Science: We are Physicists!
In Science, we have been exploring the impacts of friction and air resistance.
Here are the definitions:
We first tested which object would have the least amount of friction on a surface: an ice cube or wooden cube? Our prediction was that the ice would be the quickest therefore it has the least amount of friction. Our scientific enquiry type was ‘fair and comparative’ tests.
The children then went on to test air resistance (or drag). We tested that if our surface area increased would it slow us down or speed us up? Bin bags were our equipment of choice, have a look at our experiment:
Not only did we found out that an increased surface area means more air resistance therefore, we ran slower with the bin bag than without, but we also had a lot of fun doing it!
Help at home: Discuss different scenarios that are impacted by friction and air resistance.
Living and Learning: Rules
This week, in Living and Learning, we’ve been focussing on rules. We’ve looked closely at our three school rules and discussed why they’re important and how we can demonstrate them around school.
We should look at the speaker to show we’re ready and respectful.
We should always use our manners and say please and thank you.
We need to walk slowly and sensibly around corners so we don’t hurt ourselves or other people.
We’ve had some really interesting discussions this week about why we have rules and what would happen if there were no rules. It’s been great to hear your children’s ideas.
Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and safe place to learn.
Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what they might look like or sound like. Compare them with your rules at home. Are they similar? Are they different?
Autumn 1: Week 1: dates for your diary
Welcome to Reception Class.
The staff are very excited to see you all again.
In our classroom there will be:
Miss Lowry (class teacher)
Mrs Boulton (teaching assistant)
Mrs Kaur (teaching assistant)
Mrs Pawlak (teaching assistant)
Our classroom is all set up and ready to go.
We hope you and your child are as excited as we are about this new chapter in your child’s life. We hope you have been provided with all the information you need, but please ask if you are not sure about anything.
The First Week
After your child’s transition days, school will begin at 8.45 and finish at 3.15.
Please wait by the gate to our outdoor area and one of us will come to greet you.
At the end of the day, please wait at the gate of the Reception outdoor area. In order to ensure your child’s safety, we only let the children out as we see the parent /carer who is collecting them at the end of the day. As we are still getting to know you, this may take a little time at the beginning of the term so please bear with us.
If your child is being collected by somebody else, please tell us or phone the office. We will ask whoever is collecting your child for the password you chose.
Key information
I will post on our class news page every Friday to give you an update on what we have been learning about that week.
Please email in photographs of things that you do out of school with your child. This could be woodland walks, finding shells on the beach, baking etc.
Our class email is: moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
PE will be on a Friday. Please ensure that your child comes to school in full school PE kit.
Library will be on a Thursday. Please ensure your child comes to school with their library book on this day.
We will assign new reading books on a Thursday. Please make sure your child comes to school with their reading record book on this day.
Dates for your diary
This year we will be offering various opportunities for you to find out more about Early Years at school.
There will be after school meetings with your child’s teacher.
There’ll be stay and learn sessions where you can come into school and be part of a lesson and then find out how you can help at home.
Then, opportunities to pop into school to share your child’s learning journey book with them.
We hope that you can join us for as many of these sessions as possible.
Welcome to Reception
An invitation to this event was emailed to you back in July but here is a reminder.
Come into school to find out some basic “need to knows” about life in Reception.
17.09.24 – 6pm – 6.30pm
Stay and learn sessions
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school.
Phonics Phase 2 and coffee morning –10.10.24 9-10am
Number 1 – 13.11.24 9-9:30am
Phonics Phase 3 – 14.01.25 9-9:30am
Fine Motor and coffee morning – 03.02.25 9-10am
World Book Day- 06.03.24
Number 2 – 18.03.25 9-9:30am
Learning Journey Drop In’s
An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them.
Learning Journey Drop in 1 – 03.12.24 and 05.12.24 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
Learning Journey drop in 2 – 28.03.25 and 01.04.25 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
Learning Journey drop in 3– 08.07.25 and 10.07.25 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am and 3.15pm-3.45pm
Living and Learning: rules
At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.
Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…
Why do we have rules?
What rules can you think of?
What places have rules?
Who makes the rules?
Rules keep us safe.
Rules stop people doing bad things.
It is a rule to not go too fast in a car.
The police help people follow the rules.
In our school we have three school rules.
Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.
Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.
Next week, we will be thinking about our rules about online safety at school. Your child will bring home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.
Any questions, please do ask.
Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.
Welcome back!
I hope you had a happy and healthy summer. Welcome back and welcome to Y6 – your last ever year of primary school! I know we’re going to make it the best one yet.
Here’s some key information:
- This year, PE will be on Mondays and Thursdays.
- Our library slot is a Tuesday so bring in your library book then – but it’s a good idea to have it with you every day.
- Book Club will take place every Friday so please bring in your Reading Record on this day.
We’ve had an amazing start to the week. I’m loving the energy and enthusiasm that the class are bringing.
Living and Learning – rules
This week’s Living and Learning lesson was all about rules.
We discussed our rules and why they’re so important. We also talked about the rules we have at home and how they’re similar or different.
Help at home by having a chat about which of our school rules is most important and why.
Our learning really linked with our British Values. We made connections between following rules at school and the Rule of Law and Respect & Tolerance for example.
Welcome to Year 4!
The children have had a fantastic start to Year 4 and settled in brilliantly. It has been great to see how well they’ve adapted to the new routines and new teachers. We’re really looking forward to an exciting and successful year!
This week, your child will come home with a reading book and new Reading Record. They’ll need to bring in their Reading Records every Friday for Book Club sessions, where they’ll be set an activity to complete at home (more information on the activities are inside the Reading Record). It’s really important that your child reads daily. This not only develops their fluency but also their love of reading.
Important dates:
- PE – Wednesday and Friday
- Library – Monday
- Spelling test – Friday
- Times tables test – Friday
Any questions, please ask!
Reading Records
Reading Records
This week, Year 3 will be sent home with their new and exciting reading records! These records are to help me (Miss Birch) keep track of the children’s reading progress.
The new reading records key info:
- Each time one of the children signs out a new book to read from the library, they can make note of these in the book and rate them out of 5 stars.
- I’ll choose an activity for the whole class to complete on their chosen book each Friday. More information on these activities are inside the record.
- The children will need to bring in these reading records every Friday for our Book Club lesson where we’ll discuss their books and develop their love of reading.
- The children’s grown-ups will 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!
I hope this is all clear and I’m really looking forward to seeing their progress.
Any questions, please ask!
Y3/4 Spelling list for half term 1
In Key Stage 2, instead of asking you to learn a short list of spellings each week, you will be given a longer list (roughly 40 words) that we will focus on in that half-term. Don’t worry, we’re not asking you to learn them all in one week. Instead, we’ll ask you to focus on learning these words over the course of the entire half-term. There’s a few reasons for this:
- We want you take responsibility for your own learning and start to figure out how you learn best (there’s some ideas below). Even if that means making some mistakes along the way.
- Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long-term.
- Similarly, lots of research suggests that if you learn something for a week and don’t come back to it you’ll likely forget it anyway
- We won’t have a ‘formal’ test each week. Instead, we’ll mix it up. We might ask you to test each other on the words you’ve been learning. We might test the words at random and then you’ll know which words you need to practise more and which words you’re confident with. We might just think about some of the words and share ideas for how we’re going about learning them.
- Ultimately, we want this to be about learning – and not just getting them right in a test.
How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all. However you decide to do it is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.
Every Friday, we’ll spend time practising or testing (informally) or discussing all things spelling so be ready (one of our 8 Rs for learning) to join in!
If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.
Half-term 1
This half-term, our spellings are linked to the rules and strategies we’ll be learning in class:
- alternative ways for writing the ‘ay’ sound
- alternative ways for writing the ‘ee’ sound
- ‘double up for a short vowel sound’
- ‘drop the e for ing’
- ‘drop the y for an i’
- adding the suffixes ed, ing
- homophones (words that sound the same but are spelled differently)
Each Friday, you’ll be tested on 8 of the words from the list below.
| famous | believe | accident | breathe | answer |
| library | passion | notice | were | possess |
| century | address | favourite | appear | here |
| their | weight | complete | ordinary | wear |
| straight | they’re | surprise | busy | increase |
| session | possible | there | hear | where |
| suppose | mission | eighth | extreme | occasion |
| fraction | different | attention | learn | possession |
Living and Learning: rules
At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.
Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…
Why do we have rules?
What rules can you think of?
What places have rules?
Who makes the rules?
Rules tells us what to do.
We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.
Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.
Rules help us to be happy and healthy.
Our reading fluency text for this week was all about rules too.
In our school we have three school rules.
Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.
Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.
We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.
Next week, we will be thinking about our rules about online safety at school. Your child will bring home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.
Any questions, please do ask.
Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.
