Me and my community week
Living and Learning: New school charity
Every year, we vote for a new school charity to support.
Our new charity will replace our current school charity The Children’s Heart Fund. Thank you for all the donations and support given to this great, local cause, including £180 for our recent Rob Burrow Connect Challenge.
As part of our Me and my community themed week, children will be considering the following shortlist of charities. Children should start thinking about these charities and be ready to share their views.
Action Against Hunger aim to save the lives of vulnerable people affected by hunger. Action Against Hunger fights hunger and malnutrition around the world, because no child should ever suffer or die from it. Stop hunger today.
No child should live in poverty. All children should have their basic needs met so that they can achieve their full potential in life. Give every head a bed.
Each class will vote for one charity which will be brought to the Junior Leadership Team who will have the final vote on Thursday 07 November.
It’s nearly time to elect our new junior leaders
We have recently launched this year’s Junior Leadership Team election process. Our Junior Leadership Team is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.
The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with two representatives from each class, chosen democratically by their peers.
Here are some of the qualities our junior leaders think are needed to be an effective JLT member.
- use the 8Rs for learning
- be respectful and polite
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- share and be confident with your ideas
- let others speak
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- follow our school rules and make good choices in class and around school
This weeks’ whole school homework is all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections on Thursday 24 October. For children who want to stand in the election, they will have the chance to share their speeches in class on Wednesday or Thursday this week.
Well done to all our current junior leaders who have represented their class so well this year. Remember, you can stand again in the election.
Reading and Writing
Reading
Last week in our reading lessons, Year 2 children were exploring non-fiction books and texts. The children enjoyed looking through a range of different non-fiction books and ticking off all the features they could find.
Help at home: Look through a non-fiction book and ask your child to point out all the features. Discuss the differences between non-fiction and fiction books.
Writing
This half term, Year 2, have produced some wonderful writing. As well as doing some bigger pieces of writing about The Great Fire of London, we have been concentrating on handwriting, dictation and editing our writing for ‘must dos’. We have been encouraging the children to look at their own writing and spot any ‘squashed sentences’. This is where two sentences run into each other. For example – I like to play in the park it is fun. The children can spot where the squash is and either fix it with punctuation or a conjunction.
Help at home: Quiz your child. Can they find the squash? Ask them to choose the best conjunction to fix the squash. They could choose and, because, so or but.
After-school clubs
Our autumn term clubs continue after half term and there is an opportunity to join the below after school clubs which currently have available places:
Monday
Hama Bead Club – Y4, Y5, Y6
Mindfulness & Yoga – Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6
Tuesday
Skipping – Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6
Sewing & weaving – Y4, Y5, Y6
Wednesday
Skipping – Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4
Girls Football – Y4, Y5, Y6
Thursday
Dazl Dance – Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4
Basketball – KS1
Basketball – KS2
Clubs run straight after school and finish at 4.15pm.
All clubs will run until w/c 9 December, which would give your child 6 sessions if they’d like to join.
If your child is interested in joining any of the above clubs, please reply to the email sent and an individual payment request will be set up.
Rugby ticket offer
Headingley Stadium has the honour of hosting the England men’s and women’s national team against Samoa and Wales respectively on Saturday 02 November 2024.
As a partner school of the Rhinos, we are pleased to offer children and families 20% off tickets. These are purchased directly from the Rugby Football League using the discount code shown below.
Living and Learning: respect
To start our lesson about self-respect, we made our own creature creations. Starting with a head, someone else added a body and finally someone else added legs.
We had some great mixed up creations and not one of them was the same. The creatures were all different as we all have different drawing styles and imaginations and, just like the creatures, those differences make us all unique.
We thought about what else makes us unique and why we are special. Some children wanted to add extra things to this like different behaviours, responsibilities and routines.
We thought about how we can show that we respect ourselves.
Get enough sleep.
Eat your 5 a day and other healthy foods.
Don’t be rude to yourself.
Brush your teeth.
Don’t try and hurt yourself.
Keep yourself clean.
Not having too much screen time.
Looking after your belongings.
Looking after your family.
Do exercise to make you fit and strong.
Here’s a poem we created…
Our weekly circle time sessions give the children chance to build on this learning about respect and self-respect and our themed week, Me and My Communities, after half term will also reinforce this learning about our own identity.
Help at home: talk through this learning and think about how respecting ourselves helps us to respect others.
Me and My Community week
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place from Monday 4th November. This is the first of two themed weeks in the year. In our ‘Me and My Community’ week, children will learn about what it means to belong to a community, from family to national or even international communities. Importantly, our children will also learn to respect and celebrate different communities. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of our Living and Learning education.
Events and learning during the week will include looking at our own identity including belonging and self-esteem, diversity of people around us including race, age, religion and disability and children will also be getting out into the community working with local organisations and taking pride in the local area for example by litter picking.
Active travel in the community
We encourage children to get out in the community in an active way on their way to and from school, with prizes available as part of the themed week. By walking/scooting/biking to school, families will by keeping our community safer and healthier by reducing congestion at the school gate. Maybe even pick up a piece of litter on the way. Even by parking further away from school your child could then to do the final part of their journey by foot, bike or scooter. Bike and scooter storage facilities are available beside the Year 3 and 4 classrooms.
Email us (moortownoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of your active travel, maybe by a landmark in our community on your route to school, for the chance to win one of five vouchers. Entries to be submitted by noon on Friday 8th November.
New school charity
At the end of the themed week, classes will have the chance to discuss our charity shortlist and the Junior Leadership Team will have the final vote for which charity they would like our school to support, replacing our current charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
Identity day
Friday 8th November will be a non-uniform Identity Day. Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend, a team they are part of or support or traditional dress to represent their heritage. There is no donation or contribution required for this day.
SAVE THE DATE PTA coffee morning Friday 8 November 9-10am
As part of the week, we welcome all parents and carers to an informal coffee morning to meet other members of our school community including representatives from the PTA. A whole school community Wake up Shake up will follow at 9:50am in the main playground.
Can you help?
Maybe you speak another language and you would be happy to speak to children about this or you would like to share about your own family culture and heritage. If so, please contact the office to pass on your details. Also, do you have any local community links that may support our week?
Our website continues to keep you up to date with key community events as well as our community noticeboard.
Connect Challenge
Today, the whole school completed our Connect Challenge, in memory of Rob Burrow, by running walking or skipping seven laps of the back playground and the green. All the children gave 100% and were even asking to do extra laps. It was a great active morning!
Thank you for your donations so far. You can still donate on Gateway until the end of the week with money raised to be split between the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Appeal and our school charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
Watch us while we work
Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for our watch us while we work session this week. It was lovely to see so many.
Here’s a summary of what we covered and how we are encouraging the children to become more responsible for their learning at home.
Spellings – use the spelling guide for ideas to help with learning weekly spellings.
Sentence practice – use a picture as a stimulus for writing sentences including asking questions about what they can see.
Daily reading – we thought about some of the reading skills the children are learning in Year 2 (fluency, prosody (using expression in their voices), retrieval, interpret and learning new vocabulary). Reading needs to happen daily to build up these skills. A brief note in their reading record books is needed after reading at home. We will continue to monitor the use of e-books at home. Please alert us to any access issues.
Maths – our number tennis games included counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and number bonds to 10 and 20. Play these when you’re in the car, walking to school or making breakfast. Hit the Button is a great online game to build up the recall of these facts.
Numbots certificates are awarded every Tuesday and it’s great to see children already achieving their next levels in Year 2.
Finally, here’s the help at home section of the website.
Please get in touch if you need any further support with your child’s learning at home.