Anti-bullying week All Different, All Equal
Next week is national Anti-Bullying Week and our Living and Learning statement is I know how to STOP bullying.
The theme this year is ‘All Different, All Equal‘ with the following key aim:
The idea is to help children and young people celebrate what makes them, and others, unique and help them understand why it’s important that every child feels included in school, able to be themselves, without fear of bullying.
Our school definition has recently been reviewed by the new School Council and remains unchanged.
‘Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.’
As part of their learning this week, children will discuss these aspects of bullying:
- Our definition of bullying (above)
- Types of bullying – cyber-bullying and prejudice-based bullying related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and belief, special educational need and disability
- What to do if children experience or witness bullying. The key message is to tell someone (start telling other people)
STOP can stand for two key messages: the definition (Several Times On Purpose) and the solution (Start Telling Other People).
All classes have access to their class I want to say box or a whole school worry box where they can tell an adult any concerns about bullying or any other issues.
KS2 classes will also be using dance to show this learning through dance workshops arranged as part of the week.
For further support, bullying resources can be found at…
- https://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-information/advice-parents
- https://www.kidscape.org.uk/resources/
- http://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/
- https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/news-blogs/get-involved-in-anti-bullying-week-2017-all-different-all-equal/
- https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/bullying-and-cyberbullying/keeping-children-safe/
- https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/types-bullying/
- https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/feelings-and-symptoms/bullying/
Explorers Art Project
This week, we’ve been linking our Explorers topic with our writing and art learning. (There’ll be more about our descriptive writing in a separate post.)
We’ve created our own version of ‘The Land of Neverbelieve‘ and have been busy creating/designing this fictional land. We started by imitating the style of the book to create the outline of our island and have been thinking about how to turn this shape into a magical, mystical island. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be completing our final, neat versions which we’ll combine with our writing learning.
Here’s a few pics of our learning so far…
An orca inspired island.
The original ‘Land of Neverbelieve’.
Ethan practises drawing the ‘head’ of the island.
Pia gets her ideas down on paper – this island involves a tribute to Pia’s hamsters.
A shark-shaped land of mystery.
An imaginative take on a ‘Land of Neverbelieve’.
A detailed sketch of the final piece.
Football Training
Football training continued this week with 20 children from Year 5 and 6 in attendance. We focussed on our ball control and shooting before playing some small sided games.
Please note: we’ll always be outside for training (even in the rain). Please make sure your child has suitable, warm (if necessary, waterproof) clothing.
Roundhegians RUFC Engagement Afternoon
During the first term, we were lucky enough to be visited by some rugby coaches who are affiliated with Roundhegians RUFC. We learnt lots about rugby union and it was great to see our skills improve each session.
As a celebration, Roundhegians organised an engagement afternoon on Monday. Some children from Year 4 and Year 5 went along to Roundhegians to play in a non-competitive, fun tournament. Well done to all those involved. The coaches were extremely impressed with your attitude and behaviour – you certainly represented Moortown Primary well!
If you’re interested in playing rugby union, please visit Roundhegians RUFC. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me before or after school.
Reading with Reception
At Moortown, we do lots to create a love of reading: read a class novel, enjoy regular library sessions, have a weekly ‘love of reading’ free read session, read a range of interesting texts, take part in the ‘Extreme Reading’ competitions, etc.
In Year 5, we also enjoy reading with our Reception friends on a Friday. Reception and Y5 both look forward to this session. Year 5 do a great job of patiently reading to the younger children, asking questions to check their understanding while YR do a great job of reminding Y5 about phonics (and showing them how to stop after ‘3, 2, 1 Stop!’).
Here are a few pics from our most recent session…
Debate – Should eSports be in the Olympics?
During our reading session on Friday, we had a debate: Should eSports be in the Olympics?
We were given some information from FirstNews and had time to think about both sides of the argument. We thought about what a ‘good’ debater looks like and used sentence stems to shape the discussion.
We’ve been practising our debating skills quite a lot this year and have made huge improvements in our ability to use information to inform our viewpoint before putting forward a concise, logical argument.
Well done, Year 5!
Promoting a Love of Reading
Today, we visited the library for our weekly love of reading session (my favourite part of the week). We had the chance to sit in the library, relax and read. When we’re reading, we have our writing books with us in case we come across any vocabulary that we’d like to ‘magpie’ for our writing. If we find a word or phrase we like, we jot it down in our personal dictionaries.
We also use this time to read with an adult in our guided reading groups. We discuss what we’ve read and if we’re enjoying it.
Help at home by encouraging your child to read regularly. Even better, read with them!
Marvellous Maths Learning
In our maths lesson today, we carried out a little investigation (LO: square numbers). We were given 36 counters and had to arrange them in as many different arrays as we could.
However, one array in particular seemed to be different to the others:
We noticed this array was shaped like a square. Without realising, we’d taught ourselves what square numbers are. We then used the counters to show other square numbers. Now that we were confident identifying square numbers, we had a go at some pretty tricky reasoning.
Some of us applied our knowledge to this super challenging challenge:
We haven’t been able to solve it (YET!) but we will do. I was super impressed by how resillient everybody was and it was great to see people working together to tackle all of the reasoning and problem solving questions.
It also made for some particularly interesting self assessments:
- ‘I enjoyed having to be resilient.’ Ripley
- I found the challenge (very) hard but I tried and tried and I know feel confident.’ Amrit
- ‘I feel proud because I was resillient.’ Ethan
Gymnastics
Today in PE, we practised our balancing and jumping skills for gymnastics. We’ll be focussing on gymnastics in our Wednesday PE lessons for the next half-term.
In today’s lesson we worked together to create a range of balances before learning how to do a headstand. We’re not quite there yet but we have a much better understanding of the technique needed to perform this tricky balance. We also know how to do this safely – even how to fall safely if we lose our balance. Some of us could already perform a headstand so we acted as coaches to help everyone else through the various stages of a headstand.
A word of caution – don’t try this at home!
Fountains Abbey trip
Today, Y5 and Y6 visited Fountains Abbey as part our Explorers topic. The trip was particularly exciting because each group were able to plan their own exploration of this National Trust site.
Whilst some of us were off exploring the Studley Royal Gardens, the rest of us were spending ‘A Day in the Life of a Monk’. In this fun workshop, led by National Trust volunteers, we visited the abbey, learnt lots about its history and learnt how monks lived their fascinating lives. Did you know that monks considered heating using a fire a luxury? Or, that they had seven church services a day and one in the middle of the night? Even harder to imagine, they lived almost their whole life in silence. (Some of us would certainly struggle with the last one!)
When exploring, we each had a role to play within our group: map-reader, photographer, visitor surveyor, artist and time-keeper. We were in charge of making sure we visited the places of interest the people in our group wanted to see and had to ensure we were back at our ‘base’ at the correct time. It was really fun to politely approach members of the public and carry out a visitor survey (a geography fieldwork skill). Can you believe that someone had travelled all the way from the USA?
To enhance of our geography learning from the classroom, we continued to compare Fountains Abbey with Machu Picchu. We found lots of similarities: they have similarly interesting histories, they are both ruins, they first became ruins in quite similar ways, both places were used by religious people to celebrate a god and we found out that farming was crucial in both places.
We all had a great time and will certainly sleep tonight (the adults will anyway). As always, the children were fantastic ambassadors for our school and we received several compliments from the public.
Here are some quotes from the day:
- ‘I love nature now!’
- ‘It was great that we chose which parts of Fountains Abbey we wanted to explore.’
- ‘My favourite part was learning how a monk loved their life!’
- ‘It was great finding out about the life of a monk!’
- ‘It was really fun to go for a walk in a nice place!’
