West Yorkshire School Games Cross Country Final
A huge well done to our star Year 6 star runner who, after finishing 1st place in the Leeds final, represented Leeds today in the rearranged West Yorkshire Final at Temple Newsam. He ran a fantastic race and finished in a very impressive 6th place out of a very large field. What a great achievement!
Science: We are biologists.
This half term, we are biologists. Biology is the study of living things.
In this week’s lesson, we dissected a flower called Alstroemeria. We labelled the different parts and discussed which of them make up the male and female reproductive systems. Have a look at our work:
Help at home: Label the different parts of the flower. Describe the process of pollination or plant fertilisation.
Coronation celebration – Themed Menu 05 May 2023
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu for the Coronation Celebration on Friday 05 May 2023. See the menu here.
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).
Big Walk and Wheel final results
After the two week Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge, we now have the final results.
In our category of small primary schools, we finished in 24th place out of 514 schools with an average of 91.14% of our journeys to school being active. We achieved the highest national (24th) and Northern England (5th) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.
This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
We hope these active journeys continue as by walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
Living and Learning: Mental wellbeing
Last half term, Year 3 learnt about different emotions and how we can deal with those emotions in a healthy way. Some of the sessions focussed on topics such as strong emotions, being the same and being different, and solving problems.
For one week, we focused on change and loss. Change and loss occurs all the time during our lives in small and big ways and it’s important to know how to deal with the emotions that come with these situations.
We identified things that change can change such as; changing topics, clothes and seasons but also changing friendships, year groups and someone not being here anymore. When these things change, we might feel a loss and miss how things were before and that’s ok!
Teddies play a big role in many children’s lives. We listened to the story ‘Dogger’ by Shirley Hughes which is about a child who loses his favourite toy, Dogger. We discussed how we might feel if we were to lose our favourite toy and what we could do to make ourselves feel better.
Living and Learning – Change and Loss
Over the previous term, Year 4 were learning about different emotions and how we can deal with those emotions in a healthy way. For one week, we focused on change and loss. Change and loss occurs all the time during our lives in small and big ways and it’s important to know how to deal with the emotions that come with these situations.
We identified things that change can change such as; changing topics, clothes and seasons but also changing friendships, year groups and someone not being here anymore. When these things change, we might feel a loss and miss how things were before and that’s ok!
Teddies play a big role in many children’s lives. We listened to the story ‘Dogger’ by Shirley Hughes and here’s what we discussed…
What does your teddy mean to you?
I’ve had my teddy since I was born so I feel safe when I have it.
How would you feel if you lost your teddy?
I would feel upset and miss it a lot.
How might your body feel if you lost your teddy?
I might feel anxious and nervous because I’m worried about where it is.
What could make you feel better if this happened?
I could ask my family and friends to help me look for it.
I could talk to my grown ups about how I feel.
I could hug a friend.
Help at home by talking about any changes, big or small, that might be coming up at home and share how you are feeling about them!
Bean update
Hello Reception!
I hope you’re all enjoying the glorious sunshine as much as your beans. Here’s a picture of how your beans are doing.
As you can see, some of them are at the “sprouting” stage. At this stage, the bean is developing a root system to soak up moisture and nutrients from the soil.
Some of them are developing their first leaves which enables them to absorb as much sunlight and energy as possible.
Don’t forget to send me any pictures of what you get up to in the holidays!
moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
Spring 2: Week 6
I can’t believe we’re at the end of our second term in Reception! This half-term, we found about transport from the past. We created simple maps and learnt how land, sea and rivers are represented on maps. We’ve noticed the first signs of Spring, planted flowers and beans and learnt about the different stages of a beans life cycle. Finally, we talked about how some families celebrate Easter and created our own Spring baskets.
Here’s a video of some of our amazing highlights from this half-term.
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called The Tiny Seed. This week, we talked about the rhyming words. Can your child tell you the rhyming words in this week’s poem?
Reminders and upcoming dates
- PE will be on a Monday and Thursday next half-term.
- Don’t forget to keep reading your Collins e-books over the holidays.
- Monday 01 May – Bank holiday
- Monday 08 May – Bank holiday
- Monday 15 May – Training day: school closed
Help at home: Practise spelling the phase 2 and 3 tricky words.
As always, I hope you all have a happy and healthy half-term break. Don’t forget to email me any pictures of what you get up to in the holidays. moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 17 April.
Living and Learning: MindMate
This half term our Living and Learning lessons are based around the MindMate learning themes of emotions and friendships.
Our first lesson was based around strong emotions and exploring and describing how it feels to be sad/unhappy.
We thought about how others might express feelings of unhappiness and if they did feel unhappy, to practise asking, and listening to, others about what makes them unhappy.
We reinforced that everyone feels sad or unhappy at times and that’s natural.
In our circle time on the same theme, the children suggested some things to do if they were feeling sad.
Would it help if…
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you played with a friend or brother or sister
- you did something you enjoyed
- you did some exercise
As part of this lesson, we did two of the mindfulness exercises taken from this website. The children enjoyed this very much and focussed excellently.
In the second lesson, we started by working together to match emotions to the pictures and explaining the choices.
We recognised all the emotions from our own lives and that a person’s facial expressions often say how they are feeling. We also discussed how our bodies might change in other ways when we feel strong emotions (clenched fist, red cheeks etc..)
This video of two friends shows lots of characteristics of a good friendship and a healthy relationship. Friends do have fall outs and we talked about what to say to someone who is feeling upset because they have fallen out with a friend, being teased or is feeling left out.
This was done by putting themselves in their shoes.
Help at home – ask your child to practise what they might say to someone who is being teased or feeling left out.
Design and Technology: food preparation
This week, Year 1 have prepared, eaten and evaluated some overnight oats. This is part of our Living and Learning (healthy eating) and Design & Technology (food preparation) learning.
The children have thoroughly enjoyed it and have used lots of different food preparation skills and techniques.
Then we got to taste it! Yum!
The recipe has been sent home so you can ask your child to demonstrate their cookery skills at home over the holidays!