Super Reception!
Supertato took over our classroom this week! The children have loved reading this story. On Tuesday, the children noticed the veggies taped to a table with pictures of the Evil Pea all over the writing area. Just when we were about to start reading the book, we found a letter from the Evil Pea.
On Wednesday, the Evil Pea had been up to his mischievous tricks again! The veggies were trapped in a shopping basket hanging on a door!
All week the children our new role play area has been very busy with determined superheroes trying to solve the crimes and capture the Evil Pea!
Super writing!
Every morning, the children have a morning activity to do before phonics. We’ve been super impressed with their amazing sentences this week.
Maths
In maths, the children continued to develop their understanding of composition, or the numbers within numbers. We used the Hungarian number pattern (die pattern) to explore ways to represent numbers. By using this die pattern, it is helping the children understand the ‘5-ness’ of 5.
We started by sing the ‘5 Little Aliens in a Flying Saucer’ song to help us see remember the pairs of numbers that make 5. When another alien joined the gang, they quickly realised there was no space! FlM said, “We need to build another spaceship.” Therefore, we used a double dice frame to begin to explore 6 and 7 as numbers that are composed of ‘5 and a bit’.
Music
This week, the children learnt all about robots and made their own robot to use next week in music.
AT – They might be used to help people.
TH – They do what you say.
JQ – You can control it.
FiM – A robot could help you with your shopping.
MB – I would put a button on to move it.
SL – I would put hands on my robot so it can do the cleaning.
SS – I might use a remote control.
AS – I would put legs on my robot.
Poetry Picnic
This week’s poem was an eight-line poem called A Little House. We highlighted lots of digraphs, trigraphs and tricky words when reading the poem.
Reminders
- Fiddly Fingers Stay & Learn – Friday 03 February 8.50am-9.30am
No need to sign up just come and join in with some fun finger gym activities. Due to limited space, only one adult per child can attend this session. - Parent-Teacher meetings – Monday 06 & Tuesday 07 February
- Class assembly – Wednesday 22 February – 2.40pm – 3.00pm
Reading
As you all know we love to read at Moortown Primary School. Starting from today, Year 5 will be reading with Reception every Friday. It was lovely to see and hear all the children engaged in a story.
Writing a report
For the next few weeks in writing, we are writing a report on a volcano.
A report is a text type that give us factual information and describes ‘how things are’. Some features of a report include headings, subheadings, bullet points and rhetorical questions.
Today, Year 3 used the iPads to compare various text types and identify which were reports and which weren’t. After identifying the reports, we were then able to identify specific features of a report that would help us be successful when writing our own in a few weeks time.
Living and Learning: I know how to seek help.
In our living and learning sessions over the last two weeks, we have been exploring risks and how to seek help if we need to.
We looked at different scenarios and placed them on a continuum based on how much of a risk we thought they posed. Some of the scenarios were:
– learning to ride a horse
– learning to drive
– taking up a new hobby
– drinking energy drinks on a daily basis
– stealing from a shop
– putting your hand up if you’re not sure of the answer
After we’d established the risks involved with each, we spoke about how some things are worth doing because the risks are minimal but other things definitely aren’t!
When would you know if the risks involved made something not worth doing?
We spoke about how we often get that feeling in our stomach if we know the risks are too great. We also spoke about how if we weren’t sure, we should always speak to a trusted adult!
Help at home by talking with your child about different things they may encounter in their lives as they progress to high school and beyond and the risks associated with them! This will help them make informed decisions in the future!
Well done, Y6!
Living and Learning: being safe
In our Living and Learning lessons, we have been thinking about being safe in a variety of situations.
Here we are sorting some activities, that all have an element of risk, depending on whether they pose a low or high risk. There were some different opinions and the children were able to justify the decisions they had made.
We also played this hazard identification game to spot and learn about potential risks when at home.
The wires are going across the carpet. Someone might trip up over them.
The candles are burning close to the curtains so they might catch fire.
There’s a hot drink near the edge of the table. Someone might knock it off and it would burn them.
Our reading fluency text this week also has a being safe theme.
The NSPCC Speak out Stay safe assembly gave a very clear message about being safe and in our weekly circle time, the children were all able to say how they would seek help (Start Telling Other People).
Help at home by reinforcing these important safety messages ready for your homework this week.
The NSPCC has also developed an adapted version of their assembly for parents/carers to use at home with their children and some resources that can be used to enable further discussion whilst doing activities with your children.
You’ll also find online safety information for families of children with additional needs and disabilities.
Childline also have a website with age-appropriate advice for primary school children on topics such as bullying. It also has games and other interactive tools.
Music & Living and Learning
Every Monday afternoon, the children have lots of fun exploring music with Miss Gaunt. Last week, they continued learning about the pulse through movement. They listened carefully to the song When the cold wind blows and responded appropriately by using coordinated movements with the parachute.
They crouched down small like hibernating hedgehogs.
They wriggled the parachute like they were shivering.
They warmed their hands by the fire.
Last week, our Living and Learning was ‘I can asses my own risks’. We looked at different activities and placed them on a ‘risk ladder’. We talked about high and low risks.
Reading – Mauna Loa
This week in Year 4 reading lessons, we are focusing our learning around a news report about Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa is a volcano in Hawaii that recently erupted in November 2022. This is very on topic for us as we are learning about volcanoes and how they are formed in Geography!
For the first lesson, we read the report together as a class, picked out any tricky or new words that we weren’t sure of and discussed the meanings. For example, ‘crimson hues’ which means ‘red colours’.
Our next task was to be real news reporters! We watched a short clip of Newsround to decide what the best tips are to reporting. We noticed that the reporter on Newsround had:
- good body language
- good eye contact
- fantastic prosody (reading with expression)
This children had 5 minutes to practise reading their report with these skills and then it was time to perform! Here are some of them in action. They all used the skills we identified really well.
Exploring our locality
On Friday, as part of our topic, Year 2 went on a walk around the local area. We planned a route around Moortown and decided to stop at five different locations to rate the noise, safety, traffic, litter, plants/trees and recycling bins in each place. The children were extremely safe and followed our school rules on our walk. We had some great discussions about what we noticed and will be evaluating our results next week.
Lunar New Year
This week, we’ve been learning all about the Lunar New Year.
On Monday, they had lots of fun moving in different ways to create a dragon parade. Click here to watch it at home.
In literacy, we found out that the Lunar New Year is traditionally celebrated in Asian countries. We used a globe to locate some of these countries.
On Wednesday, we watched a video about special traditions and thought about the differences between the Lunar New Year and the New Year celebrations held on 31st December.
AP – It goes on for 15 days.
AM – They do a dragon dance.
EC – They have a big parade.
LN – They eat Chinese food.
SSK – They make lanterns.
FM – They have a lantern festival.
AT – We clean our house.
We had a go at making our own Chinese lanterns and dragons.
We also read the story about how the Chinese Zodiac started. We looked at the Zodiac wheel to find out which animal we are.
Our focus story was The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson. We closed our eyes and imagined what we would paint if someone gave us a magic paintbrush.
EZ – I would paint a tree because I want some gold coins.
SBL – I would paint a cat because I like cats.
SB – I would paint a rainbow.
FM – I would paint a heart.#
One of this week’s chilli challenges was to have a go at writing Chinese numerals- we found some of them really tricky!
Geography – Local walk
On Tuesday this week we set off to explore Moortown on a local walk. Our aim was to visit 5 different locations and complete a survey of what we liked and disliked at each location. We looked at five different aspects of each location – noise, litter, recycling bins, safety and greenery. Each time we stopped at a location we worked with our partner to put a smiley, straight or sad face for each category. You can see some of the results below.
Today, we looked at our results and analysed them. We wanted to know which place we liked the best. In order to do that we counted up how many of each face we had for each location. The place with the most smiley faces was the winner. Lots of us found that Moortown park was one of the best places to be in Moortown – even in the freezing weather!
Help at home by talking what you like and don’t like about the local area with your child.
