Living and learning – Me and My Money
This week, we’ve been learning all about money!
We’ve talked about so many important topics and skills that are vital to our lives and futures.
HSBC talked to us about savvy shopping. We learnt about:
- budgeting
- interest and borrowing
- debit and credit cards
- being critical consumers
We also learnt about jobs in Leeds and what we might want to do when we’re older or where the most demand for employment might be.
Virgin Money taught us about loans, their roles at the bank and bank accounts and then set us an exciting challenge – to make £5 grow!
In the coming weeks, we’ll be putting our entrepreneurial brains to the test to see if we can make profit from a small business idea. Watch this space!
Y6 said:
“I think I’m more aware of money now.”
“You should be cautious about spending money. There are questions you can ask yourself such as, ‘Is this a want or a need? Can it wait?’”
“I’m really excited to start my own business!”
Living and Learning: rights and responsibilities
In Year 3, we know that we have many different rights and with these rights, comes responsibilities.
Here are just some of the rights that we’ve discussed:
- We have the right to think and say what we think so we have the responsibility to be respectful to other’s thoughts and beliefs.
- We have the right to an education therefore we have the responsibility to come to school and engage with our learning.
- We have the right to have food and therefore we have the responsibility to make our own healthy choices.
- We have the right to feel safe at home and at school and have a responsibility to make other people feel safe. For example, play safely and sensibly with our friends and family.
Help at home by asking your child to think of their rights and therefore what responsibilities come with these rights.
Living and Learning: Democracy
At the end of last half term, Year 3 learnt about what is democracy and how we can become involved in democratic decisions.
Democracy, one of the British Values, means ‘rule by the people‘. It comes from the Greek words dêmos (people) and krátos (rule or strength). Latin is everywhere!
We learnt about how democracy works in this country. This included learning about central and local government, what services government provide for the people and the role of political parties.
After that, we had our own democratic vote to elect our new JLT members for this year.
Congratulations to our two new JLT members and well done to everyone who took part! All the speeches were great!
Me and My Money week – school charity donations
Donating money is one choice people might make when using their money.
As part of our Me and My Money themed week, we welcomed visitors from St Gemma’s Hospice, our current school charity, to hear how they have been using our donations over this year.
We have raised a staggering £1500 across the year so thank you for all of these donations. St Gemma’s Hospice are very grateful for this support.
There is one more way we can donate money this week and this is by bringing any spare 1ps or 2ps into class to deposit in each class’ saving jar.
On Friday, we shall be having a money trail with all the coins donated so please bring any spare change before then.
Here are Year 2 counting their coins so far.
We are biologists!
This half term, Year 2 have been busy learning all about animals including humans and what they need to survive.
We’ve learnt lots of knowledge about different types of animals and if you remember from our class assembly, they all have the same basic needs – air, water, food and shelter.
Here is the key vocabulary we have been learning.
More recently, we’ve been learning about humans in particular and how humans need to keep healthy as well as having their basic needs.
Help at home – the BBC website has some great videos to summarise the different types of animals and their basic needs. Choose some to watch with your child to discuss this learning.
Living and Learning: democracy
Year 4 have been considering what is democracy and how we can become involved in democratic decisions.
Democracy, one of the British Values, means ‘rule by the people‘. It comes from the Greek words dêmos (people) and krátos (rule or strength).
We learnt about how democracy works in this country. This included learning about central and local government, what services government provide for the people and the role of political parties.
After that, we held our own democratic vote to elect our JLT members for this year.
Congratulations to our two new JLT members and well done to everyone who took part!
We are geographers!
To conclude our Geography topic this half term, Year 4 ventured into Moortown to conduct some fieldwork.
We collected data about how land is used in Moortown.
We plotted our route on a map and took photos of what we observed.
Our results concluded that the main land-uses in Moortown are residential, commercial and recreational.
Help at home by asking your child what land-uses we found during our fieldwork!
Autumn 1: Week 8
In Literacy, we’ve been reading Potion Commotion by Peter Bentley. The book is about a little witch called Betty. She ends up making a big mess when putting just about everything into her cauldron to make a potion. Betty’s potion grows and grows and spreads all over the town!
Help at home: Talk to your child about the story and see if they can remember what happened at the end.
After reading the story, we thought about what we would put in a magic potion. We drew pictures and labelled our list of ingredients.
Yesterday, we decided to be scientists and make our very own hubble and bubble potion.
Before doing the experiment, we made sensible predictions.
I think it will bubble.
I think it will fizz.
I think it will hit the ceiling!
I think it will overflow.
Click here to watch our bubbling potion.
Maths
This week, we introduced simple addition and subtraction number stories.
For example,
First there were three spiders on the web.
Then, one more spider joined them.
Now, there are four spiders altogether.
Help at home: Collect up to five of your favourite toys. Use these toys to create addition and subtraction stories. Don’t forget to use the words ‘first’, ‘then’ and ‘now’ and your fingers!
What else have we been up to?
The potion chilli challenge was very popular this week!
It’s important children spend lots of time doing fine motor activities to develop their finger muscles ready for writing.
Help at home: Practise your cutting skills.
We’ve been recognising numerals and practising our counting skills at the maths bench.
One-to-one correspondence focuses on the actual counting of objects, and assigning numbers to objects in the correct order, as they are counted. This also helps children to understand that the numbers they are saying hold value.
Creating more potions in the water tray!
Reminders
- Marvellous Maths stay and learn session – Wednesday 15 November
- Please email any ‘WOW’ moments or new interests at home. We love receiving and sharing photos in school.
moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org - Please continue to read your child’s e-book daily alongside love of reading books.
Have a wonderful half-term break! I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 06 November.
We are readers!
This half term, teachers have been keeping an eye out for children impressing them with their reading.
In KS2, teachers were looking out for Reading Records where the weekly activity had been completed with time and care, book reviews had been done or challenges ticked off!
In KS1, teachers were looking for children who were putting the most effort into learning to read fluently.
Well done to our winners for this half term and welcome to the Library Team! They’ll meet with Miss Wilson occasionally to share their ideas and help make decisions about our library.
Take a look at some of their fantastic efforts:
Did you know?
Those who read for pleasure…
- Know more words
- Are better writers
- Have more empathy
- Have better general knowledge
- Have a better understanding of other cultures
- Are better at making decisions
- Do better in school generally!
Keep up the fantastic reading, everyone. There were so many people to choose from and you never know – it could be you next time!
Observation over time
Last week, Year 4 ventured into our school grounds to gather our first round of data for our observation over time.
We are observing how the living things in our school grounds change over the course of the school year.
We are going to collect further data in the spring and summer term and then draw conclusions from our results.
Watch this space!
Help at home by asking your child what they observed in our school grounds.