Forest School
Year 6 have started Forest School again. Whilst today was once again raining, hopefully the next few weeks will be better weather. However, please remember to send your child in with waterproof clothing and a change of shoes.
Today, the children played tug of war, made toast on an open fire and practised their fire making skills.
RE: Drop Down Morning
This year, Year 5 have already had 2 RE Drop Down Mornings. These are designed to recap learning over the course of a whole morning so that children can better remember key information. In Autumn term, we learnt about Christianity and then we learnt about Islam in Spring. This morning, it was the turn of Judaism.
We learnt about the history of Judaism and where Jewish people live today. We also learnt about what Jewish people believe and what is important to them. Finally, we summarised our learning across all three drop down mornings by sorting statements into a three way Venn diagram.
I have been very impressed with the children’s knowledge and understanding in this subject.
Help at home by asking your child to name the Abrahamic religions. What do they have in common?
Phonics Screening Checks.
After another wonderful week, our Year 1s have finished their Phonics Screening Checks. We are delighted with what we saw and every single one of the children should be very proud of themselves. They have worked very hard over the year on their phonics, it has shown and it has paid off. Well done Year 1, you are all stars!
Enjoy your hard earned rest over the weekend (and thank you parents for all the extra work you have done at home!)
D:Side Visit
Today, Year 4 were lucky to have a workshop from D:Side all about staying safe online – particularly when playing online games.
Not everything we see online is trustworthy and your children were great at identifying that! With the rise in AI, it’s more important than ever that we’re critical consumers of online content. We also discussed how not everyone online is who they say they are so we must always speak to a trusted adult if we are unsure or feel unsafe online.
Although the internet is great for many things, we must make sure we are using it safely. For example, your children love playing lots of online games (which can be great fun) but sometimes they also introduce some risks. That is why they have age restrictions based on what content is included in the games.
In Year 4, we should only be playing games that are rated ages 3 or 7. This is because they have content that is appropriate for our age.
We were all really impressed with your children’s knowledge of how to stay safe online. It was great to hear all their contributions for how we can also make sure we’re being safe and responsible online.
Help at home: ask your child what they could do to check if something they see online is true.
PE: Tennis
This half term, we are learning skills to help us with Tennis.
We begin the lesson by warming up. This prepares our bodies and muscles for movement during the learning.
We have 5 minutes to explore using the tennis raquets and balls. Can we keep the ball up for 10 bounces? Can we stop the ball with the raquet?
We practise a key skill. This could be hitting the ball back to a partner, bouncing the ball before we hit it or having a ready position.
We end the lesson with a team game where we may not even use the raquets! Possession ball is great example of this where we want to keep the ball on our team.
Help at home by practising the ready position when catch a ball. Hands in a ‘W’ shape, feet shoulder width a part and eyes on the ball.
Food Technology: summer garden salad
Today, Year 3 made a summer garden salad! The children prepared the ingredients, assembled the salad and ate almost all of it.
We used the bridge and claw cutting skills to cut up all the vegetables. The bridge was best for the new potatoes and the cherry tomatoes. The claw was more suitable for the gem lettuce leaves and cucumber.
The carrot was grated to keep it fine and we boiled the new potatoes until they were soft!
We stayed safe by using these skills and taking our time.
After we assembled all of the vegetables, we whisked together the oil and vinegar for the dressing.
Everyone tried it and the majority of us loved it! The dressing made it flavoursome and we liked the colours of all the ingredients.
Help by making it again at home! The recipe has been sent home with the children. Can you add something new? Could you try a different dressing?
Year 2 skipping festival
Today, the day had finally come. It was the event we had been building up to after all our skipping practicing – the Year 2 Skipping Festival!
Jodi, Chris and Adele welcomed us and the other five schools to the event at Armley Leisure Centre. First of all, there was a skipping warm up for everyone before the individual skippers did their events. The children were so encouraging and supportive to their class mates and every child tried their best and performed amazingly well.
Next, it was time for the group events. The children worked so well together in their teams and once again, we were so proud of what they have achieved. Even in the last few days, we have seen some of the children mastering these new skills.
Finally, it was time for the results. Sadly, we weren’t the winning school but we were so pleased to have received so many awards.
The children have been so resilient, responsible with their practising, determined and have definitely believed in themselves (even when it has been hard learning new skills) and we are very proud of them all.
I enjoyed the skipping festival because we got to do more skipping and try new skills.
I enjoyed the skipping festival because I liked waiting to hear who had won the certificates.
I thought skipping was hard and sometimes I got stuck but that is ok.
I liked the skipping festival because at the start of the year I thought I couldn’t do the skipping but then I discovered that I could skip all along.
I liked it because I improved my skipping skills.
I liked the skills we learnt and my favourite is backwards hop and swop.
Production: The Amazing Adventures of Superstan!
This week, we have been practising our brilliant production. The children have been acting, singing and will soon be dancing!
Please make sure you bring your costumes and props outlined – in this week’s letter – to school no later than Wednesday 24th June, in a named plastic bag. If you don’t have any of the items listed for your role, please let an adult in Year 5 or Year 6 know before the 24th.
Keep practising your lines at home and get into the character you are portraying!
Thanks everyone!
Skipping Festival Final!
Yesterday, Year 4 went to Morley to participate in the Leeds Skipping Festival Final and they did an absolutely incredible job! We’re all so proud of them. The determination, passion, teamwork and support they showed between one another was outstanding. They cheered each other on when some were feeling a bit nervous and celebrated all the super skippers.
We won some medals on the individual skips and for our whole class skip dance! Everybody did a fantastic job and it was a really fun day out.
I’m super proud of all of Year 4 for trying their best and representing Moortown so brilliantly.
Maths – Time
We’ve been really busy learning how to tell the time! We’ve looked at which hand on a clock is the minute hand (the longer one) and which is the hour hand (the shorter one). We’re starting to recognise o’clock, quarter past, half past and quarter to and we’re even beginning to tell the time to the nearest 5 minutes. We’ve been using clocks to practise telling the time in a hands-on way, which the children have really enjoyed. We’re so impressed with how well they’re picking up this new skill!
Help at home – please keep practising telling the time as much as you can using a clock with hands.
