Class News

Living and Learning: Physical health and fitness

Our latest Living and Learning lessons have been all about physical health and fitness. Here are the main age related expectations for this learning.

Firstly, we remembered how much exercise children should do each day (60 minutes – 30 minutes in school and 30 minutes out of school).

How can we achieve that target? We thought about all the ways to keep active including:

• active travel to and from school
• skipping at playtimes
• brain breaks in lessons
• active games at lunchtime
• after-school clubs
• Junior parkrun
• going on a bike ride
• playing outside

Then, it was time to get active and have a brain break.

We know how much exercise is needed to keep our bodies healthy but what are the benefits of physical activity? Ask your child if the following statements are true or false.

Finally, we thought about what to do if we were worried about our health.

Tell a trusted adult.

Tell my parents.

Tell my teachers.

Ask my friends.

Write it down in the Living and Learning box.

Winter poems!

Today in Year 1 we got more into the Christmas spirit by writing some beautiful winter poems! We thought of lots of nouns, adjectives and verbs to describe a wintry scene. Then we arranged them into a diamond to make a poem. We started with a noun and then two adjectives. The middle line was three verbs and then we finished with two more adjectives and a final noun. We did amazingly well and enjoyed reading them out to the class as well.

Living and Learning: I make healthy choices

Last week in Living and learning we talked about making healthy choices to keep ourselves physically and mentally healthy. We talked about how physical activity can keep our minds and bodies healthy. We talked about our heart being a muscle and discovered how it beats much faster after some of exercise!

Then we thought about when we could be physically active throughout the day. We learnt we had to be active for 60 minutes a day!!

Living and Learning: I make healthy choices

This week in Living and Learning, Year 5 have been talking about how to make healthy choices.

We discussed how it is important to be healthy both physically and mentally. 

Year 5 were able to come up with lots of examples about how they make healthy choices.

I enjoy baking but we usually bake healthy alternatives instead of lots of cakes and biscuits – Lily

I like going to dancing at the weekend which helps me stay physically healthy – Isla

I stay healthy by keeping active and eating lots of fruit – Harry

At the end of our Living and Learning session, we had a debate about whether fast food should be allowed in our school.

After a heated discussion with good points both in favour and against, in the end, Year 5 voted that they would like Moortown Primary School to remain a happy and healthy place to learn.

Living and Learning: Perseverance

In this week’s L&L session, we learned what perseverance means.

‘persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success’

We watched a clip that showed a Llama who had to persevere in tricky situations and it didn’t give up! We discussed the sort of things we could try when persevering:

– trying a different approach
– taking a break
– celebrating the small successes
– think about why you started in the first place

We then created a poster to illustrate our knowledge of perseverance and what it means.

We can see people trying to climb mountains and learn how to ride a bike – two things which definitely require perseverance!

Living and Learning: I make healthy choices

In Living and Learning over the last few weeks, we’ve spent time talking about what being healthy means, the effects of exercise on our bodies both physically and mentally and what  choices we can make to be healthy.

”Exercising regularly can improve your concentration and help you learn better,” said Soham.

”It can also help you sleep at night,” added Hidayah.

”Doing exercise releases a chemical called endorphins in your brain which makes you feel really good,” commented Safi.

We also learned that doing at least sixty minutes of exercise every day is a healthy approach.

Remember that your child is allowed to bring a healthy snack on a Wednesday to enjoy after swimming!

We are artists!

This half term in Topic, we are artists.

So far in art, we have been learning about the history of art and describing art work as classical, modern, abstract and figurative.

Ask your child if they can remember what these four words mean!

Next week, we will be making our own sculptures inspired by the Leeds sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

In preparation for this, Year 5 started to design their sculptures today. They will be working as a table to construct their final pieces.

If you can, please can your child bring in a cardboard box (no bigger than a shoebox) by Thursday the 9th of January for this art project.

Thank you!

This week in Reception

The last two weeks of the term are always really busy. As we head towards Christmas we will begin our mini-topic of Christmas by decorating our home corner.

Phonics

This week we will learn the phonemes z, qu and ch.  The children will be taught the term ‘digraph’- two letters making one sound.

We are really impressed with how well the children are doing with their phonics learning. Please keep practising the phonemes and listening to your child read at home.

Literacy

The class have been enjoying listening to Julia Donaldson stories and talking about their favourites.

Christmas events

Guess how many ‘reindeer poos’ are in the jar.

The children have seen the jar and have made some guesses about how many ‘reindeer poos’ they think there are. You can enter the competition on the app.

Living and Learning – I make healthy choices.

What does it mean to be healthy? Y6 know!

We had soooooo many ideas for how to make healthy choices and pretty much everyone in the class noted how health relates to your mind and your body, mental and physical.

Here are some of our numerous ways to stay healthy.

Then, it was time for the big debate. We practised our note making before putting our oracy skills to the test.

Should fast foot be available in school?

Have a look at some of our discussion points.

When all was said and done and everyone had contributed to the class debate, we had a democratic vote.

Should fast food be available in school?

For: 8

“Not all the time, though.”

“People should be able to sample foods from different countries.”

“We should have the choice for ourselves.”

Against: 20

“Fast food is fatty and can make you overweight.”

“You could have it at home if you liked but it shouldn’t be in schools.”

“We don’t want to ban it all together but our lunches should be healthy so you don’t suffer a sugar crash.”

Descriptive writing

Over the past few weeks, Year 2 have been working really hard on their descriptive writing.  The stimulus for our writing was a famous piece of art by Leonardo da Vinci called ‘The Last Supper’.

Children were tasked with writing sentences using adjectives and expanded noun phrases to describe The Last Supper.

Here are a few examples of the descriptive sentences we wrote in our writing:

The men are eating boring, tasteless food.

In the dark room, the bearded men all look serious.

They are wearing old-fashioned clothes.

Jesus is wearing a blue and orange gown.

On the long table, there is a white tablecloth.