Welcome to Spring 2
We hope you had a great half-term. Let’s hope for a more settled half-term and better weather!
During the next few weeks our theme will be ‘Let’s Go!’. This theme will include the following mini-topics.
Great outdoors
As the weather becomes warmer, children will begin to notice the first signs of spring. Your child will observe the changes in the environment and will observe the bulbs that we planted grow earlier.
This theme is Geography-led. Your child will look at a contrasting locality within the UK. They’ll compare life in a city to life in the countryside by looking at books, photographs and drawing on the children’s own experiences.
On the move
Following on from the Great Outdoors theme, we’ll extend our geographical comparisons to a different part of the world. Your child will look at life in that country and compare it to their own life here in the UK.
The outdoor area will be used to promote your child’s scientific understanding. Your child will plant seeds and care for beans, peas, carrots and potatoes. They will watch them grow and will learn what conditions are needed for plants to grow.
New life
As a scientist, your child will continue to develop their understanding of growth through our incubation project this term. They’ll watch eggs incubate, chicks hatch and develop. They’ll care for the chicks by making sure that they have food and water. From this experience, they will gain early scientific knowledge relating to life cycles.
Easter
Easter is another festival that your child will learn about. We’ll talk about how some families celebrate Easter. Your child will take part in various traditions such as egg decoration, egg rolling and hot cross buns. We’ll share the Easter story. We’ll link Easter to our previous theme of New Life by discussing animals they may see out and about – sheep and their lambs, for example.
Phonics
We will be practising all the phonemes learnt so far and using these to read and write captions and simple sentences.
Literacy
We will read and retell the following texts.
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen
The Hundred Decker Bus by Mike Smith
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Maths
The children will continue to develop a deep understanding of numbers to 10, (including the composition of each number).
They will practise their ability to subitise (recognise quantities without counting) up to 5 and verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system.
Through day to day practical activities they will compare quantities up to 10 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than or the same as the other quantity.
As always, please ask if you have any questions and let us know about your child’s ‘wow moments’ at home.
Roman Presentations
Over the last week, the children in year three have been preparing presentations all about their recent learning in history: Romans and Anglo Saxons.
Our presentations included the following topics about life in Britain:
– life before the Romans
– life during the Roman occupation in Britain
– life after the Romans left Britain
Today, the children presented their learning!
Living and Learning: Staying Safe Week
Last week, we enjoyed our Staying Safe Week.
This included lots of visitors and learning centred around keeping safe in our lives.
We explored keeping safe online, road safety, keeping safe around dogs, who keeps us safe in our community, keeping safe around water and we enjoyed reading a book about respecting ourselves.
Our first visitor helped us learn all about road safety. We learned about the importance of wearing a seatbelt and got to look at the possible out comes if seatbelts aren’t worn.
Next, we had visitors from the police come in and tell us all about how to keep safe in the community.
Later that day, we learnt all about fire safety. The Moortown Fire Brigade came in and answered all of our questions and we even got to have a look at the equipment they use to put out fires! See if your child can remember any of our learning about fire safety.
After that, we learned about staying safe near water. See if your child can remember what to shout if they think someone is in danger near a river or other body of water.
We also learnt about online safety. We learnt that whilst online, we must protect our personal information (like passwords, addresses, full names etc) and make sure we are being kind and respectful online, too. We are all kind and respectful in real life and it is no different online!
See how much of our learning your child can remember from safety week!
Well done, Y3.
Cross country opportunity
We are pleased to invite KS2 children to compete in an upcoming cross country race as part of the Leeds Schools Athletics Association cross country programme of Saturday morning races. Children will compete against pupils from other Leeds schools.
The race will take place at 10am on Saturday 5th March at Middleton Park (next to the John Charles Centre for Sport, Middleton Grove, Leeds, LS11 5DJ).
There are opportunities for Year 3 and 4 girls and boys (under 9) to race 900m and Year 5 and 6 girls and boys (under 11) to race 1500m. Once your child has completed their race, you are free to leave the event.
Please note, parents/carers are responsible for taking and supervising their child/children.
If your child is interested in taking part, please respond to the the message recently sent out.
We look forward to pupils representing our school at this event.
If you are unable to take part in this event, you may want to join the free Sunday morning junior parkruns held locally at Roundhay Park, Temple Newsam and Boddington.
Half term Dog’s Trust workshop
Rachael, from the Dog’s Trust in Leeds, visited all classes last week in our Staying Safe themed week.
She is holding a half term workshop next week and she would like us to share this with our families.
Contact Rachael, by email, if your child is interested in attending.
Discussion Texts
Y6 are aiming to find out the answer to this question:
Is it fair to say the Islamic Golden Age was much more advanced than Viking society?
In order to answer this question and discuss it in a balanced argument, first we needed to practise some writing skills.
We’ve focused on cohesive starters – challenge your child to list five.
Have a look at these great examples of practising these skills at home where they focused on quality over quantity.
Living and Learning: Staying Safe
What an action-packed week we had last week!
We were learning all about staying safe, looking after ourselves and making safe choices, including online.
We had lots of visitors, including Mrs Hill from Dogs’ Trust who taught us about how our behaviour can change how a dog feels and therefore reacts. We can make safe choices around them to help everyone.
“If a dog is eating or sleeping, just leave them. When they’re awake, then you can pet them,” said Evie.
Asthon explained, “When a dog comes near you that you don’t know, you can put your hands across your body and turn away.”
Leeds City Council’s Road Safety Team came to talk to us about the choices we can make to stay safe on the roads. We also looked at what they do in order to protect us.
“I learnt that lots of road safety equipment cost a lot of money!” shared Aadil.
“I enjoyed the lesson – it was a good idea to use a real life situation where we only had a certain amount of money in order to help people,” said Billy.
Go Wise came in to talk to us about the safe choices we can make online. Check out the pictures above for their golden rules plus what to do if you have a problem.
“There can be some weird people on the internet so we can be safe by blocking strangers you don’t know or not accepting random friend requests,” said Harman.
Da’wud simply stated, “Screenshot. Block. Report.”
Lots of our favourite visitors were the fire officers. We discussed fire hazards in the home and had a great chat with them about how they keep us safe in our community.
Khadija learnt that they have to wear a special suit to protect them against the fire and they have a tank filled with air that’s very heavy.
“I liked when they came in because they showed us the fire equipment up close,” said Christina.
“It’s best to close your doors at night because they can stop the fire from spreading around your house,” said Vedant.
We also talked about safe choices when it comes to setting physical boundaries and being in charge of you. The book below is a great way to open up the conversation.
“I liked how it shows real life situations and it made me feel more confident about not just going with it like you’re crossing a road or you don’t always have to hug someone – you can high five them if you prefer!” reassured Sasha.
Finally, we watched a virtual assembly, hosted by some familiar faces, which was all about speaking out to get the help you need in order to stay safe.
Living & Learning: Staying safe online
In Staying safe week, our visitor, Sarah from Go Wise Online, shared some great tips for staying safe online. The internet is a great resource but we need to stay safe when using it.
In class, we considered how the children use the internet and some of the online games that are popular. For each game, we checked the PEGI rating. Fortnite, for example, has a PEGI rating of 12 meaning the game is suitable for children age 12 and up.
To link with our current science learning, seasonal changes, we used iPads to find out answers to some of the questions we had.
When searching on the internet, we need to be aware what to do if something comes on the screen that makes us scared or sad. We also learnt about the padlock that can be found at the start of some web addresses (URL).
Discuss these questions with your child.
Here’s some pictures of our safe searches.
Finally, we watched some videos to give us some more advice about staying safe online. Watch them again and discuss the key safety messages with your child.
Living and Learning: Safety Week
This week, Moortown Primary School has been taking part in Safety Week.
Year 5 have been learning lots about different ways that they can stay safe both inside and outside of school.
Some highlights include…
A visit from Dogs Trust informing us how we stay safe around dogs – be that our own dog or a dog we might not know.
Road Safety learning:
Safer Internet Day: a whole day dedicated to learning about how we can stay safe online. The children really impressed me with their knowledge about how they stay safe online.
A visit from Moortown Fire Service where the children were able to ask questions about how to prevent a fire and stay safe in the event of one. Something that really resonated with the class was the importance of sleeping with your door closed. Ask your child if they can remember why this is important.
And a quiet half an hour where we read this book about consent.
If you or your child have any questions about anything we have discussed this week please don’t hesitate to ask.
Abbey House Museum
Year 1 had an incredible time at Abbey House Museum yesterday! The children behaved excellently and were very enthusiastic about all the artefacts they saw. We explored rooms of old toys and compared them to now. They were even some toys from when Mr McGriffiths was a child!
We also explored the Victorian street and went inside some of the shops. I wonder which shop was your favourite. We talked about how these shops were similar or different to shops today. We also had a workshop where we were able to handle and explore different objects from the past. It was so exciting but the soap smelt horrible!
