Lotherton Hall
We had a great time at Lotherton Hall yesterday. The sun shone briefly and we stayed mostly dry!
The children enjoyed watching the penguins being fed and hunting for minibeasts.
Remember to ask your child to share their highlights.
07 June 2019
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Thursday 13 June.
What is Light?
This half term, the children will be learning about light, how it travels and how it helps us to see. We have all explored some questions around light this week and this creative homework invites the children to demonstrate what they know to each other.
As always, creative homework can be anything! We suggest that it should be one page of a homework book and take around 40 minutes to complete. Here are some suggestions:
- Create a diagram to show how light travels/how the eye works/how we see objects and colours…
- Write an information text including everything you know about light.
- Write a poem entitled, ‘Light’.
- Create a piece of art using the light spectrum.
Have fun with it and we’ll enjoy sharing them next week.
Topic
Year Three have been learning about extreme earth. We specifically looked at earthquakes. We learnt that most earthquake occur near the ring of fire. We learnt all about tectonic plates and where the ring of fire is.
We learnt that for countries near the ring of fire a huge concern is building safety. Often people are killed in earthquakes because of buildings collapsed.
Year Three then became engineers. Their task was to create a structure that would withstand earthquake Clifford. The criteria was a structure with 4 sides.
Structures were then tested by earthquake Clifford. We judged the success and safety of their structures based on how far it survived on the Richtor scale.
Great engineering, Year Three!
Walk to School Week competition update
For pupils who are completing the #WalktoSchoolWeek story this week, as school is closed tomorrow, the missing words for Thursday AND Friday can all be found on Friday in the usual locations. Happy Walking!
Remember to bring in your completed sheet on Friday to be entered in the prize draw for four £10 vouchers.
Big Pedal
Our involvement in the recent Sustrans Big Pedal initiative has been recognised in the latest Leeds City Council Influencing Travel Behaviour newsletter.
Thank you to all the schools who took part in The Big Pedal this year. An amazing 2299 schools across the country took part and 36 of them were from Leeds which is brilliant!
Well done to Moortown Primary School who came 38th out of 500 in the small school category!
It’s great to see such positive engagement in these active travel initiatives to ensure families have a healthy and active start to the day. Thank you to Moortown Living Street group for their support with our active travel initiatives.
Money Matters themed week – School Savings Club
As it is our Money Matters themed week, we are holding an information and paying in session tomorrow after school for the School Savings Club pupil accounts.
Jordan Francis, from Leeds Credit Union, will be available to give more details and hand out application forms for these pupil accounts. As there is not minimum deposit requirement, it is a great way for your child/children to learn the importance of money. Paying in sessions are held every half term.
As always, if you are unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be paid in, to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
Living and Learning: How does our money help people?
HotShots was a great start to our themed week. Each child had three chances to get their fastest shot with lots of encouragement and supporting from the sidelines.
Well done to Shasmeen and Jack who were our fastest girl and boy shooters with speeds of 28mph and 39mph.
Thank you to children who have returned their sponsor form and money. Please return any remaining money by the end of the week. The money raised will be donated to our school charity, WWF.
What makes a good sports leader?
Thank you to our current Year 6 Sports Leaders who have fulfilled this role for the past year. It’s now time to train up some new leaders to take over lunchtime physical activity sessions.
Year 5 were invited to sign up for the roles and we had some great applications.
Today, fifteen Year 5 pupils began their training to gain their Mini Leaders Award. As well as learning a variety of physical activities, the group worked on their communication, explanation and organisational skills. After their second training session on Friday, they will be ready to lead sessions to the rest of the school from next week.
Walk to school week
To celebrate Walk to School week, next week, we’re working with Moortown Living Streets to run a fun daily quiz to help get more feet on the street! It is also our Money Matters themed week so what a better way to travel to school for free!
We all know that reducing school gate traffic improves air quality and safety and by walking some or all of the way families benefit from a healthier and more pleasant start to the day.
During Walk to School Week, Living Streets Moortown will be hiding ten words along the routes to school. See your child’s entry form for more details.
Find them each day to fill in the blanks and complete the story – remember to take a pen or pencil! There are also some daily ACTIONS for you to try – see if you can do them all!
At the end of Walk to School Week, your child should hand their completed story in to their class teacher for a chance to WIN one of four £10 Love to Shop vouchers!
What are the parts of a plant?
Each week, in our Green Fingers topic, we have been observing changes over time by looking to see how our pea, tomato and cress plants have changed and grown.
This time, we used some scientific equipment to observe even more closely. The magnifying glass made the parts of the plants bigger so we could see them more clearly.
Some of the children, who are growing pea plants, made a surprising discovery when they were observing their plants.
Can you spot what it was?
To find out what are the main parts of a plant, the children were asked to research this using an appropriate search question or phrase on the internet. They were able to tailor the search to material relevant to them.
We checked our findings as we watched this BBC video. We decided this information is from a trusted source.
Living and Learning: Mental health
Mental health has the been the whole school focus in Living and Learning. In Year 2, this learning has been based around the importance of special people in their lives and friendships.
We considered what makes a good friend is and the children compiled a great list of qualities they would want in a friend.
- kind
- helpful
- honest
- friendly
- not distracting at learning time
- generous
- loving
- playful
- caring
- polite
- sharing
- fun
In the subsequent lesson, we discussed the sorts of things that can cause friendships to break and what can help make friendships stronger? We thought about some ways to sort out friendship problems and discussed that difficulties within friendships can usually be resolved.
If children do encounter friendship problems which they can’t sort out themselves, they are encouraged to Start Telling Other People. One way to do this could be writing a worry slip in the class Living and Learning box for an adult to read and discuss with the child.
To follow this up at home, here are some friendship related texts.
- Hello by Jack Foreman
- Friends by Kim Lewis
- Halibut Jackson by David Lucas
- Friends by Kathryn Cave and Nick Mayland
- Rosie and the yellow ribbon by Paula Depaolo
- Two friends by Clara Vullamy