Autumn 2: Week 2
Nursery Rhyme Week
This week, we celebrated Nursery Rhyme Week! In Literacy, we read Each Peach, Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. We had so much fun carefully exploring the illustrations to spot all the different nursery rhyme characters hidden on each page.
On Wednesday, we looked at household objects from the past and the present. We talked about how they are similar and different.
This week’s chilli challenges were all linked to our nursery rhyme theme. Take a look at some of the wonderful learning in action…
Phonics
This week, we learnt four new graphemes: v, w, x, and y. The children are really enjoying their daily phonics sessions and are becoming super readers!
Help at home:
Practise reading the tricky words we’ve learnt so far. You could make it fun by playing a Tricky Word Hunt around your home. Hide the words and see how quickly your child can find and read them!
Living and Learning
Our Living and Learning statement this week is: I follow our school rules: We’re ready.
We have been exploring what it means to be ready – showing good looking, good listening, good sitting and good body language. The children are fantastic at being ready to learn – well done, Reception!
Help at home: Talk together about what being ready looks like at home. For example, being ready to help or being ready for school.
Reminder
Next Tuesday is our Maths Stay & Learn session for parents. Once the children are settled on the carpet, we’ll invite you into the classroom to watch a short maths session. After that, there’ll be a variety of maths challenges for you to enjoy with your child. To finish the session, I’ll deliver a short presentation all about maths in Reception. We look forward to seeing you there!
Art: Figurative vs Abstract
To start off this topic, we looked at our featured artists: Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Thomas J Price. We were able to see their work on our trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
We’ve then continued our history of art journey by analysing whether art is figurative or abstract.
Help at home: Asking your child to define these terms. Is there another piece of art around your home that you could place on the table above and why? Or, discuss the key vocabulary for this topic. Can you use it in a sentence?
Reading: performing Varjak Paw
This week, Year 4 have been reading the start of Varjak Paw by S.F Said. This is a narrative all about a special cat who is locked in a house and dreams of escaping and exploring the outside world.
Today, we became actors and performed the first chapter of the novel. Our R2s (remember tos) for this performance were…
- show clearly who the character is
- showing the events of the extract
- project voice
- voice intonation
Year 4 did a brilliant job! I was so impressed by their acting skills and voice projection.
Help at home: read with your child at home and ask them to summarise the chapter they’ve read. You could even act a little bit out together!
PE: Gymnastics
This half term, we become gymnasts!
Travelling as been our focus for this week, where we’ve practised moving around the space in different ways: high, low, wide, narrow, with many points of contact and few. We also has a lesson today using the equipment; we explored the apparatus with controlled and balanced movements.
Next week, we will perform sequences of travelling using benches!
Book club – group reading
Hello!
This week, we are beginning 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.
Any questions – please ask. Thank you!
Living and Learning: Me and My Money week
Last week, we enjoyed the first of our two Living and Learning based themed weeks all about money. This learning forms part of our Living and Learning curriculum.
What money do we use?
We identified and compared the different coins and notes we use in this country. We also compared the cost of every day items from a banana to a house!
Why is money an important part of people’s lives?
Money is important because…
People use money to buy the things they need to survive like shelter, food and water.
You can donate to charities.
You can save for something that you want.
If people don’t have money, they might be homeless or not have food to eat.
How do people use money?
People make different choices with their money.
Some people choose to donate money. On Monday, we had a visitor from Yorkshire Air Ambulance, our current school charity, who shared how donations help the charity.
We finished the week with some fundraising events for Yorkshire Air Ambulance – Hotshots and our penny trail. Thank you for all your donations so far. Hotshots sponsor money can be added to School Gateway by Friday 14th November.
Who will be our new school charity?
Then, it was time to think about our next school charity. We thought about what charities are, who or what they help and how we can help charities.
We discussed our shortlist of charities and after that, all the children made a democratic decision by voting for their chosen charity. Our junior leaders took that choice to the JLT meeting and a final vote took place.
We are pleased that our class choice, Martin House Children’s Hospice, is now our new school charity for the forthcoming year.
Help at home: discuss this important learning with your child at home to consider how they use money and why money is important.
Living and Learning: Hotshots sponsorship event
To finish off our Me and My Money themed week, all the school took part in a Hotshots event, led by PE Partner, to raise money for our school charity, Yorkshire Air Ambulance.
Can I just say how fantastic all the children were in every year group! It was amazing to see them all encouraging each other, no matter their ability. When the children were up for their turn, who maybe football isn’t their forte, the rest of the children were so supportive with their cheering and encouragement. It was fantastic! You should be very proud of them all!
Living and Learning: Penny trail
It was great to see the generosity and enthusiasm of the children during our Me and My Money themed week to try and fill their class collecting tubes. They were filling up by the end of the week.
On Friday, all the classes ventured into the playground to use their pennies to create a huge ‘Moortown’ penny trail. We had so many 1ps and 2ps that we ended up doubling and tripling up our coins.
The total amount raised for Yorkshire Air Ambulance was a fantastic £123.53 so thank you for your donations.
Anti-Bullying Day!
Today, we celebrated Anti-Bullying and Odd Socks Day as part of Anti-Bullying Week.
We all wore odd socks to school to show that it’s okay to be different and to stand up against discrimination and bullying. At Moortown, we always celebrate diversity and wearing odd socks was a fun way to show this today!
In Year 4, we had some important conversations around what bullying is and what to do if we experience it. We like to use the acronym STOP to help us remember.
We discussed where your children could get support regarding bullying:
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email [email protected]
We attended a live online lesson held by CBBC all about this years theme ‘power for good’. This is all about using out power for the right reason to stand against bullying. Year 4 came up with our own pledge to stop bullying.
Help at home: have an open discussion about bullying at home. What is bullying? What should you do if you experience bullying? How can bullying make somebody feel? How can we resolve conflict respectfully?
Living and Learning: anti-bullying day and odd socks day
We kicked off anti-bullying day with our odd socks to celebrate that we are all unique and different.
Odd socks day is a celebration to show that we are all different and that makes us unique.
We are wearing odd socks today because we are all different and we should be treated fairly.
Odd socks day shows that we are all different. We should respect everyone no matter what they look like
We explored our school definition of bullying, created by our junior leaders, by looking at what some of the words meant.
What are the different types of bullying?
Our school definition helped us understand the different types of bullying – physical (hurting someone’s body), emotional (hurting someone’s feelings) or cyber bullying (online).
We also considered the role of bystanders and their responsibility to start telling other people.
The story #Goldilocks looks at how we should treat everyone with respect whether it is in person or online.
How can you STOP bullying?
We used our weekly circle time to think about the role we all have to STOP bullying. Year 2 had some excellent suggestions.
Our main message is Start Telling Other People and to continue to do that until you are heard.
You can stop bullying by…
respecting others
telling the bully to stop if you are a bystander.
telling a trusted adult.
asking a lunchtime helper to help.
standing up for others.
letting everyone join in and not leaving people out.
being kind to people and not hurting them.
helping the person being bullied and take them to an adult.
being resilient and saying STOP.
ignoring the bully, walk away and don’t say anything back to them.
Using positive words and actions can also help to prevent bullying by creating a happy and healthy school.
We thought about some positive words and actions we could use to stop bullying.
How can you get help?
Seeking help can be done in a number of different ways.
Who could you tell? (taken from our child friendly anti-bullying policy)
- Safeguarding team – Mrs Weekes, Mr Wilks, Mrs Russell and Mrs Szczepanska
- Any other members of staff
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email [email protected]
The children thought about who they would tell if they needed to Start Telling Other People.
Help at home: discuss our school definition of bullying with your child. Do they know the difference between falling out and bullying, and between a one-off situation and something that’s happened more than once?