After-school clubs
Our autumn term clubs continue after half term and there is an opportunity to join the below after school clubs which currently have available places:
Monday
Hama Bead Club – Y4, Y5, Y6
Mindfulness & Yoga – Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6
Tuesday
Skipping – Y3, Y4, Y5, Y6
Sewing & weaving – Y4, Y5, Y6
Wednesday
Skipping – Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4
Girls Football – Y4, Y5, Y6
Thursday
Dazl Dance – Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4
Basketball – KS1
Basketball – KS2
Clubs run straight after school and finish at 4.15pm.
All clubs will run until w/c 9 December, which would give your child 6 sessions if they’d like to join.
If your child is interested in joining any of the above clubs, please reply to the email sent and an individual payment request will be set up.
Rugby ticket offer
Headingley Stadium has the honour of hosting the England men’s and women’s national team against Samoa and Wales respectively on Saturday 02 November 2024.
As a partner school of the Rhinos, we are pleased to offer children and families 20% off tickets. These are purchased directly from the Rugby Football League using the discount code shown below.
Living and Learning: Democracy
This week in L&L, we’ve been focusing on one of our British Values – democracy. Democracy means that power is in the hands of the people.
Our topic this half-term has been Ancient Greece. The Ancient Greeks founded democracy so the children already had a great understanding of what this meant.
The word democracy comes from Greek:
- dêmos – people
- krátos – power/rule
We’ve learnt about democracy in our country and how this works. The children were really interested in learning about the central and local government and the roles of political parties. We also discussed how we’re involved in democratic decisions at school:
We get to vote for how we use our reward time.
We get to vote for our JLT in school.
At the start of the year we got to vote for the name of our class reward points.
Next week, we’ll have our own democratic vote to elect our new JLT members for this year.
Help at home: create your speech for becoming a JLT candidate.
- What good qualities do you have to be a good leader?
“I would be a great leader because I listen to, and respect, other’s views.”
- How can you help your class?
“I would help Year 4 by listening to your opinions and ideas and sharing these with Mr Wilks and Mrs Weekes.”
School Trip to Lotherton Hall!
Yesterday, Year 3 and 4 visited Lotherton Hall on a school trip! This trip linked to this our science topic: grouping and classifying living things.
We began the day by exploring the Wildlife World and we saw some incredible animals! Some of your children’s particular favourites included the capybara, tapir, emus, Humboldt penguins and flamingos! It was amazing to be able to get so close and admire these fantastic animals.
Later, we were lucky enough to attend a workshop all about classifying animals. I was so impressed with all your children’s science knowledge! They explored the five groups of vertebrates:
- mammals
- reptiles
- amphibians
- fish
- birds
At the end of the workshop, each table got a replica skull to study. They looked at the teeth to decipher whether it was a herbivore or carnivore and the eye sockets to determine whether it was a predator or prey. It was fascinating!
It was a brilliant day filled with exciting and interactive learning – we’d love to go back!
Help at home: ask your children to name the different animals they saw at Wildlife World and classify them into their vertebrate group.
Maths: column addition
This week, we’ve loved doing column addition!
We began the week with column addition without exchanging and once your children were confident with this, we moved onto column addition with exchanging.
You can exchange 10 ones for 1 ten.
You can exchange 10 tens for 1 hundred.
You can exchange 10 hundreds for 1 thousand.
I’ve been wowed by your children’s column addition this week! They’ve demonstrated some fantastic knowledge of how and why we use column addition.
Help at home by asking your children to complete the following calculations using column addition:
2910 + 5839 =
1092 + 7233 =
2649 + 7221 =
8323 + 1284 =
Me and My Community week
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place from Monday 4th November. This is the first of two themed weeks in the year. In our ‘Me and My Community’ week, children will learn about what it means to belong to a community, from family to national or even international communities. Importantly, our children will also learn to respect and celebrate different communities. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of our Living and Learning education.
Events and learning during the week will include looking at our own identity including belonging and self-esteem, diversity of people around us including race, age, religion and disability and children will also be getting out into the community working with local organisations and taking pride in the local area for example by litter picking.
Active travel in the community
We encourage children to get out in the community in an active way on their way to and from school, with prizes available as part of the themed week. By walking/scooting/biking to school, families will by keeping our community safer and healthier by reducing congestion at the school gate. Maybe even pick up a piece of litter on the way. 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.
Email us (moortownoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of your active travel, maybe by a landmark in our community on your route to school, for the chance to win one of five vouchers. Entries to be submitted by noon on Friday 8th November.
New school charity
At the end of the themed week, classes will have the chance to discuss our charity shortlist and the Junior Leadership Team will have the final vote for which charity they would like our school to support, replacing our current charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
Identity day
Friday 8th 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. There is no donation or contribution required for this day.
SAVE THE DATE PTA coffee morning Friday 8 November 9-10am
As part of the week, we welcome all parents and carers to an informal coffee morning to meet other members of our school community including representatives from the PTA. A whole school community Wake up Shake up will follow at 9:50am in the main playground.
Can you help?
Maybe you speak another language and you would be happy to speak to children about this or you would like to share about your own family culture and heritage. 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 continues to keep you up to date with key community events as well as our community noticeboard.
Drop-down morning: history, geography and computing
Today we had drop-down morning! This is an entire morning dedicated to recapping our topic learning from previous years. In Year 4, we recapped:
- history – heroes
- geography – explorers
- computing – algorithms
We began the day with history. We discussed two influential figures in history: Nelson Mandela and Leonora Cohen. I was so impressed with your children’s knowledge about these two individuals and they demonstrated this in ‘Walkabout Bingo’. Our bingo cards had 15 questions about either Nelson Mandela or Leonora Cohen and, to fill these, the children needed to ask each other for the answers. It was a really fun way for your children to test each other’s knowledge!
For our geography topic, we compared York and Venice. We recapped what we knew about the human and physical geography of both cities before revisiting the idea of overtourism. The children’s job was to read a selection of issues that’ve arisen due to overtourism in York and Venice and, in groups, come up with some solutions. It was great to hear your children’s discussions and they came up with some excellent solutions!
Finally, we recapped our Year 3 computing on algorithms.
An algorithm is a set of instructions or rules to complete a task.
Our focus was on creating effective algorithms in the simplest form (to make it easier for our computers to follow). We practised creating and writing a variety of different algorithms and even debugging some!
Help at home:
- Ask your child to tell you about Nelson Mandela and Leonora Cohen and why they’re such influential figures in history.
- Create a list of physical and human geographical features with your child.
- Download ScratchJr and ask your child to show you how to create algorithms.
- Alternatively, ask your child to write an algorithm for this grid:
Connect Challenge
Today, the whole school completed our Connect Challenge, in memory of Rob Burrow, by running walking or skipping seven laps of the back playground and the green. All the children gave 100% and were even asking to do extra laps. It was a great active morning!
Thank you for your donations so far. You can still donate on Gateway until the end of the week with money raised to be split between the Rob Burrow Centre for Motor Neurone Disease Appeal and our school charity, The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund.
Reading: Book Club
Every Friday, your children share their love of reading in our Book Club sessions. As part of their homework, they complete one activity in their reading records each week, relating to the book they’re reading. This week it was ‘Predict the Future’.
We then discussed our class novel ‘Greek Myths’ by Geraldine McCaughrean – specifically the myth of ‘Daedalus and Icarus’ which we’re half way through. Your children shared their own predictions of what might happen:
I predict that Icarus is going to get too close to the sun and burn.
I predict that Icarus’ wings are going to fall off and he is going to fall but then Daedalus is going to catch him.
I predict that Icarus’ wings are going to melt off and he is going to fall but one of the guards is going to catch him and lock him up again.
We’re all very excited to finish the myth and find out if our predictions were correct!
Help at home: Read with your child daily and encourage meaningful conversations about their books. What do you think will happen next? Who is your favourite character and why? If you had to describe this book in three words, which would you choose?
Living & Learning: Rights and Responsibilities
This week, our L&L statement was: I know that rights come with responsibilities.
We had a brilliant discussion about how we all have rights, however these come with certain responsibilities. As a class we came up with some rights we have within school and the responsibilities that come with these:
- We have a right to playtime but a responsibility to play safely and respectfully.
- We have a right to learn but a responsibility to be great learners.
- We have a right to eat lunch but a responsibility to be respectful and polite to the lunchtime staff.
- We have a right to use the classroom equipment but a responsibility to look after it.
- We have a right to share our opinions in circle time but a responsibility to do so respectfully.
After, we looked into some children’s rights in the UK:
Help at home: Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9_IvXFEyJo and ask your child what rights and responsibilities they have at home (eg. they have the right to play with their toys but a responsibility to do this safely).
