Living and Learning: Relationships
Over the past 3 weeks, we have had a plethora of RSE lessons covering a range of topics. This week, we talked about relationships and what makes them healthy as well as families and what makes ours different and unique.
To start, we defined a relationship as “the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected” and then talked about the different relationships we have in our lives. Then, we discussed healthy and unhealthy relationships and thought about how we could support and improve them. Here are a few ideas:
- being kind, considerate and respectful
- being honest
- listening to each other
- respecting personal space, boundaries and privacy
- accepting others’ differences
We then talked about similarities and differences between our families and focused in our why our families are important to us. Here are a few responses. Families provide:
- love
- care
- support
- food
- shelter
- safety
Help at home: Talk with your child about the different relationships they have.
Numbots
With six Numbots certificates awarded this week, it’s great to see the children continuing to work hard at home to achieve their next level.
Certificates are awarded every Tuesday so let’s see how many more we can achieve before the end of the year.
Summer 2: Week 3
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is called I Have a Little Frog. We had lots of fun using prosody when saying the last line. Click here to watch us perform our poem.
Literacy and history
This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. Our word of the week was thoughtful. We talked about what the word means and how it links to our story. Yesterday, we looked at some past and present seaside holiday photographs. We talked about similarities and differences.
Role-play
With the weather heating up, we thought it would be a good idea to turn our home corner into an ice cream shop. Throughout the week, we’ve seen some amazing turn taking, communication skills and imaginative play. Some of the children made their own labels and signs to put up in the shop. I’ve definitely had my fair share of ice cream sundaes this week!
Jellyfish
This week’s creative chilli challenge was to make a jellyfish. From rainbow jellyfish to jellyfish with six eyes, we had lots of fun creating them.
Super skippers
This week, Year 2 took part in our Skipping School KS1 festival at Leeds Trinity University against four other Leeds schools.
The children have been learning lots of individual and group skipping skills and today it was great to see just how much the children have progressed.
All the class worked hard as a team to earn as many skips as possible in their events. Dexter’s 99 single bounce skips in 30 seconds certainly helped to contribute to our total!
After all the points (skips) were added up, the winning school was announced…
We were so excited and proud to hear we had won!
A huge well done to all the children for fantastic determination, resilience and team work. They have worked so hard by practising in PE, at lunchtime and playtime, at skipping after-school club and even at home!
The festival has been really fun. I feel happy.
I like it because I’ve learnt lots of different skips and people encouraged me.
I feel proud of my skipping.
This is the third year in a row our Year 2 classes have achieved this and we feel very proud of their success.
Topic: Design and Technology
In D&T this half-term, Year 4 are making a prototype of a go-kart.
A prototype is an early sample or model of a product used to evaluate a design.
The design criteria (what makes a product successful) for their go-kart prototypes are:
- It has to move freely.
- It has to be able to hold a person (eg a model figure).
- It has to have an electrical circuit in order to move.
We’ve discussed that before a product can be made, it must be carefully designed. Today, Year 4 drew annotated sketches of their go-kart designs and had to label all the components that they’re going to use. They completed both a birds eye view and a side view sketch.
I can’t wait to see their designs come to life!
Help at home: What would wellington boots need to be successful?
Can you come up with 3 design criteria?
1.
2.
3.
Design and Technology – What makes a stable structure?
First, we looked at the design process.
PLAN – MAKE – EVALUATE
This week, we have been looking at what makes a stable structure.
A stable structure is strong, has as flat base and is free-standing.
We moulded playdough into different 3D shapes and made predictions about which would be the most stable and why. We placed each structure on a flat surface (a whiteboard) and tipped it. We measured how high we could lift the board until the structure started to roll off.
Help at home by looking at structures in the environment and trying to use our topic vocabulary to describe the structures.
Design and Technology: TechCard
During our Design and Technology lesson last week, the children were set a task to build a bridge.
The design criteria (what makes a product successful) for their bridge were:
- It has to be strong.
- It has to be able to hold a vehicle.
- It has to be long enough to stretch from one desk to another.
The children used TechCard for this! TechCard is a building system that uses simple card components to create working models.
I gave simple instructions and let them be as creative as they liked. I saw fantastic teamwork skills. They brought their own ideas together and every group built a successful bridge!
Here’s some images of us testing each bridge. The most successful ones had more than one layer of TechCard to make it strong and secure.
Help at home: What would children’s climbing frame need to be a successful one?
Can you list at least 3 design criteria?
1.______________________
2. ______________________
3. ______________________
Living and Learning: RSE
Over the last few weeks in Year 4, we’ve been exploring relationships and change.
We’ve discussed that our relationships should always be happy and healthy. We gave ideas for how we can make sure this is the case:
- We always respect each other.
- We are kind to each other.
- We try to help each other.
- We listen to each other.
If we don’t feel like our relationships are happy and healthy we should always speak to a trusted adult.
We then looked at the human life cycle and spoke about some of the changes that happen as we get older. For example, when we are born, we have no responsibilities and our grown ups look after us constantly. As we grow older, we have more responsibilities like cooking for yourself, having a job and learning to drive.
Help at home: by discussing a change that is coming up soon. How do you feeling about moving up to Year 5?
Inter-Primary Sports Day
Some children from Y5 and Y6 went to a sports day at Allerton Grange. There were lots of other schools there competing in a range of events such as javelin, long jump and 200m.
Everyone represented Moortown with commitment, enthusiasm and (most importantly) respect. We finished fifth overall!
Well done to all who took part.
DT – testing the strength of different designs
This week in DT we have done lots of testing the stability and strength of different shapes. First of all we made three shapes out of playdough. We tested which was the most stable. We found out that the pyramid was the most stable because it had a wide, flat base.
Then we tested the strength of different shapes made out of paper. We made a cylinder, cuboid and triangular prism and placed books on top. We were quite surprised to find that the cylinder held the most books before collapsing.
Later on in the week, we investigated how we could strength our designs. We each made a cylinder on our tables and put them together to make a super structure – some peoples held 24 books with just 6 cylinders!
Finally, we put all our cylinders together to made a mega structure! We were able to put 107 books on it and it still didn’t collapse. We had run out of books! So we decided to see if it could hold the weight of a child which it did! It couldn’t hold the weight of Mr McGriffiths though!
Help at home by making and designing different structures. How could you test their strength!