Residential
We have had an fantastic first day at Herd Farm!
We spent the day busying about doing the Leap of Faith, Crate Stack, Zip-Wire, archery and bushcraft!
Pictures tell 1000 words so here are some smiley snaps from our adventures… 
We’re now in for the evening – watching Hercules with hot chocolate and resting before another big day tomorrow!
Living and Learning – I know the importance of a balanced diet.
Year 3 have been discussing how we can make sensible choices that help our bodies stay healthy.
One way we can help our bodies stay healthy is having a balanced diet. The children have previously learnt about what a diet is and a balanced diet in Science earlier this year.
A diet: the foods a person or animal eats.
A balanced diet: eating a wide variety of foods in the right proportions.
We discussed our own diets and whether they are balanced or not. Here are some questions we thought about…
Are you having your 5 a day?
Are you getting enough protein whether its from meat or other sources?
Are you allowed a treat here and there?
Here’s a guide to the amounts of food we should be having.
Help at home: Can you plan your next meal using these proportions to help you?
Foot-Tech Euros festival of football
As part of our North East Leeds Well School Partnership, twelve Year 2 pupils took part in the Foot-Tech Key Stage 1 festival of football at John Smeaton.
It was an action packed morning and the children gave 100% to all the different football activities. They looked super smart in our new KS1 sports tops too.
I loved it!
Foot-Tech all did a great job.
I liked the 3 v 3 games.
I really liked it because of all the competitions.
People were trying their hardest.
I liked playing with the other children.
I practised lots of football skills.
Foot-Tech run children’s football training locally. Click here to find out more.
What are the main exports of Brazil and the UK?
Y6 can tell you!
Check out their fantastic presentations below – they had freedom to show their learning in whichever way they chose.
Help at home by asking your child to define our geography vocabulary:
- deforestation
- agriculture
- biome
- vegetation belt
- climate zone
- natural resources
- exports
- indigenous people
Living and Learning: Healthy Eating
In Living and Learning, we’ve been looking at healthy eating.
We discussed how some people may be persuaded by what they are seeing in adverts.
Help at home by discussing some more items to add to each of the columns above.
Cooking starts with preparation – washing hands is absolutely essential. Some other key things to think about, as we put into practise in DT at school, are the grip you’re using with the knife, making sure to use any heat responsibly and making sure things are cleaned before use, especially things like fruit and vegetables.
Wonderful writing!
This week in Year 1 we have been writing a report all about our own Wild Thing. After reading the book Where the Wild Things Are, we thought about what our own Wild Thing would look like and we drew some pictures. Then we thought about what it would eat, how it moved and where it lived. There was some brilliant and very original ideas! Some of us even managed to include a ‘Did you know?’ fact. Miss Parwani was very impressed with everybody’s effort and attitude to their writing.
Well done Year 1!
Help at home by discussing your child’s Wild Thing with them. Can they describe to you all the different elements we have talked about at school?
Summer 1: Week 3
This has been a very different week for everyone in Reception and the children have dealt with it marvellously. On Monday and Tuesday, Miss Lowry was in class teaching and getting to know everybody. Then for the rest of the week, Mr McGriffiths was teaching. It has been a great week and I have been very impressed by not only the children’s learning but also their attitude.
Caterpillars
Our caterpillars continue to grow and are becoming very big now! We will be looking closely over the next week to see if they start to form their chrysalis.
Writing
This week we have been reading Walking through the jungle by Julie Lacome. We made story maps on Tuesday and then we wrote about what we might see if we went exploring through the jungle. There were some great ideas and I was very impressed by everybody’s writing!
Maths
This week in maths we have been learning about numbers bigger than 5. We have been learning to recognise these numbers by using the ‘5 and a bit’ structure. We started with 6 which is made from 5 and 1 and worked all the way up to 9. This will help us to subitise these numbers in the future.
Help at home by giving some objects for your child to count. Can they make a pattern of 5 first then see how many more? Encourage them to subitise in this way rather than count one by one.
PE
We continued to play Hulk Smash and even started to compete in pairs which will help us when we play larger games higher up the school.
Poetry Picnic
This week the poem was the classic nursery rhyme, Sing a song of sixpence. We have been watching this video to help us remember it.
The final thing to say I have had a fantastic week in Reception and I have been really impressed by the children’s maturity, attitude and respectfulness. I can’t wait to get back on Tuesday for another week here!
Living and learning: health and prevention
Over the past couple of weeks in Living and Learning, Year 4 have been learning about how we can keep our bodies healthy.
Last week, we learnt about germs and how we can prevent them from spreading and therefore keep ourselves well.
We started off the lesson by talking about the different types of germs there are; bacteria, viruses and fungi. These are all around us. Some are helpful but some are harmful!
We then discussed how quickly and easily germs can spread. We spent a lot of the lesson talking about the importance of hand washing and how this is the most effective way for us to combat spreading harmful germs.
Help at home by looking at this hand washing guide with your child to remind them to wash their hands thoroughly!
Science: virtual farm tour
This morning, we met Sam who took us on a virtual tour of a dairy farm.
We learnt about how a dairy farm works. Did you know that the cows wear a fitness tracker so the farmer knows how many steps they do each day and how long they spend lying down and standing up. This is so that the farmer can check on the health of the animals.
We learned about how the cows are milked and that they produce up to 50 litres of milk a day!
We learned about how the cows have been selectively bred for specific desirable characteristics. These cows are bred so that they produce a lot of milk. Other cows are selectively bred for their size so that they grow big and quick or for their hardiness so that they can live in tougher weather conditions.
We also learnt about how wheat production is similar. We produce wheat that has desirable characteristics like its size and its resistance to drought. 
Writing a promotion – Venice and York
Year 3 have written a promotional piece about either York or Venice.
A promotion persuades and tries to sell a product or experience.
These were our R2s:
- present tense
- adding connectives
- alliteration
- rhetorical questions
- commands
The children researched what they wanted to talk about in their writing. For example, specific landmarks or places tourists could visit.
Here are just a few fantastic examples:
The vocabulary they’ve used it great and reading them definitely makes me want to visit York and Venice!
