Living and Learning: Mental health
Mental health has the been the whole school focus in Living and Learning. In Year 2, this learning has been based around the importance of special people in their lives and friendships.
We considered what makes a good friend is and the children compiled a great list of qualities they would want in a friend.
- kind
- helpful
- honest
- friendly
- not distracting at learning time
- generous
- loving
- playful
- caring
- polite
- sharing
- fun
In the subsequent lesson, we discussed the sorts of things that can cause friendships to break and what can help make friendships stronger? We thought about some ways to sort out friendship problems and discussed that difficulties within friendships can usually be resolved.
If children do encounter friendship problems which they can’t sort out themselves, they are encouraged to Start Telling Other People. One way to do this could be writing a worry slip in the class Living and Learning box for an adult to read and discuss with the child.
To follow this up at home, here are some friendship related texts.
- Hello by Jack Foreman
- Friends by Kim Lewis
- Halibut Jackson by David Lucas
- Friends by Kathryn Cave and Nick Mayland
- Rosie and the yellow ribbon by Paula Depaolo
- Two friends by Clara Vullamy
Great news for Leeds
This article is great news for the city enabling children to develop healthy lifestyle choices.
Leeds has become the first city in the UK to report a drop in childhood obesity bucking the national trend. The national child measurement programme (NCMP), which requires all children to be weighed at the start and end of primary school saw a decrease in obesity levels in both reception children and children in year 6.
Doubling, halving and sharing
Doubling-adding a number to itself or multiplying it by two-is something that children find really interesting. Using the same number of fingers on each hand, children quickly learn that 1 add 1 is 2 or double 5 is 10.
Double facts are very useful for children to learn as later they can use them to derive other number facts such as near doubles. For example, if they know 6+6 =12 then they can work out that 6+7=13.
In Reception children learn doubling, halving and sharing through hands-on practical activities.
Help your child develop their knowledge of these concepts by using real life experiences at home, such as sharing out food or cutting pizza slices.
Residential
Well, what a great few days we’ve had! 
Taking Year 4 on their residential was an absolute pleasure. All the children made the most of this opportunity and it was great to see them pushing themselves beyond their own ‘comfort zones.’
The main objectives of this visit were to develop teamwork and independence. The children most certainly achieved these! It was lovely to witness the support they offered to each other and their teamwork skills were outstanding. The class followed instructions, used super manners and were very respectful to their environment and all the adults alike. Herd Farm staff commented on the positive attitudes and determination shown by the children throughout their stay.
On behalf of all the Moortown staff that attended our visit, thank you Year 4 for making this a trip to remember. We had lots of laughs and you were all a credit to yourselves, your families and, of course, our school!
Well done Year 4!
Many thanks to all the staff that made our visit possible and more importantly ‘entertaining!’
Mrs Freeman, Mrs Weekes, Mrs Charlesworth, Mrs Pearson, Mr Wilks and Mr Owen.
Below, are some photos for your to enjoy with your children. Next week, we will be doing some feedback, about Herd Farm, and this will be added to our class news page.
After-school club availability
Our summer term after-school clubs have started this week but it’s not too late to sign up as we do have a few spaces still available.
Monday cricket Years 3-6
Tuesday skipping Years 1-4
Wednesday Gymnastics (Leeds Gymnastics Club) All years
Thursday multi games Years 3-6
Please contact the office to book for these clubs.
Living and Learning: Calming down
I can describe and use ways to calm down.
Throughout the week, Year 6 have been discussing how they’re feeling and what they do when they’re not feeling calm. We all get worked up from time to time and we all calm ourselves down in different ways.
At home, discuss how you calm down and what strategies your child uses at home and at school. They might talk about some of the mindfulness techniques children have been taught or counting to ten, going for a walk or getting a glass of water.
This is a particularly important discussion for our Year 6s and it will be useful for them to recognise that they’ll be more and less calm depending on what’s happening in their lives at a given moment in time.
Mini Mermaids running club
Mini Mermaids running club are starting a new block of sessions, open to girls, from 7th June. The sessions build up to a 5km challenge at Roundhay parkrun on Saturday 20th July at 9am.
Gledhow
LEEDS LS8 1RG
For details of how to sign up, click on the booking page here.
Living and Learning: School charity fundraising
Our Money Matters themed week starts on 20 May.
During the week, there will be two opportunities to raise money for our current school charity, WWF (selected democratically by our school councillors).
Hot Shots Monday 20 May 2019
Every child will get chance to take part in this fun event to ‘kick’ off our Money Matters themed week. Children are encouraged to raise sponsorship money for taking part in the event with the money raised going to our school charity WWF.
Money trail 24 May 2019
Start saving your 1p and 2p coins to bring into class during the themed week. At the end of the week each class will use their class’s coins to make a whole school money trail in the playground.
Here’s our trail from last time where we raised £117.77. Can we beat this total?
Here’s some ways the money we raise might be used by WWF.
Living and Learning: Relationships education parent/carers information session
We will be holding two parent/carer information sessions on Monday 20 May at 2:30pm and 5:30pm. The sessions, open to parents/carers from all year groups, will give more information about the following.
- What does our Living and learning curriculum cover?
- What does relationships education look like in different year groups through school?
- What is included in our relationships and sex education policy?
If you are interested in attending, please complete and return the response slip on the letter being sent home to reserve a place.
If you are unable to attend but would like information from the session to be sent home with your child, please indicate this on the letter.
Poetry Passwords
Last week, during a reading lesson, the children were asked to use their retrieval and inference skills to answer questions about this poem.
I made a new password!
I made a new password
That no one could guess. Which words rhyme with secure?
It’s long and confusing How many symbols does the password contain?
And truly a mess. Is the password easy to remember?
It has random letters Could a person work out the password?
and numbers galore, What is the problem in the poem?
with dozens of symbols Find and copy a part of the text that makes you laugh.
and spaces and more.
My password is perfect,
completely secure,
and no one will break it;
of that I am sure.
It’s flawless and fool proof.
I don’t have a doubt.
But, whoops! I forgot it
and now I’m locked out.
–Kenn Nesbitt
Following this, we discussed how having a secure password helps you protect your personal information.
Albie stated that: “Passwords should be something personal to you and easy to remember, but difficult for someone else to figure out.”
“It could be a special word or phrase, name of your favorite character, movie, food or song,” added Hifza.
The class thought about tips for creating safe passwords.
“Have a mixture of symbols, numbers, lowercase and uppercase letters,” recommended Daisy.