Being healthy themed week
We’re gearing up for a busy, active Being Healthy themed week, next week.
With lots of activities and visitors planned for the children, there are also some ways for you to get involved. Firstly we have our health fair on Monday after school, open to all children and parent/carers.
Ocean Awareness Day
The whole school took to the seas on Wednesday 20 June, exploring the world’s oceans for the day and what is currently happening to them.
Reception created some fantastic art using plastic bags and some of them chose to do some writing set in the ocean. Here’s a taster of Freya’s story for you:
Once upon a time there was a whale called Shamoo. She loved being in the water especially in the sea and making friends. She loved going on adventures around the whole sea…
Year 1 and 2 investigated how salty our seas are working with our Polar Ambassador, Terry Kirk.
They also created some fantastic wave art using watercolour and wrote some lovely ocean shape poems.
Year 3 and 4 also wrote shape poems and they learnt about what lives in the deepest parts of our ocean, even creating their own weird and wonderful deep ocean creatures.
Year 3 and 4 thought about the effect of plastic on our oceans and use the bottle tops we’d collected from the milk we have every day to create their own plastic ocean art in order to raise awareness of just how much plastic we get through as a school.
In Year 5 and 6, they investigated how we explore under the sea and debugged some coding in order to make a submarine automatically photograph underwater creatures. They also learnt about what plastic does to our ocean and the creatures that live in it. Over two days, Mr Catherall and Miss Rushbrooke collected an alarming amount of plastic from school and the adult who work here. Using this, Year 5 and 6 created a collage of an ocean creature, again to raise awareness of just how much plastic we use everyday.
Year 6 also worked together to write a letter to Kirkstall market asking them to stop using plastic bags as it’s a great place for people to shop without plastic but the bags they provide make this difficult.
It was a great day which taught us a lot and got us thinking about what we could do to help look after our planet and the other creatures that live here.
Musical mood!
We’ve had a marvellous musical morning! The children listened to two different pieces of music (Morning Mood by Grieg and O Fortuna by Carl Orff). We discussed how the music made us feel and how we could represent our feelings using different colours and mark making.
Here are some comments from our discussion:
“I would use red because you go red in the face when you are sad and red is angry.”
“The song made me feel calm and made me think of whales in the ocean.”
“It made me think of erupting volcanoes!”
We had a fantastic morning filled with conversation and the arts!
Talk to your child about what colour they are feeling.
Water safety
From this year, schools are required to publish how many Year 6 pupils have met the national curriculum requirements relating to swimming and water safety.
National Curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety:
- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
- use a range of strokes effectively
- perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.
Following recent consultation about these attainment targets, and to ensure that all Year 6 children have met National Curriculum requirements for water safety, the class will be taking part in a water safety session on Friday 13 July.
Roundhegians Open Day
Roundhegians Rugby Club, who kindly host our annual sports day and other sporting fixtures, are having an open day on Saturday 7th July.
Being Healthy themed week 2 July
Our next whole school themed week, based around Being Healthy, will be taking place from Monday 2 July 2018. Our key message will be how to be healthy; both physically and emotionally. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education. We are looking forward to a very busy, healthy week!
Our School Council have been considering ways to support our school charity, Make-A-Wish, and as skipping has been taking off at school, we will be running a beat your personal best skipping challenge. On Friday 6 July, this will culminate in a Make-A-Wish day with all children invited to wear blue and bring a £1 donation to support our charity while trying to beat our personal bests.
There are also some opportunities for parents and carers to get involved in the week.
Monday 02 July 3:15pm – 4:15pm Health fair
Our Health and Sports Fair in the hall is to promote health and sport opportunities and services in the local area.
Come along with your child/children after-school to find out more.
Tuesday 03 July Sports day Key Stage 2 9:30am Reception/Key Stage 2 1:30pm
You are welcome to come along to support our annual sports day at Roundhegians RUFC. We require adults to help walk the children to Roundhegians so please contact the office if you can help with this.
Thursday 05 July 2:30pm – 3:15pm d:side drug education parent information session
Dave Hill from d:side, a health education provider, will be running an information session about drug education following his sessions with all classes during our themed week. Parents and carers from all year groups are welcome to attend. Please contact the office if you would like to reserve a place.
Following our recent walk to school week and the Big Pedal scooter and bike week, this themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active ways to travel to school. We will be encouraging children to use a sustainable method of transport, maybe parking further away from school, scooting, biking or walking to school.
Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of health? If you are able to support our Being Healthy themed week by coming into school, please contact your child’s class teacher directly or the office to arrange this.
Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy and healthy school.
Scarab Beetles
As part of our Ancient Egypt topic, we’ve been learning about scarab beetles and why they were so sacred.
We made our own.
It all started with designing what we wanted our beetle to look like.
Next up, we had to make the beetle out of clay by choosing the right tools for the job.
After they’d dried, we painted them our chosen colours. Red signified the god, Ra. Yellow symbolised the sun and the desert while blue symbolised the Nile. Green was the symbol for growth.
Here are some discussion questions for you and your child:
- What tools did you use and why?
- What went well?
- What would you change or improve for next time?
- What was your favourite part?
- What would be a top tip for someone else?
Assessing
At the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage each year, schools must report how each child has achieved across 17 different areas. Whilst the government plans to introduce a statutory assessment on a screen, at the moment this assessment is based on teachers’ (and other adults’) observations of what a child can do, and anything the child might do on paper and in books.
Because it’s teachers assessing, there’s obviously room for different judgements and interpretations. That’s why Mrs Burke and her team attend lots of meetings across the year to share assessments with other schools – we call this ‘moderation’.
Every four years, Leeds City Council also carries out some moderation, and it was Moortown’s turn this year. The meeting went well – teacher assessments were agreed. Here are the conclusions of the report:
The provision in the setting was well thought out and provided a variety of challenges for a range of abilities. The wood work station was a particular strength and gave the moderator some solid evidence around moving and handling [one of the 17 strands] and shape, space and measure [another strand].
Floor books were used to encourage children to contribute their ideas in the construction area.
Practitioners that participated in moderation had a sound knowledge of all the children discussed and could identify the next steps in their learning.
The profile of [a child with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities] included some effective examples showcasing the learning journey of that child and how provision is planned for his specific needs.
From a floor book based around ‘the world’, it was clear that practitioners plan a wide range of experiences to move learning forward such as hatching chicks and potion making.
There are two ‘next steps’, neither of which relates to the quality of our provision: to gather greater evidence for children in a particular strand, and to continue to involve parents / carers:
It was agreed it would be useful to capture more responses and comments from children to add in to the maths floor book together with more of their mathematical graphics. This would provide useful additional evidence for both strands of maths throughout the year. The moderator suggested keeping a note, for example, on a class list of which children had contributed so that the book provides evidence for all learners over time.
The reception teacher is considering other ways to involve parents and gather additional evidence from home.
Well done to Mrs Burke and all her team – and to our wonderful 2017-18 Reception children.
Ocean Awareness Day
Yesterday was Ocean Awareness Day for Moortown Primary School!
First, we had an assembly to discuss the importance of the ocean which got us thinking about the small things we can do at home to protect it. One huge problem for our environment is our use of plastic. You can find more information from our trusty First News source here.
Talk to your child about the small changes you could make to do your bit. We talked about:
- purchasing a reusable bag for life
- requesting glass milk bottles
- using paper straws
To celebrate Ocean Awareness Day, we designed our own sea creature and wrote a report about it. Here are some of our weird and wonderful results!
The reports were pretty good, too!
Next up, we created some Ocean poetry in the style of shape poems. (Some of us got to read them in the afternoon assembly, too!)
Finally, we gathered in the hall to create some whole class artwork using recycled milk bottle lids. First, we made the shape of some ocean dwellers in small groups…
…before making a gigantic dolphin as a team!
The likeness to a real dolphin wasn’t an accident – we did it on porpoise!
For more ways you can help at home, check out tips to use less plastic.
Ocean Awareness Day in Y5
Written by Isaac Cooper (in collaboration with Mr Catherall)
Year 5 had a whale of a time on Ocean Awareness Day. After looking at some awful pictures about the effect plastic waste can have on our ocean we tried to make a change.
One of our favourite activities was making a huge whale of plastic rubbish donated by some members of staff and some of our class (thank you to anyone who contributed).
We were learning about the negative effect plastic has on our oceans so we decided to recycle the plastic waste as a whale. Here is our finished product…
When you look at this think about these questions:
Why would you pollute our ocean?
Why would you throw rubbish on the floor?
Why would you do this to the animals?
After this, we made posters to raise awareness.
Finally, we used scratch to think about how the ocean can be explored.
What a great day!