World Book Day
This Thursday is World Book Day where we celebrate books and reading.
Today, we joined an online talk from the illustrator, David O’Connell.
First, we learnt some bugs facts based on the living things in his books.
Then, David showed us how to draw three of his characters, Dribble, Dash and Nettie, taken from his latest book, The Beastie Bros. The children’s illustrations were excellent.
Finally, there was chance to think about what questions we’d like to ask David.
How many books have you wrote?
What was your first book called?
Why did you want to become an illustrator and author?
Help at home: have a look at some illustrations in books at home. How are they similar or different to the characters David draws?
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 walked away from the situation making you sad
- you talked to a friend or a trusted adult
- you wrote down how you felt
- you read a book
- you went for a walk
- you did some exercise like dancing
As part of this lesson, we did two of the mindfulness exercises taken from this website – mindful hearing and mindful breathing.
Help at home – ask your child what they might do if they were feeling unhappy or if a friend was feeling unhappy.
Leeds Beckett tennis
This week, Nic and Sky, tennis coaches from Beckett Sport Juniors, came to deliver a tennis themed assembly.
Here are the details of a special offer they are offering for Moortown pupils.
Living and learning: internet safety
This week, it was Safer Internet Day and we spent the day focusing on these two key areas of online safety.
- I know that some things online may not be true (people and information).
- I know that I shouldn’t share personal information online.
We used some different texts to support this learning and our daily poem too.
We joined together with Year 1 to hot seat the characters. This helped us to think about their feelings and actions.
This video also reinforced key messages about not everything online is true (this could be people or information) and the importance of not sharing any of your personal information.
We used our Living and Learning statement to think about the importance of always being respectful.
People should be respectful online because if you aren’t, others won’t be respectful to you.
It’s like bullying if you keep doing it.
It’s just like saying something mean in real life and we wouldn’t do that.
It can hurt other peoples’ feelings.
Dave from d:side visited last week to reinforce lots of internet safety messages. He was very impressed with the knowledge and understanding from the children.
Throughout this learning, we reinforced the message that if the children were unsure or something didn’t feel right they should always Start Telling Other People and let a trusted adult know.
Help at home: Can your child tell you the key messages from the texts we read?
Finally, our online safety section has further support available for parents.
Year 2 class assembly
We’re looking forward to sharing our learning at our class assembly tomorrow.
We hope to see you there at 2:40pm.
New school meal menu
After February half term, we start our new menu which runs to the end of the year. It can be viewed here. Please review this with your child to help with their selection at the start of the day. We continue to offer meat free Mondays.
The cost of a school meal is £2.75, which should be paid in advance on the School Gateway app. We’re happy to accept payment for the week, month, half term or term. We prefer two weeks’ notice to change lunch arrangements.
All children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 receive free school meals. If your child is in Year 3 to Year 6, and you are on benefits or a low income, your child may be eligible for free school meals.
Some people like to choose a mix of school dinners and packed lunch for their child – that’s absolutely fine, as long as it’s a the same pattern of school dinners and packed lunches every week. Just let office staff know which days you’d like to opt in for a school meal in the week, and which days you’d prefer to provide your child with a packed lunch.
We continue to gather feedback from children on our school meals. Shortly, we will be reviewing our vegetable choices to help to eliminate waste.
If you have any feedback. please do get in touch.
Skipping school
Yesterday, Year 2 welcomed Katie from skipping school to Moortown to show us lots of new skills.
The children were fantastic. Every child was resilient and determined. They gave the skipping 100% effort and some made amazing progress in one afternoon.
We are practising in school regularly ready for our competition in June.
Help at home by practising at home. You can purchase skipping ropes from school.
PE: gymnastics at Leeds Gymnastics
Today, as part of our involvement with the Leeds Well Schools Partnership, we all had the opportunity to visit John Smeaton Leisure Centre to take part in a gymnastics session led by Leeds Gymnastics.
We explored the different equipment trying some new skills and also skills we had learnt in our recent PE gymnastics learning.
A highlight was having a go on the air track, practising some of the jumps covered in the warm up.
What a great active morning. The children behaved excellently, listening well to the coaches and trying their best with all activities.
We’ve done really good gymnastics.
I loved all the equipment.
It was scary because I had to do handstands.
My favourite part was the bars.
I enjoyed everything especially the air track.
I became better at the rolls.
If you want to find out more about local gymnastics opportunities, have a look at our physical activity guide.
Living and learning: online safety assembly
This week, Louise from West Yorkshire Police came to deliver a whole school assembly all about staying safe online.
There were lots of clear online safety messages around content, contact and conduct.
At the end of the assembly, the children reflected on what they were going to do after hearing Louise’s messages.
I am going to ask my adult to take off the chat on my Roblox settings.
I am not going to accept friend requests from people I don’t know.
I am not going to play games that have a age rating older than me as they won’t be appropriate for me.
Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.
Writing: Flooded
Year 2 have thoroughly enjoyed reading a beautifully illustrated book called ‘Flooded‘ by Mariajo Ilustrajo. We surmised that the book had two key themes: the flood and teamwork. We used our reading skills to summarise, sequence and infer from the story. This week, we have started using our writing skills to retell and orally compose the story along with story mapping to aid us with our own story writing.
Help at home by retelling the story and talking about the main themes in the story. If you could change where the story was set, where would you choose?
