Mindfull or mindful?
Would you like to find out more about mindfulness and how it can be used to support your child at home?
As part of our whole school themed week next week, all children will be taking part in mindfulness workshops. There’ll also be a parent/carer session on Monday 20 November at 2:30-3:15pm.
Please contact the office if you would like to attend.
Christmas school dinner themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Thursday 07 December. Please contact the office, before Monday 20 November, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
From SNAP to Smell Journeys – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
Last week’s Living and Learning theme was I know we’re all the same and we’re all different. We used Our Rules that we created last week in our discussion of the pros and cons of being the same and different to everybody else. We decided it would be really boring if we were all the same all the time! In teams, we wrote a recipe for success for teamwork. Some ingredients we thought of were ‘problem solving attitude’ and ‘good listening skills’.
We took on the role of detectives in English this week, spotting features of an instruction text in cookery books. We had competitions to see whose text contained the most features – but we had to give evidence of each feature to win the point!
Maths has revolved around multiplying and dividing by 3! We’ve looked at finding groups of three and finding three equal groups which is tricky because they sound similar but are very different. There are lots of ways to represent one number sentence. For example: 5 x 3 = could be expressed as ‘3 x 5′, ’15’, ‘five threes’ or shown by fifteen counters. We played Snap to test our knowledge of this in a fun way.
Some of us had more luck than others. You had to be quick!
To round off our Explorers topic in a creative way, we went on a Smell Journey around school, after discussing artwork by Kate McLean: NYC’s Threshold of Smells.
This inspired us to write a descriptive recount of a walk to school where we were bombarded with stinky stenches and awesome aromas. We also wrote a class Pongy Poem, which we displayed in the style of a smell.
Next, we experimented with colour and shape using watercolours to represent what the smells might look like if we could see them. (There were some interesting discussions about certain smells!)
This week’s Creative Homework task was to show understanding of addition and subtraction and I was absolutely bowled over by the quality of the submissions! The children had clearly gone to so much effort to show what they had learnt over the past few weeks and they were so proud of what they had done, which sparked some great conversations between pupils. It was fantastic to see. There were lots of board games with their own rules using addition and subtraction at their core, there were online quizzes and mazes and puzzles, there was even a video presentation (see the bottom of the post)! We all thoroughly enjoyed discussing each and every one, so I would like to say a massive well done from me, once more. Check out some of their brilliant learning below:
Well done to certificate winners Hifza, for a fantastic contribution to this week’s Living and Learning theme and her understanding of how we are the same and different, and Henka, for an unbelievably good piece of descriptive writing and your handwriting has come on leaps and bounds, too! Keep it up!
Who do you think you are? themed week 20 November
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place from Monday 20 November, which also coincides with national Road Safety Week. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education.
Events during the week will include looking at our own identity including belonging, self-esteem and mindfulness, diversity of people around us including race, age, religion, disability and gender. Classes will also be getting out into the community working with local organisations such as St Gemma’s, local care homes, Moortown Community Group and taking pride in the local community by litter picking.
Road Safety Week will run alongside our themed week where children are encouraged to take a walk/scoot/bike in the community on their way to and from school, maybe even picking up a piece of litter on the way. If your child walks, scoots or bikes, they should complete the slip at the bottom of the letter sent home (spare tokens are available in class), each day, for a chance to win a £10 shopping voucher for each class. We hope you will support this initiative in helping children make a healthy start to their day and also helping towards reducing congestion at our gates. Even by parking further away from school your child could then to do the final part of their journey by foot, bike or scooter. Bike and scooter storage facilities are available beside the Year 3 and 4 classrooms.
During the themed week, children will be researching local, national and international charities and a new school charity will be chosen at the end of the week to replace our current charities, Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Mind Leeds.
Friday 24 November will be a non-uniform identity day. Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend, a team they are part of or support or traditional dress to represent their heritage. We invite a donation for the PTA Christmas fair.
Who do you think we are?
Do you think you’d recognise some of our staff in their early years? This photo competition is back and will run throughout the week with details to follow separately. Proceeds will be given to our new school charity.
Community coffee morning Wednesday 22 November 9-10am
As part of the week, we welcome parents and carers to an informal coffee morning to meet other members of our school community including representatives from the PTA, our governing body, Moortown Community Group and Friends of Moortown Park. I will also be available to speak to parents about our new Living and Learning scheme of work. A whole school community Wake up Shake up will follow at 10am in the main playground.
Mindfulness information session for parents
Please see the separate letter to sign up for this parent workshop on Monday 20 November, 2:30pm-3:15pm.
Can you help?
Pupil feedback from our previous Who do you think you are? themed week was to ‘learn more languages that other people speak.’ Do you speak another language and you would be happy to speak to children about this? If so, please contact the office to pass on your details. Also, do you have any local community links that may support our week?
Our website and Twitter continue to keep you up to date with key community events as well as our community noticeboard with lots of information about the themed week too. It’s going to be a busy week!
Anti-bullying week All Different, All Equal
Next week is national Anti-Bullying Week and our Living and Learning statement is I know how to STOP bullying.
The theme this year is ‘All Different, All Equal‘ with the following key aim:
The idea is to help children and young people celebrate what makes them, and others, unique and help them understand why it’s important that every child feels included in school, able to be themselves, without fear of bullying.
Our school definition has recently been reviewed by the new School Council and remains unchanged.
‘Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.’
As part of their learning this week, children will discuss these aspects of bullying:
- Our definition of bullying (above)
- Types of bullying – cyber-bullying and prejudice-based bullying related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and belief, special educational need and disability
- What to do if children experience or witness bullying. The key message is to tell someone (start telling other people)
STOP can stand for two key messages: the definition (Several Times On Purpose) and the solution (Start Telling Other People).
All classes have access to their class I want to say box or a whole school worry box where they can tell an adult any concerns about bullying or any other issues.
KS2 classes will also be using dance to show this learning through dance workshops arranged as part of the week.
For further support, bullying resources can be found at…
- https://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-information/advice-parents
- https://www.kidscape.org.uk/resources/
- http://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/
- https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/news-blogs/get-involved-in-anti-bullying-week-2017-all-different-all-equal/
- https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/bullying-and-cyberbullying/keeping-children-safe/
- https://www.childline.org.uk/info-advice/bullying-abuse-safety/types-bullying/
- https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/feelings-and-symptoms/bullying/
From Fallen Pegs to Emergency Evacuations – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week, our big topic highlight was the highly-anticipated den building! After lots of fantastic contributions to our construction resources, Thursday arrived and we couldn’t wait to get started.
First, in class, we discussed what a den actually was, and all the equipment we would need to be successful. Our first task was to group ourselves into teams of four, which was easier said than done!
We divided our building resources between our groups and found an area in the hall. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed something!
One of the hardest parts was tying our resources together and making everything secure, but we worked together in our teams to make our dens as strong and sturdy as possible. There were a few times where an emergency evacuation was needed to rescue children from inside falling bed sheets, but we lived to tell the tale…
Some of us had the brilliant idea of having strength in numbers and decided to band together to form larger teams! What a great idea! (This came in very useful when it came to packing away some very confusing clothes horses.)
Once our dens were assembled, we walked carefully around the hall to give feedback to each group and to note ideas for how to improve our own!
Next, to enjoy the fruits of our labour, we all relaxed inside our dens with our books, using torches, and listened to music. We think we have the explorer life cracked!
We even invited other classes to come and see our hard work, and we escaped with only one collapsed den!
Finally, it was time to clear up. This was probably the most tiring part! We had to work together really well to make sure everything went back to how we found it.
We had a brilliant, but exhausting, day and we couldn’t have done it without your generosity, so thank you very much for sending in your supplies once again. We do, however, send our apologies to the fallen pegs that didn’t make it home.
Please look through our pictures from the day below!
-Mrs Burgess and Miss Wilson
Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about their rights and responsibilities, 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 also two focused weeks – Anti-bullying week (13 November) and Who do you think you are? (20 November).
Our full Living and Learning long term plan is now available on the health pages 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.
Our new school council
Congratulations to our new school councillors!
We had a record number of candidates this year and there were some very close votes but here are our winning candidates.
Their first meeting will be on Wednesday 08 November.
Well done to all children who prepared a speech. We hope they don’t feel too despondent and are resilient to have another go next time.
Final school council project
Back in July, our Year 5 and 6 school councillors attended the Leeds Youth Voice event at Leeds Civic Hall. They were very keen to share their experience back in school with the school council and also in a whole school assembly. The one idea they wanted to implement back at school was to have a friendship stop.
With the support of the rest of the school council, this is now in place!
This was a great project for the school council to work on as they came to the end of their time as school councillors. Representatives spoke to the whole school in assembly to explain how the friendship stop works.
Ask your child if they have seen the new sign and what they would do if they saw someone at the friendship stop.
Here is a note from Grace who was one of the school councillors that wanted to make this happen.
The friendship bus stop, which is new to our school, is a great chance to make new friends. It encourages people of all age groups to make sure that everyone has someone to play with. The bus stop is located above the bench closest to the entrance to the middle playground. We hope that this idea goes well and that every child uses this correctly. Your child should definitely know what the friendship stop is and how to use it in the right way because it has been discussed during our Friday assembly.
From Ghosts and Ghouls to Colouring and Councillors – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
This week’s Living and Learning theme was: “I know I live in a democracy.” Children were tasked with writing a speech to run for School Councillor or a Talk Time about the importance of voting. I was bowled over by the quality of these speeches and the passion and confidence each candidate showed.
There were some fantastically creative campaigns!
A very exciting part of our week was our long-awaited trip to the Forbidden Corner!
Although the excitement seemed to get a bit much for some!
When we arrived after our long journey, the first thing we did was eat our lunch. We were starving and it was only 11:45!
We were even joined by two visitors (but we didn’t let them steal our quackers).
As we begun our journey into the unknown, we felt a little nervous, but we trooped forwards, just like real explorers would!
We even managed to spot Mr Catherall hiding in the trees!
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The Forbidden Corner was a very strange place with bizarre twists and turns. We didn’t know what was coming next!
We were worried we might never get out!
Spot the real statues.
Our explorations proved truly a-maze-ing!
Here is photographic evidence of Year 3 breaking the rules!
We were the kings and queens of the castle! What a lovely view.
Our trip gave us chance to show our teamwork and map reading expertise.
It felt lovely to be outside with nature.
There were some impressive sculptures. This giant woodcutter inspired us to complete some brilliant artwork as you will see below.
His axe was pretty heavy!
This week, we tested our rafts to see if they would float with the weight of five marbles. First, we predicted what would happen and jotted down our method. Some of our rafts successfully floated!
While some of our rafts had a slightly soggy end…
But the experiment was a great learning experience as we discovered which materials floated and which unfortunately sank!
We also tried our hands (or feet) at football, this week.
Of course, we had to practise our celebrations!
To round off our diverse and creative week, we used a photo taken at the Forbidden Corner as an art stimulus. We drew the same picture four times but changed the media used each time: graphite pencil, wax crayon, oil pastel or pencil crayon.
After each drawing, our partner gave us a star and a step for us to improve in the next picture.
This allowed us to experiment with different materials and find out which we liked best; exploring happens in art, too!
What an all-round fantastic half term for Year 3. We’ve made massive amounts of progress in only seven weeks and I look forward to seeing what else is in store.
I hope everyone has a lovely week off. Make sure you keep on exploring!
