Spring 2: Week 6
I can’t believe we’re at the end of our second term in Reception! The children have made tremendous progress in all areas of the Early Years curriculum.
Summer 1
Next half-term, we will be learning about bugs and going on lots of bug hunts for bugs. We will learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and hopefully set some butterflies free! We will use hand drills to build a bug hotel for our outdoor area.
Linked to Geography, we will find out where our favourite animals come from. We will locate countries on a map, look at different environments, and compare them to the UK.
As artists, we will mix colours to create camouflage patterns. We will also create landscapes for various animals using our small world resources in the classroom, and create scenarios and storylines for our play.
Poetry picnic
This week’s poem was called The Tiny Seed. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been talking about what plants need to grow. Can your child remember what plants need?
Reminders and upcoming dates
- Don’t forget to keep reading your Collins eBooks over the holidays.
- Monday 06 May – Bank holiday
- Monday 24 May – Training day: school closed
As always, I hope you all have a happy and healthy half-term break. Don’t forget to email me any pictures of what you get up to in the holidays. moortowneyfs@spherefederation.org
I look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 15 April.
Big Walk and Wheel final position
After the two week Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge, we now have the final results.
In our category of small primary schools, we finished in 20th place out of 459 schools with an average of 89.81% active journeys to school. We achieved the highest national (20th) and Northern England (3rd) ranking out of those schools in Leeds taking part.
With a total of 1655 active journeys across the two weeks, this is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
Help at home: By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
Spring 2: Week 5
This week, we’ve seen lots of super independent learning!
We used watercolours to do observational paintings of daffodils.
We explored printing natural objects into clay.
We looked carefully at seeds and sorted them into groups. Our word of the week was miniscule. We used this word to describe the seeds.
We’ve been observing our beans to see if they’ve changed. This morning, we noticed a shoot!
This week, we used our perceptual subitising skills (seeing the quantity without counting) to build on our understanding of equal amounts. We used dice patterns and fingers to explore doubling quantities to 10. We used this generalised statement when talking about doubles.
… is made of … and …, double … is ….
We noticed that not all numbers are made of doubles. Can your child remember why? 
Help at home: Explore making double patterns with different objects at home.
Reminder!
Don’t forget to attend one of the learning journey drop ins next week. You’ll also get to meet Miss Lowry. We look forward to talking about your child’s amazing learning.
Big walk and wheel update
We’ve had a great start to the Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge this week.
After the first five days, we are currently in 19th place (out of 549 schools) in the small primary category with an average of 84.76% of our journeys to school being active. This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
To keep up with the leader board for the rest of the challenge, it can be viewed here.
The Big Walk and Wheel challenge continues until Friday 22nd March so we look forward to seeing our progress over the upcoming week.
Help at home: By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
Spring 2: Week 4
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading the traditional tale Jack and the Beanstalk. We planted our own beans and talked about what a bean needs in order to grow. After planting our beans, we wrote a set of instructions about how to plant a bean.
Yesterday, we introduced the children to life cycles and talked about what a life cycle is.
What is a life cycle?
EB – small to big
BT – Something is a baby then turns into an adult.
RN – Baby chicks grow into a mummy and daddy.
SW – When babies are small they keep growing.
AG – Bugs start off as an egg and they get bigger and bigger.
RZ – They grow and grow and grow!
We watched a video about the life cycle of a bean and talked about the 4 stages.
Help at home: Can your child remember the life cycle of a bean?
Maths
This week, we consolidated our understanding of the composition of numbers by investigating the numbers within 7. We investigated the whole number using the part–part–whole model, e.g. 5 is a part. 2 is a part. 7 is the whole. We used cubes to show that 7 can be made by combining parts in different ways. We also played a game called Missing parts. Mrs Wood hid some cubes (a part) behind her back and we had to think about the missing part. This is something called partitioning (splitting the whole it into parts).
Help at home: Practise partitioning numbers up to 7 into two parts. You could use your toys, fruit or pencils.
Phonics
This week, we continued to read and write longer words including words ending in -ing.
Help at home: Practise writing these words: looking, marching, farming, waiting, morning, winking, singing. Don’t forget to use your phoneme fingers to segment!
What else have we been up to?
This week, our chilli challenges were linked to our focus story.
Poetry Picnic
Click here to watch this week’s poem.
Finally…
Thank you to all the parents/carers who came to watch our class assembly on Wednesday. We were blown away by how many of you turned up! We hope you enjoyed it.
REMINDER!
- Learning journey drop ins – Tuesday 26th & Thursday 28th March
9-9.30 & 3.15-3.45
Please return your sign up slip by Friday 22nd March.
Leeds Rhinos ticket offer
As part of our partnership, and as a thank you for all the great work that the children have been doing this year, Leeds Rhinos would like to offer children and their families an amazing opportunity to attend a match at AMT Headingley Stadium at a special discounted schools rate.
Date – Friday 5th April 2024
Kick off – 8pm
Opposition – Warrington Wolves
Venue – Headingley Stadium (LS6 3BR)
Tickets can be booked now through the school via School Gateway. Please note that tickets will go off sale at 10am on Monday 25th March 2024.
We look forward to welcoming Leeds Rhinos for an assembly next week too.
World Book Day
We’ve had a wonderful day we’ve had celebrating World Book Day. Our classroom was full of wonderful book characters. Thank you to all the parents/carers who came to our stay and learn session this morning. It was lovely to see our classroom so busy!
World Book Day Stay & Learn
The classroom is all set up ready for our World Book Day stay & learn session tomorrow morning. We look forward to inviting parents and carers into our classroom. See you all tomorrow!
York Railway Museum
Today, Reception went on their first school trip to York Railway Museum. We enjoyed looking at the trains in The Great Hall. We particularly enjoyed sitting on the high-speed Japanese bullet train – the world’s fastest passenger rail network. We also found the replica version of Stephenson’s Rocket.
We look forward to sharing more photos in our class assembly next Wednesday.
The Secret Garden
It was a pleasure to welcome M&M productions to perform ‘The Secret Garden’ for us. It’s a classic story (written in 1911!) about resilience and friendship. They gave it a modern twist with some familiar songs – it was very entertaining!
What a start to the week it was! Keep your eyes peeled for what we get up to on World Book Day, this Thursday.
Help at home by discussing what your child liked about the performance using the pictures above! Can your child retell the story?
We loved it!
Y2 – I really liked it because Master Colin was able to walk. He believed in himself.
Y6 – It was funny and had all the things a play should have. I’ll definitely be checking out the book from the library.
Y3 – The sign language song was cool and interesting!
Y5 – I liked the show because they had a creative way to change the scene. They had a great voice projection.
