29 November 2019
This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due on Thursday 5 December 2019.
Having learnt all about Scotland in our topic learning this week, the children have a text t0 read and answer questions. We’ll read it together and mark our work in our homework review on Thursday 5 Dec.
Living and Learning: My Community week so far
This week, we are enjoying our ‘My Community’ themed week based around these themes.
- Who am I? (identity)
- Who are we? (diversity)
- Where do I live? (community)
- How do we all live together? (equality)
There have been lots of events, visits and visitors so far.
- School community coffee morning and Wake Up Shake Up on Monday
- Bulb planting with Friends of Moortown Park
- Visiting Allerton Grange drama department for a community themed drama session led by Year 12 pupils
- A visit from Linda Gledhill from the deaf and hearing impairment team
- A visit from the RNIB to raise awareness of visually impaired members of our community
- JustDifferent disability workshops
- Litter picking in the local area
- Hate Crime workshops led by West Yorkshire Police
- Visiting Donisthorpe Hall
- A visit from Moortown fire service
- A visit from our PCSOs
- Learning carousels across different classes
Still to come is a visit to a group run by Moor Allerton Elderly Care; Greek language sessions led by a parent; a visit to St Gemma’s Hospice and choosing our new school charity.
The week will culminate with Identity Day on Friday 29 November.
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. We invite a donation for the PTA Christmas fair.
Thank you for all the entries we have received for the active travel in the community competition.
We encourage families to get out in the community in an active way on the way to and from school. Email (moortownoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of your active travel, maybe by a landmark on the route to school, for the chance to win one of five £10 vouchers. The winners will be drawn in the assembly tomorrow afternoon so please ensure your entries are sent by 12 o’clock tomorrow.
Thank you for supporting the themed week and please discuss the week with your child to reinforce this important learning.
Living and Learning: Community Week
This week is Community Week so we’ve been talking about who we are, how we’re the same and different and learning more about our community and the people in it.
At home, ask us to tell you about:
- DAHIT – the deaf and hearing impairment visit where we learnt about how people with hearing difficulties are helped to be part of the community
- JustDifferent – a charity which helps people understand that those with disabilities are just the same as us. We really enjoyed meeting Julie and learning about how she is different but likes the same things as us.
- The Fire Service – who delivered an assembly about what they do in our community
- Our Carousel – where we’ve visited the KS2 classes to explore us and the communities we’re part of
Don’t forget, the children can come dressed in clothing which symbolises their personality tomorrow: a Brownie uniform, a football team kit, religious/cultural dress and whatever else represents who they are.
Topic: computing and geaography
Year 4 combined their computing and geography knowledge today to practise learning counties and using compass language.
We created algorithms using compass directions to get from one county to another, gradually making our algorithms more complicated and challenging each other to follow our algorithms to see where they turned up.
At home, see how many cities and counties we can name and whether we can tell the eight points of a compass.
Topic: compass language
A distressing message appeared in Year 4 this week informing us that someone had abducted Miss Rushbrooke’s highland cattle!
We had to use our knowledge of compass directions to find the correct envelopes that would lead us to the location of the cow before the end of the day.
Year 4 worked incredibly hard to ensure they redeemed the cow and I am happy to inform that he is now safely back in Miss Rushbrooke’s house.
22 November 2019
This week’s spelling activity focuses on adding the suffixes er and est and is due in school on Thursday 28 November.
When we add er to a word like nice, it creates the meaning of more. So, nicer means more nice. Adding er to a word like build, creates the meaning of someone who. So builder means someone who builds.
When we add est to a word like nice, it creates the meaning of most. So, nicest means the most nice.
Think of 8 words which you can add the suffix er to and use three in a sentence. Then, think of 8 words you can add the suffix est to and use three in a sentence.
Writing: taking on a character
We’re going to write a character description of a pirate this week so, to get us in the mood, we got ourselves into character through some drama.
After a few warm-up games, we started to move around the room slowly, with big strides, like a clown and then we posed as different characters we read about last week.
We were Peter Pan.
We were The Evil Stepmother
We were Fantastic Mr Fox
We were Cinderella.
To get us into a piratey mood, we then thought about what our pirate was like and created scenes as a group of our piratey adventures.
We sailed across the seven seas.
We attacked any boats that got in our way.
Some fab drama from Year 4 who are now very much looking forward to writing their pirate character descriptions. Watch this space.
Living and Learning: My Community
We’re looking forward to lots of learning about identity, diversity and our community in our next whole school themed week, My Community.
Here are some key events taking place next week.
Christmas themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 12 December. Please contact the office, before 28 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).
Living and Learning: My Community themed week
Themed week – My Community
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place from Monday 25 November 2019. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of 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, disability and gender. Classes 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
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 be 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 on your route to school, for the chance to win one of five £10 shopping vouchers. Entries to be submitted by Friday 29 November 2019.
New school charity
During the themed week, children will be researching local, national and international charities and a new school charity will be chosen at the end of the week to replace our current charity, WWF. Children will have chance to consider and suggest charities in the upcoming whole school homework (Friday 22 November 2019).
Identity day
Friday 29 November 2019 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. We invite a donation for the PTA Christmas fair.
SAVE THE DATE Community coffee morning Monday 25 November 2019 9-10am
As part of the week, we welcome parents and carers to an informal coffee morning to meet other members of our school community including representatives from the PTA, our governing body, Moortown Community Group and Friends of Moortown Park. There will be chance to hear about proposed plans for the new land to the rear of school. A whole school community Wake up Shake up will follow at 10am in the main playground.
Can you help?
Pupil feedback from our previous My Community themed week was to ‘learn more languages that other people speak’. Do you speak another language and would you be happy to speak to children about this? 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 and Twitter continue to keep you up to date with key community events as well as our community noticeboard with lots of information about the themed week too. It’s going to be a busy week!