British Library: Refugee’s Journey
Today, it was a pleasure to welcome back Liz from the British Library to do a drama and reading workshop with us.
Our session focused on Azzi In Between, a book about a girl who has to leave her country because it’s not safe.
We explored the story with lots of drama and freeze frames.
We also got to play lots of drama games which were really fun.
We explored different scenes of the book in our groups…
…before putting together the entire performance with each group contributing a part to the bigger show.
Help at home by asking your child to explain what was happening in this picture and why! Or, explain what emotions Azzi felt throughout the story.
Guided Reading Week 5
As next week is the last week of Spring Term, your child’s target page is the end of the book (no matter the group). Guided reading books need to be returned before Friday 4th April, if possible. If your child will not have finished their book by this time, please ask them to speak to me and we can see if they can have the book for the break.
Science: conductors and insulators
Today, Year 4 were learning all about electricity in science. We spoke about…
conductors: a material that allows energy to flow through it
insulators: a material that does not allow energy to flow through it.
Your children worked in small groups to sort a variety of objects into conductors of electricity and insulators of electricity. They had some brilliant discussions while trying to reason why an item must be an insulator or conductor.
The plastic cup must be an insulator because we know the outside of a wire is plastic and that’s an insulator.
The metal objects are conductors because the inside of wires are metal and electric fences are made of metal.
What they found…
Conductors:
- coin
- key
- nail
- paperclip
- metal sharpener
Insulators:
- rubber band
- plastic cup
- newspaper
- mug
- glass
Then, we discussed why insulators are so important. They keep us safe and protect us from the electricity flowing through devices. Without insulators, we would get electric shocks when using electrical devices.
Help at home: walk around your kitchen and ask your child to identify different conductors and insulators of electricity. Ask them to explain how they know.
DT: Food Technology
Today, Year 5 made vegetable pasta bake! This is part of our Living and Learning (healthy eating) and Design and Technology (food preparation) learning. We worked in small groups to prepare the ingredients and then cook them. The children peeled, crushed, chopped, diced, cubed and sliced! We made sure that we washed our hands and wore our aprons for hygiene reasons.
We used the bridge cutting method and the claw cutting method to cut up our ingredients. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they help us from hurting ourselves!
Help at home: The children have been given a recipe to take home. Why not try it for yourselves? Is there anything you would change?
Topic: We are computer programmers!
In Computing, this week, we have been creating a pedometer. Pedometers are devices that measure the steps you walk. They have a device or arm inside that moves up and down with your hip motion. Each time you walk, your body tilts to one side, and you swing a leg moving forward. Your body then shifts the other way, and you swing your other leg forward as well.
Every tilt of your hips coupled with a shift of your legs counts as a step.
In our first lesson, our code did not go to plan. We had to use decomposition to help debug our code. So, in our next lesson, we used logical thinking to help create a different code. Thankfully, this one worked! Being a happy and healthy school, we put our pedometers to the test – some groups got up to 500 steps!!
Help at home: Why not have a go at creating a program on Makecode?
Moortown netballers
Well done to our Year 5/6 netballers who competed in the Bee Netball competition at Allerton High.
In each match, the team showed great teamwork and resilience. It’s great to see their netball skills progressing. Well done!
We’d also like to thank parents for helping with transport for this event.
Through our partnership with Leeds Rhinos, have a look at this special offer to see some more live netball this weekend.
Here are some local netball opportunities too.
Living & Learning: being me
Living and learning this week was about influences and peer pressure…
…both positive and negative.
We discussed what peer pressure means to us and what might happen as a result.
Feeling confident means we feel like we can stand up for ourselves and say no if we need to.
We paid ourselves some compliments to remind ourselves how awesome we are.
Reminder: learning journey drop in
Learning Journey drop in 2 – 28.03.25 and 01.04.25 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
Wow reading records!
The children really impressed me with their reading records this week! The activity was comic strip which asks them to draw a comic of what they have read (which could be their current book club books)! These records are to help me keep track of the children’s reading progress so it’s always fantastic to see the children’s evidence of this each Friday.
A reminder of the reading record key info:
- I choose an activity for the whole class to complete on their book each Friday. More information on these activities are inside the record. If you are ever unsure which activity it is, please ask or choose a random one!
- The children need to bring it in every Friday for our Book Club lesson where we discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
- The children’s grown-ups also need to write a short comment sharing with us the lovely reading their child has been doing at home!
It gives the children ownership and responsibility of their reading.
Any questions, please ask!
Reminder: learning journey drop in
This is an opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them. This will involve looking through your child’s learning journey book.
Learning Journey drop in 2 – 28.03.25 and 01.04.25
Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm