Class News

Wellbeing Advent Calendar

In Y6, were always thinking about ways to be mindful. We’ve been completing these small activities for 5 or so minutes every day to look after our wellbeing.

Kirsten said, “It’s nice to let your mind relax for a few minutes.”

Packed lunches

At Moortown Primary, our packed lunch guidance includes:

• information about the different food groups
• how to put together a healthy, balanced packed lunch
• links to recipes and ideas for healthy packed lunches

This week, our packed lunch guidance will be emailed to parents and carers and sent home to children who have a packed lunch in school.

Packed lunches should be in a secure named container.  No sweets are allowed – instead, we encourage lots of fruit or vegetables.  Water is available on all tables for children who choose a packed lunch.  However, your child can bring their own drink in a non-breakable container – please avoid fizzy drinks.

Change4life provides lots of ideas for healthy packed lunches including  suggested swaps.

As an alternative to packed lunches, school meals, including a vegetarian option, are a great choice and are prepared daily in our kitchen. Children are offered a choice of main courses and desserts and they select their main meal choice at the start of the day.  Catering Leeds provides food which meets national Food Standards criteria.  School meals can be combined with packed lunches.

Free school meals are available to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.  They are also available to some older children according to family income.  It’s important to register for entitlement to free school meals, even if your child has a packed lunch or is in a younger class – this is so we can receive additional funding (called the pupil premium) which we can use to help your child. Please check if this is something you might be entitled to.

Figurative language

Y6 have been reading poetry this week, all to do with winter.

We’ve been learning about figurative language and the precise choices of vocabulary that the poet used.

We’ve learnt about similes and analysed their effect on the reader.

Living and Learning: Takeover Challenge Day

School Savings Club

The next School Savings Club paying in date is 09 December 2019 at 3.15-3.45pm.

The account is open to all children and it is free to set up. As there is not minimum deposit requirement, it is a great way for your child/children to begin to manage their own money and understand the importance of saving. We offer paying in sessions every half term where you can bring along any savings to be paid into your child’s account.

As an extra incentive, Year 3 pupils who open an account, or who currently have an account, will be credited with £10.

If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.

Here are the remaining paying in dates for this year (the penultimate Monday of each half term).

• 03 February
• 23 March
• 11 May
• 06 July

To find out more about the accounts or if your child would like to open account, please enquire at the office.

Themed Week

Last week, during our ‘My Community’ themed week, the children had a very exciting visit from the local fire and rescue service. They chatted to us about their role in the community and then showed us around one of their fire engines.

This was followed by a visit from two local police community support officers.

Spelling Shed

Spelling Shed is a great interactive resource to use at home to reinforce learning in class. We have set up a new feature on Spelling Shed whereby your child will have their weekly spellings as a list to practise when they log on. We hope this will give children an alternative way to learn their weekly spelling words.

All children have received their Spelling Shed logins but if you have misplaced this information, please come and ask us. Login details can also be found inside your child’s reading record books.

Here’s a reminder about how Spelling Shed works.

The game is simple and gives four different degrees of support in the form of difficulty modes; easy, medium, hard and extreme. Higher levels allow a higher score to be achieved but children can practise as much as they like on lower levels before trying to gain high scores. The scores achieved give a league position and each class has its own league position within a school league and our world league.

Thank you for your support with this learning at home.

Living and Learning: Out in the community

As part of our My Community themed week, Year 2 enjoyed a trip to Donisthorpe Hall to their weekly residents’ concert to help us learn more about some of the people that make up our community.

It was an absolute delight to see the young and the old dancing together. Our residents had a really lovely afternoon. We would love any of the pupils to come back any time. 

What a fantastic afternoon which the older residents at Donisthorpe clearly enjoyed. Their joy at seeing and meeting the year 2 children was lovely and the children fully engaged with them. The residents and children had a lovely time. Thank you for organising such a worthwhile community activity.

Gymnastics

On Friday, a group of children attended an event at Leeds Gymnastics Club.  It was great to see the children trying out new skills and really enjoying themselves. Thank you to Mrs Bharath and the parents who helped out with this session.

Geography: Exploring OS Maps

As part of our geography learning, we explored the UK using OS maps today. OS stands for Ordnance Survey. The children were amazed at how detailed these maps are and we were particularly excited to find Loch Lomond, Scafell Pike and Snowdon on them as these are physical features of the UK that we’ve already learnt about.

Dig out any maps you’ve got at home and see what exploring you can do without eve leaving your house!