Our new school council
Congratulations to our new school councillors!
We had a record number of candidates this year and there were some very close votes but here are our winning candidates.
Their first meeting will be on Wednesday 08 November.
Well done to all children who prepared a speech. We hope they don’t feel too despondent and are resilient to have another go next time.
Final school council project
Back in July, our Year 5 and 6 school councillors attended the Leeds Youth Voice event at Leeds Civic Hall. They were very keen to share their experience back in school with the school council and also in a whole school assembly. The one idea they wanted to implement back at school was to have a friendship stop.
With the support of the rest of the school council, this is now in place!
This was a great project for the school council to work on as they came to the end of their time as school councillors. Representatives spoke to the whole school in assembly to explain how the friendship stop works.
Ask your child if they have seen the new sign and what they would do if they saw someone at the friendship stop.
Here is a note from Grace who was one of the school councillors that wanted to make this happen.
The friendship bus stop, which is new to our school, is a great chance to make new friends. It encourages people of all age groups to make sure that everyone has someone to play with. The bus stop is located above the bench closest to the entrance to the middle playground. We hope that this idea goes well and that every child uses this correctly. Your child should definitely know what the friendship stop is and how to use it in the right way because it has been discussed during our Friday assembly.
From Ghosts and Ghouls to Colouring and Councillors – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week’s Living and Learning theme was: “I know I live in a democracy.” Children were tasked with writing a speech to run for School Councillor or a Talk Time about the importance of voting. I was bowled over by the quality of these speeches and the passion and confidence each candidate showed.
There were some fantastically creative campaigns!
A very exciting part of our week was our long-awaited trip to the Forbidden Corner!
Although the excitement seemed to get a bit much for some!
When we arrived after our long journey, the first thing we did was eat our lunch. We were starving and it was only 11:45!
We were even joined by two visitors (but we didn’t let them steal our quackers).
As we begun our journey into the unknown, we felt a little nervous, but we trooped forwards, just like real explorers would!
We even managed to spot Mr Catherall hiding in the trees!
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The Forbidden Corner was a very strange place with bizarre twists and turns. We didn’t know what was coming next!
We were worried we might never get out!
Spot the real statues.
Our explorations proved truly a-maze-ing!
Here is photographic evidence of Year 3 breaking the rules!
We were the kings and queens of the castle! What a lovely view.
Our trip gave us chance to show our teamwork and map reading expertise.
It felt lovely to be outside with nature.
There were some impressive sculptures. This giant woodcutter inspired us to complete some brilliant artwork as you will see below.
His axe was pretty heavy!
This week, we tested our rafts to see if they would float with the weight of five marbles. First, we predicted what would happen and jotted down our method. Some of our rafts successfully floated!
While some of our rafts had a slightly soggy end…
But the experiment was a great learning experience as we discovered which materials floated and which unfortunately sank!
We also tried our hands (or feet) at football, this week.
Of course, we had to practise our celebrations!
To round off our diverse and creative week, we used a photo taken at the Forbidden Corner as an art stimulus. We drew the same picture four times but changed the media used each time: graphite pencil, wax crayon, oil pastel or pencil crayon.
After each drawing, our partner gave us a star and a step for us to improve in the next picture.
This allowed us to experiment with different materials and find out which we liked best; exploring happens in art, too!
What an all-round fantastic half term for Year 3. We’ve made massive amounts of progress in only seven weeks and I look forward to seeing what else is in store.
I hope everyone has a lovely week off. Make sure you keep on exploring!
School Council elections
Our School Council elections will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.
Before voting, please read the following:
- Vote once for one person.
- Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
- Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
- When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.
Votes will be counted tomorrow and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.
Good luck to all our candidates.
City of Leeds basketball
City of Leeds basketball club recently led a PE session for Year 5 and delivered our basketball after-school club in the summer term.
Here are details of their sessions available locally.
There is also a new girls-only session at Allerton High School on Monday evenings, 6pm – 7.30pm, ages 7 – 14 years. The first two sessions are free and then it is £5 pay to play.
Bonfire themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Friday 03 November. Please contact the office, before Wednesday 18 October, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
- Posh dogs in finger rolls or Vegetarian meatballs in finger rolls
- Curly fries
- BBQ baked beans
- Rocket lolly
- Fresh fruit and yogurt
From Code Breakers to Saving Mr Owen – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
Miss Wilson is reporting for Moortown Magazine.
Moortown Primary School, set in picturesque North Leeds, was where ground-breaking learning took place this week. Experts claim that Moortown Primary is home to some of the most hardworking pupils in the country.
This week, Year 3 has enjoyed: brilliant raft building, a confusing code breaker, phenomenal physical education, resilience in reading sessions, and fantastic fact files.
After being presented with the challenge of designing and creating a raft in order to save Mr Owen, who was stranded on a desert island, the students worked in pairs to meet the design criteria.
Will, a member of the class, said: “It was really exciting and fun.”
Jessica commented: “I liked using our own designs.”
On Monday, the students’ creations will be put to the test to see if they actually float and can save the poor Y4 teacher.
Problem-solving has also appeared in maths this week, where children were faced with a code-breaker situation. Number sentences were given to the young mathematicians, who had to use column addition to work out the answer. Their resulting number translated to a letter which formed a word. This is what the code breakers had to say:
Rayn, who enjoyed the task despite its difficulty, stated: “I found it really tricky to match the number answers to the letter codes.”
“It was hard because it was a race against other teams,” fellow classmate, Emma, said.
The class will apply this knowledge to their subtraction studies next week.
Year 3 were visited once again by local gymnastic experts. The focus, mirroring previous weeks, was balance and coordination alongside lots of elements of fun.
“I liked it because it was fun sliding on the benches using our bodies!” a visibly excited Yusayrah purported.
Leo claimed: “It was tricky bending down on one leg with the other one sticking out in front of you.”
Check out these epic slow-mo videos captured at the scene:
Stretching tall and jumping high
Balancing on the benches
Bunny hops
During reading this week, Year 3 has sampled a variety of tasks. One of these challenges was ‘Draw and Label’ where students listened to a description from their class novel and had to sketch out how they imagined the scene to look.
Hifza, who is soon to turn 8, said: “I thought this activity was interesting because I’ve never done it before.”
Meanwhile, Musa alleged that it was fun because he enjoyed labelling the drawing.
Continuing their geography theme in topic lessons (‘LO: to know about global regions’), Year 3 worked collaboratively to build a country fact file in pairs.
Regarding the task, Jemima remarked: “It was hard because some of the words were really tricky.”
“I enjoyed searching on the iPads,” said Mr Laverick, aged 7.
If you haven’t already guessed, this week and next week’s English theme is newspapers! We have discussed the features of news reports and learnt about the punctuation required for quotes and speech. (Ask your child what a colon means! “Hang on…”) This has been tricky for many, as it may be completely new, so when we did succeed with our learning, it tasted even more sweet!
It was great to meet lots of parents at the homework review on Thursday and I hope you enjoyed looking at and hearing about our amazingly creative homework! Here are some highlights:
I look forward to seeing you on Monday or Tuesday for parents’ evening.
School council elections
Our school council elections will take place next Thursday 19 October.
In an assembly this week, our current school councillors told us what characteristics are needed to be an effective school councillor.
These included:
- use all the 8 Rs for learning
- be respectful
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- tell the truth
- be confident with your ideas
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- make good choices in class and around school
Watch out for the whole school homework this week all about the election and democracy.
From Decapolagests to Hellos and Goodbyes – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week’s maths has been all about giving context to our calculations by telling a story and asking a question. For example: “Talha had 452 cookies. Kashif gave him 30 more. How many cookies did Talha have altogether?” We used our place value grids to tackle these calculations and these will help us with our column addition next week.
Collaborative learning has been a recurrent theme across the week, where we’ve given feedback on each other’s learning in English and worked together to find facts in a newspaper article…
… and used our sketching skills to draw a new species of animal we found on our exploration (Emily discovered a Decapolagest!). We did this by drawing its head, eyes and mouth and passing it to the next person. Next, we drew the body, arms and wings and passed it on. Then, we drew the creature’s legs and tail. Finally, we drew the animal’s feet!
It certainly produced some humorous results!
Our wacky pictures helped us plan a descriptive piece of writing.
Continuing the team work theme, in groups we have also researched our continents in our topic lessons, and presented our findings to the class!
Using our drama skills, we recreated a scene from a short film. When Miss Wilson shouted, ‘Freeze frame!’ we had to hold our positions whilst the audience discussed how each character would be feeling and why, using what we knew from the clip.
Here are some action shots from our PE lesson, where we practised our ginormous jumping and our huge handstands.
We even got the benches out for some balance and stretching, for the first time! It was very exciting!
Sadly, this week, we had to say goodbye to two of our classmates: Maya and Setayesh. You will both be deeply missed and we wish you lots of luck for your new schools, but we’re sure you will both be fantastic!
A humongous welcome to our new friend Talha, who joined the Year 3 team on Thursday! Already, you are a valued member of the class and I look forward to getting to know you better.
From Addition Missions to Egg Rolls – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
We took on the role of spies this week in Maths, with secret addition missions to accomplish. We also practised how to mark our own answers and we’re shaping up to be independent and responsible learners.
For a more concrete representation, we have used place value grids to help us visualise how to add a 3 digit number to a 1 digit number.
Our maths talk this week has revolved around explaining what happens when we solve these calculations.
In English, this week, we have analysed what makes a good description. This helped us write our own as a group…
… and then move to more independent writing by the end of the week. I have been blown away by the quality of the children’s writing, especially their use of expanded noun phrases and prepositions.
As we continue our journey with our Explorers topic, we identified and described human and physical features of geography. Our flying ship was cut off from its communications with HQ this week, so we had to describe our location using photos taken out of the portholes.
PE was a highlight of the week again, as we continued to work on our flexibility and coordination in gymnastics. Some of the stretches were a little tricky but I’m sure our core strength will be improving as the weeks go by! Why not try a back support or an egg roll whilst you’re watching TV or even doing your spellings!
We’ve discussed what it means to be a part of a team, alongside our Living and Learning theme this week: “I am resourceful. I am resilient.” We talked about our goals and how we will need these two Rs for Learning to achieve them.
Well done to certificate winners Leo, who is a great example of someone who doesn’t give up when they face a challenge, and Nryan, whose spelling investigation impressed me greatly.
Another fantastic week in Year 3 – well done to everyone!