Zoom: Reception to Year 1 information meeting
As the weather becomes brighter and we near the end of the academic year you may be thinking about your child’s next steps as they journey into Year 1. Moving to Year 1 is perhaps a less significant change for children, and that’s because we’re a happy and healthy place to learn where we all know each other.
A zoom meeting for parent’s starts our transition process, here you will meet the Key Stage 1 staff and find out about the Year 1 curriculum.
The zoom meeting is on Monday 16 June at 6pm please follow the link that will be emailed to you.
The next step is for your child to spend some time in the Year 1 classrooms. They’ll meet the teachers and join in with the learning, they’ll get a taste of what it’s like to be in Year 1. The whole-school transition, later in July, completes the process, by spending a morning with their new class teacher.
This is a really exciting time of year, moving on and taking those next steps whilst continuing to strengthen the effective learning behaviours they have established in Reception.
Residential Day 3
What an amazing three days we’ve had!
It’s been new, exciting, fun, different, scary, hilarious and tiring! We’ve worked as a team, tried things we’ve never tried before, given it our all, laughed our heads off and come up against a tank of piranhas and lived to tell the tale.
It’s been a blast … Robin Wood 2025, over and out!
Residential Day 2
Design and Technology: Design Criteria
This half term, we are designers. Year 5 learnt about design criteria. Design criteria is ‘the precise features a product must have in order to be successful’. In the lesson, we looked at different items and created what we thought the design criteria would be.
Help at home: Discuss the key vocabulary for this half term.
Summer 2: Week 1
Ahoy, Me Hearties!
This week, we’ve been reading The Night Pirates by Peter Harris. This great book has inspired our learning in the areas of provision. We’ve been building pirate ships in the construction area, making up stories with the pirates, creating pirate hats and collecting treasure at the finger gym table.
Maths
This week, we introduced the Rekenreks to the children. We continued to practise our subitising skills by using our ‘fast eyes’ to subitise the beads on a Rekenrek. A Rekenrek allows the children to further develop their subitising skills as they explore the structure of small numbers.
We know to make sure all the beads are at the right-hand side of the rack. This is called the ‘ready position’. We then pause (think), place (one finger) and push (the beads) using the ‘one finger push’ method.
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called Monkey Babies. We discussed the rhythm of the poem and decided it had a ‘medium’ rhythm. We also could hear lots of rhyming words. See if you can hear the rhyming words when you watch it.
Group 1
Group 2
Super writing!
Every morning, we have a go at writing a caption or a sentence about an interesting picture. We’ve seen some amazing letter formation this week. Here’s some examples…
Help at home: Write a caption or sentence about this picture. You could bring your sentence into school or take a picture of it and send it to moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
Tennis
Yesterday, the children amazed us with their fantastic listening skills during the tennis session. They were very enthusiastic when playing the heads, shoulders, knees and ball game at the start.
This half-term is super busy! Please make sure you make note of the key events happening in Summer 2.
Tennis
Today, Year 2 had a great tennis session with a coach from Roundhay Tennis. This weekend, Roundhay Tennis club are inviting children to attend their free ‘Family Fun Tennis Opens Days’.
Residential
We arrived at Dobroyd Castle after a very excited coach journey and since then it’s been full-on fun!
Today, we’ve taken part in climbing, the night line, archery, trapeze and team challenges alongside having some delicious food.
It’s been amazing to see everyone having so much fun, getting stuck into absolutely everything as well as tackling their own personal challenges in each activity.
Bring on tomorrow!
Reading: Performing Poetry
This week, we’ve been reading a poem called ‘Photograph’ by Roger Stevens.
Roger Stevens is a well-known British poet, author, and musician who has written extensively for children. He has published dozens of poetry collections, both as a solo writer and as an editor of anthologies that bring together poems from a range of voices.
Today, we performed the poem in groups! Here are the R2s:
– tone / emphasis
– vary the pace
– vary the volume
Here’s the photo I took
Last year on the beach
Dad, wearing the tie
I bought him for his birthday
Billy drinking lemonade
The straw up his nose
And Mum, huddled up in her coat
Against the seaside windNow Dad’s in France
And our beach is covered in concrete
And tangled barbed wire
And land mines
In case the Germans invadeBut on that day
We’d just made
The world’s grandest sandcastle
And watched the tide
Rush in
Filling the moat
Gradually washing
The sandcastle away
Living and Learning: exercise!
Our latest Living and Learning sessions have been all about the importance of exercise and how we need to keep active to keep our bodies and our minds healthy.
During the school day, here’s some ways we move our bodies:
Travelling to and from school by walking, bike or scooter
Wake up Shake up
Running around at playtimes
PE: netball
Swimming on a Wednesday
The NHS guidance states that children and young people should ‘aim for an average of at least 60 minutes (30 minutes in school and 30 minutes out of school) of moderate or vigorous intensity physical activity a day across the week’. We know that the exercise we need to do to achieve this, should increase our heart rate.
We spent part of our lesson moving our bodies! We followed this yoga video which also helped us to feel calm and centred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBYhgQnVRGw
Help at home – try a new physical activity out of school – maybe a local junior park run, tennis lessons or have a look at our local physical activity guide for more ideas!
Multiplication Tables Check
Coming up next week, Year 4 will be completing their Multiplication Tables Check (MTC).
They will have to answer 25 times table facts and will have 6 seconds for each question. It will be completed on the iPads.
I am so proud of all the progress Year 4 have made with their times tables this year. They have put in so much time and effort and this is reflected in their fluency.
In preparation for the MTC next week, ensure your children are practising their times tables up to 12s at home. Here are some ideas:
- Visit https://mathsframe.co.uk/en/resources/resource/477/Multiplication-Tables-Check to complete a practice MTC.
- Go on TTRS and do Garage and Soundcheck.
- Ask your child a different times table fact at each meal time.
- Play a game to see who can answer 10 times table facts the quickest.
- Stick some post-it notes around the house with different multiplication facts on.