It’s Anti-Bullying Week
This week, it’s anti-bullying week and the theme for this year is ‘Change starts with us’.
Don’t forget – we are also taking part in Odd Socks Day on Tuesday 12th November.
Recently, some of our Year 6 pupils have created a child friendly anti-bullying policy which will be shared with the rest of the school during this week.
Child friendly anti-bullying policy
Written by: Evie, Zidaan, Omar and Eve (Year 6)
What is bullying?
In our school, this is what bullying means:
Bullying is where you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.
What might bullying look like?
If any of these things happen several (lots of) times, it is bullying.
- Hurting peoples’ feelings, for example, name calling, teasing, threatening, ignoring or spreading rumours
- Hurting peoples’ bodies, for example, hitting, punching or kicking
This could be in person or online (cyber bullying) and could be because of someone’s race, disability, gender or appearance.
What could you do if you are being bullied?
Start
Telling
Other
People
Who could you tell?
- Mrs Weekes/Mrs Freeman/Mrs Russell/Mrs Small (they are child protection staff)
- Mrs Taylor (Health Leader)
- Any other members of staff
- Friends
- Someone in your family
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Our views on bullying
STOP bullying – bullying is wrong!
We’re a happy and healthy school.
Poppies
Ever since then, poppies have become a symbol of remembering not just those who gave their lives in World War One, but all those who have died on behalf of their country.
Today, we took the opportunity to have a go at sketching poppies. I’m sure you will agree, these drawings are simply stunning.
Where in the world am I?
Following our local walk this week, we used the map to see the route we had taken. The children were able to spot landmarks on the map and some even spotted their house!
Our new topic, Where in the world am I?, will include lots of map work so if you have an atlas at home it would be great to start looking at where we live in the world.
Where in the world am I?
As a hook to start our new geography based topic, Where in the world am I?, we took a walk around our local area observing and recording features we spotted along the way. Following from this, we will group the features into physical and human and then comment on our likes and dislikes about the local area. What do you like about Moortown?
Skylar’s missing note
What an exciting first day back Year 2 have had!
This morning, we welcomed Sam and Jen and we were engrossed by the performance of Skylar’s missing note. This musical story was all about Skylar’s prized piano and how one of the notes (middle C) became lost as the piano was transported to their new house. The note did appear in the mouth of a pigeon but unfortunately, despite Skylar’s best efforts, the note could not be reunited with the piano. Nevertheless, Skylar continued to enjoy her piano and she found other ways to use her piano to create music.
Following the performance, Sam led a workshop where we continued the story but this time based on the pigeon. Along the way, we learnt many musical terms.
- Dynamics – loud or quiet
- Pitch – high or low
- Tempo – fast or slow
- Rhythm – the pattern of the music
Anti-bullying week – Odd Socks Day
Next week is Anti-bullying Week. This year’s theme is ‘Change starts with us’ and we will be taking part in Odd Socks Day on Tuesday 12 November.
This day is to raise awareness of our differences, individuality and personal choice. There is no need for any payment – your child should simply wear odd socks and join in the fun!
Thank you for your support.
Where is Skylar’s missing note?
‘A young girl journeys in search of her piano’s missing middle ‘C’ lost in transit during a house move.’
We look forward to taking part in this theatre show at school tomorrow for Years 1 and 2.
Featuring a specially constructed piano, it encourages children to play, understand and respond to music, enhancing both language and listening skills through a playful and magical story.
Living and Learning: Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and two focused weeks.
Anti-bullying week (11 November) ‘Change starts with us’
My Community themed week (25 November)
Our new school charity will be chosen as part of the My Community themed week. Every year, we nominate a new charity to support. This year, we have been supporting WWF. We decide this on the basis of a Talk Time homework, and then school councillors make the final decision.
Our Living and Learning long term plan details the learning for each year group across the year and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar. We will begin and end this half term with a focus on manners.
I apologise when I need to.
I say please and thank you.
Living and Learning: Democracy
With the School Council elections 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.
In class, we have already been taking part in democratic decisions. At the start of the year, the children voted when deciding what class animal to adopt from WWF and also when choosing its name. We also discussed a future class vote to decide our next whole class reward when we complete our class ladybird spots.
Ask your child about this text and what problem was solved democratically. How did Roshan react?
Well done to all the children who spent time preparing and then presenting their School Council speeches this week. All the children gave confident speeches with lots of great ideas to make changes at school.
In the election, the children voted at our polling station, using their ballot paper, for who they thought would be the best person for the job.
We are proud to announce that Danny and Theo were successfully elected and they will be representing our class this year. Well done!
All children can still use their pupil voice to make suggestions for the School Council meetings by telling their school councillors or putting a suggestion in the Living and Learning box.
4Rs not the 8Rs
This week, as we come to the end of our materials science topic, we welcomed members of the Leeds City Council Waste Recycling team to talk about waste and recycling.
Firstly, we learnt about the different bins we have at home and what should and shouldn’t be put in each bin.
We’re used to the 8Rs of learning but in terms of waste, we learnt about the 4Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.
‘To reduce food waste, you could put your leftovers in a box and have it later.’ Betsy
‘If your clothes are too small, you could take them to a charity shop to be reused.’ Evie
Next, we did a transformation activity to look at how some materials can be reused. Did you know Tetrapaks (such as some milk and juice cartons) can’t be recycled in the green bin but there are now recycling points, around Leeds, where they can be taken.
We followed a set of instructions to transform a Tetrapak into a purse!
How do we manage waste at school?
- Each class has a recycle bin to recycle paper and card.
- We reuse paper by having a scrap paper drawer in class.
- We recycle our milk cartons every day.
- We try to reduce food waste by allowing children to choose their main meal choice at the start of the day.
- In Year 2, we have our Ecobrick for any plastic that can’t be recycled.
Next, we met some some of our own waste recycling advisors who had to deal with some waste scenarios.
We finished with Busta and Pong’s song to recap the important message of recycling.
What a great informative session we had!
Here are some questions to discuss with your child.
- What colour is the recycling bin in Leeds?
- Which bin should you put nappies in?
- Which bin should you put food waste in?
- What is the brown bin for?
- Where could we take old clothes?
- Where does glass go?
- What can be reused?
- What are the 4Rs?
- Why do we need to recycle?
