Who do you think you are?
Our themed week is in full swing with many highlights so far.
- Mindfulness workshops for Year 1, 2, 3 and Reception.
- Dove self esteem sessions for Year 5 and 6 (Visitor feedback – ‘We really enjoyed running the sessions and the classes we had were great and very engaged!’)
- Visits from RNIB, BID sensory services and the Leeds deaf and hearing impairment team for all classes
- West Yorkshire Police Hate Crime session for Year 5 and 6
- Some Year 5 and 6 children attended the Moor Allerton Elderly Care ‘Old & New Games’ afternoon (Visitor feedback – ‘They were brilliant and a pleasure to have.’)
- Whole school assembly about charities by Val from the Salvation Army charity shop in Meanwood
- Year 4 visit to St Gemma’s Hospice
- Year 5 visit to Marjorie and Arnold Ziff centre
- Year 2 visit to Donisthorpe Hall
Thank you to parents who have attended our mindfulness workshop on Monday and our community coffee morning and wake up shake up today.
There is still more to come.
- PCSO visit to talk about community safety, road safety and monitor speed outside school in 20mph zone for Reception, Year 1 and 3
- Mindfulness workshops for Year 3, 4 and 5
- Learn languages in our community for Year 3 and 4
- Two more chances to walk, bike or scoot to school (Road Safety Week) to be in with a chance to win prizes on Friday
- New school charity will be chosen
- Have a go at the Who do you think we are? competition
Take a look at the class news pages to find out more about your child’s learning this themed week.
Today’s visitors
Today, visitors came to speak to us about sign language. Everyone learnt how to say ‘How are you?’, ‘I’m fine thank you’, ‘What’s your name?’, My name is____’, ‘How old are you?’ , ‘I am ______ years old’ and how to spell their names in sign language.
We were learning about this because our themed week is community and there are a few deaf people who live in Leeds.
Also, we were visited by members of the police who split the class in half, treating one half very nicely and the other half not so nicely: they gave one half Ribena and the other water; gave one half more talking time than the other; told one half they were cool; and gave tokens to them. This was to show that it would be unfair to treat people differently for no real reason. Hate crime is when people discriminate against others because of their race, gender, religion/belief, disability or sexual orientation.
We learnt that we are all the same and all different and we should treat others how we want to be treated.
Written by Pippa and Neive.
Our very own islands
As mentioned in the news post about our topic review last week, one of the things the children have enjoyed the most throughout Explorers is designing their own islands.
Our writing was inspired by a fantastic book, The Land of Neverbelieve, which resulted in some brilliant descriptive pieces about exploring this fantastical land. It is an island in the shape of a dragon (although many children believed it to be a wolf) with weird and wonderful areas dotted around: The Dark and Spooky Mountains, The Flowering Meadow, Book Mountain and many more. We decided to create our own islands which have demonstrated incredible imagination and more amazing writing from the children.
Mindfulness
As part of our community week and today’s focus on identity, Y6 worked on mindfulness this morning. This is something we’ve spoken about before but today’s learning helped us to realise how there were lots of different ways we could be mindful of ourselves and mindful of others.
We also learnt about lots of techniques we could take away and use if we were struggling with situations or if we just wanted to become more mindful.
Year 6 really enjoyed this session and we discussed which things they’d like to use in class. Ask your child about what they learnt and see whether there’s anything they could use at home, too.
Topic Review
Alas! We have come to the end of our Explorers Topic – one which we’ve all really enjoyed. We always take a look back on topic learning by reflecting on the work in our topic books, looking at news posts, recalling our favourite learning and discussing the skills we’ve developed along the way.
Year 6 came up with loads of learning we’ve done throughout this eight week topic:
In pairs we then thought about what our favourite learning had been and we created a diamond nine to show this:
Then, we rearranged our thoughts to reflect on which activities helped us to learn the most:
Finally, we thought about how our learning related to the real world and ordered it in terms of which has been most important:
Year 3 came to visit us today as well so that we could share our topic learning with each other. First, Year 3 took the Year 6s on a tour of their topic book, explaining their learning as they went and then Year 6 took the role of tour guide.
We finished off by looking at each other’s diamond nines and the Year 6s guessed how Year 3 would have ordered their learning from favourite to least favourite.
Dance Workshop
All of Key Stage 2 took part in a dance workshop today, dancing to songs sung by artists who had experienced bullying. Year 6 dance to Justin Bieber and had a great time with quite a complicated routine.
Here we are preparing for our big performance.
At the end of the day, we performed our routine to the school and enjoyed watching what the other classes had prepared too. This is all part of anti-bullying week which has involved us discussing what bullying is in class too: different types of bullying; suggestions for it you are bullied; suggestions for if you see bullying; and why a bully might be making those choices. Ask us about the discussions we’ve had at home and see what we remember.
Mindfull or mindful?
Would you like to find out more about mindfulness and how it can be used to support your child at home?
As part of our whole school themed week next week, all children will be taking part in mindfulness workshops. There’ll also be a parent/carer session on Monday 20 November at 2:30-3:15pm.
Please contact the office if you would like to attend.
More Veggie Burgers
We know that we talked about our cooking last week, but the rest of Year 6 did it today. We used the same skills: bridge and claw cutting methods, grating, frying, blending, moulding and – once again – washing up.
Once again, not everyone expected they’d enjoy it but everyone really liked them. Mushroom-based was the favourite of the group. We did the same recipes as last time: courgette-based, carrot-based and mushroom-based veggie burgers.
We took some more photos.
Pippa made a carrot avalanche or carralanche!
Some of us decided to taste them there and then.
Lots of children wanted to make the burgers at home so here’s the recipe.
- 2 shallots (chopped)
- 2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
- 2 tbsp of breadcrumbs
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp of cumin
- 1 tsp of paprika
- 150g of cheddar (grated) or 200g of feta (crumbled)
- 1 tin of mixed beans (optional)
- 2 carrots (grated) or 2 courgettes (grated) or a punnet of mushrooms (chopped)
Fry the onions and garlic (and mushrooms if you’re using them) and then place all of them into a large bowl. Use your hands to mix all of the ingredients together thoroughly. Once mixed, get a handful of mixture and use your hands to shape it into a burger. Place the burger shapes onto a baking tray and put in an oven (180 degrees) for 20 minutes.
Enjoy in a bun, with a salad or even with chips!
Written by Neive and Pippa.
Christmas school dinner themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 07 December. Please contact the office, before Monday 20 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
Who do you think you are? themed week 20 November
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place from Monday 20 November, which also coincides with national Road Safety Week. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education.
Events during the week will include looking at our own identity including belonging, self-esteem and mindfulness, diversity of people around us including race, age, religion, disability and gender. Classes will also be getting out into the community working with local organisations such as St Gemma’s, local care homes, Moortown Community Group and taking pride in the local community by litter picking.
Road Safety Week will run alongside our themed week where children are encouraged to take a walk/scoot/bike in the community on their way to and from school, maybe even picking up a piece of litter on the way. If your child walks, scoots or bikes, they should complete the slip at the bottom of the letter sent home (spare tokens are available in class), each day, for a chance to win a £10 shopping voucher for each class. We hope you will support this initiative in helping children make a healthy start to their day and also helping towards reducing congestion at our gates. Even by parking further away from school your child could then to do the final part of their journey by foot, bike or scooter. Bike and scooter storage facilities are available beside the Year 3 and 4 classrooms.
During the themed week, children will be researching local, national and international charities and a new school charity will be chosen at the end of the week to replace our current charities, Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Mind Leeds.
Friday 24 November will be a non-uniform identity day. Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend, a team they are part of or support or traditional dress to represent their heritage. We invite a donation for the PTA Christmas fair.
Who do you think we are?
Do you think you’d recognise some of our staff in their early years? This photo competition is back and will run throughout the week with details to follow separately. Proceeds will be given to our new school charity.
Community coffee morning Wednesday 22 November 9-10am
As part of the week, we welcome parents and carers to an informal coffee morning to meet other members of our school community including representatives from the PTA, our governing body, Moortown Community Group and Friends of Moortown Park. I will also be available to speak to parents about our new Living and Learning scheme of work. A whole school community Wake up Shake up will follow at 10am in the main playground.
Mindfulness information session for parents
Please see the separate letter to sign up for this parent workshop on Monday 20 November, 2:30pm-3:15pm.
Can you help?
Pupil feedback from our previous Who do you think you are? themed week was to ‘learn more languages that other people speak.’ Do you speak another language and you would be happy to speak to children about this? If so, please contact the office to pass on your details. Also, do you have any local community links that may support our week?
Our website and Twitter continue to keep you up to date with key community events as well as our community noticeboard with lots of information about the themed week too. It’s going to be a busy week!