PE with Foot-Tech Academy
This half term we are very lucky to have Foot-Tech Academy come into Moortown to help us with our PE learning. We will be practising three different skills: run, jump and throw. This week we learnt how to control our speed and movements when running. We each picked up a cone and pretended it was a steering wheel and we were driving a car. We had to change gears depending on how fast we were going! Hula hoops were roundabouts and we needed to make sure we slowed right down in order to go around the roundabout. There were even bridges to jump over.
We had a brilliant time and we can’t wait to continue our learning for the rest of the half term.
Dissecting Alstroemerias
In this week’s science learning, we expanded our understanding of the anatomy and reproductive cycle of a plant.
We did this by dissecting alstroemerias and labelling the different parts.
After this, we created a cartoon comic strip to illustrate how alstroemerias (and similar plants) reproduce.
Help at Home: See if your child can remember the different parts of a plant. Even better if: they could draw a labelled diagram to illustrate their understanding!
Summer 1: Week 1
Welcome back! We hope you all had a happy and healthy break. Thanks to everyone who sent an email about your child’s half-term holiday. We had lots of fun sharing these on Monday.
This half-term our topic is called Life on Earth. We’ve kicked off our topic by going on bug hunts. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be learning more about life cycles. We’ll closely observe caterpillars and tadpoles to help us understand the different stages of a life cycle. A big thanks to Huey (and Mum) for bringing in some tadpoles!
Help at home: Find out about your favourite insect. Draw a picture of it and write one or two facts about it. Bring it to school next week for us to share.
DT
This week, the creative area turned into a woodwork bench. The children worked in small groups to create bug hotels. They used hand drills, screwdrivers and hammers to create their bug hotels.
Our finished bug hotels…
Next week, we’ll be finding natural objects to put inside our bug hotels.
Help at home: Can you help collect natural objects to put inside our bug hotels?
PE
Yesterday, we really enjoyed our first session with the Foot-Tech coaches. This half-term, we’ll be learning three key skills: push, kick and throw.
Phonics
This week, we’ve started Phase 4. In this phase children will use the phonemes learnt in Phase 2 and Phase 3 to read and spell words with four or more phonemes and words ending in suffixes:
–ing, –ed /t/, –ed /id/ /ed/, –est
Here are some examples:
CVCC words: tent, damp, toast
For example, in the word ‘damp’, d = consonant, a = vowel, m = consonant, p = consonant
CCVC words: swim, plum, spoon
For example, in the word ‘plum’, p = consonant, l = consonant, u = vowel, m = consonant
CCVCC words: stamp, crept, twist
For example, in the word ‘stamp’, s = consonant, t = consonant, a = vowel, m = consonant, p = consonant
CCCVC words: strap scrub strong
For example, in the word, ‘strap’, s = consonant, t = consonant, r = consonant, a = vowel, p = consonant
CCCVCC words: strand strict sprint
For example, in the word, ‘sprint’, s = consonant, p = consonant, r = consonant, i = vowel, n = consonant, t = consonant
They’ll also learn to read and write 18 new tricky words.
Help at home: Practise reading and writing this week’s tricky words:
said, so, have and like.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was called Pitter Patter.
Help at home: When it rains this weekend, have fun saying this week’s poem together at home.
Have a lovely weekend.
Latin: Acting and Adverbs
In Latin, we read, translated and acted out a comic strip (see below) about life before the Romans conquered Britain. We also discussed adverbs in both English and Latin. Take a look at our great work:
Help at home: Identify the adverbs in the story, what three letters do they end in?
Chocolate cake!
Our first week back has been all about chocolate cake! What’s not to love?
We have focused our Writing and Reading learning around a poem – Chocolate Cake by Michael Rosen. This children’s poem is about how much a young boy (Michael) loved chocolate cake and how one time, he ate an entire cake in the middle of the night. What is the meaning of the chocolate cake? We decided as a class that it’s all about temptation and that when it comes to things you love, it can be tricky or impossible to control one’s impulses.
Click here to read the poem: https://www.uv.mx/personal/jomartinez/files/2011/08/Chocolate-Cake.pdf
In the next two weeks, Year 4 will be writing a narrative about leaving the classroom, sneaking up to the staffroom and eating the teachers chocolate cake! It’s made us hungry just thinking about it.
Just like the poem, the purpose of our narrative will be to entertain and interest the reader by telling a story. The features we’ll use are: descriptions, direct speech and adverbial phrases to add detail.
In Reading, we have put ourselves into Michael’s shoes and performed part of the poem by adding actions and expressions to the words. Here’s some of us in action!
We’ve also picked the poem a part to answer retrieval questions, where the answer is in the text and inference questions, where we’ve needed to use clues to find the answer.
Help at home by thinking of lots of adjectives (describing words) to describe this chocolate cake. We’ll use them in our writing!
Living and Learning: Personal hygiene
This week, our living and learning session was all about recognising the importance of personal hygiene including handwashing.
What is personal hygiene?
DD – It’s about keeping our clothes clean.
EC – My Mummy puts my clothes in the washing machine.
HM – We need to brush our teeth so they don’t get black.
LC – Every single morning and every single night, I brush here. (teeth)
LN – We brush our teeth so there’s no cavities.
HW – You need to wash your hands when you’ve been to the toilet.
To help us understand the importance of washing our hands, we had a go at a germ experiment.
We used soap, mixed herbs (germs) and water to see how important it is to wash our hands. The children were amazed when they watched the germs (mixed herbs) move away from the soap on their fingers.
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.