Big Walk and Wheel
Get set… we’re taking part in Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel 2022 (the new name for Big Pedal), the UK’s largest inter-school cycling, walking, wheeling and scooting challenge. The challenge runs from 21 March to 1 April. It’s free and we would love everyone to be involved.
What do you need to do?
Encourage your child(ren) to walk, scoot or cycle to school on as many days as possible during the event. Park and stride (parking your car further away from school, for example, Marks and Spencer car park and walking, scooting or biking the final part of the journey) also counts.
Why we are taking part
As a happy and healthy school, Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is a great way to build physical activity in children’s daily routine which is important for their physical health and mental wellbeing.
Active school runs also help to reduce congestion and air pollution outside the school gate. A 2021 YouGov study showed nearly half of UK children worry about air pollution near their school. Children thought active travel was the best away to bring down these pollution levels.
Plus there are some great prizes to be won every day if we get enough children taking part!
Useful resources
To help you prepare, Sustrans has developed a handy free guide packed with advice, games and challenges to help you have hassle-free cycle, walk or scoot to school.
Download your free family guide here.
Cross country runners
Well done to pupils who took part in the Leeds Schools Athletics Association Saturday morning race at Middleton Park. These races are open to Key Stage 2 children. This was the final race for the season but we will continue to offer these races next year.
It was great to hear they were encouraging each other at the event. Great work!
Roman Presentations
Over the last week, the children in year three have been preparing presentations all about their recent learning in history: Romans and Anglo Saxons.
Our presentations included the following topics about life in Britain:
– life before the Romans
– life during the Roman occupation in Britain
– life after the Romans left Britain
Today, the children presented their learning!
Living and Learning: Staying Safe Week
Last week, we enjoyed our Staying Safe Week.
This included lots of visitors and learning centred around keeping safe in our lives.
We explored keeping safe online, road safety, keeping safe around dogs, who keeps us safe in our community, keeping safe around water and we enjoyed reading a book about respecting ourselves.
Our first visitor helped us learn all about road safety. We learned about the importance of wearing a seatbelt and got to look at the possible out comes if seatbelts aren’t worn.
Next, we had visitors from the police come in and tell us all about how to keep safe in the community.
Later that day, we learnt all about fire safety. The Moortown Fire Brigade came in and answered all of our questions and we even got to have a look at the equipment they use to put out fires! See if your child can remember any of our learning about fire safety.
After that, we learned about staying safe near water. See if your child can remember what to shout if they think someone is in danger near a river or other body of water.
We also learnt about online safety. We learnt that whilst online, we must protect our personal information (like passwords, addresses, full names etc) and make sure we are being kind and respectful online, too. We are all kind and respectful in real life and it is no different online!
See how much of our learning your child can remember from safety week!
Well done, Y3.
Cross country opportunity
We are pleased to invite KS2 children to compete in an upcoming cross country race as part of the Leeds Schools Athletics Association cross country programme of Saturday morning races. Children will compete against pupils from other Leeds schools.
The race will take place at 10am on Saturday 5th March at Middleton Park (next to the John Charles Centre for Sport, Middleton Grove, Leeds, LS11 5DJ).
There are opportunities for Year 3 and 4 girls and boys (under 9) to race 900m and Year 5 and 6 girls and boys (under 11) to race 1500m. Once your child has completed their race, you are free to leave the event.
Please note, parents/carers are responsible for taking and supervising their child/children.
If your child is interested in taking part, please respond to the the message recently sent out.
We look forward to pupils representing our school at this event.
If you are unable to take part in this event, you may want to join the free Sunday morning junior parkruns held locally at Roundhay Park, Temple Newsam and Boddington.
Half term Dog’s Trust workshop
Rachael, from the Dog’s Trust in Leeds, visited all classes last week in our Staying Safe themed week.
She is holding a half term workshop next week and she would like us to share this with our families.
Contact Rachael, by email, if your child is interested in attending.
Topic recap morning!
In the middle of each half term, we have a morning where we revisit learning that we’ve done in previous topics.
Today’s drop-down morning included:
Geography – Where in the world am I?
Geography – human and physical features
DT – structures
We began our drop down morning by playing a chase the vocabulary game – 
See if your child can remember our vocabulary.
In the second geography session, we identified human and physical features in different landscapes.
See if your child can remember the different human and physical features in this picture below and explain why:
In our DT session, we played bingo by collecting answers to questions all about our topic.
We finally created a structure using Lego and tested which one was the most stable! See if your child can answer these questions about our DT learning:
Well done, Y3!
Living and Learning: Identity
This week, we learned all about identity in our Living and Learning session.
We had to think about what makes us who we are.
We thought about all the different things that mean something to us and all the different things that make us both similar to others but unique from others, too.
Grace said, “I’m unique because my family are from China.”
“Something that makes me unique from others is my religion. I’m a Muslim,” said Raheem.
“Something that Jack and I have in common is that we both have brown eyes,” added Zac.
Ava said, “I’m unique because out of everybody on my table, I’m the only one who plays piano.” Ava then found out that she had that in common with Mr Wain!
The whole class had something in common – we are all part of the same community in Moortown Primary School!
Making a switch!
In this week’s science learning, we learnt about switches and even made our own!
See if your child can fill in the gaps to our learning below.
When a switch is ______, the light bulb will turn on as the power from the cell can flow through the circuit.
When a switch is _____, the light bulb will not turn on as the power from the cell cannot travel around the whole circuit.
open, closed
Spring term after-school clubs
After-school clubs will be restarting next week and they will run for eight weeks until the Easter break. Places can be booked via Gateway.
Our physical activity clubs continue to be heavily subsidised through the investment of our PE and Sport Premium.
Please contact the office if you have any queries about the clubs or the booking system.
