Leeds Diving opportunities
Recently, Year 2 and 3 welcomed Leeds Diving as part of their talent in diving programme.
If your child is interested in learning to dive, please see the information and requirements below.
Living and learning: Confident Me
Y6 had a visitor today to talk about being confident in our own skin.
First, we analysed some appearance ideals…
…and discussed the cost of these ideals if you’re trying to match what you see on social media.
“If you spend all your money on clothes then you won’t have any left for playing sport!” explained Olivia.
“You can get carried away, run out of money, and never feel like you’re enough,” warned Tommy.
We learnt about how images online can be manipulated. They can be altered to change the colours or shape of people – or even totally made up by AI!
Sometimes pictures you see online aren’t completely realistic so there’s no point trying to replicate what you see on social media.
Help at home by talking about why it’s good to celebrate being you. What are you proud of? Why are you unique? Why is it good to be different?
It’s also a good idea to have regular check ins about what you’re doing and seeing on social media.
“We should just say nice things about each other,” said Moosa.
“Don’t focus on what someone looks like – focus on what they’re like on the inside!” wisely stated Cate.
Reading: Y5 met Liz Pichon!
Last week, we had a surprise video call from author Liz Pichon – who writes the Tom Gates novels.
Liz talked about where she gets inspiration for her stories and how she plans out the novels before writing. She talked us through how she draws the doodles in her stories and we also had a go – what do you think of our bugs?!
Finally, she read an extract from her new book, Five Star Stories.
Living and Learning: I respect others!
In our Living and Learning lesson this week, Year 5 learnt about discrimination and the protected characteristics.
Discrimination is defined as ‘the unfair treatment of people because of who they are or because they have a certain characteristic(s)’. We discussed examples and the impact of discrimination.
The Equality Act 2010 protects people from discrimination based on protected characteristics.
We remember the protected characteristics by using the mnemonic:
DR S GRAMPS
Disability
Race
Sex
Gender reassignment
Religion or beliefs
Age
Marriage or civil partnership
Pregnancy and/or maternity leave
Sexual orientation
Help at home: Name the protected characteristics without looking.
Geography: Fantastic Fieldwork!
On Friday, Year 5 ventured to Moortown Park – an urban green space – to conduct their Geography fieldwork. The children were trying to measure carbon stores in the locality. Carbon stores are known as ‘places where carbon is stored in the environment’. To calculate this, they measured the girth (the distance around the outside of something thick) of different trees. They did this by sampling: a way of collecting fieldwork data without measuring everything.
This coming week, we will use this information to work out how much carbon is stored in the trees.
Have a look at us being geographers:
Help at home: To link with our writing skills, spot the parenthesis used in this post!
Performance Poetry
During Reading this week, we have been reading poems by Paul Cookson. The first, The King of All the Dinosaurs and the second, Mr Shadow’s Shoes.
We watched Paul Cookson perform one of these and had a think about what made his performance so good! These are the R2s that we took from him:
- read with prosody
- well-rehearsed
- add actions
- change tone of voice
- change volume of voice
- involve the audience
We then used these R2s to do our performances! We worked in small groups to add actions, rehearse and practise reading with prosody. The performances were fantastic with some even memorising the words after 20 minutes!
Help at home by reading another poem by Paul Cookson. There are plenty to choose from here: https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/extract/13318/100-Brilliant-Poems-for-Children-by-Paul-Cookson.html
Leeds Diving
This week, we welcomed James and Oli from Leeds Diving. They came to visit Year 2 and 3 as part of their talent in diving program to unearth the next generation of world class Olympic divers in Leeds.
The children took part in lots of different exercises, including jumping, agility, flexibility, strength and speed, while James and Oli looked to see who may
have the right characteristics to be world class performers.
Well done to Sophie, Isla and Ailie who have been invited to take part in the second phase.
Autumn 1: Week 5
On Wednesday, we went on our local walk around Moortown. Before going on our walk, we used Google Earth to track our route. I was amazed at how sensible they were. Well done, Reception!
Yesterday, we had a go at drawing our own maps of our local walk.
Maths
This week, we’ve explored how numbers can be composed of 1s.
Throughout the week, we’ve been collecting groups of 2, 3 and 4 objects to help us understand that a ‘whole’ is made up of smaller parts.
Help at home: Can you make collections of objects at home? Remember the objects don’t always have to be the same!
Literacy
This week our focus was We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen. We’ve had great fun using actions to retell the story. Click here to watch us.
Help at home: These pictures are mixed up. Can you remember the order of the story?
Chilli challenges
In the construction area, we had to build a cave for a bear. 
The Bee-Bots were very popular this week. We had lots of fun controlling the Bee-Bots around the bear hunt mat. Some children decided to make their own road!
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem is a short poem called Falling Apples. After listening to the poem, we talked about apple trees.
I’ve got an apple tree in my garden.
This apple is from my apple tree.
I have an apple tree at my Grandma’s house.
Click here to watch this week’s poem.
Reminders!
- Don’t forget to come to our Phase 2 phonics Stay & Learn and coffee morning next Thursday at 9am.
- Library books need to be returned every Monday.
- Please make sure your child’s reading record is in their bookbag every Thursday.
Marvellous Maths!
This week in Maths we have been beginning to learn about addition. We have been using the language of parts and a whole. For example, 3 is a part. 2 is a part. The whole is 5. We have been drawing part whole models and writing out addition number sentences. Below you can see some pictures of Year 1 marvellous maths work. Well done Year 1!
Help at home by investigating how different numbers are made. Remember to use the language of parts and a whole. Your child could then practise writing some addition number sentences.
The Spider and the Fly
This week, Y6 have been reading The Spider and the Fly – a poem by Mary Howitt. It was written in 1829 and used as a way to entertain but also to warn children about being overly trusting.
Below are some pictures of our reading lesson where we were using retrieval skills to draw the spider, fly and setting.
Don’t we look proud!
