaved excellently, listening well to the coaches and trying their best with all activities.

We’ve done really good gymnastics.
I loved all the equipment.
It was scary because I had to do handstands.
My favourite part was the bars.
I enjoyed everything especially the air track.
I became better at the rolls.


If you want to find out more about local gymnastics opportunities, have a look at our physical activity guide.

Living and learning: online safety assembly

This week, Louise from West Yorkshire Police came to deliver a whole school assembly all about staying safe online.

There were lots of clear online safety messages around content, contact and conduct.

At the end of the assembly, the children reflected on what they were going to do after hearing Louise’s messages.

I am going to ask my adult to take off the chat on my Roblox settings.

I am not going to accept friend requests from people I don’t know.

I am not going to play games that have a age rating older than me as they won’t be appropriate for me.

Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.

KS2 ice skating Planet Ice

As part of our involvement with Leeds Well Schools Partnership, a group of twelve Key Stage children recently took part in an ice skating session at Planet Ice.

After getting kitted out with our ice skates, we ventured onto the ice with some children being very hesitant. Our instructor taught us how to get up safely if we fell (and there were quite a few falls!), how to move forward on our skates and how to glide. All the children had a great attitude to learning these skills and showed excellent resilience and support to each other. By the end of the session, there was some great progress made and lots more smiles! Well done to all the children who took part.

This event was incredibly popular with over 90 children requesting to take part. If you would like to give ice skating a go, then have a look at the sessions available at Planet Ice. We’d recommend it!

 

Yorkshire Air Ambulance

This year, our Junior Leadership Team democratically selected Yorkshire Air Ambulance  as our new school charity to support.

Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a lifesaving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across the whole of Yorkshire. Money raised keeps both of their air ambulance helicopters maintained and in the air.

This week, we welcomed representatives from Yorkshire Air Ambulance for an assembly to hear first hand about the excellent work they do and how our donations will help the charity.

Did you know it costs £21,000 per day to keep the Yorkshire Air Ambulance running.

It’s great to hear the children have already got ideas of how we can raise money for YAA. They are encouraged to put these ideas into our class Living and learning boxes for the Junior Leadership Team to consider.

Living and Learning: Being safe

Being safe is a key part of our Living and Learning curriculum.

We took part in the NSPCC Speak out Stay Safe online assembly.

During the assembly, we heard about Sam and some things that were upsetting Sam.

Thankfully, Sam told a teacher about her worries. We thought about which grown-ups would be good to talk to in school and out of school (start telling other people). Brothers, sisters and friends would also be good to talk to and discuss feelings but telling a grown-up (over 18) would be the best thing to do to get help.

Our Living and Learning box, in the classroom, is another way the children can speak out and write down any worries.

We also heard about Childline – ask your child to show you the way to remember the number.

To follow up this learning, we welcomed staff from NSPCC to deliver a Speak out stay safe workshop. They were very impressed with the children’s learning and understanding.

Help at home: Buddy Zone, on the Childline website, has some games and activities for the children to do.

 

Maths: TTRS

This week, we have talked through how the children can access and use Times Tables Rock Stars. Login details are the same as for Numbots.

In Year 2, the children learn the two, five and ten times tables and these are the tables that have been assigned to the children. There will be division questions related to those times tables too.

Soundcheck is used in Key Stage 2 to check all the times table facts up to x12 so this isn’t recommended in Year 2 as the children haven’t learned these other times tables yet.

We encourage the children to continue to use Numbots too to help to secure their addition and subtraction number facts.

Another resource to support times tables and other number facts is Hit the Button. This is a great, fast-paced game and children can choose which times tables or number facts to work on during each game. This game is free to play online.

If you have any further questions regarding the resources mentioned, do not hesitate to contact us.

Active travel and safety around the school gate

As a happy and healthy school, and to promote safety outside school at the start and the end of the day, we encourage children to travel to school actively.
We have bike and scooter storage facilities by the Y3/4 classrooms.
Please be mindful and considerate on the approach to school where children are travelling actively on their bikes and scooters.
If you do have to drive to and from school, please use Marks & Spencer car park to park and stride.
To reinforce this important message, we have been sent this short video regarding school parking from our local PCSO.