Democracy
Today, Year 2 did a fantastic job delivering their speeches to be elected for the Junior Leadership Team (JLT). The children prepared some wonderful speeches with brilliant ideas. Every child had their democratic vote by deciding who they’d like to see represent our class in the JLT.
Well done to Isla and Henna for being voted as our new members of the JLT.
Science: Space
Year 5 have now started their second science topic: Space! This week, we have learnt about our Solar System.
Here are some key facts we learnt:
- The Solar System is made up of the Sun, celestial bodies, eight planets and their moons.
- The Sun, Earth, Moon and other planets are approximately spherical bodies.
- The Sun is a star which releases heat and light and is at the centre of the Solar System.
- All of the planets in our Solar System orbit the Sun.
- The first four planets have solid surfaces whilst the last four planets have gas surfaces.
• Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars all have solid surfaces.
• Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have gas surfaces. - Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.
Then, we carried out research using secondary sources (a form of scientific enquiry). We used this information to create posters about the order of the planets and wrote down more key facts about each one.
Finally, we made mnemonics to remember the order in which the planets orbit the sun.
Help at home: Come up with a new mnemonic to remember the order of our solar system. Here is an example:
Mercury My
Venus Very
Earth Epic
Mars Marvellous
Jupiter Jumper
Saturn Suits
Uranus Unique
Neptune Neil
Or why not watch the ‘we are planets’ song.
Geography – I can investigate land-use in my locality. Part 2!
Last week, during Geography, we planned a walk in our locality so that we could investigate what the land is used for. This week, we walked the walked!
Here are the types of land-use we saw:
- residential – flats and houses
- commercial – shops and restaurants
- recreational – Moortown Park
- transport – roads
We really enjoyed getting our steps in while being geographers! We stayed safe by wearing high-visibility jackets, walking in pairs and taking care when crossing the roads.
Yorkshire Dance School Trip!
Yesterday, Year 3 went on their trip to Carriageworks Theatre to join Yorkshire Dance School in a day full of great activities!
Our first task of the day was to rehearse our performance on stage with lighting and music. The children were a bit nervous after seeing how many seats there were in the audience but they did a fantastic job!
Then, we had a talk from Northern School of Contemporary Dance and Phoenix Dance about a career in dance. They spoke about dancing at all different stages of life and how inclusive dance is! They also discussed how dance can be just a hobbie as well. Both these schools run clubs during the holidays, after school and in schools!
Before lunch, the children experienced an amazing workshop where they learnt and performed Afro dance which originates from Africa and countries like Nigeria! The children got stuck in and created a choreographed dance from their six moves.
Finally, the day ended with our final performance! We performed a dance to the song, Believer by the Imagine Dragons. We chose this as we thought it linked well to the theme of ‘dreaming’ – that we can dream to achieve great things and if we believe in ourselves then we will achieve them. Year 3 were the youngest there and they had the whole audience cheering and clapping along so a big well done to all of them! Our hard work paid off!
Writing – expanded noun phrases!
We’re going to use the Eye of the Storm to write a narrative.
In order to do so, we have to practise certain skills. Imagine you’re making a cake – you need all the required ingredients for it to taste nice!
This week, we’ve focused on expanded noun phrases alongside discussing the film. We’ll move onto figurative language later in the week.
Check out our creative collaborations below!
Help at home by deciding whether the following options are expanded noun phrases:
- many taunting, twisted branches above me
- Shackling the beast to the furnace, he returned to his navigation with hope ignited within.
- Two ominous, jet-black clouds rumbled nearby.
- several icy bullets of rain
Book Club Drama
Book Club was ace this week!
There were some incredible examples of this week’s Fact File activity and every single person had a comment / signature from their adult – really impressive stuff, Y6.
We also looked at how many challenges we’d completed so far (which resulted in lots of star jump reading in class!) and some of our book reviews for this year.
We finished with some drama linked to our class novel: Survivors. Can you guess which scenes are being acted out below?
Help at home by discussing our class novel.
- Which has been their favourite chapter?
- Which would they recommend to you?
- Which parts have been the most exciting and why?
Tom Palmer local events
This year, some children at school attended an online workshop with author Tom Palmer. Tom Palmer has been in touch to let us know about some local events he is attending in half term.
Message from Tom
For children and families – I am also coming to Leeds on Thursday 2 November
2023 :
* Farsley Book Festival – 10am-11am more here
https://trumanbooks.co.uk/event/flf-kids-day
* Chapel Allerton Library – 2pm
* Pudsey Community Hub and Library – 4pm
Wednesday 18th – Yorkshire Dance at Carriageworks Theatre!
Hello!
As you will know, Year 3 have their school trip this Wednesday 18th to the Carriageworks Theatre.
During this trip, Year 3 will have two workshops and experiences that Yorkshire Dance are leading. These will be active and engaging! In the afternoon is the performances where each school with perform their dance that they have been practising at school.
In between these sessions, will be lunch time where we will eat, drink and relax. Please make sure your child has a packed lunch and a water bottle. They should also be wearing PE kit so that they are comfortable to move throughout the activities.
Reminder that they won’t need swimming kits as we are out all day!
We’re looking forward to it!
Miss Birch
Writing: Non-Chronological Reports
For the past couple of weeks, Year 5 have been planning, writing and publishing their own non-chronological reports about a fictional city. The children were able to create their own made-up city and their task was ‘to give information’ (the purpose of a report).
Their writing needed to link to some of our geography learning (urban green spaces and city expansion) as well as contain parenthesis and a variety of sentence starters.
Have a look at some of our fantastic work:
Help at home: Look at this class post and the children’s work, try to spot parenthesis and a variety of sentence starters.
Living and learning: Respect
Over the past fortnight in Living and Learning we have been discussing respect. First of all we discussed how we show respect to other people. We talked about respect meaning caring about other peoples thoughts and feelings. We were able to come up with lots of examples of how we showed respect both at school and at home.
This week, we spoke about how we can respect ourselves by celebrating what makes us unique. We looked at each other and compared ourselves, saying what was the same and what was different. After that, we said what some of our favourite things to do were. Our partners listened really respectfully to what me said and then drew some pictures of their partner doing their favourite thing. I was very impressed by both the listening and drawing skills shown!
Help at home by discussing what makes your child unique and the amazing things that make them awesome!