Class News

Bike to School week and Let’s ride

Biking and scooting are one of the ways we encourage children to actively travel to and from school and next week we’ll be taking part in Bike to School Week (with Sustrans and the Bikeability Trust). We are pleased to be part of this UK-wide event, encouraging families to cycle, or scoot, to school. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate active school journeys and the positive impact it has on children’s health and wellbeing – as well as the environment.

Bike and scooter storage facilities are available by the side of the Year 4 classroom.

Also, taking place this weekend is the free Let’s Ride session held locally at the Brownlee Centre.

This free family community event is ideal for the whole family to enjoy cycling in a safe and friendly space. At the Leeds Brownlee Centre, Bodington Playing Fields, you can ride at your own pace as many times as you like with volunteers on hand to chat all things cycling.

Sign up for the event here.

Reading challenges…

Check out this photo of some Year 5s completing the reading record challenge ‘read in an unusual place’…

Can you think of a more peculiar place to read a book?

Reading records

Last Friday, your child was sent home with a brand new reading record. This is an exciting new scheme that has been introduced this year for KS2.

The new reading records offer the following benefits:

• it is a place for children to record the books/texts they’ve read and rate them out of five stars
• there are a range of activities your child will accomplish throughout the year based on what they’ve read (each week, details of this task will be posted on class news)
• it gives children a chance to enhance their love of reading during our weekly book club sessions in school
• it gives children ownership and responsibility of their reading
• it allows children to practise their oracy skills during book club sessions when they share what they’ve been reading
• it can be a place for parents to share with teachers the wonderful reading their child has been doing at home

If your child would like to complete a reading activity for this week – please feel free! We will decide on our whole class reading activity for next week, tomorrow.

You can find more details about this in the activities section of the reading record.

Any questions, please ask!

Happy reading!

Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning

Last week, Year 5 were focussing on the Eight Rs for learning. The Eight 8rs for learning are good learning behaviours that we aim to demonstrate during every lesson.

Challenge your child to name the Eight Rs for learning as fast as they can!

During our Living and Learning lesson, we were challenged to order the Eight Rs in order of importance. This was a particularly difficult task as all the children recognised the importance of each R. We engaged in a thoughtful and interesting debate where children were able to argue why they thought a particular learning behaviour was of paramount importance.

A fantastic start!

We have had a fantastic start to the year with all the children settling really well into their new school. There have been lots of smiles and laughter and very few tears!

Thank you for helping with this and preparing your child for this exciting time.

Workshops

Thank you to everyone who has attended our recent Zoom sessions to help you support your child at home. Watch the phonics session and the Early Years introduction. (And apologies for the distracting cursor in the latter – maybe that’s a nervous habit of Mr Roundtree!

The next workshop will be on Tuesday 28 September at 6pm. This reading workshop will explain how we teach reading in Reception and how you can help at home.

PE

PE will begin the week beginning 20 September. Your child should come to school in their PE kit on Wednesday and Friday.

Isolation learning

This will be emailed to you each week and is only for those children who are having to isolate because of COVID.

A few other things

Please make sure your child brings a water bottle and bookbag to school every day. You may want to send a change of clothes for your child which can be left at school.

If you have any questions or concerns please let us know. We are also keen to hear of any ‘wow’ moments, achievements and interests your child has.

moortownreception@spherefederation.org

Fantastic week!

Year 1 have had another excellent week at school and have shown great learning and listening skills. They were given their first class treat this afternoon for their wonderful learning behaviour, some time out in the sun playing on the front playground equipment. Well done everyone!

In writing we have been looking at the book Lost and Found more and we thought about how we would feel if a penguin knocked on our door! The children produced some wonderful sentences, making sure they used a capital letter and full stop.

In maths, we have been continuing to practise counting backwards and forwards to 100. We even counted how long it would take someone to deliver a message to Mrs Weekes and come back (we got to 97!). Keep using Numbots at home to continue to support your child’s learning.

Thank you for sending all your children’s reading books back this Friday, they have all been changed and are due back in on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend,

Mr McGriffiths

Living and Learning

Hi everyone,

This week in Living and Learning, Year 4 began learning about the 8Rs. The children were introduced to eight different attributes that will help them to be strong and successful learners. 

As a class, we discussed how we all use the 8R’s in our everyday life and especially at school:

• They are all very responsive by listening to instructions. This in turn, makes them ready to learn.
• The children are being resilient in maths lessons when learning column addition. They aren’t giving up when it gets tricky!
• They are being resourceful by using atlases to label the counties on their maps.
• They reflect on their work at the end of each lesson by saying what they have learnt and something that they have found difficult or not.
• They have been taking risks when contributing their own ideas to the lesson.
• The class is being responsible and remembering what is expected of them when in school.

Help at home by talking about these 8Rs and linking it to the children’s actions and activities outside of school!

Reading Records

Hi everyone!

Today, Friday 17th September, your child was sent home with a brand new reading record. Now you might be thinking, ‘Hang on! My child hasn’t used one since Y3!’. Although this might be the case, we’re excited for all the ways your child can engage with reading at home in these new Reading Records.

The new Reading Records offer the following benefits:

• it is a place for children to record the books/texts they’ve read and rate them out of five stars
• there are a range of activities your child will accomplish throughout the year based on what they’ve read (each week, details of this task will be on your homework letters)
• it gives children a chance to enhance their love of reading during our weekly Book Club sessions in school
• it gives children ownership and responsibility of their reading
• there are loads of exciting challenges to complete to become a Reading Challenge Champion
• it can be a place for parents to share with teachers the wonderful reading their child has been doing at home.

This week, the activity your child should complete based on their reading is…

Draw It

You can find more details about this in the activities section of the reading record.

Any questions, please ask!

Happy reading!

Where in the world am I?

Challenge your child with some quick-fire questions that we’ve been learning about at school:

• What’s the capital of England?
• What’s the capital of Scotland?
• Name the four countries of the UK.
• What’s the capital of Northern Ireland?
• What’s the capital of Wales?
• What’s the name of our county?
• What’s the name of our continent?

Notice the use of my capital letters – why are they used here?

Our Science and Geography vocabulary

This half term, our Science focus is States of Matter and we are chemists!

Take a look at our list of vocabulary that we’ve been learning about in class. How well would you say you know their definitions?

Some of them are quite tricky. Can you remember the actions we’ve done in class?

We’re also Geographers this half term and we’re learning about urban green spaces and city expansion.

What small activities could you do at home to help you remember this list of vocabulary?