Reflecting on Year 1
This week has been transition week in Year 1. The children loved their morning in Year 2 with Mrs Taylor and Mrs Lake. They were very excited to explore their new classroom and get to know their new teachers. During circle time this week, we reflected on what we enjoyed about Year 1 and the children drew some wonderful pictures of their favourite things.
We also discussed any worries or concerns the children had about moving to Year 2. The children gave some brilliant advice on what to do if they are feeling worried.
Help at home by talking to your child about next year and what to expect. If you have any questions at all don’t hesitate to contact me.
Staying Safe themed week
Our next whole school themed week, based around Staying Safe, will be taking place next week. The key message is how to be safe in a range of situations – at home, at school, online and in the environment.
A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education including road safety (Leeds City Council); water safety (Canal and River Trust and RNLI); fire safety (West Yorkshire Fire Service); staying safe around dogs (Dogs Trust); first aid (Leeds Beckett and Red Cross); safety in our community (PCSOs) and e-safety (d:side).
Here are some events taking place.
Monday 08 July 3pm – 3:30pm d:side e-safety drop in information session
A representative from d:side, a health education provider, will be available to discuss e-safety issues and details of your child’s e-safety learning in the themed week.
Thursday 11 July from 8:30am West Yorkshire Police bike register event
Pupils are invited to bring along their bikes to be registered at this bike security marking event at school. Registering your bike helps police and retailers identify and verify the legitimate owner of bikes that have been stolen or are being resold. This is a first come first served event.
Friday 12 July 2:35-3:15pm Leeds Beckett University Carnegie Great Outdoors basic first aid session for parents/carers – there are limited places available so please confirm your place via school gateway.
The themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active and safe ways to travel to school. Children are encouraged to travel to school in a sustainable way, keeping safe along the way.
For a chance to win one of three £10 Love2Shop vouchers, we’d love to see their active travel staying safe photos, maybe using a traffic crossing or wearing their bike helmet (send photos to moortownoffice@spherefederation.org). Photos should be sent by 4pm on Thursday 11 July and winners will be announced on Friday 12 July.
Due to the rising costs of visitors to school, this year, we are requesting a voluntary contribution of £1 per pupil to go towards paying for visitors. This can be made on school gateway. Thank you for your support with this.
Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of safety? If you are able to support our Staying Safe themed week by coming into school to speak to the children, please contact me via the office or your child’s class teacher.
We will keep you up to date about events during the week on the class news pages on our website.
Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy, healthy and safe school.
KS1 and KS2 Olympic Event
Today, a group of KS1 and Year 5/6 pupils took part in the East & North East Leeds Well School Partnership KS1&2 ‘Olympic’ Event at Leeds Beckett University.
Our KS1 children completed a 10-station skills circuit carousel on the pitch in the middle of the track while our KS2 children took part in athletic track and field events.
Well done to all the children for giving 100% in all of the activities and learning new skills in such a great sporting setting.
It was really fun and we got to do a mixture of events. There was something for everyone.
I thought all the activities were really good. My favourite was the skipping.
We had chance to run around the big track.
It was all about having fun and cheering on your team.
Thank you Miss Parwani!
Today was Miss Parwani’s last day of teacher training with us in Year 1. She has done a brilliant job and the children have loved having her in the class. We are sad to see her go but we had a really fun afternoon saying goodbye in the sunshine!
All the children wrote a message in her goodbye card and I was really impressed with her kind and thoughtful they all were.
She will now move on to the next stage of her teaching journey as an ECT and we wish her all the best going forward.
Thank you Miss Parwani!
Living and Learning: PANTS (the underwear rule)
In Living and Learning this week, we have discussed the NSPCC’s underwear rule and talking about the acronym PANTS.
More information about the Underwear Rule, including a short film and a parent guide can be found here including a parent guide for you to follow up this learning at home.
England Schools’ Swimming Association Primary Team Championships
This weekend, our Year 5 and 6 swimmers took part in this prestigious national finals event at Ponds Forge, Sheffield after recently qualifying in the North East regional heat.
Competing against schools from all over the country from Westminster to Guernsey to Devon, and with tough competition, all the team put in 100% in their mixed stroke and freestyle races. For some of our swimmers, this was their first experience of competitive swimming. We are very proud of how well all the children represented Moortown with such a great, supportive team spirit.
A huge thanks go to parents for their support with the team over the two events.
Races can be watched back on the following link.
1:08:00 lane 2 mixed stroke
2:40:50 lane 7 freestyle
Design and Technology: Textiles
This half term we are learning all about Design and Technology and we will be sewing our own hand puppet! We are very excited to get going. Yesterday, we started practising our stitching skills by using the sewing cards. We had to thread our needle and tie a knot in the end. This took great resilience and perseverance but everybody did a brilliant job and kept on trying. Once the needle was threaded, we began to sew. We practised both the overstitch and the running stitch and we were all very proud of ourselves!
Here is the vocabulary we will be learning about in this topic.
Help at home by looking over the vocabulary and discussing each word with your child.
What can you achieve?
Today, Jess Wright, who is a coach with PE Partner and leads one of our after-school clubs, came to speak to the children in an assembly.
At only 17, Jess has been playing football for over ten years and currently plays for Sheffield Wednesday. She also coaches at different levels from children to adults and referees too.
Jess has another role which is to try to get children, especially girls, into football and providing opportunities for children who want to get involved.
Jess shared information of how to get involved in local physical activities. This could be our school after-school clubs, other local physical activities listed in our guide for parents and carers or other opportunities especially around football and getting girls into football.
Leeds City JFC are a local club looking for new members especially in their girls teams.
Wigton Moor JFC are another local club with opportunities.
Catalan Soccer offer classes and camps.
Thank you to Jess for coming into school to inspire the children and to share her experiences around football and the opportunities and skills it provides.
Geography: Kenya reports
This week we rounded off our Geography topic by writing a report all about Kenya. We were able to show off both our knowledge of Kenya and the world as well as our impressive writing skills. Both Miss Parwani and I thought everybody’s writing was excellent. They have learnt so much during this topic and they enjoyed the chance to write about it.
Help at home by discussing what they have learnt about Kenya and maybe choosing a different country to explore! What hemisphere is it in? What continent? Is it near the equator? What is the weather like? How is it different to the UK?
We are mathematicians!
Over the past couple of weeks in maths Year 1 have been working hard on numbers up to 100. We have been making the numbers using resources as well as breaking apart the numbers into tens and ones. We have looked at one more and one less than any number to 100 as well as comparing two numbers using the greater than (>) and less than (<) signs. The children have done brilliantly and I have been very impressed with their knowledge and how flexibly they can work with these numbers. These will great an amazing foundation for their work in Year 2.
Help at home by talking about numbers to 100 and asking children questions such as ‘What’s one more than _____? What’s one less? How many tens and how many ones are there in _____?’
