Big Walk and Wheel
We are taking part in the 15th year celebration of Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel, the UK’s largest inter-school cycling, walking, wheeling and scooting challenge. The challenge runs from 11-22 March 2024. It’s free to take part and we would love everyone to be involved.
Last year, in our category of small primary schools, we finished in 24th place out of 514 schools with an average of 91.14% of our journeys to school being active. We achieved the highest national (24th) and Northern England (5th) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.
What do you need to do?
Encourage your child(ren) to walk, scoot or cycle to school on as many days as possible during the event. Park and stride can also be included if you park at Marks and Spencer or further away from school and walk/scoot or bike the final part.
Why we are taking part
Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is a great way to build physical activity in children’s daily routine which is important for their physical health and mental wellbeing.
Active school journeys also help to reduce congestion and air pollution outside the school gate. A 2021 YouGov study showed nearly half of UK children worry about air pollution near their school. And that children thought active travel was the best away to bring down these pollution levels.
Plus there are some great prizes to be won every day if we get enough children taking part!
Useful resources
To help you prepare, Sustrans has developed a handy free guide to walking, cycling or scooting to school. It is packed with advice to help you have hassle-free journey to school.
Download your free family guide using this link: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/sign-up-to-receive-your-free-school-run-guide/
For more information about the event go to www.bigwalkandwheel.org.uk . Enjoy the challenge!
Dodgeball
In PE, we’ve been honing our dodgeball skills.
We’ve played lots of different versions like Island Dodgeball, Chicken Run and Protect the President.
Help at home by discussing how dodgeball skills transfer to other sports and games.
Check out the action shots below!
Guided Reading Week 1
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 1st March:
Divine Freaks: up to chapter 5/page 55.
Street Child: up to chapter 8/page 64.
How To Train Your Dragon: up to chapter 2/page 28.
The Considine Curse: up to chapter 5/page 38.
Extra Time: up to chapter 10/page 37.
The London Mystery Eye: up to chapter 8/page 60.
Guided Reading Information
Year 5 have been given their guided reading books.
The class have been divided into groups and each group has been given a book to read at home. This will last for this half term.
During our Book Club sessions each Friday, each group will discuss what they have read so far and share their reading record activities related to their book. This will be a fantastic opportunity for the children to explore characters and storylines more than they might do normally!
Every Friday during Book Club, each group will be given a new page to read to for the next Friday. This information will be posted every week on our class news.
What to remember:
- Your child has a book that they need to read every week (up to a chosen point marked with a post-it note).
- The reading record activity needs to be completed using their new book.
- A comment from a grown up needs to be written in their reading record.
- Group reading books and reading records need to be brought in every Friday.
Help at home: listen to your child read their new book and ask questions about the book to help prepare them for class discussions.
I look forward to hearing the children’s discussions next week!
Writing: Francis
This week, Year 5 have started their new writing topic. Over the next two weeks, the children will write a short narrative which creates tension and suspense. We used an animated video as our stimulus which was sourced from the Literacy Shed.
This film is perfect at building tension: the narrator uses pauses and varies the speed at which he speaks in order to build the suspense. As well as speech used to create tension, the music also plays a key part in creating suspense.
Help at home: Watch the video with and without music. How does this alter the tension created?
We are Historians
This week we finished our history topic by looking back at our key concept of trade. We spoke about how we buy things nowadays and how we pay for them. We came up with lots of different ways that we can pay for things: cash, cards, phones and even watches! We looked back at how our grandparents might have paid for things and the difference between then and now.
Finally, we discussed what people did before there was money and coins. People in the distant past traded the things that they has lots of for the things they needed. Then we had a go ourselves. We split into 4 groups and were each given something that we were farming. There was a chicken farm, an apple farm, a milk farm and a carrot farm. We had to trade with the other farmers to get a bit of everything! It was quite difficult at first because we were so eager to trade we gave away all of our produce! After a few goes we were able to trade with the other groups really well and everybody got what they needed. We spoke about the different value of each item and whether they were worth the same amount.
Help at home by discussing what trade means with your child and times they might have traded something.
Spring 2: Week 1
Welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful half-term break. Thank you to those who have emailed some pictures. If you’ve not sent any, please do send them to moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org. Sharing photos from home helps to develop your child’s communication and language skills.
This week, we’ve been reading The Train Ride by June Crebbin. We pretended we were looking out the window on a train. We used our imaginations to think about what we might see.
Yesterday, we learnt about the first locomotive. We used this website to find out lots of information about Robert Stephenson’s Rocket. We looked at different train pictures from the past and present. After talking about what’s the same and what’s different, we had a go at putting them in order from the oldest to the newest.
Help at home: Look at the website again with your child at home. Talk to your child about Stephenson’s Rocket.
Tricky word password
This week, we’ve introduced our new tricky word password. When the children come in and out of the classroom, they have to read the tricky word on the door. We will change the tricky word daily to help children remember the tricky words.
Help at home: Continue to practise reading and writing the phase 2 and 3 tricky words.
Maths
This week, we further developed our comparison skills by looking at different sets. We encouraged the children to focus exclusively on the numerosity of sets, without being diverted by colour, shape or size. We reinforced the language of ‘more than’, ‘fewer than’ and ‘an equal number’ when describing how many objects were in each set. ‘Fewer than’ was used rather than ‘less than’, as the focus was on countable things.
Help at home: Which hand has more pom-poms? Which hand has fewer pom-poms? How do you know?
Poetry Picnic
Click here to watch this week’s poem. We had lots of fun mixing, pouring, frying and tossing pancakes.
We’ve got some exciting events coming up in March!
Monday 04 March – Whole school theatre performance
You should have received a message about this.
Tuesday 05 March – Our first school trip to the National Railway Museum
We are very excited about this!
Thursday 07 March – World Book Day stay and learn session – 9-10am
Come and read a story or two with your child.
Wednesday 13 March – Our class assembly – 2.40pm
Skipping school
This week, Year 2 had a great skipping afternoon with Katie from Skipping School and the children showed great perseverance and resilience during the session.
We learnt all the Year 2 skipping individual and group skills that we’ll be performing at the Year 2 skipping festival in June. More details to follow.
If your child would like to buy a skipping rope to practise these skills at home, they are available in class for a subsidised cost of £3 per rope. We are subsidising the cost with the PE and Sport Premium as a way to encourage physical activity out of school.
Cross country star
Congratulations to our Year 3 runner who represented Leeds today in the West Yorkshire cross country final. Competing against pupils from Calderdale, Bradford, Wakefield, Kirklees and Leeds, he ran a fantastic race at Temple Newsam and should feel very proud of achieving a top 15 finish.
Group reading!
Hello!
This week, Year 3 are beginning their second round of group reading!
The class have been divided into groups and each group has been given a book to read at home. This will last for this half term.
During our Book Club sessions each Friday, each group will discuss what they have read so far and share their reading record activities related to their book. This will be a fantastic opportunity for the children to explore characters and storylines more than they might do normally!
Every Friday during Book Club, each group will be given a new page to read to for the next Friday.
What to remember:
- Your child has a book that they need to read every week (up to a chosen point marked with a post-it notes).
- The reading record activity needs to be completed using their new book.
- A comment from a grown up needs to be written in their reading record.
- Group reading books and reading records need to be brought in every Friday.
Help at home by listening to your child read their new book and ask questions about the book to help prepare them for class discussions.
I look forward to hearing the children’s discussions next week!
Thank you,
Miss Birch
