Author: Mrs Taylor

Who do you think you are?

Our themed week is in full swing with many highlights so far.

  • Mindfulness workshops for Year 1, 2, 3 and Reception.
  • Dove self esteem sessions for Year 5 and 6 (Visitor feedback – ‘We really enjoyed running the sessions and the classes we had were great and very engaged!’)
  • Visits from RNIB, BID sensory services and the Leeds deaf and hearing impairment team for all classes
  • West Yorkshire Police Hate Crime session for Year 5 and 6
  • Some Year 5 and 6 children attended the Moor Allerton Elderly Care ‘Old & New Games’ afternoon (Visitor feedback – ‘They were brilliant and a pleasure to have.’)
  • Whole school assembly about charities by Val from the Salvation Army charity shop in Meanwood
  • Year 4 visit to St Gemma’s Hospice
  • Year 5 visit to Marjorie and Arnold Ziff centre
  • Year 2 visit to Donisthorpe Hall

Thank you to parents who have attended our mindfulness workshop on Monday and our community coffee morning and wake up shake up today.

There is still more to come.

  • PCSO visit to talk about community safety, road safety and monitor speed outside school in 20mph zone for Reception, Year 1 and 3
  • Mindfulness workshops for Year 3, 4 and 5
  • Learn languages in our community for Year 3 and 4
  • Two more chances to walk, bike or scoot to school (Road Safety Week) to be in with a chance to win prizes on Friday
  • New school charity will be chosen
  • Have a go at the Who do you think we are? competition

Take a look at the class news pages to find out more about your child’s learning this themed week.

Diversity

Today, the focus for our themed week was diversity, looking at how people are different.  We had two visitors to support this, focusing on visual and hearing impairment.

Firstly, we welcomed Natasha and Liz from RNIB.  As our visitors are both registered blind, the children were able to find out first hand all about their life and then put themselves in their shoes.

After that, we worked with Linda Gledhill (Leeds deaf and hearing impairment team).  We learnt some important messages about how to help someone if they are deaf.

  • Don’t shout at them
  • Stand close by
  • Speak one at a time
  • Don’t cover your mouth so they can see your lips
  • Use sign language

We are special

Thank you for all the special objects and photos that have been sent in to show your children’s identity.  As we have had so many, we’d like to keep them a little longer than this themed week so we can give the children chance to tell the rest of the class all about them.

If you do need your items back sooner, please let us know.

When talking about what makes me, me? this video generated lots of discussion and you may want to watch again with your child.

Identity

Yesterday we began our Who do you think you are? themed week by focusing on our identity, who we are, and how we are all special.  We particularly enjoyed our mindfulness workshop to focus on how our emotions can relate to who we are.

Our super power of mindfulness can help us to make a better choice and control different  situations.

There were lots of techniques that we can use in school and we have done already.

  • Breathing hug
  • Breathing tree
  • Ok breathing
  • Make your thumb come to life to show your emotion
  • Calming bottle

 

  • ‘I felt calm and I liked the relaxing music.’ Christina
  • ‘I liked everything because I like mindfulness.’ Billy
  • ‘I liked how we used the colours of glitter for the different emotions to make our calming bottle.’ Edris
  • ‘I would use the bottle if I was sad or angry to make me ready to work.’ Vedant
  • ‘If I shake the bottle, it will help me to be calm.’ Aadil
  • ‘I liked the game where we did the secret tapping because it showed us that everyone is kind.’  Betty
  • ‘I liked to show my emotions using the freeze frame.’ Tanvi
  • ‘I liked to show my emotion by bringing my thumb to life as a way of telling others how I feel.’  Da’wud

It was great to see so many parents attending the workshop on Monday, too, so that some of the techniques can be used at home as well.  Keep an eye out for a parent guide to support this with your child.

17 November 2017

For all children in Year 1 to Year 6, the homework this week is Talk Time and will be discussed in class on Thursday 23 November:

Which charity should our school support?

Next week, we will focus on identity, diversity and community in our Who do you think you are? themed week.  As part of this week, children will think about our school charity.  Currently, we support Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Leeds Mind.  A previous School Council selected these because they wanted to help people, support a mental health charity and wanted to help local and regional charities.  They were chosen because pupils passed on to School Councillors very clear and strong arguments.

We’ve helped these charities for two years now, so it’s time for a change. We need you to have a discussion at home about which charity would be best for us to support. We will now support one charity for one year.  Each class will discuss this and then the councillors will bring the views and ideas together to decide on the charities.

Once your child has decided on a charity, make sure they have clear, powerful reasons to support their views.

You might want to discuss whether we support…

  • a local charity
  • a children’s charity
  • a charity which helps a vulnerable group in our community
Other things to talk about could include…
  • should we ensure the new charities are very different to the current ones or previous ones?
  • should we need to have charities at all?
  • if your child was to set up a new charity, what would (s)he choose, and (as always) why?

Mindfull or mindful?

Would you like to find out more about mindfulness and how it can be used to support your child at home?

As part of our whole school themed week next week, all children will be taking part in mindfulness workshops.  There’ll also be a parent/carer session on Monday 20 November at 2:30-3:15pm.

Please contact the office if you would like to attend.

Who do you think you are?

In preparation for our themed week next week (20 November), it would be great if your child could bring in a photo of themselves as a baby and also something that is special to them.  This could be a photo of special people, a special place or an object for the children to explain to the class so we can celebrate how we are all different but all equal.

We’ll use these in class on Monday 20 November if your child could bring them in on the day or Friday 17 November.

Hello from Addis Ababa

This week, Year 2 were very excited to speak with some children from Sandford International School in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  We’d already sent the children some questions to find out about where they live and how it might be different to Moortown.

It really brought it to life when we were actually able to ask the questions to the children themselves in our Skype call.

Ask your child what we found out and how Addis Ababa is different to, but also the same as, Moortown.

Through our comparison of this different location, we have been covering the following Year 2 geography age related expectations.

Making comparisons to a UK location, can your child describe and compare a non-European place using geographical words (eg an African or Asian village compared to a village in Yorkshire)?
Can your child describe a place referring to both physical (eg beach, coast, forest) and human (eg village, factory, port) features?
Can your child explain what facilities a town or village might need?
Can your child ask and answer questions about the geography of the school and its surrounding environment?

Guided reading

In Year 2, as well as group reading, we also teach reading as a whole class using a variety of texts to support this. Today, as part of Anti-bullying week, we used our whole school definition of bullying to discuss word meanings.

When reading with your child at home, ask if there are any words they do not understand. Use a dictionary, the context of the sentence or any illustrations to help to understand what the word means.

In pairs, we then read through some scenarios to decide if they were bullying or not.

African themed dance

To link with our comparative location of Africa, Year 2 have been performing some great African themed dancing.

Here are some of the Year 2 PE objectives that we were working on as part of this learning.

Can your child perform most simple actions with control and coordination?
Can your child make a sequence by linking ideas from a stimulus into movement?
Can your child plan and perform a sequence of movements?
Can your child show contrasts in shape?
Can your child reflect on what other people have done?

There was also some thoughtful and constructive reflections to each other after the performances.