Staying safe week: road safety
Jake, from the Leeds City Council road safety team, gave a whole school assembly all about staying safe on and around roads including different types of active travel.
Don’t forget, as part of our staying safe themed week, we are running our active travel safety competition this week.
For a chance to win one of three £10 Love2Shop vouchers, we’d love to see your active travel staying safe photos, maybe using a traffic crossing or wearing a bike helmet (send photos to moortownoffice@spherefederation.org). Photos should be sent by 4pm on Thursday 11 July and winners will be announced on Friday 12 July.
Help at home: Jake reminded us of the green cross code. Talk to your child about what we need to remember when crossing the road.
Staying safe: online safety
Louise from West Yorkshire Police gave 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 check my younger sisters’ 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.
Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.
Reading – performance poetry!
Year 3 have been reading a poem recently called ‘Sky In The Pie’ by Roger McGough.
Waiter! There’s a sky in my pie,
Remove at once if you please,
You can keep your incredible sunsets
I ordered mincemeat and cheese.
I can’t stand nightingales singing
Or clouds all burnished with gold,
The whispering breeze is disturbing the peas
And making my chips go all cold.
I don’t care if the chef is an artist
Whose canvases hang in the Tate,
I want two veg and puff pastry
Not the universe heaped on my plate.
Ok I’ll try just a spoonful
I suppose I’ve got nothing to loose…
Mmm the colours quite tickle the pallet
With a blend of delicate hues.
The sun has a custardy flavour
And the clouds are as light as air,
The wind with a chewier texture,
With a hint of cinnamon there?
This sky is simply delicious
Why have I not tried it before?
I can chew my way through to eternity
And still have room left for more.
Having acquired a taste for the cosmos
I shall polish this sunset off soon,
I can’t wait to tuck into the night sky,
Waiter please bring me the moon.
We picked out the tricky vocabulary and discussed the meanings…
- delicate hues – soft colours
- Tate – art gallery in London
- heaped – piled on
- cosmos – the universe or outer space
We completed a RIC based on the poem too…
Retrieval: answer is in text
Interpret: use clues and knowledge to find the answer
Choice: author’s choice of vocabulary
Finally, we spent some time preparing and performing the poem! What makes a good performance?
- using expression
- adding actions
- intonation & pace
- eye contact and body language
Some of us even memorised the poem! Here’s just a couple of performances.
Help at home by performing this different poem by Roger McGough:
Design and Technology: sewing!
This week, we’re sewing together our two pieces of fabric to create our pouch.
One piece is longer than the other so that there is a closing flap for a button or piece of velcro.
We’ve been very resilient and great team players. Lots of us having been helping our friends to tie the knots in their thread and thread their needles.
Here’s some of our work in progress!
Staying Safe themed week
Our next whole school themed week, based around Staying Safe, will be taking place next week. The key message is how to be safe in a range of situations – at home, at school, online and in the environment.
A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education including road safety (Leeds City Council); water safety (Canal and River Trust and RNLI); fire safety (West Yorkshire Fire Service); staying safe around dogs (Dogs Trust); first aid (Leeds Beckett and Red Cross); safety in our community (PCSOs) and e-safety (d:side).
Here are some events taking place.
Monday 08 July 3pm – 3:30pm d:side e-safety drop in information session
A representative from d:side, a health education provider, will be available to discuss e-safety issues and details of your child’s e-safety learning in the themed week.
Thursday 11 July from 8:30am West Yorkshire Police bike register event
Pupils are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school. Registering your bike helps police and retailers identify and verify the legitimate owner of bikes that have been stolen or are being resold. This is a first come first served event.
Friday 12 July 2:35-3:15pm Leeds Beckett University Carnegie Great Outdoors basic first aid session for parents/carers – there are limited places available so please confirm your place via school gateway.
The themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active and safe ways to travel to school. Children are encouraged to travel to school in a sustainable way, keeping safe along the way.
For a chance to win one of three £10 Love2Shop vouchers, we’d love to see their active travel staying safe photos, maybe using a traffic crossing or wearing their bike helmet (send photos to moortownoffice@spherefederation.org). Photos should be sent by 4pm on Thursday 11 July and winners will be announced on Friday 12 July.
Due to the rising costs of visitors to school, this year, we are requesting a voluntary contribution of £1 per pupil to go towards paying for visitors. This can be made on school gateway. Thank you for your support with this.
Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of safety? If you are able to support our Staying Safe themed week by coming into school to speak to the children, please contact me via the office or your child’s class teacher.
We will keep you up to date about events during the week on the class news pages on our website.
Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy, healthy and safe school.
Armley Mills Industrial Museum
Year 3 and 4 visited Armley Mills Industrial Museum today! The museum was full of amazing, old machines that get wool from a sheep, ready to weave into fabric.
Each class had a weaving workshop where they carded wool to make it smooth and straight. This was done by hand or in the later years, there were machines for this! Back in Victorian times, children as young as 7 were working on the machines… We decided that we’d much rather be in school learning than doing this!
We then saw a huge old spinning machine that helps to get the wool thin and looking like string or thread. It was very loud. The song, “wind the bobbin up” was explained as the wool is spun around one!
Finally, we had a go at weaving ourselves. There is a weft which goes left to right and a warp that goes top to bottom. The children weaved their fabric in and out to create some beautiful weaves!
We also spent some time outside in the garden getting some fresh air and exploring the other levels to the museum. We saw machines for sewing, projecting and banking. Very impressive!
Help at home by watching this BBC Bitesize video about weaving. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0015x4s/bitesize-daily-79-year-olds-art-89-year-olds-3-weaving
Waterstones!
Yesterday, 10 children from Year 3 and 4 went on a trip into Leeds to visit Waterstones!
The children all chose a book to take home and we had great fun looking at all the different choices that were available.
Take a look at some of the books that we chose below! Have you/would you like to read them?
Living and Learning – Healthy me and my body.
We’ve been learning about our bodies in Year 3.
How are females and males different?
We came up with lots of ideas about how they are different but actually decided that many females and males have loads of similarities. For example; favourite colours, hobbies, hair colour.
One thing we decided that is definitely different is the body parts.
Year 3 were very mature and discussed how animals (including humans) have different bodies for different reasons. For example, females can produce milk for their young whether they are a cow or a cat.
It’s important that we know the names of our body parts and that they belong to us. We reminded ourselves of the NSPCC pants rule:
Help at home by naming as many body parts as possible! How many can you name?
Living and Learning – Body Image
We kicked off our new topic in Living and Learning by talking about body image.
We first made a human scale in the hall to show how confident we are with different things. One side of the hall was ‘most confident’ and the opposite being ‘least confident’. This showed us how different we all are ‘inside’.
We then thought more generally and came up with these ideas of how we’re different:
Some of these things we can’t change, could change or will change over time. Here’s what we decided!
Food Technology: Summer Garden Salad
Today, Year 3 made a Summer Garden Salad! The children prepared all the ingredients, assembled the salad and ate almost all of it.
We used the bridge and claw cutting skills to cut up all the vegetables. The bridge was best for the new potatoes and the plum tomatoes. The claw was more suitable for the gem lettuce leaves and cucumber.
The carrot was grated to keep it fine and we boiled the new potatoes until they were soft!
We stayed safe by using these skills carefully and taking our time.
After we assembled all of the vegetables, we whisked together the yoghurt, oil and vinegar for the dressing.
Everyone tried it and the majority of us loved it! The dressing made it flavoursome and we liked the colours of all the ingredients.
Help by making it again at home! The recipe has been sent home with the children. Can you add something new? Could you try a different dressing?