Fountains Abbey trip
Today, Y5 and Y6 visited Fountains Abbey as part our Explorers topic. The trip was particularly exciting because each group were able to plan their own exploration of this National Trust site.
Whilst some of us were off exploring the Studley Royal Gardens, the rest of us were spending ‘A Day in the Life of a Monk’. In this fun workshop, led by National Trust volunteers, we visited the abbey, learnt lots about its history and learnt how monks lived their fascinating lives. Did you know that monks considered heating using a fire a luxury? Or, that they had seven church services a day and one in the middle of the night? Even harder to imagine, they lived almost their whole life in silence. (Some of us would certainly struggle with the last one!)
When exploring, we each had a role to play within our group: map-reader, photographer, visitor surveyor, artist and time-keeper. We were in charge of making sure we visited the places of interest the people in our group wanted to see and had to ensure we were back at our ‘base’ at the correct time. It was really fun to politely approach members of the public and carry out a visitor survey (a geography fieldwork skill). Can you believe that someone had travelled all the way from the USA?
To enhance of our geography learning from the classroom, we continued to compare Fountains Abbey with Machu Picchu. We found lots of similarities: they have similarly interesting histories, they are both ruins, they first became ruins in quite similar ways, both places were used by religious people to celebrate a god and we found out that farming was crucial in both places.
We all had a great time and will certainly sleep tonight (the adults will anyway). As always, the children were fantastic ambassadors for our school and we received several compliments from the public.
Here are some quotes from the day:
- ‘I love nature now!’
- ‘It was great that we chose which parts of Fountains Abbey we wanted to explore.’
- ‘My favourite part was learning how a monk loved their life!’
- ‘It was great finding out about the life of a monk!’
- ‘It was really fun to go for a walk in a nice place!’
Phonics Mornings
Don’t forget to attend one of our phonics lessons this week.
Please join us on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning to see your child learn.
Don’t worry if you haven’t signed up yet – just come along!
See you there!
Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about their rights and responsibilities, what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and also two focused weeks – Anti-bullying week (13 November) and Who do you think you are? (20 November).
Our full Living and Learning long term plan is now available on the health pages and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar.
Our new school council
Congratulations to our new school councillors!
We had a record number of candidates this year and there were some very close votes but here are our winning candidates.
Their first meeting will be on Wednesday 08 November.
Well done to all children who prepared a speech. We hope they don’t feel too despondent and are resilient to have another go next time.
Final school council project
Back in July, our Year 5 and 6 school councillors attended the Leeds Youth Voice event at Leeds Civic Hall. They were very keen to share their experience back in school with the school council and also in a whole school assembly. The one idea they wanted to implement back at school was to have a friendship stop.
With the support of the rest of the school council, this is now in place!
This was a great project for the school council to work on as they came to the end of their time as school councillors. Representatives spoke to the whole school in assembly to explain how the friendship stop works.
Ask your child if they have seen the new sign and what they would do if they saw someone at the friendship stop.
Here is a note from Grace who was one of the school councillors that wanted to make this happen.
The friendship bus stop, which is new to our school, is a great chance to make new friends. It encourages people of all age groups to make sure that everyone has someone to play with. The bus stop is located above the bench closest to the entrance to the middle playground. We hope that this idea goes well and that every child uses this correctly. Your child should definitely know what the friendship stop is and how to use it in the right way because it has been discussed during our Friday assembly.
Congratulations!
Congratulations to our new Reception school councillors.
Here they are delivering their manifestos!
Arctic report
We’ve worked hard across Topic and Writing over the last three weeks. As part of our Explorers topic, we decided to find out all about the Arctic. We started off by thinking up questions we’d like answered about this area before sorting them into categories. This created the four subheadings for our report:
- Where and what is the Arctic?
- Its Exploration
- Indigenous Animals
- What does the future hold?
Then, we spent four lessons finding out and making notes. In one lesson, Miss Rushbrooke acted as the expert and taught us all about where and what the Arctic is and we made notes.
We also found out lots about ‘Its Exploration’ through reading; ‘Indigenous Animals’ through internet research (with lots of discussion about reliable sources); and ‘What does the future hold?’ by watching some information videos.
Once we’d gathered everything we needed, we put pen to paper to pass the information on in the form of a report. Here’s Ollie’s first paragraph:
Finally, (that’s right, we’re not done yet) we worked with a partner to thoroughly edit each other’s writing and there was some great teamwork going on.
Fantastic project from Year 6 which they’ve put huge amounts of effort into right from beginning to end.
From Ghosts and Ghouls to Colouring and Councillors – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week’s Living and Learning theme was: “I know I live in a democracy.” Children were tasked with writing a speech to run for School Councillor or a Talk Time about the importance of voting. I was bowled over by the quality of these speeches and the passion and confidence each candidate showed.
There were some fantastically creative campaigns!
A very exciting part of our week was our long-awaited trip to the Forbidden Corner!
Although the excitement seemed to get a bit much for some!
When we arrived after our long journey, the first thing we did was eat our lunch. We were starving and it was only 11:45!
We were even joined by two visitors (but we didn’t let them steal our quackers).
As we begun our journey into the unknown, we felt a little nervous, but we trooped forwards, just like real explorers would!
We even managed to spot Mr Catherall hiding in the trees!
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The Forbidden Corner was a very strange place with bizarre twists and turns. We didn’t know what was coming next!
We were worried we might never get out!
Spot the real statues.
Our explorations proved truly a-maze-ing!
Here is photographic evidence of Year 3 breaking the rules!
We were the kings and queens of the castle! What a lovely view.
Our trip gave us chance to show our teamwork and map reading expertise.
It felt lovely to be outside with nature.
There were some impressive sculptures. This giant woodcutter inspired us to complete some brilliant artwork as you will see below.
His axe was pretty heavy!
This week, we tested our rafts to see if they would float with the weight of five marbles. First, we predicted what would happen and jotted down our method. Some of our rafts successfully floated!
While some of our rafts had a slightly soggy end…
But the experiment was a great learning experience as we discovered which materials floated and which unfortunately sank!
We also tried our hands (or feet) at football, this week.
Of course, we had to practise our celebrations!
To round off our diverse and creative week, we used a photo taken at the Forbidden Corner as an art stimulus. We drew the same picture four times but changed the media used each time: graphite pencil, wax crayon, oil pastel or pencil crayon.
After each drawing, our partner gave us a star and a step for us to improve in the next picture.
This allowed us to experiment with different materials and find out which we liked best; exploring happens in art, too!
What an all-round fantastic half term for Year 3. We’ve made massive amounts of progress in only seven weeks and I look forward to seeing what else is in store.
I hope everyone has a lovely week off. Make sure you keep on exploring!
An apple a day…
…keeps the doctor away!
This week, Mrs Pearson had an abundance of apples falling from her tree in the garden. Rather than waste this delicious, fresh fruit, we decided to put it to good use.
Ready…
Steady…
Bake!
The children set to work washing, peeling and slicing the apples. It was lovely to see great team work. Reading the recipe as they worked, Year 4 were able to measure and weigh ingredients accurately.
After everything was put into the mixture and the pastry rolled and filled, it was time to put our creations into the oven.
Spicy aromas filled the air and after just fifteen minutes our apple turnovers were ready! Delicious
The children really enjoyed their own mini ‘Bake Off’.
School Council excitement
We listened to all of the school councillor candidates yesterday and there were many very impressive speeches.
Today, we entered the polling station first thing and voted for our chosen candidate. Mrs Weekes then added up all of the votes and our new Y6 school councillors were announced in assembly this afternoon. Very well done to Edward and Megan.