Big Walk and Wheel – getting active on the way to school
It’s been a great start to Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge this week.
After the first five days, we are currently in 14th place (out of 514 schools) in the small primary category with an average of 90.36% of our journeys to school being active. This is a great achievement and we want to thank families for supporting this challenge.
To keep up with the leader board for the rest of the challenge, it can be viewed here.
Thank you to those families who brought along bikes to the bike register event too. Nineteen bikes were registered at school.
By walking, cycling and scooting to school, you are helping us make a positive change to the school run. With less cars close to the school gates, this is a safer and healthier way to start the day.
The Big Walk and Wheel challenge continues until Friday 31st March so we look forward to seeing our progress over the upcoming week.
A special visitor!
Today, Year 1 had a special visitor come into class. Our local councillor, Mahalia France Mir, came to talk to us about the letters we sent to her before half term. She was very impressed with our writing and our arguments for improving safety around the shops near school. She explained what her job entails and how she helps the local community solve problems. We asked some great questions!
This followed on from our trip to the shops with the police last Tuesday to hand out warning tickets to local drivers. We are very proud of ourselves for making a difference in our locality.
Well done Year 1!
Active Travel
Next week sees the start of Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel walking, scooting and cycling challenge. It inspires pupils to make active journeys to school, improve air quality in their neighbourhood and discover how these changes benefit their world.
Join us to take part in this challenge by walking, scooting, biking or park and stride from Marks and Spencers to school from Monday 20th March – Friday 31st March.
As part of this active travel event, we will be hosting a bike register session on Tuesday 21st March. Pupils, parents and family are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school.
Staying safe online
As a follow up to the recent Safer Internet Day, PCSO Louise delivered an assembly for all classes to reinforce the key online safety messages.
Help at home by asking your child/children how the 4Cs relate to them when they are online.
World Book Day!
Happy world book day to everyone! This morning Year 4 and Year 1 got together to share our love of reading. Every child in Year 1 chose a book and the Year 4 children sat down and read it to them beautifully. The atmosphere in both classrooms was so calm and peaceful and the children loved it!
This is what some of the Year 1 children thought.
I loved that they read the story to us but also let us have a go at reading!
I thought my book was very funny!
Well done everyone! Make sure you carry on your excellent reading at home!
Supporting our school charity
St Gemma’s Hospice is our current school charity chosen democratically by the children.
Today, we welcomed Steph and Stewart from St Gemma’s Hospice for an assembly to find out more about the fantastic work they do in our local community.
Here, two of our junior leaders are presenting them with a cheque for £377 for the money we have raised so far.
Steph and Stewart commented on the impressive behaviour of the children and the intelligent questions they asked.
Our junior leaders are planning a visit to the hospice over the next few weeks to continue this partnership.
Living and learning: online safety and safer internet day
Over the last two weeks, Year 1 have been learning about four main areas of online safety (plus lots of other online safety tips too).
- I know that there are sometimes age restrictions online.
- I know that passwords are important.
- I know that some things online may not be true.
- I know that I shouldn’t share personal information online.
We welcomed Dave from d:side last week to support this learning and this week was Safer Internet Day.
We’ve had lots of discussions about staying safe online. We read the book Chicken Clicking by Tony Ross. In the story a chick gets access to the farmer’s computer and makes a chick friend online. He goes to meet his new friend in the woods… I’ll let your children tell you what happens next.
The children wrote some speech bubbles giving Chicken Clicking some superb advice about how he should have acted differently.
We learnt that the padlock next to the web address tells us this is a secure and trusted site.
We also watched some videos starring Jessie and her friends. In the first video Jessie shares some personal information whilst playing a game with a person who is pretending to be kind. We spoke about how we should always keep our personal information private.
On Thursday, we recapped our learning from Safer Internet Day and wrote some excellent reports about what we had learnt. Well done Year 1.
Help at home by reinforcing the important messages above but also that if anything worries or upsets your child they should tell a trusted adult straight away.
We are scientists
This term, Year 1 have been learning all about different materials. We have looked at what materials different things are made from and what properties those materials have. Last week, we tested different types of paper to see which was the most absorbent. It was lots of fun and we did a brilliant job taking turns as well as carefully observing and discussing the results.
This week, we tested the same types of paper but this time we investigated whether you could write on the paper. The results were very different! We discussed how different properties of materials make them suitable for different jobs.
Help at home by discussing what different materials things are made from and why that material is suitable for that object. Also, ask what would be an unsuitable material? Why?
Living and Learning: being safe
In Living and Learning and circle time we have been talking about hwo to stay safe. We have thought about when we might need to get help and how to get help.
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 that were part of your homework last 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.
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.
