New themed menus
Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special Australia Day themed menu on Tuesday 24 January. This themed menu has recently been selected by our school councillors.
Please contact the office, by 12 January, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
Another themed menu selected by our school councillors is for Shrove Tuesday, 28 February.
Please contact the office, by 09 February, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
New SEAL theme…Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
- Self-awareness: feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
- Managing feelings: understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself.
- Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
As part of our current science mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.
The theme also links with Moortown’s Got Talent, our upcoming annual talent show.
The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened / under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.
Christmas Party!
Dancing – then statues!
The Witches
On Tuesday, we had a brilliant time at West Yorkshire Playhouse watching The Witches.
Both classes had a great time and enjoyed seeing Roald Dahl’s famous story come alive.
There’s always lots on at the theatre – why not take a look? https://www.wyp.org.uk/about/whats-on/
School Meals
Our school dinner menu is usually changed on a termly basis but this is now changing to half yearly. Our new menu will therefore be from February 2017.
When we return from the Christmas holiday, we will start on Week 3 of our current menu until the new menu is introduced.
School Saving Club paying in session
Our next paying in date for School Saving Club account holders is Thursday 08 December 3.15-3.45pm. If you can’t make this date, the next one will be on Thursday 02 February at 3.15-3.45pm.
Children must be accompanied to the sessions.
Alternatively, you can bring money to the office in a sealed envelope marked School Saving Club for the attention of Miss Hale.
School Saving Club accounts can still be opened. Please ask at the office for an application form.
Children who are in currently in Year 3 will have their account credited by Leeds City Council with £10 once opened.
Physical activity – the facts
In August 2016, the Government released its Childhood Obesity Strategy. This document outlines actions which will address the rising rates of childhood obesity.
Yorkshire Sport Foundation have produced the following poster with statistics and key information from the strategy.
We continue to monitor and improve our physical activity provision (see our current PE Provision Plan (pe-and-sport-premium-2016-2017) and our previous PE Provision Plan (pe-and-sport-premium-2015-2016).
Packed lunches
Struggling for ideas for a healthy packed lunch?
Change4life have some great tips and easy to prepare ideas based on the Eatwell Guide.
Also make reference to our Packed Lunch Guidance.
Food Science
Lucy from Marks and Spencer’s came in and taught us about the science that goes into their famous melt-in-the-middle puddings. We learnt about emulsifiers and the role these play in the pudding. I think our favourite part was the taste test. What a great job that would be!
STEM Project
The following pictures sum up our project. After finding out how elastic band cars work, we designed and planned our own. The children had to make decisions about the size of the wheels, type of elastic band and the style of the frame. Each group planned something different which was good to see!
We began making the frame and then added the mounts for the axles. When we tested out the axles, we discovered a problem – can your child tell you what it was? So we found some different axles to use and carefully measured, marked and sawed these. After some gluing of the wheels, the cars were ready for their power source – the elastic band. Can your child explain to you how the elastic band makes the car work?
We were so excited to test the cars! Unfortunately, they didn’t work as well as we had hoped. There were many things wrong including wheel-spinning, glue stopping the wheels from spinning, axles which were too short, wheels falling off…
However, Year 3 were resilient and resourceful and managed to fix all these problems themselves and improved the performance of the car! I was so proud of how well they worked together to solve these problems.
When they were finally ready, we had a competition and the winning team’s car went over one and a half metres!
Well done, Year 3!
