Living and Learning – Homework Review
Last week, the whole school had the same Talk Time homework:
What is a drug?
This homework, which links to our Living and Learning statement, is a first step in children becoming aware of drugs. During our homework review today, the children each shared some of the conversations they had had at home. Year 4 showed great maturity and a good awareness about drugs that are helpful and those that are harmful.
Below are some of the question prompts that we gave to the children to help shape their discussions…
What is a good definition for a drug? “A drug can be good for you but some can be bad for you.”
Are all drugs bad? “We need some drugs to help us when we are ill. These can be dangerous if they aren’t taken correctly.”
A poem by Phoebe
What is a drug?
Drugs can be helpful
Drugs can be bad
Some make you happy
Some make you sad
Everyday drugs
That we can see
Caffeine in morning coffee
And afternoon tea
Beer, wine
And spirits too
Can make people laugh
Or be sick in the loo
Medicines
Are all drugs
That doctors prescribe
For illness and bugs
Drugs can be helpful
Drugs can be bad
Some make you happy
Some make you sad.
Following our homework review, Year 4 went on to discuss the risks of drinking alcohol. Using a ‘ Where alcohol goes in your body‘ diagram, we talked about some of the effects alcohol can have on the body.
Once swallowed, alcohol enters the stomach. The alcohol is absorbed into the small intestine and the bloodstream through the stomach walls. The blood vessels carry the alcohol to almost every organ in the body including the heart, lungs, liver and brain.
The children asked lots of questions to each other.
“What other dangers are there to your health?’
“It can damage your brain.”
“Why do people chose to drink alcohol?”
“Because it can make people feel relaxed.”
The children learnt how alcohol can affect the body and they could explain why drinking alcohol may pose a greater or lesser risk, depending on the individual and the amount of alcohol consumed.
Living and Learning – Let’s be more active
Across the nation, school’s are working towards providing a more active environment to learn in. Here at Moortown, we all Wake Up and Shake Up everyday to increase our heart rates which benefits our physical, emotional and mental health as well as improving our brain function.
In Year 6, we went on a bike ride in the class room for around 10 minutes which was great fun and got all of our hearts racing.
Living and Learning: Parent/carer workshops Staying Safe themed week
Thank you to all the parents/carers who have signed up to the workshops on offer next week during our Staying Safe themed week.
There are a few places left if you would like to come along.
Benchball
Some of our KS2 children took part in a come and try benchball event at Roundhay School tonight.
Competing against other local schools, they showed great teamwork and PE skills.
Benchball uses a lot of the same skills as netball and we hope that some of the players come and join the netball after-school club on a Monday – we have a few places left!
Impressive writing
This half term, Year 6 are learning how to use colons, semi-colons and dashes.
Here’s some great writing from Martha about a mythical beast where she’s used these skills independently.
Martha will now use the feedback to help her to improve her writing and aim to write just as well and with fewer mistakes in her next piece.
At home, read this together and ask your child what they wrote about. Can they show you how to use colons and semi-colons correctly?
A-maze-ing computing
As part of our Fighting Fantasy topic, we’re working towards creating our own maze-based games on a computer programme called Kodu. Last week we learnt about algorithms, decomposition and debugging.
Today, we’ve continued our learning about debugging by creating our mazes offline.
When we realised our maze didn’t work or wasn’t complicated enough or was too complicated, we had to debug in order to improve it.
Using blocks, Lego or Kapla helped us to make sure we kept the lines of our mazes straight and allowed to be symmetrical with our designs.
Once we were happy with the shape of the maze, we started to think about what the aim of the game would be, adding points or obstacles in our way.
Next week, we’ll move our learning onto the computers and create our maze in Kodu.
At home, ask us how our learning is developing and see whether we can tell you how the game we’re creating will work. Here’s an explanation for how to play this maze.
Living Streets new badge design competition
We are proud to work with Living Streets to support our aim for active and safe travel to and from school.
WOW is Living Streets’ year-round walk to school challenge and every day our pupils log their daily journeys to school on the WOW Travel Tracker. Those that make an active (walk, bike, scoot or park and stride) journey to school at least once a week for a month earn a WOW badge. There are 11 to collect across the year all of which have been designed by pupils in their annual badge design competition.
Living Streets are now asking for our pupil’s help to design a new badge. Details will be sent home shortly but take a look for some more information. Return your badge designs to your class teacher or the office.
Living and Learning: I can make things better
Year 6’s Creative homework was really impressive this week. They were asked to show how we can make things better and there were all sorts of creative responses with all sorts of different contexts: friendship, the environment, school, home life – the list goes on.
We always enjoy looking at each other’s homework and we write comments in homework books to tell each what we think.
Lots of children liked Sachpreet’s homework – and not just for the great photo of the class back in Reception. They liked how she’d gone through the whole class saying what she felt each person had changed for the better.
Let’s let the dice decide
Year 6 turned their day into a Fighting Fantasy quest on Friday. They let the dice decide.
The dice decided which line came into the classroom first.
The dice decided when we did what lessons.
The dice decided what we ate for lunch.
The dice decided who we played with at breaktime.
It was an interesting day and, although they could choose not to, most children allowed the dice to make all of their decisions.
Quick Sticks hockey
Last week, some of our Year 5 and 6 children took part in the Leeds North East Quick Sticks hockey qualifying festival at Allerton High. Well done to all the children involved and thank you to staff and parents who supported the event.
