Living and Learning: body image
Body image, as part of our Living and Learning curriculum, uses a focus on self-esteem to promote a positive body image. There is a strong emphasis on appreciating and celebrating everyone’s unique qualities, talents and abilities.
We want to enable pupils to feel proud and confident about who they are and to value their own and each other’s individuality.
Firstly, we talked about what makes us special. This could be something physical or personal.
I’m special as I am kind to my friends.
I’m special because I can do lots of different skipping skills.
I’m special because I try hard on TTRS.
I’m special as I can run fast.
I’m special because I’m good at helping others.
Next, we discussed why we have names and what if everyone was nameless?
If we didn’t have names, we wouldn’t be as special as we are.
We have names because we are unique and special.
We need names as we wouldn’t know who people are.
Then, we considered why we like different activities.
We like different activities because we are different people.
Not everyone likes the same thing because we are all different.
It would be boring if everyone liked the same things.
Finally, we thought about why we look different and what things we can change and what things we can’t change about ourselves.
It’s always great to hear the children discussing and sharing ideas in our Living and Learning sessions and circle times.
Help at home: Listen to this text, Your Body is Awesome, with your child. What is brilliant about their body?
Design and Technology: sewing!
This week, we’re sewing together our two pieces of fabric to create our pouch.
One piece is longer than the other so that there is a closing flap for a button or piece of velcro.
We’ve been very resilient and great team players. Lots of us having been helping our friends to tie the knots in their thread and thread their needles.
Here’s some of our work in progress!
Design Technology: I can use tools and materials to add applique to my product.
This week, Year 5 have been adding applique to their cushions. Applique means ‘pieces of fabric sewn or stuck on to a larger piece to form a picture or pattern. The children were mostly using running stitch to add this. They have been incredibly resilient in this work and not giving up after tying SO many knots.
Take a look at their work:
Help at home: Donate an old piece of clothing that we can use to stuff our cushions. We want to be sustainable and therefore recycle old material. The piece of clothing will be cut up so make sure you won’t want it back!
Staying Safe themed week
Our next whole school themed week, based around Staying Safe, will be taking place next week. 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); staying safe around dogs (Dogs Trust); first aid (Leeds Beckett and Red Cross); safety in our community (PCSOs) and e-safety (d:side).
Here are some events taking place.
Monday 08 July 3pm – 3:30pm d:side e-safety drop in information session
A representative from d:side, a health education provider, will be available to discuss e-safety issues and details of your child’s e-safety learning in the themed week.
Thursday 11 July 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. This is a first come first served event.
Friday 12 July 2:35-3:15pm Leeds Beckett University Carnegie Great Outdoors basic first aid session for parents/carers – there are limited places available so please confirm your place via school gateway.
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 Love2Shop 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 moortownoffice@spherefederation.org). Photos should be sent by 4pm on Thursday 11 July and winners will be announced on Friday 12 July.
Due to the rising costs of visitors to school, this year, we are requesting a voluntary contribution of £1 per pupil to go towards paying for visitors. This can be made on school gateway. 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.
Year 2 reading assembly
Sports day
It’s been a busy sporting week for Year 2 with our skipping festival, the Olympic Event at Leeds Beckett for some children and sports day at Roundhegians Rugby Club this Tuesday 02 July.
The children have been told their teams and their races but please come and see us if you want to check this.
If possible, they will need to come in a t-shirt of their team colour on Tuesday. We can provide a bib instead if this isn’t possible.
There is an important update about access to Roundhegians Rugby Club.
We’ve been advised that the normal vehicle access and car park for Roundhegians is currently out of use due to building work taking place at the clubhouse.
Instead, access will be through the gate on High Moor Avenue. This will mean there will be limited on street parking so please walk to the venue if you can.
You’re welcome to bring chairs/rugs to enjoy the morning/afternoon’s events.
We hope to see you there at 1:30pm on Tuesday.
Leeds Industrial Museum – Armely Mills
Yesterday, Year 4 embarked on our last school trip of the year! We visited Armely Mills; the museum was full of amazing, old machines that take wool from a sheep and make it into fabric.
Each class had a weaving workshop where they carded wool to make it smooth and straight. This used to be done by hand or, in the later years, by machines! Back in Victorian times, children as young as 7 were working on the machines… We decided that we’d much rather be in school learning!
Finally, we had a go at weaving ourselves. When we weave, there are two threads called a weft and a warp that go in different directions. The weft goes from left to right and the warp goes from top to bottom. We weaved a variety of fabric to create some beautiful weaves!
We spent the rest of the day exploring the other parts of the museum and the gardens.
A fun-filled day had by all!
Help at home by watching this BBC Bitesize video about weaving. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015x4s/bitesize-daily-79-year-olds-art-89-year-olds-3-weaving
Living and Learning: healthy me and my body
In Living and Learning, we’ve been learning about our bodies.
The question we have been thinking about is: how are females and males different?
We came up with lots of ideas about how they are different but actually decided that many females and males have lots of similarities. For example; favourite colours, hobbies or hair colour.
One thing we decided that is definitely different is the body parts.
Year 4 discussed how animals (including humans) have different bodies for different reasons. For example, females can produce milk for their young whether they are a cow or a cat.
It’s important that we know the names of our body parts and that they belong to us. We reminded ourselves of the NSPCC pants rule:
Help at home by naming as many body parts as possible! How many can you name?
Summer 2: week4
PE
We have been practising our races for sports day again this week. The children are really enjoying using the different equipment and developing new skills!
English
This week’s book is called Clean Up. It is about a girl called Rocket who cleans up the beach whilst on holiday. It has inspired the children to clean up our school. They have been proud litter pickers picking up any rubbish that they find and using it to make creations in the classroom. They have been using the word of the week (pollution) whilst discussing what they have been doing and why.
Help at home: by using our word of the week with your child.
Maths
This week we have been discovering bonds to 5. The children have been making these and using the sentence stem:
5 is made from …. and …..
…. and …. combine to make 5
We have also been singing lots of songs including five little speckled frogs to consolidate this learning.
Reminders
Next week is a busy week. We have sports day, meet the teacher, our school trip and the summer fair.
KS1 and KS2 Olympic Event
Today, a group of KS1 and Year 5/6 pupils took part in the East & North East Leeds Well School Partnership KS1&2 ‘Olympic’ Event at Leeds Beckett University.
Our KS1 children completed a 10-station skills circuit carousel on the pitch in the middle of the track while our KS2 children took part in athletic track and field events.
Well done to all the children for giving 100% in all of the activities and learning new skills in such a great sporting setting.
It was really fun and we got to do a mixture of events. There was something for everyone.
I thought all the activities were really good. My favourite was the skipping.
We had chance to run around the big track.
It was all about having fun and cheering on your team.
