Big Walk and Wheel – getting active on the way to school
It’s been a great start to Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge this week.
After the first five days, we are currently in 14th place (out of 514 schools) in the small primary category with an average of 90.36% 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.
Thank you to those families who brought along bikes to the bike register event too. Nineteen bikes were registered at school.
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.
The Big Walk and Wheel challenge continues until Friday 31st March so we look forward to seeing our progress over the upcoming week.
Putting our views across
Today, Councillor Mahalia France-Mir came into school to hear about the concerns the children had about litter in our locality.
The children clearly put across their views about the litter they had seen as part of a local walk during our geography ‘streets around our school’ topic.
Councillor Mahalia was very interested to hear from the children. We were pleased to hear she is going put forward their views with the hope that a recycling bin will be added to Moortown Park and for some of the existing bins to be moved to better positions.
The children felt proud to have their views heard and fingers crossed some actions will be taken to help improve our local area.
Active Travel
Next week sees the start of Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge. It inspires pupils to make active journeys to school, improve air quality in their neighbourhood and discover how these changes benefit their world.
Join us to take part in this challenge by walking, scooting, biking or park and stride from Marks and Spencers to school from Monday 20th March – Friday 31st March.
As part of this active travel event, we will be hosting a bike register session on Tuesday 21st March. Pupils, parents and family are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school.
Staying safe online
As a follow up to the recent Safer Internet Day, PCSO Louise delivered an assembly for all classes to reinforce the key online safety messages.
Help at home by asking your child/children how the 4Cs relate to them when they are online.
Computing Topic
This half term Year 2 are studying Computing in Topic. Last week, we discussed what a computer is and what sort of devices we might have at home that have a computer built-in.
This week, we have been looking at algorithms. We have been learning all about the program ‘Scratch Jr’ and how to create an algorithm. We know how to set a sequence so that our Sprites (characters) move, shrink, grow and turn.
We also learnt how to debug an algorithm that does not work and how to alter a sequence.
We’ve had a lot of fun using Scratch and learning about all of the buttons and how they work. We are really looking forward to using the program again next week and learning more!
Times Table Rock Stars
All children will soon be receiving their login details for Times Tables Rock Stars. (These are the same logins as for Numbots.)
In Year 2, the children learn the two, five and ten times tables and these are the tables that have been assigned to the children. There will be division questions related to those times tables too.
Soundcheck is used in Key Stage 2 to check all the times table facts up to x12 so this isn’t recommended in Year 2 as the children haven’t learned these other times tables yet.
We encourage the children to continue to use Numbots too to help to secure their addition and subtraction number facts.
Another resource to support times tables and other number facts is Hit the Button. This is a great, fast-paced game and children can choose which times tables or number facts to work on during each game. This game is free to play online.
If you have any further questions regarding the resources mentioned, do not hesitate to contact us.
World book day
Today, on World Book Day, Year 2 and Year 6 shared some of their favourite books. The children really enjoyed reading to each other and sharing books. 
Living and Learning: MindMate
This half term our Living and Learning lessons are based around the MindMate learning themes of emotions and friendships.
Our first lesson was based around strong emotions and exploring and describing how it feels to be sad/unhappy.
We thought about how others might express feelings of unhappiness and if they did feel unhappy, to practise asking, and listening to, others about what makes them unhappy.
We reinforced that everyone feels sad or unhappy at times and that’s natural.
In our circle time on the same theme, the children suggested some things to do if they were feeling sad.
Would it help if…
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you played with a friend or brother or sister
- you read a book
- you went for a walk
- you did some exercise
As part of this lesson, we did two of the mindfulness exercises taken from this website.
This week, we started our Living and Learning lesson by working together to match emotions to the pictures and explaining the choices.
We recognised that facial expressions can give a big clue as to how someone is feeling.
This video of two friends shows lots of characteristics of a good friendship and a healthy relationship. Friends do have fall outs and we talked about what to say to someone who is feeling upset because they have fallen out with a friend, being teased or is feeling left out.
This was done by putting themselves in their shoes.
Help at home – ask your child to practise what they might say to someone who is being teased or feeling left out.
SATs information session
Supporting our school charity
St Gemma’s Hospice is our current school charity chosen democratically by the children.
Today, we welcomed Steph and Stewart from St Gemma’s Hospice for an assembly to find out more about the fantastic work they do in our local community.
Here, two of our junior leaders are presenting them with a cheque for £377 for the money we have raised so far.
Steph and Stewart commented on the impressive behaviour of the children and the intelligent questions they asked.
Our junior leaders are planning a visit to the hospice over the next few weeks to continue this partnership.
