Africa Amazing Africa
This week, we began exploring our new class text, Africa, Amazing Africa by Mauni Feddag.
This engaging non-fiction book links closely with our Geography topic, where we are learning about the country of Kenya.
As a class, we compared the features of fiction and non-fiction texts. The children demonstrated a strong understanding, confidently identifying key characteristics and accurately placing them within a Venn diagram.
Help at home:
Explore some non-fiction books together and look out for the key features such as heading, sub heading, contents, facts and information, index.
Living and Learning: Staying safe themed week 18 May
Our next whole school themed week, based around Staying Safe, will be taking place from Monday 18 May 2026. The key message is how to be safe in a range of situations – at home, at school, online and in the environment.
A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education including road safety (Leeds City Council); water safety (Canal and River Trust and RNLI); fire safety (West Yorkshire Fire Service); first aid; safety in our community (PCSOs), martial arts (BMMA) and drug education (d:side). Some of the events require parental permission and these letters have been sent out separately.
There are also some opportunities for parents and carers, from all year groups, to get involved in the week.
Thursday 14 May from 8:30am West Yorkshire Police bike register event
Pupils are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school. Registering your bike helps police and retailers identify and verify the legitimate owner of bikes that have been stolen or are being resold.
Tuesday 19 May 3pm – 3:30pm d:side drug education drop in information session (playground)
A representative from d:side, a health education provider, will be available to discuss details of your child’s drug education learning in the themed week.
The themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active and safe ways to travel to school. Children are encouraged to travel to school in a sustainable way, keeping safe along the way.
For a chance to win one of three £10 vouchers, we’d love to see their active travel staying safe photos, maybe using a traffic crossing or wearing their bike helmet (send photos to [email protected]). Photos should be sent by 10am on Thursday 21 May and winners will be announced on the same day.
Due to the rising costs of visitors to school, this year, we are requesting a voluntary contribution of £2 per pupil to go towards paying for visitors. This can be made on Arbor. Thank you for your support with this.
Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of safety? If you are able to support our Staying Safe themed week by coming into school to speak to the children, please contact me via the office or your child’s class teacher.
We will keep you up to date about events during the week on the class news pages on our website.
Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy, healthy and safe school.
SATs Breakfast Club
Living and Learning: Being safe
We took part in the NSPCC Speak out Stay Safe online assembly.
During the assembly, it highlighted children’s rights and gave the clear message of ‘Speak out, Stay safe’. The children were confident at identifying who their own trusted adults are and felt comfortable that they could ask for help.
We also heard about Childline – ask your child to show you the way to remember the number.
To follow up this learning, we welcomed staff from NSPCC to deliver a ‘Speak Out Stay Safe’ workshop. They were very impressed with the children’s learning and understanding.
Help at home: Discuss who your child would speak to if they needed help and/or visit the Childline website, which has age-appropriate advice for primary school children on topics such as bullying. It also has games and other interactive tools.
PE: Basketball
This half term our PE unit is basketball. We had our first lessons where we practised our throwing and catching skills whilst in a game setting. Then, we had our ‘fitness for’ session where the children went round to different stations to practise different skills: high knees, star jumps, burpees, etc. These sessions help us understand how fit basketball players need to be. Did you know most basketballers run about 5km during a 48 minute game (most players play for an average of 30 minutes)?
Help at home: Can you name all of the different types of passes?
Living & Learning: Being safe
Being safe is a key part of our Living and Learning curriculum and we took part in the NSPCC Speak out Stay Safe online assembly.
During the assembly, we heard about Sam and some things that were upsetting Sam.
Thankfully, Sam told a teacher about her worries. We thought about which grown-ups would be good to talk to in school and out of school (start telling other people). Brothers, sisters and friends would also be good to talk to and discuss feelings but telling a grown-up (over 18) would be the best thing to do to get help.
You could speak to safe adults at school like the safeguarding team.
Be brave and speak out – it will get better.
Our Living and Learning box, in the classroom, is another way the children can speak out and write down any worries.
We also heard about Childline – ask your child to show you the way to remember the number.
Help at home: Buddy Zone, on the Childline website, has some games and activities for the children to do.
Poetry Basket: Under a stone
This week’s poem is called Under a stone.
We’ve been focussing on the words earth (land eg soil, dirt) and firm (a solid surface).
PE: basketball
This half-term in PE, we’re doing basketball!
Basketball is a fantastic sport for your children to practise a variety of different skills (e.g., passing, catching, shooting, defending etc.).
Last week, we began exploring some different ways we can pass the ball in basketball – chest pass and bounce pass. We recapped our ‘pass and point‘ technique which we used last year in netball and rugby. When you release a ball during a pass, your fingers should end pointing towards where you are aiming. This is a great technique to ensure an accurate pass.
This week, we’ve looked more closely at catching. When preparing to catch a ball, we need to get into the ready position:
- feet shoulder width apart
- knees slightly bent
- diamond hands
The ready position allows us to safely and effectively catch the ball.
Help at home: if you have a ball at home (any ball will do) practise some chest and bounce passes with your child. They must show you the ready position before catching the ball.
Guided Reading Week 2
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 8th May.
Ghost Hunter– up to page 95
Kensuke’s Kingdom – up to page 69
Two weeks with the Queen – up to page 61
How to train your dragon – up to page 103
Spy fox– up to page 85
Considine Curse – up to page 85
Maths: factors, multiples and primes
Over the past two weeks, we have been learning about factors, multiples and primes in Year 5. We have learnt how to find all the factors of a number, as well as find common factors between two numbers. We have learnt what prime, square and composite numbers are and how to identify them.
Prime number: has exactly 2 factors.
Square number: has an odd number of factors.
Composite number: has more than 2 factors.
This unit of work ended with us creating factor multiple chains within 100. You begin with a number less than 100 and then find a factor of this number. Next find a multiple of the new number and then a factor of this number etc..
For example: 64, 4, 32, 8, 88, 11….
We first played cooperatively where we had to work together to create the longest chain. Afterwards, we played competitively where we had to stop the other person be able to continue the chain. Some of us worked out a way we could always win using our knowledge of numbers! It was great fun.
Help at home by playing a game of factor multiple chains.