Author: Mrs Taylor

Living and learning: d:side visits

This half term, our Living and Learning focus includes staying safe. We have arranged for visitors to come into school to help to deliver this key aspect of education.

We have been working with d:side for many years and they will be visiting school to deliver sessions based around drug education and e-safey sessions to coincide with Safer Internet Day (11 February).

d:side is a comprehensive drug & alcohol education programme that encourages children to make positive & healthy life-choices whilst promoting a pro-active attitude to life. They focus on developing the children’s knowledge, skills & attitude, whilst equipping them with the appropriate life skills to successfully manage sensitive situations with peers & encourage a positive approach to life.

As part of these visits, there are two specific parent/carer information sessions.

Tuesday 21 January 3.05-3.30pm d:side drug education informal information session (open to all parents)

A d:side representative will be available to provide information about your child’s drug education learning with d:side and answer any other related enquiries.

Tuesday 04 February 2:50-3.30pm d:side e-safety informal information session (open to all parents)

A d:side representative will be available to provide information about your child’s e-safety learning with d:side and answer any other related enquiries.

Please contact school if you would like to attend.

 

 

 

 

Celebrate Yorkshire themed menu

Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 16 January. Please contact the office, in the next few days, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).

Living and learning this half term

Living and Learning sessions are held weekly, in class, to promote social and emotional aspects of learning and other areas of Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE).  This half term we have two main themes, from our long-term plan.
  • Drug, alcohol and tobacco education (DATE) 
  •  Keeping safe and managing risk
Safer Internet Day,  Tuesday 11 February, will be part of this learning.
Pupils tell us they enjoy learning delivered by visitors and this half term all classes will take part in esafety and drug education sessions with d:side and visitors from NSPCC will be delivering their Speak out Stay safe programme. Further details will follow.
We begin the half term with a focus on manners and in particular interruptions.  Children will consider what is a valid interruption, for example an emergency and what alternatives are there to interrupting?  Children across school are encouraged to use our brain, buddy, boss system to try to avoid interruptions.  This means they would first think themselves.  Then, they could try asking a friend and the final option would be to ask the adult.  This encourages the children to become independent and take responsibility.

Here are the weekly Living and Learning statements, for this half term, to support this learning. There will also be some whole school homeworks on these themes.

  • I don’t interrupt (with my mouth or my hand).
  • I can make things better.
  • I know what a drug is.
  • I know how to seek help.
  • I make safe choices, including online.
  • I can assess my own risks.

Where in the world am I?

This week, it has been the final week of our geography based, Where in the world am I?, topic.

Throughout this learning, the children have become more knowledgeable about where they live within the world.

We live in Moortown.

Moortown is in the city of Leeds.

Leeds is in the country of England.

England is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. The other countries are Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom is in the continent of Europe. The other six continents are Asia, North America, South America, Australasia, Antarctica and Africa.

While learning all these place names, this has given us lots of opportunities to practise using capital letters for proper nouns.

This topic has also allowed us to explore maps in atlases and also online mapping (including Google Maps).

Finally, the children had a go at creating their own maps to show a familiar daily route – their way to school.

Can your child describe their route, maybe referring to some local landmarks along the way, using some positional and directional vocabulary such as near, far, left, right and the compass points of north, east, south and west. Ask your child what the map key is needed for too.

Here are a few examples.

The children will be sharing some of this learning in our class assembly in the new year.

Cross country success

Following the recent Leeds North East Cross Country Festival at Cardinal Heenan, we are proud to announce that the following children have qualified for the Leeds final in February.

Year 3

Bridget (13th), Jake (5th) and Junior (20th)

Year 4 

Billy (11th)

Well done to all the children who took part and good luck to our qualifiers.

Packed lunches

At Moortown Primary, our packed lunch guidance includes:

  • information about the different food groups
  • how to put together a healthy, balanced packed lunch
  • links to recipes and ideas for healthy packed lunches

This week, our packed lunch guidance will be emailed to parents and carers and sent home to children who have a packed lunch in school.

Packed lunches should be in a secure named container.  No sweets are allowed – instead, we encourage lots of fruit or vegetables.  Water is available on all tables for children who choose a packed lunch.  However, your child can bring their own drink in a non-breakable container – please avoid fizzy drinks.

Change4life provides lots of ideas for healthy packed lunches including  suggested swaps.

As an alternative to packed lunches, school meals, including a vegetarian option, are a great choice and are prepared daily in our kitchen. Children are offered a choice of main courses and desserts and they select their main meal choice at the start of the day.  Catering Leeds provides food which meets national Food Standards criteria.  School meals can be combined with packed lunches.

Free school meals are available to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.  They are also available to some older children according to family income.  It’s important to register for entitlement to free school meals, even if your child has a packed lunch or is in a younger class – this is so we can receive additional funding (called the pupil premium) which we can use to help your child. Please check if this is something you might be entitled to.

Living and Learning: Takeover Challenge Day

On Friday 6th December, we will be taking part in Takeover Challenge Day and this year, it is being supported by First News.
What is Takeover Challenge?
Takeover Challenge is a fun engagement project which sees schools and organisations across England opening their doors to children and young people to take over adult roles.
It puts children and young people in decision making positions and encourages schools and organisations to hear and act upon their views and ideas. Children and young people gain an insight into the adult world and schools and organisations benefit from a fresh perspective about their work.
During the day, children will take over some of the adult roles in class. This may include taking the register/dinner register, tests, performing the warm up for PE, reading the class novel or planning parts of lessons.
Some older children will have the opportunity to ‘takeover’ other roles in school including taking over the office, serving dinners and leading the certificate assembly.

School Savings Club

The next School Savings Club paying in date is 09 December 2019 at 3.15-3.45pm.

The account is open to all children and it is free to set up. As there is not minimum deposit requirement, it is a great way for your child/children to begin to manage their own money and understand the importance of saving. We offer paying in sessions every half term where you can bring along any savings to be paid into your child’s account.

As an extra incentive, Year 3 pupils who open an account, or who currently have an account, will be credited with £10.

If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.

Here are the remaining paying in dates for this year (the penultimate Monday of each half term).

  • 03 February
  • 23 March
  • 11 May
  • 06 July

To find out more about the accounts or if your child would like to open account, please enquire at the office.

Spelling Shed

Spelling Shed is a great interactive resource to use at home to reinforce learning in class. We have set up a new feature on Spelling Shed whereby your child will have their weekly spellings as a list to practise when they log on. We hope this will give children an alternative way to learn their weekly spelling words.

All children have received their Spelling Shed logins but if you have misplaced this information, please come and ask us. Login details can also be found inside your child’s reading record books.

Here’s a reminder about how Spelling Shed works.

The game is simple and gives four different degrees of support in the form of difficulty modes; easy, medium, hard and extreme. Higher levels allow a higher score to be achieved but children can practise as much as they like on lower levels before trying to gain high scores. The scores achieved give a league position and each class has its own league position within a school league and our world league.

Thank you for your support with this learning at home.