Christmas dinner menu
Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 13 December. Please contact the office, before Monday 26 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
16 November 2018
This week, the whole school has the same Creative homework which children should be ready to discuss as part of our homework review on Thursday 22 November.
I know how to STOP bullying.
This homework is a response to our learning this week during anti-bullying week. Throughout the week, each class has had the chance to talk about what bullying is, what the different types of bullying are and how can we STOP it:
- Start
- Telling
- Other
- People
As part of your discussion you may find our school definition of bullying useful, as agreed by our School Councillors:
Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.
As the homework is Creative, you can do anything you want to respond to the statement. Here are a few ideas to help you:
- Create a cartoon strip of a bullying scenario and how it is solved.
- Create an acrostic poem using the word bullying.
- Write your own ‘kindness statements’ for your class.
- Create a scenarios quiz for your class to decide what they would do.
It’ll be all Wright in the flight.
This week’s invention theme has been Wilbur and Orville Wright’s brainchild: the aeroplane! We’ve enjoyed some science this week all about flight.
We started by making some paper aeroplanes. Plane 1 was the control, Plane 2 had one wing flap and Plane 3 had both flaps on its wings. We wanted to measure how far each plane travelled across the classroom.
In our groups, we each had roles and had to work cooperatively.
It was important to keep certain variables the same in order for it to be a fair test. We needed to know if it was the wing flaps affecting the distance travelled and not something else.
Tape measures were used in order to record each throw. We threw each plane three times to get an average distance.
We generally noticed that Plane 1 flew the furthest. Plane 2 always seemed to take a left hand curve and Plane 3 sometimes did a loop in the air. This led to our discussion about air resistance. The particles in the air were being blocked by the wing flaps, stopping the plane from cutting through the air and travelling as easily.
Imagine you have your hand out of the car window. What happens if you hold your palm up towards the sky? What happens if you hold your hand so the palm is facing the way you’re going? That is air resistance in action!
Our discussion led us to the following conclusion:
The greater the air resistance, the shorter the distance travelled.
PE with Leeds Beckett
Year 5 welcomed visitors from Leeds Beckett for one of two weekly PE sessions. Like last week, it was high energy and lots of fun!
Our two favourite activities this week were noughts and crosses…
… and rock paper scissors! Two classic games mixed with a PE twist!
This half term, we’re focusing on moving in different ways, so this ticked all the boxes!
Computing Unplugged
Did you know that Ada Lovelace, who was a British inventor, was the first person to invent the computer program? In her honour, Year 5 have enjoyed some offline computing today. We will learn more about Ada tomorrow.
They had six different stations, each with its unique brief. For example:
Children had to design algorithms to achieve a goal…
…such as collecting coins in – aptly named – ‘Coin Collect’ whilst avoiding traps…
…or they had to debug an existing algorithm in ‘Spot the Mistake’. (Challenge your child to define debugging.)
It was frustrating and challenging at times.
But when we succeeded, it felt great.
In ‘Treasure Hunt’, we wrote an algorithm to guide our Bee-Bot from the pirate ship to an area on the map to hide the loot. Our team mates had to predict which co-ordinates the algorithm would take the Bee-Bot to…
… and at station ‘ABCs’, we predicted spelling which word (using the Bee-Bot) would give the shortest and longest algorithm, explaining our reasoning for why we thought so. Of course, then we had to prove it.
We also used logical reasoning to find the best route back for Stanley (from our class novel, Holes) to his tent for his shower – every piece of code used was in exchange for one minute of precious showering. Was it worth it to cut through Tent F and trade 5 minutes of tub time? It was important to avoid the lethal lizards!
At the ‘Pocket Money’ station, we had to find the best routes for collecting different totals. A challenge was to show finding £2.54 in three different ways.
Well done to Year 5 for working brilliantly in their teams.
School Council 2018-2019
Meet our newly elected school councillors, chosen democratically by their class.
Their first meeting will be held next week. On the agenda is to discuss bullying (as part of anti-bullying week), Takeover Day and to consider what they might want to spend their library and class reward budgets on.
All children are encouraged to make suggestions to their school councillors (by posting their suggestion slip in each class’ Living and Learning box) for ideas/concerns to be discussed.
Inventions – Taboo!
“Today, we played Taboo where you had to describe an invention without saying four main words.” – Kismat
“All the inventions were from or connected to Leeds.” – Eliza
“My favourite invention was the Jelly Tots because I like recent stuff.” – Henry
“My favourite invention was Cluedo because I really like the game.” – Zak
“Mine was the mouse trap so you don’t have any mice stealing your cheese!” – Omar
“The oldest invention was the locomotive. It’s connected to Leeds because it was the first ever steam locomotive and the person who designed it came from Leeds.” – Ben
“The most recent invention was Jelly Tots in 1965.” – William
“The most challenging part was guessing the other person’s invention when they were describing it.” – Evie
“The most challenging part was trying to describe the invention because there were four words and you couldn’t say them but describe it without saying them!” – Zidaan
Living and learning – Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and also a focused week – Anti-bullying week (12 November).
Also this half term, our new school charity will be chosen. Every year, we nominate a new charity to support. This year, we have been supporting MakeAWish. We decide this on the basis of a Talk Time homework, and then school councillors make the final decision.
Our Living and Learning long term plan details the learning for each year group across the year and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar. We will begin and end this half term with a focus on manners.
I apologise when I need to.
I say please and thank you.
Active travel in October – week three winner
Well done to our week three winner who made active journeys to school every day last week.
Our active travel section on the website has recently been updated. Have a look at some of the initiatives we take part in to encourage a happy and healthy start to the school day.
Living and Learning – Democracy
This week, we’ve based our learning around our rights and responsibilities – I can take part in democratic decisions.
First, we wrote down what we knew already about democracy. Then, we watched a video from a trusted news source (Newsround) and wrote down what we had learned. Challenge your child: What was the red line on the floor for in the House of Commons?
Through our discussions, we defined some key words…
… and devised some questions that we wanted to know the answer to.
An interesting discussion arose surrounding the age of voting. (Finlay asked: ‘Why do we have to be 18 to vote?’) Some of us thought that it should be lowered because politics affects children, too. Others thought 18 years of age was appropriate because you are legally an adult with enough life experience.
In the interest of all things democratic, we had a vote on the matter.
Should we change the voting age?
21 out of 28 people said yes. 7 out of 28 people said no.
Zakariya noticed that 28 is in the 7 times table: 4 lots of 7 = 28.
We discussed that 7 out of 28 is the same as saying 1 out of 4 or one quarter. That’s the same as saying 25/100 which is equal to 25%.
Using this knowledge, we worked out that 21 out of 28 is the same as saying 3 out of 4 or three quarters.
“It must be 75 out of 100,” said Maggie. Or even 75 one hundredths or 75%!
1 quarter + 3 quarters = 1
25% + 75% = 100%
7 + 21 = 28
Now we know that 75% of Year 5 think the voting age should be changed.
Next, we had another anonymous vote: Which group would you change the voting age to?
The 15-17 category had the majority.
Good luck to all the candidates standing in this year’s school council elections.