Class News

School Council Elections

Following in-class election speeches this week, our School Council elections will take place on Thursday, 11 February. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.

Before voting, please read the following:

• Vote once for one person.
• Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
• Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
• When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.

Results will be counted on Thursday and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.

Good luck to all our candidates.

Phonics fun

We’ve been learning about comparatives and superlatives in phonics this morning. We’ve also been learning about one of our key spelling rules: drop the y for an i.

Reading with Reception

Every Friday afternoon since Christmas, Reception have visited us so that we can read to them. They choose a book from their classroom and then enjoy us reading it to them before discussing it together. We enjoy it just as much as they do and have actually started teaching them how to read some easier words, too – it’s been quite challenging remembering our phonics from all those years ago.

A visit from the chicks

We thoroughly enjoyed meeting the chicks on Friday as they ventured into Y5 for a visit. We discussed what sort of animal they were and therefore what we knew about them but mostly we just enjoyed holding them and listening to their cheeping.

How’s our Life topic going?

We’re all enjoying learning about ‘Life’. There’s been oceans of learning this week. We began by sorting animals according to criteria we chose ourselves:

• water, land and air
• colour
• deadly, not deadly
• vertebrate, invertebrate

We then had to try to sort them into which class they belonged to: mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird, fish, insect and plant. There were some animals we disagreed with and we had to learn more about these classes to be able to sort them correctly.

We’ve then focused on life in the ocean, looking at what different types of animals live there and finding out the similarities and differences in their life cycles.

Measuring mass

This morning we’ve been measuring mass using rice, weights and balance scales. 

Mindfulness in Reception

We’ve had a very mindful morning in Reception.

As part of our learning in SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning), we’ve been considering different emotions and how to recognise these feelings in ourselves and others.

When thinking about the emotion of anger we thought about what someone would need to do if they felt angry.

One way to calm down and focus the mind is the starfish meditation and we all had a go.

Starfish Hand Meditation

This is a great way to divert and refocus the mind.

1. Spread your fingers out like a starfish on one hand.
2. Take your finger from the other hand and trace around your fingers and hand.
3. As you do this, concentrate on only how it feels and let other thoughts float away.
4. Continue until you feel relaxed and calm.

At the end of our PE lesson we had some focussed time and practised finger sticks.  Finger sticks, another mindfulness technique, involves co-operation, trust, concentration and focus.  There was some great partner work.

Meanwood Park orienteering

This week, linking with their learning about owls, Year 3 helped to create two of the owl markers for a new orienteering project at Meanwood Park.

Further details about the trail will follow once the rest of the owls, from other local schools, are ready and in place.

A moment of mindfulness

After a busy lunchtime, Year 2 had a moment of mindfulness to get focussed for the afternoon’s learning.

Starfish Hand Meditation

This is a great way to divert and refocus the mind.

1. Spread your fingers out like a starfish on one hand.
2. Take your finger from the other hand and trace around your fingers and hand.
3. As you do this, concentrate on only how it feels and let other thoughts float away.
4. Continue until you feel relaxed and calm.

Owl report

As part of our Life topic, we have written a report about owls as a class. We split into groups to write different paragraphs and this is what we came up with.

Owls

Owls are known for being wise like Winnie the Pooh’s friend Wise Owl. Interestingly, owls can’t actually turn their heads all the way around. Funnily enough, some schools have owls on their logo because they’re popular. Read this interesting report to find out amazing facts about owls.

Appearance

Interestingly, owls don’t have feet. They have sharp talons that grab their prey silently at night. They have brown, white and sometimes grey feathers which help them to camouflage. They have large, round eyes and pointed beaks.

Habitat

Interestingly, owls usually live near or in woods. They also live in the green wide countryside and nest in tall trees. This is because they need to stay away from large predators below. Shockingly, moist owls nest in long, green grass in the countryside so that they can hide from their prey.

Diet

Owls eat tiny insects, small birds, worms and mammals. Owls hunt at night because they are nocturnal. Owls eat their prey and regurgitate the indigestible parts. Owls eat smaller birds than themselves. Owls live in trees to try and find their prey.