Design & Technology: food preparation
This week, Year 2 have been using their food preparation skills to create their latest product, fruit smoothies.
This forms part of our Design and Technology food learning which involves following a recipe to create a product each term.
The recipe, taken from this healthy eating website, is our reading fluency text of the week so we’ve had chance to read and understand the instructions before we made our smoothies.
First, we got ready to cook by washing our hands, rolling up jumpers, putting on our aprons and tying long hair back.
We used lots of different food preparation skills including peeling, fork hold to help with claw grip (for chopping), measuring liquids and using measuring spoons.
Then, the children got to enjoy their smoothies.
We always evaluate our product afterwards to see how it could be changed next time. In a link to our learning about adjectives (words that add information about a noun), there were plenty of adjectives used to describe the smoothies – extraordinary, bubbly, fizzy, tasty, yummy, creamy and delicious.
Well done to all the children who worked safely and sensibly with Mrs Roth.
Help at home: your child has taken this recipe home. Can they demonstrate some of their food preparation skills by making this again at home.
English – Little Red
We are linking it to learning about nouns and adjectives in our writing. We are also using our retrieval and inference skills in reading and thinking about the author’s choice or words and phrases.
Help at home by discussing the text with your child. How is Little Red different to the traditional tale Little Red Riding Hood?
Living and Learning: mental health
For the next three weeks, mental health is our new theme in our Living and Learning lessons.
Talking about feelings and knowing where and how to seek help for yourself or others is very important.
People can help you if you tell them how you feel.
If something is wrong and you don’t tell an adult, it might get bigger.
Start telling other people so you can feel better.
This week, Year 2, with the help of some of the characters from the Beano, have been learning about a range of emotions.
Emotions are feelings. They can change all the time.
We all experience a whole range of emotions, from anger to happiness to fear.
Looking at someone’s face and their body language can help us to understand how others might be feeling.
How might Dennis be feeling? What clues tell you this?
We discussed why it is important to recognise and talk about our emotions and how to seek help with our feelings or if we notice a friend might need help.
Next week, we will be thinking about self care techniques that can help us to look after our own mental health. Mindfulness is one example of a self care technique. We do lots of mindfulness techniques in class – ask your child to share them with you. Also, look out for the wellbeing bingo for you to try at home.
Help at home: We’ve talked about how people’s faces and body language can help us to understand how others are feeling. What emotions are the children showing here? Maybe try some other emotions at home too.
Living and Learning: online safety
This week, our Living and Learning focus has been about online safety and in particular spotting adverts online.
First of all, we thought about what an advert is and what a pop up is.
Then, we read a story about Smartie who had a dilemma with a pop up while he was online.
Pop ups, including online adverts, if clicked on, may take us away from the page we’re looking at so we learnt this key message to help keep us safe online.
Help at home: reinforce this key message of telling an adult if an advert pops up on screen.
Assembly stars
Well done to all the children who performed so well in our class assembly. The children have worked hard to rehearse and they have enjoyed being able to share their learning with you.
Assemblies give the children a chance to practice their oracy skills in particular to project their voice and we hope you’d agree they did that well.
Thank you for your support to help the children to learn their lines and for coming to watch on day. We hope you enjoyed it.
Reminders
This Tuesday 19 November at 2:40pm is our rearranged class assembly. We hope you can join us.
On Wednesday 20 November, as the whole class are taking part in the infant agility event, the children will need to come to school in PE kit. This will replace our Tuesday PE lesson for next week.
This means, the children should come to school in normal uniform on Tuesday 19 November.
Living and Learning: anti-bullying day and odd socks day
We kicked off anti-bullying day with our odd socks to celebrate that we are all unique and different.
Odd socks day is a celebration to show that we are all different and that makes us unique.
We are wearing odd socks today because we are all different and we should be treated fairly.
Odd socks day shows that we are all different. We should respect everyone no matter what they look like.
We explored our school definition of bullying, created by our junior leaders, by looking at what some of the words meant.
What are the different types of bullying?
Our school definition helped us understand the different types of bullying – physical (hurting someone’s body), emotional (hurting someone’s feelings) or cyber bullying (online).
We also considered the role of bystanders and their responsibility to start telling other people.
The story #Goldilocks looks at how we should treat everyone with respect whether it is in person or online.
How can you STOP bullying?
We used our weekly circle time to think about the role we all have to STOP bullying. Year 2 had some excellent suggestions.
Our main message is Start Telling Other People and to continue to do that until you are heard.
You can stop bullying by…
respecting others
telling the bully to stop if you are a bystander.
telling a trusted adult.
asking a lunchtime helper to help.
standing up for others.
letting everyone join in and not leaving people out.
being kind to people and not hurting them.
helping the person being bullied and take them to an adult.
being resilient and saying STOP.
ignoring the bully, walk away and don’t say anything back to them.
Using positive words and actions can also help to prevent bullying by creating a happy and healthy school.
How can you get help?
Seeking help can be done in a number of different ways.
Who could you tell? (taken from our child friendly anti-bullying policy)
- Safeguarding team – Mrs Weekes, Mr Wilks, Mrs Russell and Mrs Limbert
- Any other members of staff
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
The children thought about who they would tell if they needed to Start Telling Other People.
Help at home: discuss our school definition of bullying with your child. Do they know the difference between falling out and bullying, and between a one-off situation and something that’s happened more than once?
Year 2 cheer dance
Today, some of the year 2 children took part in a cheer dance event led by DAZL (Dance Action Zone Leeds). The children followed a warm up and learnt some cheer dance techniques to put together in a routine using pom poms. The children were very brave to perform the routine to the other schools there. Finally, all the children made a circle and encouraged each other to perform their own dance move in the middle. It was great to see the children’s confidence to do this.
We loved our Moortown PE tops too! 
DAZL run our Thursday after-school dance club and there are a few spaces available if your child would like to join.
I liked the pom poms because I’ve been wishing to do cheerleading.
I liked cheerleading because it is a type of dance and I like to dance.
I liked it because I learnt a new dance.
I liked the circle time because we could show everyone our own dance move.
It was amazing!
Living & Learning: Me and My Community week – other communities
This week, we’ve been thinking about the communities we belong to.
Our school community is very important and we thought about what makes our school special.
Moortown Primary School is a happy and healthy place to learn.
What does our school logo represent?
People are linked. They look happy.
They are holding hands.
It shows friends playing together.
They are dancing and jumping so they are energetic and active.
The different colours represents different people’s skin colours.
It shows that all are invited and all are included.
Our visual ethos statement show lots of different things that are important to our school.
Our school is diverse and we looked at the different ethnicities and religions we are lucky to have in our school. Then, we found out some information and presented this data about the children in the class.
As well as understanding who we are and our own identity, we’ve been thinking about other communities we are part of.
We’re all part of our own family community.
This text helps us to recognise that other people’s families sometimes look different to our own families and that’s ok. We respect these differences.
We are all part of our own friendship community.
What is a friend?
A friend is someone…
you play with
who looks after you
that cares for you
you spend time with
you like
who hugs you if you are sad, if you want them to
who cheers you up
who is kind to you and asks you to play
Friends can be different to us and that’s ok. We should respect our friends and not leave them out.
The key message from this week is that we are all part of different communities and we respect those communities and other communities too.
Help at home: ask your child what communities they are part of and what other communities there are.
Living and Learning: Me and My Community themed week DAHIT
Today, Linda Gledhill visited Year 2 to talk about the DAHIT team. The deaf and hearing impairment team work across Leeds to support inclusion of deaf or hearing impaired children. Linda gave us lots of advice of how to communicate with someone who is deaf. We also learnt a little bit of BSL (British Sign Language).
Help at home: Practice the BSL signs the children brought home. Ask you child the top tips for communicating with someone who is deaf.