National Storytelling Week
It’s national storytelling week! Y6 were pleased to join a webinar hosted by author Tola Okogwu. She’s written Onyeka, among lots of others, and took us through how she comes up with her amazing story ideas.
We could interact with Tola and she even picked Luca’s idea of the character having super stretchy legs as her super power! Check it out below.
We loved thinking creatively to start off this magical tale so help at home by finishing it off or starting a new one with your own ideas!
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!
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.
Maths: measure
Over the last couple of weeks, Y6 have been learning about measure.
We’ve looked at mass, length and capacity.
We also looked at solving problems which contain a range of skills.
The presentation was standout this week – as well as the confidence!
Help at home by asking your child how many:
- g are in a kg?
- ml are in a l?
- mm are in a cm?
Living and Learning: Being Safe
We took part in the NSPCC Speak out Stay Safe online assembly.
During the assembly, 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.
We also heard about Childline – ask your child to show you the way to remember the number.
To follow up this learning, we welcomed staff from NSPCC to deliver a ‘Speak Out Stay Safe’ workshop. They were very impressed with the children’s learning and understanding.
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.
Geography: rising sea levels
In our topic lessons, we’ve been looking at climate change and how it’s contributing to ice caps melting.
We’ve looked at low lying countries and coastal regions such as the Solomon Islands.
We watched quite an impactful video where an island called Kale has completely disappeared over the last ten years due to rising sea levels.
We thought about the impacts that the rising sea levels has on a place like the Solomon Islands.
Help at home by researching ways we can slow down climate change at home.
Active travel and safety around the school gate
Living and Learning: drug education
For the past two weeks, we have been focussing on drug education. We defined a drug as ‘a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.’
Year 6 looked at what might influence a person to use drugs. They were asked to discuss what would most influence whether a person would use the drug. This is a group’s answer ranked with the most likely influence at the top.
They were then asked to rank what is mostly likely to influence someone not to use the drug. This was another group’s answer.
As this was group work, the children used their oracy skills of actively listening to others and respond respectfully as we know that people can have different opinions.
Knowing people can be influenced, we looked at the 3 different ways someone can respond to the pressure.
The children were given scenarios to read and asked to identify who or what the character is being influenced by and whether they are feeling pressure, including peer pressure (pressure from those around them). Then, consider the different ways the character could respond:
∙What would be an example of a passive response? For example, joining in with the group to feel included
∙What would be an example of an aggressive response? For example, shouting “no” and being rude to others
∙What would be an example of an assertive response? For example, saying a calm, firm but polite “no thanks”
Help at home: Read the scenario and discuss what would the 3 ways to respond be.
Spring term after-school clubs
We’ve had a great first week to our after-school clubs. There are some places available on the following clubs if your child would like to join. Please refer to the letter below to show the relevant year groups.
Writing: speech
This week, we’ve been practising using speech punctuation in writing.
We’ve looked at the rules for writing dialogue (of which there are a lot!) before applying them ourselves.
We’ve also worked on some transcription – I read a sentence out to the class which contained speech and they had to listen carefully and write it down correctly. It’s a difficult skill but it was very helpful when we were learning about where each punctuation goes.
It was great to have a bit of freedom as well in our writing. We could choose to write about any two characters as long as we gave them completely different characters. It was fun!
Help at home by looking out for the speech punctuation when you’re reading (every day!) at home.