Living and Learning: Staying safe in the community.
Today, we welcomed both the fire and police service into school. The children were thrilled to see a fire engine parked in the playground!
These vital services keep us safe and it was very interesting to hear all about the roles the professionals play. Ask your child to tell you about the photos below.
Living and Learning: Who’s in our community?
This week, we welcomed Natasha and Alex from RNIB. They shared lots of information about how they support people with visual impairments in our community.
Living and Learning: Who are we?
Even though we are all different and unique, there are still many connections between us. In this learning, Year 2 produced a ‘spiders’ web’ to show how we are connected.
If one of the connections was cut, how would that person feel if they were excluded from the web of connections?
The key message is that communities that include everyone are stronger.
Living and Learning: Who am I?
In our themed week, this week, we’ve enjoyed finding out about the identity of members of our class.
Living and Learning: My Community week so far
This week, we are enjoying our ‘My Community’ themed week based around these themes.
- Who am I? (identity)
- Who are we? (diversity)
- Where do I live? (community)
- How do we all live together? (equality)
There have been lots of events, visits and visitors so far.
- School community coffee morning and Wake Up Shake Up on Monday
- Bulb planting with Friends of Moortown Park
- Visiting Allerton Grange drama department for a community themed drama session led by Year 12 pupils
- A visit from Linda Gledhill from the deaf and hearing impairment team
- A visit from the RNIB to raise awareness of visually impaired members of our community
- JustDifferent disability workshops
- Litter picking in the local area
- Hate Crime workshops led by West Yorkshire Police
- Visiting Donisthorpe Hall
- A visit from Moortown fire service
- A visit from our PCSOs
- Learning carousels across different classes
Still to come is a visit to a group run by Moor Allerton Elderly Care; Greek language sessions led by a parent; a visit to St Gemma’s Hospice and choosing our new school charity.
The week will culminate with Identity Day on Friday 29 November.
Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend, a team they are part of or support or traditional dress to represent their heritage. We invite a donation for the PTA Christmas fair.
Thank you for all the entries we have received for the active travel in the community competition.
We encourage families to get out in the community in an active way on the way to and from school. Email (moortownoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of your active travel, maybe by a landmark on the route to school, for the chance to win one of five £10 vouchers. The winners will be drawn in the assembly tomorrow afternoon so please ensure your entries are sent by 12 o’clock tomorrow.
Thank you for supporting the themed week and please discuss the week with your child to reinforce this important learning.
Living and Learning: Community Week
This week is Community Week so we’ve been talking about who we are, how we’re the same and different and learning more about our community and the people in it.
At home, ask us to tell you about:
- DAHIT – the deaf and hearing impairment visit where we learnt about how people with hearing difficulties are helped to be part of the community
- JustDifferent – a charity which helps people understand that those with disabilities are just the same as us. We really enjoyed meeting Julie and learning about how she is different but likes the same things as us.
- The Fire Service – who delivered an assembly about what they do in our community
- Our Carousel – where we’ve visited the KS2 classes to explore us and the communities we’re part of
Don’t forget, the children can come dressed in clothing which symbolises their personality tomorrow: a Brownie uniform, a football team kit, religious/cultural dress and whatever else represents who they are.
Living and Learning – Just Different
Y6 enjoyed a visit from Julie who works for a charity called JustDifferent. She came to talk to us about living with a disability.
Having been diagnosed with myoclonic dystopia, she gave us loads of insights and information about coping with a disability. There are lots of different types and everyone is different and deals with theirs in different ways.
Did you know that over 10 million people in the UK have a disability? Some you can’t see – these are ‘invisible disabilities’.
Her main message: people with disabilities are just that – people. We talked about how that made them just a bit different but how we are still similar in lots of ways, too.
Juile – a former police officer – was fascinating to listen to. Everyone came away with an increased awareness and understanding of what disabilities are and how to show our support.
OS Maps
Recently, Y5 have been using Ordnance Survey maps in order to locate places using six figure grid references.
We really enjoyed using real OS maps. Thank you Miss Rushbrooke for letting us borrow them!
Challenge your child by asking them to locate places using six figure grid references at home or when you’re out and about!
Topic: computing and geaography
Year 4 combined their computing and geography knowledge today to practise learning counties and using compass language.
We created algorithms using compass directions to get from one county to another, gradually making our algorithms more complicated and challenging each other to follow our algorithms to see where they turned up.
At home, see how many cities and counties we can name and whether we can tell the eight points of a compass.
We cracked the code!
Resilience was oozing out of the Y6 classroom in our geography lesson today. They cracked a code by using six figure grid references and solving an anagram.
Sam said, “It was so challenging. I feel tired now! But also proud.”
Zidaan said, “I thought it was super challenging. Our problem was that we were overthinking it and made it too complicated for ourselves.”
“I feel really proud. We worked so well as a team,” said Poppy.