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.
Year 2 reading assembly
Sports day
It’s been a busy sporting week for Year 2 with our skipping festival, the Olympic Event at Leeds Beckett for some children and sports day at Roundhegians Rugby Club this Tuesday 02 July.
The children have been told their teams and their races but please come and see us if you want to check this.
If possible, they will need to come in a t-shirt of their team colour on Tuesday. We can provide a bib instead if this isn’t possible.
There is an important update about access to Roundhegians Rugby Club.
We’ve been advised that the normal vehicle access and car park for Roundhegians is currently out of use due to building work taking place at the clubhouse.
Instead, access will be through the gate on High Moor Avenue. This will mean there will be limited on street parking so please walk to the venue if you can.
You’re welcome to bring chairs/rugs to enjoy the morning/afternoon’s events.
We hope to see you there at 1:30pm on Tuesday.
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.
Moortown’s super skippers
Today, Year 2 took part in the Skipping School KS1 festival at Leeds Trinity University against four other Leeds schools.
The children have been learning lots of individual and group skipping skills and today it was great to see just how much the children have progressed.
We were lucky enough to win some awards for the following events.
After all the points (skips) were added up, the winning school was announced…
We were so excited and proud to hear we had won!
A huge well done to all the children for fantastic determination, resilience and team work. They have worked so hard by practising in PE, at lunchtime and playtime, at skipping after-school club and even at home!
We looked super smart in our new KS1 PE tops too.
Skipping is amazing because it gives us exercise.
I really liked learning new skips at the festival.
It’s all been fun and it is good for your mental health.
Living and Learning: relationships
For the last few weeks, our Living and Learning lessons and circle times have been all about happy and healthy relationships between our friends, peers and families.
Here, we thought about what makes a family.
A family can be three people or four people. It just matters that you LOVE them!
A family is a group of people and they love each other.
A family is people who are combined together.
You can show you care for your family by loving them as much as you love yourself and be kind and respectful.
Family respect you, take care of you and show you kindness and love.
Sometimes, you might have fall outs but you will come back together.
We read some texts about how not all families are the same and that is ok. The children also enjoyed sharing special members of their family.
The Great big book of families by Mary Hoffman
What is a healthy relationship? What does a good friend do? What should I do if I’m not happy with a friendship? These were all questions we considered as we moved onto thinking about friendships.
Consent is also part of this relationships learning. We have already learnt about consent in terms of permission seeking when online but here we thought about it when we are with others. We practised showing how we give and don’t give consent and how we can also change our mind if we want to.
We will continue to use this text to support learning about consent.
Finally, you will have seen the children have brought home the NSPCC Pants Underwear rule. We revisit this important learning every year.
Help at home: read the NSPCC pants underwear rule with your child/children and think about how this keeps you safe. This parent guide is available too.
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
PE: Tennis skills
This half term, Year 2 are learning the fundamental movement skills associated with tennis. Throughout the half term, we will be doing individual racket and ball activities and learning different skills. We have also started doing some partner activities; rolling and bouncing balls in and out of hoops, serving into a hoop and striking the ball on the floor to their partner with the tennis racket.
Help at home by talking about the skills your child is learning and practice hitting a ball with a tennis racket.
Visitors
This week, as part of our biology learning in science, some visitors arrived in class.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be making lots of observations to see what changes over time with our caterpillars.
We have been learning about the different stages of the butterfly life cycle in science but also from our non-fiction reading fluency text.
Take a look at this video to see this amazing transformation and this video for more about animal life cycles.
When comparing butterflies to other living things, we noticed the offspring look very different to the adult.
Help at home: ask your child what is the next stage in the life cycle of a butterfly and what we will expect to see next.
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.
