School Council elections
It’s was a busy morning at the Moortown Primary School polling station with all classes taking part in our School Council elections. We’ve had a record number of children choosing to stand as candidates including the majority of the current School Council. Candidates prepared and delivered some great speeches to their class earlier this week in preparation for the election.
With a number of very close results, the winning candidates were announced in our assembly this afternoon.
Well done to our new school councillors – we are sure you will represent your class well.
The first meeting will be held after the half term on 01 March and one of the initial decisions to be made will be how we can support Sport Relief.
School Council Elections
Following in-class election speeches this week, our School Council elections will take place on Thursday, 11 February. 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.
Results will be counted on Thursday 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.
Reading with Reception
Every Friday afternoon since Christmas, Reception have visited us so that we can read to them. They choose a book from their classroom and then enjoy us reading it to them before discussing it together. We enjoy it just as much as they do and have actually started teaching them how to read some easier words, too – it’s been quite challenging remembering our phonics from all those years ago.
A visit from the chicks
We thoroughly enjoyed meeting the chicks on Friday as they ventured into Y5 for a visit. We discussed what sort of animal they were and therefore what we knew about them but mostly we just enjoyed holding them and listening to their cheeping.
How’s our Life topic going?
We’re all enjoying learning about ‘Life’. There’s been oceans of learning this week. We began by sorting animals according to criteria we chose ourselves:
- water, land and air
- colour
- deadly, not deadly
- vertebrate, invertebrate
We then had to try to sort them into which class they belonged to: mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird, fish, insect and plant. There were some animals we disagreed with and we had to learn more about these classes to be able to sort them correctly.
We’ve then focused on life in the ocean, looking at what different types of animals live there and finding out the similarities and differences in their life cycles.
BLAST!
Alright, Charlie is coming to Moortown Primary on Monday 08 February.
Alright, Charlie is a gender neutral, age-appropriate resource for young people which aims to raise the awareness of grooming and how to stay safe from unsafe adults for young people aged 8-11. The BLAST Project been developed in Leeds by a nationally recognised service working to prevent child sexual exploitation (CSE). It’s been funded by the Department for Education and will be available for all primary schools across the country from the end of March; however, schools in Leeds have been piloting the resource since September and so far it has received great feedback from parents, teachers and young people alike.
On the same theme, did you watch the horrific, but true, docudrama on BBC3 last week? Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar tells the true story of Breck Bednar, a 14-year-old schoolboy who was lured to his death after being groomed online by Lewis Daynes while gaming. Whilst this seems a world away from primary school, Breck was only 14 years old. (Please note: it contains strong language and upsetting scenes.)
Check out our advice for staying safe on-line.
The last page of our age-related expectations contains age-appropriate skills your child should have in Year 5 and Year 6.
Silk painting
We’ve all tried something new this week. Our art project, linked to our Life topic, has been to create a new hybrid animal and then paint it onto silk. None of us had ever tried silk painting before and we all enjoyed doing something new.
Once we’d designed our new animal, we drew it on silk before going over our design in ‘gutta’. This is an outline which hold the paint inside the lines of your drawing. We practised on paper before using the gutta on silk.
Once our outline was complete, we painted the silk and loved watching how the colours would merge and bleed into each other to create a lovely effect.
What do you think of our final paintings?
Animal Antics
We really enjoyed getting up close and personal with some real life animals as part of our Life topic this week. We wore a snake as a scarf and learnt all about how the patterns of its scales help it to hide from its prey.
We also used our maths skills to estimate how long it was and then measured it against our own height to compare.
Next, we met some rainforest chickens and learnt all about how the mother has to sit on her eggs to keep them warm so that they’ll hatch.
Finally, it was time for the creepy crawly – a tarantula. Only the bravest dared hold this little creature.
What a fantastic experience for us all. Thanks to Miss Valentine for organising it!
School dinners
Our school dinner menu was discussed by our School Council this week. They also talked about ways to encourage others to try some of the new meals that are on the Spring term menu.
Did you know the menu is available to view on our website and also displayed on our dining room window. This is a good way to make your child aware of what the daily meals are.
The menu follows a three week cycle and it changed on a termly basis.
Here are the options for today.
School Council elections 11 February
Our current school councillors held their final meeting today as we prepare to elect our new school council. This year’s election date is Thursday 11 February.
Children from every class, including Reception, are encouraged to prepare a speech to present to their class as part of the election process. Our whole school homework before the election date (05 February) will give children the chance to plan their speech.
Thank you to our existing school council who have been involved with many decisions and discussions throughout the year. On today’s agenda, there have been discussions around the new school dinner menu, classroom reading areas, e-safety and general suggestions put forward by children in each class. It appears they have enjoyed the role as they all intend to stand again at the elections.