October active travel prize winners
We’ve awarded the final voucher prizes for our October active travel prize draw.
Well done to Isla, Year 2, and Jasraj, Year 4, who won the week 4 and overall October month prizes for travelling to school in an active way.
The Living Streets’ WOW interactive travel tracker allows children to record, in class, their daily journey to school and children will continue to be awarded themed badges at the end of every month for travelling actively.
An active journey includes:
- walking
- scooting
- biking
- park and stride
We want to reduce the number of cars outside school so if you do have to travel by car, we recommend parking away from the school gate maybe at our preferred park and stride location, Marks & Spencer.
As always, keep safe while travelling.
Computing Unplugged
Did you know that Ada Lovelace, who was a British inventor, was the first person to invent the computer program? In her honour, Year 5 have enjoyed some offline computing today. We will learn more about Ada tomorrow.
They had six different stations, each with its unique brief. For example:
Children had to design algorithms to achieve a goal…
…such as collecting coins in – aptly named – ‘Coin Collect’ whilst avoiding traps…
…or they had to debug an existing algorithm in ‘Spot the Mistake’. (Challenge your child to define debugging.)
It was frustrating and challenging at times.
But when we succeeded, it felt great.
In ‘Treasure Hunt’, we wrote an algorithm to guide our Bee-Bot from the pirate ship to an area on the map to hide the loot. Our team mates had to predict which co-ordinates the algorithm would take the Bee-Bot to…
… and at station ‘ABCs’, we predicted spelling which word (using the Bee-Bot) would give the shortest and longest algorithm, explaining our reasoning for why we thought so. Of course, then we had to prove it.
We also used logical reasoning to find the best route back for Stanley (from our class novel, Holes) to his tent for his shower – every piece of code used was in exchange for one minute of precious showering. Was it worth it to cut through Tent F and trade 5 minutes of tub time? It was important to avoid the lethal lizards!
At the ‘Pocket Money’ station, we had to find the best routes for collecting different totals. A challenge was to show finding £2.54 in three different ways.
Well done to Year 5 for working brilliantly in their teams.
School Council 2018-2019
Meet our newly elected school councillors, chosen democratically by their class.
Their first meeting will be held next week. On the agenda is to discuss bullying (as part of anti-bullying week), Takeover Day and to consider what they might want to spend their library and class reward budgets on.
All children are encouraged to make suggestions to their school councillors (by posting their suggestion slip in each class’ Living and Learning box) for ideas/concerns to be discussed.
Living and Learning – Apologising
This week’s Living and Learning statement is:
I apologise when I need to.
We discussed what good manners mean to us – showing respect for everyone. We said that being respectful is not only one of our school rules but so important to life outside school, too. Here are some of our examples of when we’ve apologised and how it made the people involved feel.
Sometimes, mistakes and accidents happen. You can’t change the past to alter what happened but you can make the right choices after the event. Apologising to the person or people involved could be the first step to making things better.
We moved our focus to our class novel. Holes is about kids sent to a juvenile detention and correctional facility. Do they need to apologise for anything in their past? The characters often treat each other pretty badly. Should they say sorry for their actions? Would it make a difference?
Here are our thoughts on who should apologise to who:
Our thoughtful and very varied suggestions showed our understanding of when someone should apologise and how much detail we had remembered from the class novel.
Anti-bullying week – odd socks day
Next week is Anti-bullying Week. This year’s theme is ‘Choose Respect’ and we will be joining in with Odd Socks Day on Monday 12 November.
This day is to raise awareness of our differences, individuality and personal choice. There is no need for any payment – your child should simply wear odd socks and join in the fun!
Thank you for your support.
Inventions – Taboo!
“Today, we played Taboo where you had to describe an invention without saying four main words.” – Kismat
“All the inventions were from or connected to Leeds.” – Eliza
“My favourite invention was the Jelly Tots because I like recent stuff.” – Henry
“My favourite invention was Cluedo because I really like the game.” – Zak
“Mine was the mouse trap so you don’t have any mice stealing your cheese!” – Omar
“The oldest invention was the locomotive. It’s connected to Leeds because it was the first ever steam locomotive and the person who designed it came from Leeds.” – Ben
“The most recent invention was Jelly Tots in 1965.” – William
“The most challenging part was guessing the other person’s invention when they were describing it.” – Evie
“The most challenging part was trying to describe the invention because there were four words and you couldn’t say them but describe it without saying them!” – Zidaan
Living and learning – Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and also a focused week – Anti-bullying week (12 November).
Also this half term, our new school charity will be chosen. Every year, we nominate a new charity to support. This year, we have been supporting MakeAWish. We decide this on the basis of a Talk Time homework, and then school councillors make the final decision.
Our Living and Learning long term plan details the learning for each year group across the year and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar. We will begin and end this half term with a focus on manners.
I apologise when I need to.
I say please and thank you.
Bonfire night themed menu
When we return to school, on Monday 05 November, there will be a bonfire night themed menu.
Election ready
The polling station is all set up and ready for the annual School Council elections tomorrow.
Good luck to all candidates.
Making a Viking sun compass
Did you know that the Vikings were one of the first groups of people to invent the sun compass? Where would we be (literally) without inventing a way to navigate the globe?
This week, we have combined our statistics in maths and our Time Travel – Inventions learning to create a sun compass of our own. Hopefully we find out which way is North in the process!
We started by drawing a 9 x 2 table to record time and shadow length.
(We practised some measuring skills at the same time.)
At set intervals throughout the day – as long as the sun was playing ball – we went outside to create our sun compass.
First, we held a metre ruler perpendicularly to the floor to create a shadow. Using tape measures, we found out how long the shadow was and placed an ‘x’ in chalk at its tip.
As you can see from our tables, it was 333cm at 10am- much longer than we predicted!
Challenge your child! True or false? Explain why:
- The shadow was longest at 2pm
- The shadow was shortest at 11:30
- The shadow was 147cm at 10:30
After some intervals, we made predictions about the length of the shadow with varying degrees of success:
By the end of the day, we had made lots of chalk marks on the floor. By drawing a line from our starting point to the closest section of the curve, we have found North!
