We are geographers!
This half-term, Year 2 are becoming geographers. As part of our Explorers topic, we’re comparing a place in the United Kingdom with a place in another country. This week, we started to compare Kenya to the United Kingdom and Nairobi to London. We focussed on the physical and human geography of these two places and noted the similarities between the two capital cities. Ask your child to tell you all about Nairobi.
As well as visiting Kenya, we have been learning about the seven continents, five oceans and about how the equator splits the earth into two hemispheres.
We have really enjoyed learning the continents and oceans by listening to and singing along to the great songs.
How can you help?
Google Earth is a brilliant tool to help develop children’s understanding of space, place, scale and interdependence. Zoom right in on your home and then zoom out to reveal the area of Leeds that you live in. Zoom further out to see what city you live. Zoom further for the county. A little further and you might start to spot some national parks. Further still and you can see the country that we live in. Keep zooming and you’ll see the continent we live in (though this isn’t labelled).
Quizzing your children about some locational knowledge will help them to remember important information.
- Which continent do we live in?
- Which country do we live in?
- In which hemisphere is our country located?
- Which county do we live in?
- Which city do we live in?
- Which part of Leeds do we live in?
- Which four countries make up the United Kingdom?
Summer term after-school clubs
Edit: places can still be booked for after-school clubs.
We have spaces available on:
Tuesday – basketball Y4-6 now open to Y3
Tuesday – rugby Y1-3 now open to reception
Thursday – multi-games Y4-6 now open to Y3
After-school clubs will be restarting next week and they will run for eight weeks until week commencing 4th July. Places can be booked via Gateway.
Our physical activity clubs continue to be heavily subsidised through the investment of our PE and Sport Premium.
Each club has a limit on the maximum number of children who can attend. As numbers are limited we ask that you limit your child to one club initially. If there are clubs with remaining places, we will then offer these as a second club.
Please contact the office if you have any queries about the clubs or the booking system.
Living and learning: mindfulness
As a happy and healthy school, we encourage pupils to look after their mental health as well as their physical health. Read our mindfulness newsletter for ideas and techniques to try to support this.
As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Chirpy, in Chapel Allerton, are hosting FREE after school Mindfulness Moments For Minis workshops. A time for children to reconnect and calm their minds.
Wednesday 11th May 4:30pm – 5:15pm Age 5-10
Thursday 12th May 4:30pm – 5:15pm Age 5-10
Friday 13th May 10am -10:30am pre school
Bookings can be made here.
By teaching mindfulness to children they learn the skills they need to build self-awareness, confidence and cope with stress. Mindfulness can help children deal with tough emotions and help them learn ways to relax and calm the mind and the body.
Leeds Fun Run 8th May
The Arena Group Leeds Fun Run is back for 2022, taking place on Sunday 8th May.
It offers a great opportunity to get families together, while staying and active and healthy at the same time.
Children of all abilities are encouraged to take part as they wheel, walk, jog or run the 1.3 km route around the city centre.
Living and Learning: democracy
This week, Year 2 spent our Living and Learning session considering what is democracy and how we can become involved in democratic decisions.
Democracy, one of the British Values, means ‘rule by the people‘. It comes from the Greek words dêmos (people) and krátos (rule or strength).
Democratic means people having a chance to say what they think should happen.
Our Junior Leadership Team elections and voting for our new school charity are ways the children can take part in democratic decisions at school. These events will take place in the autumn term.
All children can still use their pupil voice to make suggestions for the JLT meetings by telling their junior leaders or putting a suggestion in the Living and Learning box.
This week, we took part in a democratic decision by voting for the Wake up Shake up song. We also discussed a future class vote to decide our next whole class reward when we complete our class ladybird spots.
Before learning about voting in real life, we heard about a Go Givers story about voting.
How did Anna feel when her choice didn’t win the vote?- What is the best way to behave if you lose a vote?
- Ahmeti didn’t want others to know what she had voted for. How did the Go Givers solve that problem?
Catalan Soccer
This week, all classes are taking part in sessions led by Catalan Soccer.
Thank you to the Year 5 pupil, who currently attends Catalan Soccer sessions outside of school, who requested they came into school.
The classes have been brilliant and the coaches have fed back what a delight the kids have been to coach!
The coaches also commented how welcome they have been made to feel by your staff and teachers, so a huge thanks for that!
If your child enjoyed their session, please contact Catalan Soccer to find out more about the classes and holiday camps they run in Leeds.
KS1 SATs information session
Living and learning: manners
We always encourage good manners in class and around school but manners also features as part of our Living and Learning curriculum. This week, our Living and Learning statement has been all about table manners. At lunchtime this week, we’ve been putting this into practice. It was great to hear some nominations from the kitchen staff for those children who consistently say please and thank you for their food. Well done, Year 2!
Unfortunately, the Goops aren’t quite so well mannered at mealtimes. Ask your child to read this poem to you.
Welcome back!
We hope you had a restful break. It’s been great to see the children back at school ready for the summer term of learning.
We’ve has lots of recent success with children reaching their next level in Lexia.
Well done to Matin, Nate, Aaron, Saavi, Hollie, Talha, Charlie, Aliza and Sophie.
As well as Lexia (to support reading and phonics), Numbots (to support addition and subtraction) and Times Tables Rock Stars (to support multiplication and division) are both available for the children to practise their maths knowledge at home.
Our Numbots top three this week were:
1st Daniyal
2nd Aaron
3rd Rico
Since we have started using TTRS, our top five children who have earned the most coins are:
1st Hadi
2nd Grace
3rd Aaron
4th Rory
5th Elena
Great work! Keep working hard at home.
Big Walk and Wheel
Thank you to all the families who have supported the Big Walk and Wheel over the last two weeks.
Overall, we were placed 150th in the small school category, out of 643 schools, with a daily average of 74.29% of journeys to school being active. In Northern England, we were 18th out of 107 small schools. Well done to everyone who took an active journey to help to achieve this.
Over the two week period we actively travelled 1,358 times!
It would be great for these active journeys to continue. Travelling actively (walking, park and stride – Marks and Spencers car park, scooting or biking) is a safe and healthy start to the school day.
