13 December 2019
This week’s homework is Talk Time and will be discussed on Friday 20th December.
I can talk about what I was learning in these photos.
Below are some photographs from learning that we have done this term. Ask your children what the children in the photograph are doing, what they learned from this lesson and what more they might like to learn or get better at in this area of learning.
This is a fantastic opportunity to find out more about your child’s learning and experiences at school. If you enjoyed this discussion, Check Year 5’s Class News section of the website where photographs are regularly uploaded!
Geography – Moortown Park
Living and Learning
Drama in Writing
Geography
School Savings Club
The next School Savings Club paying in date is 09 December 2019 at 3.15-3.45pm.
The account is open to all children and it is free to set up. As there is not minimum deposit requirement, it is a great way for your child/children to begin to manage their own money and understand the importance of saving. We offer paying in sessions every half term where you can bring along any savings to be paid into your child’s account.
As an extra incentive, Year 3 pupils who open an account, or who currently have an account, will be credited with £10.
If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
Here are the remaining paying in dates for this year (the penultimate Monday of each half term).
- 03 February
- 23 March
- 11 May
- 06 July
To find out more about the accounts or if your child would like to open account, please enquire at the office.
Living and Learning: My Community week so far
This week, we are enjoying our ‘My Community’ themed week based around these themes.
- Who am I? (identity)
- Who are we? (diversity)
- Where do I live? (community)
- How do we all live together? (equality)
There have been lots of events, visits and visitors so far.
- School community coffee morning and Wake Up Shake Up on Monday
- Bulb planting with Friends of Moortown Park
- Visiting Allerton Grange drama department for a community themed drama session led by Year 12 pupils
- A visit from Linda Gledhill from the deaf and hearing impairment team
- A visit from the RNIB to raise awareness of visually impaired members of our community
- JustDifferent disability workshops
- Litter picking in the local area
- Hate Crime workshops led by West Yorkshire Police
- Visiting Donisthorpe Hall
- A visit from Moortown fire service
- A visit from our PCSOs
- Learning carousels across different classes
Still to come is a visit to a group run by Moor Allerton Elderly Care; Greek language sessions led by a parent; a visit to St Gemma’s Hospice and choosing our new school charity.
The week will culminate with Identity Day on Friday 29 November.
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.
Thank you for all the entries we have received for the active travel in the community competition.
We encourage families to get out in the community in an active way on the way to and from school. Email (moortownoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of your active travel, maybe by a landmark on the route to school, for the chance to win one of five £10 vouchers. The winners will be drawn in the assembly tomorrow afternoon so please ensure your entries are sent by 12 o’clock tomorrow.
Thank you for supporting the themed week and please discuss the week with your child to reinforce this important learning.
Friday 22 November 2019
This week, the whole school has the same Talk Time homework: Which charity should our school support?
Next week, a charity will be decided for us to support for the year ahead – for example, when we have a performance, we’ll collect money for this particular charity. What charity does your child think we should support?
You could talk about:
- what a charity is
- why charities are important
- what sort of work they do
- charities that have meaning to your family, to school or the community
- national and international charities and their work
Next week, each class will vote (because in our school we make democratic decisions) for the charity they would like to support to form a shortlist. Then, our recently elected School Council will decide which charity we will support for the next year.
Christmas themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 12 December. Please contact the office, before 28 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day (no action needed if your child normally has a school meal on this day).
Digital Mapping
Our geography topic for this half term is: Where in the world am I?
We kicked off our topic in Moortown Park with a treasure hunt.
The children learnt lots about map reading, compass reading, using a trundle wheel, teamwork and more.
This week we have been focusing on digital mapping through the use of Digimap.
The children have been able to locate places of interest and map their routes to and from school!
Living and Learning: STOP bullying
This week is anti-bullying week and Year 2 have been considering this across different areas of our learning.
In our reading lesson, we read through our school definition of bullying and considered words we weren’t sure of. We spotted the important message of STOP – several times on purpose.
We also used our inference skills, and our school definition, when looking at this photo to consider what might be happening and whether this is bullying?
‘We can see the children are hurting the feelings of the boy on the ground.’
‘We know the boy who is sitting down is unhappy and upset because of his face and his head is down.’
‘We don’t know if this is bullying as this is one time and bullying is when it happens several times on purpose.’
Thank you to all the families who supported Odd Socks Day. There were all different sizes, patterns and colours of socks on show and it was great that the children could express themselves and celebrate their individuality while raising awareness of bullying.
Andy Day, CBeebies star and his band, Andy and the Odd Socks, has again written a song for Odd Socks Day. This time it is called “Change”, based on this year’s theme Change Starts With Us.
Finally, we considered what to do if any children were bullied, again based on the STOP message – start telling other people.
All the children considered who they would tell if this was happening to them.
As noted in our new child friendly anti-bullying policy, the message is clear.
STOP bullying – bullying is wrong!
We’re a happy and healthy school.
Creating Characters
This half term, our focus in writing is description. This week and next, we’re learning about character descriptions. Today, we read some character descriptions and we even designed our own character to describe to someone else and see whether they could recreate it.
We realised that we had to:
- use comparisons
- use adjectives
- describe bit by bit
- go in a sensible order
Talk about your favourite characters at home and see whether you can take on the character description challenge too.
Living and Learning: 8Rs
Having reflected on all eight Rs for learning, Year 4 decided they learnt most about resilience this term in our tower building lesson.
As a team, we had to try and build the tallest tower but it kept getting knocked down. Despite our frustrations, we had to encourage each other to carry on and start again. We talked about situations that make us feel like this and strategies we had to help us to keep going.
At home, see if we can tell you what the 8Rs are and ways we can showing we’re using them in our learning.
World Mental Health Day
Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and Y6 did some research to find out more.
First, we learnt what makes efficient search terms. Challenge your child to explain! Take a look at this RIC:
For example, to find out the answer to this question: “What is the population of people living in Leeds, West Yorkshire, this year?” you would use much more efficient search terms. Ask your child what they would enter into the search engine.
Next, we focussed on being safe online by discussing bias (ie paid advertising vs factual content), quality of life (ie were these web pages contributing positively to our lives?) and protecting ourselves (ie not entering passwords/email addresses, avoiding pop ups). We researched some questions about World Mental Health Day using effective search terms, a variety of search engines and trusted websites.
Some important information we found out is that mental health can affect everyone. To look after yourself you need to:
- know you’re not alone
- understand it will pass
- talk about your worries
- keep active
- get enough sleep