After-school club availability
Some of our after-school clubs, starting from next week, are now open to other year groups.
Monday
- Dance (Mr Lynch) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.
Wednesday
- Gymnastics (run by Leeds Gymnastics) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.
Thursday
- Dance (Miss Marsden) – This club is now open to Reception.
Please contact the office, by Thursday 26 January, if your child would like a place on these clubs.
Maths
We’ve been learning how to compare sets of objects using the language ‘more’ and ‘fewer’. The children were challenged to prove a set had fewer objects than another.
This is how they presented their learning.
Phonics
Thank you to everyone who attended the phonics sessions last week. We hope you found them useful.
Here are some captions and sentences your child can write at home. The new phonemes ar, ai, er, or, air, oi, ear, oo, igh, ow, ee, ur These will be taught over the next few weeks.
- Mark and Carl got wet in the rain.
- The farmer gets up at six in the morning.
- Jill has fair hair but Jack has dark hair.
- Jim has seven silver coins.
- I can hear an owl hoot at night.
- Nan is sitting in the rocking-chair.
- Bow down to the king and queen.
- Gurdeep had a chat with his dad.
- I can see a pair of boots on the mat.
- It has been hot this year.
Phonics mornings
Don’t forget to attend our phonics mornings this week.
You’ll be able to see how the children are progressing and find out how you can help to support them at home.
These sessions will be held on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 9am.
See you there!
Learning to tell the time and other maths
The children are enjoying the new clock in the home corner and are teaching each other how to tell the time!
This week we have been learning about estimating.
The children had to estimate the number of bears that could can fit inside Ewan’s shoe.
Lots of children accurately guessed 9!
Then they had a go at guessing how many bears my boot would hold!
New themed menus
Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special Australia Day themed menu on Tuesday 24 January. This themed menu has recently been selected by our school councillors.
Please contact the office, by 12 January, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
Another themed menu selected by our school councillors is for Shrove Tuesday, 28 February.
Please contact the office, by 09 February, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
Tricky words
The children enjoyed reading their bananas this week!
Phonics
We have begun phase 3 of the ‘Letters and Sounds’ phonics programme.
The purpose of this phase is to:
- teach more graphemes, most of which are made of two letters, for example, ‘oa’ as in boat
- practise blending and segmenting a wider set of CVC words, for example, fizz, chip, sheep, light
- learn all letter names and begin to form them correctly
- read more tricky words and begin to spell some of them
- read and write words in phrases and sentences
Here are some examples of words your children will be reading: tail, week, right, soap, food, park, burn, cord, town, soil
Tricky words
During phase 3 the children will learn more ‘tricky words’: he, she, we, me, be, was, my, you, her, they, all, said
In addition, during this phase children will be expected to begin to write sentences independently.
If you have any questions, please ask and do attend our next phonics open mornings on Wednesday 18, Thursday 19 and Friday 20 January.
Happy New Year!
Welcome back and a Happy New Year!
All the children made a great start to their time at Moortown last term and we are looking forward to seeing their enjoyment and progress this term.
Our next big topic will be ‘Life in the snow’.
New SEAL theme…Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
- Self-awareness: feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
- Managing feelings: understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself.
- Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
As part of our current science mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.
The theme also links with Moortown’s Got Talent, our upcoming annual talent show.
The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened / under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.