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It’s the half-term break…

…so there’s no homework or spellings this week.  Enjoy the holiday, whatever you get up to.

Goodbye, Miss Hewson!

On Friday, children, parents and staff said goodbye to a much-loved member of our school community: Miss Hewson.

Miss Hewson had been with us for just short of five years (the picture below was taken in her first year at Moortown Primary).  She has left to take up a leadership role in a school in York, closer to her home.Amongst the comments in Friday’s assembly, when people were asked to suggest some of Miss Hewson’s talents (fitting in with last half-term’s Good to be Me SEAL theme), were her teamwork, her support for others, her dancing (during Wake Up, Shake Up sessions) and her ability to smile all the time!  As well as obviously missing the Moortown community, Miss Hewson commented on Friday that she would miss being the youngest teacher in a school – a feature of which she has always been most proud!

Miss Hewson, we will miss you and we all wish you well for the future.

New SEAL theme – Changes

This SEAL theme tackles the issue of change and aims to equip children with an understanding of different types of change, positive and negative, and common responses to it.

The key ideas and concepts behind this theme are:

• Change can be uncomfortable, because it can threaten our basic needs to feel safe and to belong
• Change can also be stimulating and welcome
• Both adults and children can experience a range of powerful and conflicting emotions as a result of change – for example, excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, loss, anger, resentment
• Worries about change can be made worse by uncertainty, lack of information, or misinformation and lack of support from others
• People’s responses to and ability to cope with change are very variable, and might be influenced by individual temperament, previous experience of change, and the nature of the change – chosen or imposed, expected or unexpected, within our control or out of our control.

Some children may welcome most forms of change and dislike routine and predictability.  Other children may find even small changes very difficult.

Within school, children, who are coping with or have undergone significant change, are supported in a variety of ways:

• Our positive ethos within school
• Support systems, from staff and peers, for children who have undergone change or who maybe new to the school
• SEAL and circle time sessions where children feel safe to talk about their feelings
• Class SEAL boxes for children to record any concerns
• Preparing children wherever possible for planned changes for example, a change of class teacher, Key Stage or even school

We begin this half term with a focus on manners: I don’t talk with my mouth full.

Subsequently, I can get better at my learning is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme of Changes.

Safety, health and social benefits of walking to school

In association with Leeds City Council and Living Streets we are taking part in this year’s Walk to school week.  We all know how congested the area around school can be at the start and end of the school day and so this week we are asking children to take part in the Leeds City Council Ben E. Fit competition.

Children who walk, or scoot, to school or walk part of their journey (at least five minutes, maybe by parking further away than usual) every day will be entered into a prize draw.

On Wednesday, Leeds City Council will deliver a whole school Walk to school assembly followed by pedestrian training for Year 1 and Year 2.  We also start our scooter skills training this Friday for some of our Key Stage 2 children.

Why walk to school?

Our walk to school video has lots of facts and tips about walking to school.

According to Living Streets, there are many benefits to walking to school related to health, safety and the environment.

Time and money

• Trips to and from the school gates by car waste thousands of hours of parents’ and other road users’ time and cost an average of £400 per family per year
• At the peak time of 8:35am on week days in term time, the school run generates approximately 21per cent of all trips by urban residents in the UK
• 16% of school journeys under a mile are driven to school. This distance could be walked in 20 minutes

Safety

• Driving the school run denies children the chance to develop road safety skills, independence and an understanding of their local environment
• Child pedestrian collisions on the walk to school peak at about 12 years of age. This could be due to parents not preparing their children for travelling independently and practising road safety skills when their children are younger
• Parents of children who are driven to school overestimate the risks of abduction and ‘stranger danger’ while underestimating the risks of traffic

Benefits for your children

• Children who walk to school are actively engaged with their community and have better knowledge of their local area
• Children who walk to school have wider social networks: In a study by Living Streets, 84 per cent of the children who walked to school reported always or sometimes meeting up with classmates on the way to school, while only 66 per cent of those who were driven to school had the opportunity to do so
• Walking to school improves children’s social development in future years
• The more contact children have with their natural environment, the higher they score in tests of concentration and self-discipline
• Short-term and even superficial exposure to natural areas through brief walks have been found to have positive effects on mood, reducing feelings of anger and anxiety
• An American study found that after as little as five minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (i.e., running, walking), children were able to concentrate more

Health benefits of walking for parents and children

• 24.5 per cent of adults and 14 per cent of children (aged two to ten years old) in the UK are obese and obesity can reduce life expectancy by 9 years on average
• Young people who are obese are likely to have lower levels of fitness, suffer from social discrimination and have low self-esteem and lower quality of life
• Research has suggested that, without appropriate intervention, overweight or obesity could affect as many as nine out of ten adults and two out of three children by 2050
• Walking one mile (1.6 km) can burn at least 100 calories of energy and walking two miles (3.2 km) a day, three times a week, can help reduce weight by one pound (0.5 kg) every three weeks
• Three out of ten boys and four out of ten girls do not cover the recommended minimum of one hour a day of physical activity
• Children who generally travel to and from school by car, bus or other vehicle are more likely to be overweight at age 5 than those who walk or cycle

The environment

• The school run is adding two million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year
• It is estimated that 17% of the total school carbon emissions can be attributed to school travel

Butterflies!

waiting…                                     waiting…                                        waiting…

17 May 2013

This week’s spellings will be tested on Friday 24 May 2013.

Zebras

Words using ‘igh’

• high
• night
• height
• fright
• right
• fight
• tight
• light
• might
• sight

Tigers

Adverbs ending in ‘ly’

• sadly
• fairly
• slowly
• quickly
• kindly
• shyly
• proudly
• nicely
• loudly
• sweetly

Lions

Lions will also be learning to change adjectives into adverbs. They will learn that if an adjective ends in ‘y’ they drop the ‘y’ and then add ‘ily’.

• sadly
• calmly
• slowly
• quickly
• smartly
• angrily
• happily
• scarily
• nastily
• stealthily

17 May 2013

This week’s homework is practice makes perfect. Your child will have to complete the number sequences on the sheet in their book. It is due in on Wednesday 22 May 2013.

17 May 2013

The homework this week is talk time and also a little bit of creative and is due in on Wednesday 22 May.

I know that I’m special and others are special too.

The theme for this half-term’s learning on developing children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills is ‘Good to be me’. We are exploring how children can motivate themselves in their learning and across the school. This week, we have been finding out what is special about us and what is special about our classmates.

In your child’s homework book there is an activity to complete. This activity doesn’t necessarily need to be done with a parent. It can be done with any adult that your child has a close relationship with.

The activity doesn’t have to be stuck in the books. In fact, it might be something you wish to keep. However, it is important that your child comes prepared to speak about their homework.

17 May 2013

The spellings this week all contain the ending sion. You’ll notice that this ending makes the same ‘shun’ sound as last week’s spellings.

Can you also spot the words which have a double up for a short vowel sound?

This curry is the best…

Year 5 and 6 have been creating vegetable and chick pea curry.  Here are some of the quotes about what we thought:

‘Amazing…awesome…surprisingly nice…I don’t usually like curry…this curry is the best…really, really enjoyed this.’

In conclusion, this is a quick, easy and flavoursome recipe so we encourage you to try it yourself.  If you don’t like some of the ingredients, you can change them.  Next time, we might add extra spice, chicken, tomato, quorn, peas or sweetcorn.  We hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Vegetable curry

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1 pepper
• 1 courgette
• 150g mushrooms
• 1 clove garlic
• 1x15ml spoon oil
• 2x15ml spoons curry paste
• 2x15ml spoons tomato puree
• 200g chickpeas, canned (drained)
• 1 can coconut milk (reduced fat)

Method

1. Peel the onion
2. Slice the mushroom, courgette and pepper
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onion, garlic, mushrooms, pepper and courgette for 5 minutes
4. Stir in the curry paste, tomato puree, chickpeas and coconut milk
5. Simmer for 20 minutes
6. Serve with rice and / or naan bread.