Christmas Dinner Menu – 08 December 2022
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed Christmas menu on Thursday 08 December. Please contact the office 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).
Live webinar with author Alex Willmore
On Thursday, Year 1 and 2 met author Alex Willmore (virtually) in a live webinar. It was great for the children to be inspired by Alex’s storytelling, illustrations and the introduction of his new book ‘ I DID see a mammoth!’.
As well as enjoying Alex’s new book, all the children followed Alex’s live drawing to draw their own mammoth. Alex talked about how he became an author and gave the children tips of how to create their own stories.
Art: creating William Morris wallpaper
This week in Art, we created our own wallpaper using our favourite parts of William Morris designs.
First, the children searched the internet to find their favourite design and then cropped the picture to select the part they loved the most. This was then our starting point to create our own wallpapers. The children experimented with repeated patterns by using rotation.
The class loved using the iPads to create their own designs:
Why not, at home, find other artists that use nature as a stimulus (starting point).
Science – What’s that sound?
This half term, our Science topic is called ‘What’s that sound?’. We are physicists because we are learning about physics.
So far, Year 4 have learnt how a sound travels into our ears and that is because of vibrations. For example, if an object like a car door is slammed shut, the car door vibrates and the vibrations travel through the air to our ears! To find out more, we went on a sound walk around the school to find as many different sound sources as possible.
The children heard lots of things, such as;
- children talking/shouting
- car horns
- ambulance siren
- car engines
- trees rustling
- foot steps
- fridge humming.
We worked out that we heard most of the sounds in the front playground due to being nearer the road.
Some sounds were high pitched and others were low pitched. The sounds that are there to catch our attention (ambulance sirens) are high pitched and the sounds that are more common (car engines) are low pitched.
Our second lesson was exploring sounds further and fortunately for the children, making sounds with our bodies! We tried to compose a “song” using our bodies. We clicked, stomped, hummed, thumped and shouted. We then experimented with the drums by placing rice on the top and seeing what happened when we hit it hard and hit it softly. In conclusion, the harder we hit the drum, the higher the rice flew and the softer we hit the drum, the lower the rice flew.
Have a look at us in action:
Nursery Rhyme and Anti-Bullying week
This week, we celebrated Nursery Rhyme Week. In Literacy, we read Each Peach, Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. When reading the story, we played ‘I Spy’. The children were encouraged to describe where the characters are using prepositional language, for example, Cinderella is hiding behind the cupboard.
After reading the book, they had to find a nursery rhyme character hiding in the classroom. The children had a go at writing the character’s name or a sentence describing where the character is hiding.
This week’s chilli challenges were all linked to nursery rhymes. Take a look at some in action…
Building a wall for Humpty Dumpty.
Playing Busy Bus with our friends in the maths area.
Baking a cake as fast as we can in the playdough area.
Catching fish in the water area.
Naming Old Macdonald’s farm animals and drawing our favourite.
Drawing number stories using 5 Little Speckled Frogs.
How many frogs are sat on the logs?
How many are in the pond?
Painting ‘Starry Night’ pictures.
On Wednesday, we looked at some past and present household artefacts and compared them. Some children had a go at drawing them using charcoal.
Living & Learning
This week is also Anti-Bullying week and yesterday we talked about the definition of bullying and what we can do to stop it. Which led onto us talking about kindness.
We made a kindness heart and talked about how we can be kind.
Florence – Including someone.
Avraj – By loving someone.
Lily – By looking after them.
Ryan – You can give them a hi-five.
Awais – Give to charity.
Seerat – Help someone who’s hurt.
Poetry Picnic
This week, we decided to learn a nursery rhyme. Check out our amazing actions!
Marvellous Maths
Thank you to all of the parents and carers who came to the maths stay & learn sessions this week. It was lovely to see so many of you! We hope you all thoroughly enjoyed it. The next stay & learn is a Funky Phonics Phase 3 session in January.
Reminders
– Library books must be returned every Friday.
– Learning Journey Drop In’s
Monday 12, Tuesday 13 & Thursday 15 December 8.50 – 9.30am or 3.15 – 3.45pm
A sign-up letter will be sent out shortly.
– PE is on Monday and Wednesday next week.
Home-Link Challenge
Junior leaders attend Youth Summit
Today, our Year 5 and 6 junior leaders, along with other children and young people from local primary and secondary schools, attended the Inner North East Community Committee Youth Summit at the Civic Hall.
We had the chance to meet and question councillors from the Moortown, Chapel Allerton and Roundhay wards and get involved with sharing views about youth activities for our local area.
We were then taken to the council chambers to meet the Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Bob Gettings, where he took questions from the children. We learnt lots about his role.
The event was a great opportunity for the children to see how the council is run and give their views on issues in their local community. What great representatives of the school they were!
It was brilliant! We got to meet the Lord Mayor of Leeds.
It was amazing! We got to ask lots of questions and the Lord Mayor and councillors gave really good replies.
I liked hearing about the councillors’ experiences and what they do in their area.
I enjoyed it as you got to have a say.
Living and Learning: Anti-bullying Day and Odd Socks Day
Today has been a themed day all about anti-bullying as part of the national Anti-Bullying Week. We’ve also worn our odd socks to celebrate that we are all individual, unique and different.
First of all, we had to decide if these situations were bullying.
We discussed this in groups and after looking at our school definition of bullying, we decided that we didn’t know. This was just one incident and we didn’t know if it had happened several times.
We used drama to consider how children might feel if they were being bullied and how it would affect their mental health.
I feel sad because they are pointing and laughing at me.
I will say to the teacher that they are bullying me.
I feel upset because they are hurting my feelings.
I feel disappointed as they are leaving me out and being mean.
Our child friendly anti-bullying policy talks about an important message if you are being bullied – Start Telling Other People. The children all thought about who and how they could ask for help.
Ask your child about our two STOP acronyms: Several Times On Purpose and Start Telling Other People – one’s a definition of bullying and the other’s a solution.
Finally, we read the story, We are wonders by R J Palacio which shares the message that we are all wonders because of our differences and we should show respect to each other.
‘Look with kindness and you will always find wonder.’
Well done, Year 2, for some great discussions and understanding about this important topic today.
Anti-bullying day!
Today for our anti-bullying day, we joined the nation by focussing on the message of “reaching out”. We discussed how this had several meanings: reaching out to a trusted adult for support/advice, reaching out to the victim to see if they are okay or reaching out to make a change.
We looked at the definition of bullying which our JLT members created:
“Bullying is when you hurt someone physically or emotionally (including online), Several Times On Purpose”
Whilst we hope this would never be the case in our school, we also discussed what you can do if you were to experience bullying at Moortown Primary School:
“Start Telling Other People. You could use the Living and Learning box, the worry box, email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org or even call Childline (0800 1111).”
We celebrated the message that everyone is different and equal by wearing odd socks to school:
Art: drawing from direct observation!
In today’s art lesson, we practised drawing from direct observation. We practised drawing leaves – the subject of a lot of William Morris’ designs.
To be successful, we had to:
– be resilient
– draw lightly (so we could rub out if needed)
– draw what we could see (not what we thought was there)
– add shade to show dark and light parts of our leaf
Here are a few pieces of work!
A few reminders!
Firstly, we are now into our second week of group reading, so here are the chapters you need to read up to:
- Kensuke’s Kingdom – up to chapter 5
- The boy and the tiger – up to chapter 5
- Flood and Fang – up to chapter 6
- Alone on a wide, wide sea – up to chapter 7
- Street child – up to chapter 8
- Divine Freaks – up to chapter 6
Secondly, with our class assembly quickly approaching (Wednesday 16th November) please remember to practise your speaking parts and refresh your memory by watching the YouTube video of the song we will be singing.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/CMs_IGKxMu0
Finally, Anti-bullying day is on Monday 14th November so please remember to wear odd socks!
