We are chefs!
Year 5 have become chefs this past week; they created a very delicious vegetable pasta bake. The children learnt how to cut up vegetables using the bridge and claw method. They EVEN washed up!
If your child wishes to take a paper copy of the recipe home, they are in the end of the day tray in their classroom. Some children have already made it!
Cross country finalists
Today, four Key Stage 2 pupils represented our school in the Leeds cross country final after qualifying in the North East Leeds competition.
Well done to all the children who gave 100% in their races of over 100 runners and with a tough hill at the end.
Special congratulations to our Year 6 runner who after finishing 1st in his heat went on to finish 1st in the Leeds final today! A fantastic acheievement! He will now qualify for the West Yorkshire cross country final.
Thank you to parents who transported and supported the children today.
Living and Learning: I know how to seek help
This week, we have discussed how to seek help when it is needed. The children watched a NSPCC assembly where it highlighted children’s rights and gave the clear message of ‘Speak out, Stay safe’. The children were confident at identifying who their own trusted adults are and felt comfortable that they could ask for help.
This learning will be revisited in a couple of weeks time when they will have a workshop to recap their learning and deepen their knowledge of being safe.
Help at home: Discuss who your child would speak to if they needed help and/or visit the Childline website, which has age-appropriate advice for primary school children on topics such as bullying. It also has games and other interactive tools.
Writing: Narratives with dialogue
Over the past couple of weeks, the children have developed ideas, planned and written narratives which contain dialogue. The focus of the work was for the speech to convey character and advance action. Our inspiration was a silent animation where the two main characters were carrying out a heist for a priceless ruby, however, the plot took a turn and the thieving brothers ended up in a fight.
The children then created their own two characters who were also trying to steal something and similarly ended up in an argument.
Have a look at these extracts from their fantastic work:
Reading
As you all know we love to read at Moortown Primary School. Starting from today, Year 5 will be reading with Reception every Friday. It was lovely to see and hear all the children engaged in a story.
Reading: Performing Poems
The children have been performing the poem ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ by William Wordsworth to their peers. In this homework review, the children practised their oracy skills of:
- eye contact,
- voice projection,
- fluency and pace,
- and tonal variation.
The outcome was fantastic!
Science: Our Solar System
In Science this week, we learnt about our solar system. We sorted fact cards into four different categories (planets, sun, moon or Earth). Then, we carried out research using secondary sources (a form of scientific enquiry).
This learning linked to our Computing and Living and Learning curriculum as we discussed the reliability and accuracy of information from the fact cards and the websites which we were looking at.
In addition, we created solar system posters; have a look at our fabulous work:
Finally, we made mnemonics to remember the order in which the planets orbit the sun.
Help at home: Come up with a new mnemonic to remember the order of our solar system. Here is an example:
Mercury My
Venus Very
Earth Epic
Mars Marvellous
Jupiter Jumper
Saturn Suits
Uranus Unqiue
Neptune Neil
Or why not watch the ‘we are planets’ song.
Spring term after-school clubs
Living and Learning: I know what a drug is.
Over the next couple of weeks in our Living and Learning sessions, we will be focusing on “Being Safe”. This week in Living and Learning, we discussed what a drug is and what might influence a person to take/not take them.
We learnt that a drug is: ‘a substance people take to change the way they feel, think or behave.’
We also talked about the term ‘drugs’ and how it refers to all drugs:
• all illegal drugs,
• all legal drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and volatile substances (those giving off a gas which can be inhaled),
• all over-the-counter and prescription medicines.
In small groups, the children created diamond nines of what they thought would be the biggest influence for taking/not taking drugs. Here is an example:
The children also gave reasons for their choices: “feelings/emotions might be the biggest influence as people might think it helps to relieve stress” and “family would not influence you to take them because they love you and wouldn’t want to harm you”.
Living and Learning: mental health
Over the past three weeks, we have been discussing mental health: why it is important and how to look after it. We spoke about mental health being “about our feelings, our thinking, our emotions and our moods – things you can’t see, but affect our lives in lots of ways”.
We talked about how sometimes big emotions (strong emotions that stay for a long time and can stop us from doing what we want to do in our lives) can become very overwhelming but there are strategies to help us. The children talked about taking deep breaths; thinking of happy memories; taking part in something they love or completing a self-care activity.
Help at home: discuss which self-care activities your child might use to help deal with their emotions.
