Cross Country Leeds Final
*** UPDATE*** Congratulations to our Year 3 girls team and one of our Year 4 runners who have qualified for the West Yorkshire Cross Country Final.
We were very proud of our eight Key Stage 2 children who took part in the Leeds Cross Country Final at Temple Newsam this week.
In muddy, slippy, wet conditions they all put in 100% effort in their races and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing against the best runners from across Leeds.
We’ll wait to hear if we have any qualifiers for the next round, the West Yorkshire Final.
Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.
Internet Safety Day
Yesterday was Internet Safety Day! The theme for this year’s national Safer Internet Day is ‘Too good to be true? Protecting yourself and others from scams online.’
Our first lesson was about misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes. The children were given 3 news articles to analyse and summarise. They then had to share this information with their friends over message. What they didn’t know is that these articles were hoaxes (false information made to deceive people). I shared this information with them on purpose (disinformation) and they had then shared it by accident (misinformation).
Year 5 discussed how we must be critical users of the internet to make sure false information is not spread to affect others. Ibby said, ‘I would check other websites to make sure the information was correct’. Nate said, ‘I would look at the URL to make sure it is a safe and reliable website’.
It’s really important to always speak to a trusted adult if you’re unsure about something you read online.
We joined a great BBC live lesson for Safer Internet Day all about scamming and phishing. Phishing involves tricking someone into giving out personal information online by pretending to be someone else. We learnt how to spot a phishing scam using a helpful acronym.
We then learnt about why it’s important to check with a trusted adult before sharing personal information online. Personal information that websites/apps/games collect could be anything from name and address to birthday, hobbies and even bank details. We need to keep this information safe whilst online and not give it to just anyone!
Help at home: Can you think of at least 4 pieces of personal information that we should keep private? How can you be critical users of the internet?
New school meal menu
After February half term, we start our new menu which runs to the end of the year. It can be viewed here. Please review this with your child to help with their selection at the start of the day. We continue to offer meat free Mondays.
The cost of a school meal is £2.75, which should be paid in advance on the School Gateway app. We’re happy to accept payment for the week, month, half term or term. We prefer two weeks’ notice to change lunch arrangements.
All children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 receive free school meals. If your child is in Year 3 to Year 6, and you are on benefits or a low income, your child may be eligible for free school meals.
Some people like to choose a mix of school dinners and packed lunch for their child – that’s absolutely fine, as long as it’s a the same pattern of school dinners and packed lunches every week. Just let office staff know which days you’d like to opt in for a school meal in the week, and which days you’d prefer to provide your child with a packed lunch.
We continue to gather feedback from children on our school meals. Shortly, we will be reviewing our vegetable choices to help to eliminate waste.
If you have any feedback. please do get in touch.
Living and learning: online safety assembly
This week, Louise from West Yorkshire Police came to deliver a whole school assembly all about staying safe online.
There were lots of clear online safety messages around content, contact and conduct.
At the end of the assembly, the children reflected on what they were going to do after hearing Louise’s messages.
I am going to ask my adult to take off the chat on my Roblox settings.
I am not going to accept friend requests from people I don’t know.
I am not going to play games that have a age rating older than me as they won’t be appropriate for me.
Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.
Author Zoom with Tola Okogwu!
This week is National Storytelling Week. Year 5 had a zoom with the author Tola Okogwu, who has written written Onyeka, among 15 other books!
Tola talked through her step-by-step guide on how to create ideas for stories. In today’s webinar, we built an origin story for a person with super powers. The three main ingredients we needed for this was the person, the place and the problem.
Here are some of the creative ideas Year 5 came up with:
- a boy with the power of moon and sun (night vision and fire)
- people with telekinesis
- a girl with super speed
- a boy who could shrink into different sizes
- a girl with extremely long hair
- a boy who can control time
- a boy with a super jump
- a girl who can camouflage
- a boy who is super strong
Help at home: Encourage your child to write their story using their ideas from today.
Living and Learning: Internet safety
Today, Year 5 were joined by D:side Dave! He was here to talk to us about online safety. To start off our session, he asked the children to guess how old each social media site would be. To start off, we had lots of guesses around 40 years old but quickly realised social media was not that old at all!
We looked at a case study: ‘Alfie is 10 years old. He has just got a phone for his birthday and has opened an Instagram account. He has 450 followers.’
Year 5 discussed how 450 was too many followers as he does not know that many people. Grace said, ‘You should NOT accept people you don’t know!’
‘Alfie has now changed his profile to a private profile.’
The children spoke about how a private profile is a good idea! This means only people you accept can see your profile.
‘Alfie has told his parents his password.’
A sensible choice is to set a password and tell parents just in case they need to use it but not everyone does this. Some Year 5 children have said they will now tell their parents their passwords for their safety!
We ended off our session trying to see how good we were at deciding if an online account was real or fake. Parents, can you tell which account is the real one and which three are fake?
Help at home: Have a discussion with your child about three ways we can be safe with an online social media account.
KS2 ice skating Planet Ice
As part of our involvement with Leeds Well Schools Partnership, a group of twelve Key Stage children recently took part in an ice skating session at Planet Ice.
After getting kitted out with our ice skates, we ventured onto the ice with some children being very hesitant. Our instructor taught us how to get up safely if we fell (and there were quite a few falls!), how to move forward on our skates and how to glide. All the children had a great attitude to learning these skills and showed excellent resilience and support to each other. By the end of the session, there was some great progress made and lots more smiles! Well done to all the children who took part.
This event was incredibly popular with over 90 children requesting to take part. If you would like to give ice skating a go, then have a look at the sessions available at Planet Ice. We’d recommend it!
Drop Down Morning
Today, we have had a topic drop down morning. In these mornings, we recap previous learning; this time, we recapped Geography (volcanoes), Computing (Scratch) and History (Carnivals and the Atlantic Slave Trade).
In our Geography learning, Year 5 looked at the relationship between the location of volcanoes and the location of tectonic plate borders.
They then had to label the different pictures which related to volcanoes and add any extra facts they could remember.
In our Computing lesson, the children had to identify the key vocabulary from the definitions and pictures. We also discussed computer over use and spotted signs from our body and environment that showed us we need to take a break from screens.
To finish the session, Year 5 could spend some time on scratch, revisiting their learning from Year 3 and 4.
In our History session, we matched out key vocabulary to their definitions. We then went on to discuss what a carnival was and recalled who started the Leeds West Indian Carnival: Arthur France. Arthur France immigrated to England at the age of 21.
As well as being a celebration of West Indian culture, the carnival is a celebration of the end of slavery. We looked at what the Atlantic Slave Trade was.
In the 16th Century, Britain had started new settlements (called colonies) in the West Indies and North America. The British needed lots of people to work on the huge sugar, cotton and tobacco farms (plantations) there.
Britain used slaves taken from Africa to do this work. This forced movement of slaves from Africa to the West Indies and America was called the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Help at home: Ask your child how they worked as a geographer, computer programmer or historian today.
Writing: Persuasive letters
This week, we’ve starting looking at our next piece of writing. We are going to be writing a persuasive letter. To persuade means to cause someone to do something through reasoning and argument.
We’re going to persuade the Minister for the Environment for the UK, Steve Reed, to tackle climate change more effectively. In our persuasion letters, we’ll have to make him aware of the devastating effects climate change is having around the world and what he can do to combat these effects!
Once we’ve written our letters, we’ll go and post them and await a response!
So far, we have looked at good examples and identified features.
In today’s lesson, we picked out phrases that we can use in our own writing.
Help at home: Have a discussion about how climate change is affecting our world. Is there anything we can personally do to stop it?
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
This year, our Junior Leadership Team democratically selected Yorkshire Air Ambulance as our new school charity to support.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a lifesaving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across the whole of Yorkshire. Money raised keeps both of their air ambulance helicopters maintained and in the air.
This week, we welcomed representatives from Yorkshire Air Ambulance for an assembly to hear first hand about the excellent work they do and how our donations will help the charity.
Did you know it costs £21,000 per day to keep the Yorkshire Air Ambulance running.
It’s great to hear the children have already got ideas of how we can raise money for YAA. They are encouraged to put these ideas into our class Living and learning boxes for the Junior Leadership Team to consider.