Great deforestation homework
A little late due to technical difficulties, but our deforestation homework was too good not to share with everybody.
We enjoyed looking at each other’s and discussing the different ways we’d each decided to present our information.
Now take a look yourself…
An active half term
We’ve started the year with plenty of physical activities. Here are some of the highlights.
Rugby World Cup
In September, the Rugby World Cup came to Leeds and we were lucky enough to win tickets to watch Italy play Canada at Elland Road. There was a great response to our prize draw for tickets and our three lucky winners enjoyed the World Cup experience.
Active Schools
This year as part of our investment of the Primary PE and sport premium government funding for schools we have joined the Leeds Active Schools programme. Their mission is to promote and develop, through collaboration and partnership, a sustainable system for physical activity, PE and sport that enriches the lives of all children and young people. Already this year, as part of this programme, we’ve had the opportunity to take part in some great events.
Big sing Big dance
A group of our Year 3 pupils were part of over one thousand children from across Leeds who took part in the Rugby World Cup Big dance Big sing event in Millenium Square.
Singing and dancing to the Rugby World Cup theme tune ‘World in Union’, the event was to celebrate the rugby matches in Leeds.
- ‘I loved it and I tried my best.’
- ‘It was exciting when we did the dance.’
- ‘I enjoyed using the rugby balls for the dance and singing the song, too.’
Rugby World Cup fanzone
As part of the celebrations for the Rugby World Cup, a number of children had the opportunity to be involved in the fanzone in Millenium Square. There was a carousel of activities including rugby activities and inflatables, a practical Tagtiv8 session and a visit to Leeds Library to meet author Tom Palmer. Tom writes sports novels for children, including the Rugby Academy series.
- ‘I really enjoyed the event. It was fun, especially the bit with Tom Palmer.’
- ‘I loved it! I especially enjoyed when I won the rugby ball. It was so good I want to do it again.’
- ‘I enjoyed playing pass with my friends and learning how rugby started.’
Brownlee Triathlon
Harewood House recently hosted the Brownlee Triathlon. Following this, a number of our children took part in the children’s Brownlee Triathlon held at the John Charles Centre.
The event involved a 30m swim, 1km cycle and a 400m run and was attended by Jonny Brownlee.
- ‘It was the best sporting event that I’ve ever done.’
- ‘It was great and was very challenging but in a good way.’
- ‘I have never done a triathlon. It was amazing, especially the fact that I met the Brownlee brothers.’
Football
This year we continue to be part of the Leeds School Football Association leagues for Year 4, 5 and 6, led by Mr Lawton and Mr Catherall. Here is a summary of their season so far.
The ‘Moortown Dragons’ (Year 4 football team) are learning quickly what it means to be part of a team: sticking together, working for each other, and keeping smiles on everyone’s faces. In our most recent game, they showed off some sharp passing as a team, gritty goalkeeping displays, and capped it off with a couple of stylish goals. ‘Make friends, make friends, never, never break friends!’
In the short time we’ve had, the Year 5 footballers have impressed with their passion for the game. They’ve started to show their desire to work for each other, and we’re looking forward to a good run of matches after half term. If they can show half the skills that they demonstrate daily in the playground, and keep looking out for each other, they’ll go far indeed.
The Year 6 football team have grown in confidence throughout each of their fixtures so far this year. With an emphasis on teamwork, enjoyment and working hard (on and off the ball), each team member has improved significantly. Their continued development as a team was, perhaps, most evident in the recent game against local rivals Gledhow. Well done to all! Keep it up and you’ll soon be rewarded for your efforts.
Events to look forward to next half term include more football matches, Leeds North East sports hall athletics competition, a Come and Try basketball session at Roundhay, cross country and a health-themed week, too.
Thank you to all parents who support with transport and accompanying children to these events.
Well done to all our competitors and participants who have represented the school.
Y5 assembly
Thank you very much for attending the Y5 class assembly this week – I know Miss Rushbrooke was really sorry to have missed it.
Here are a few of your comments:
- “Well done. Could hear them all. Most informative.”
- “Wonderful speaking and great percussion.”
- “Great debate and very informative.”
- “Fantastic! Great confidence!”
- “Loads of great facts showing how much they’ve learnt.”
Let’s have a debate
Having focussed on the River Amazon for the last couple of weeks, we spotted areas of the forest that had been chopped down and discussed what was happening.
We learnt that this is called deforestation and there are pros and cons to it. After learning about why people chop trees down and how they benefit as well as exploring what damage it does to the local and global environment, we formed teams and debated.
Should deforestation be allowed to happen?
Yes – Local people earn money from selling wood that is chopped down and they need that money to pay for food and shelter.
No – Cutting down trees cuts down animals’ habitats and might lead to them dying as they have nowhere to live.
Yes – Trees can be cut down sustainably so that only a couple of trees in one area is destroyed and older, rotten trees can be targetted.
No – But trees that are cut down damage many trees around them.
Yes – Any trees that are cut down can be replaced by newly planted trees so they’ll grow back.
No – Maybe so. However, it takes years for these trees to grow back and they’re never the same as they were.
It was difficult to decide which was right or wrong as we could always argue back with another point!
What’s happening in class?
Here’s an overview of what Year 5 will be learning in class in the two weeks running up to half-term.
Topic – Alongside learning about Brazil and seeing how it is similar/different to our country, we’ll be getting creative by looking at Brazilian art and picking up our saws and drills for some woodwork.
Help at home by looking at Brazil on Google maps, finding mountains, rivers, neighbouring countries and then do the same for the UK.
Maths – Fractions will be our focus all the way up to half-term. The children need to understand equivalent fractions, order fractions by finding a common denominator and they need to be able to add and multiply fractions together.
Help at home by joining in with Practice Makes Perfect homework. Ask your child to explain how to solve fraction problems to you as though you’ve never heard of the word fraction before.
English – Having focussed on writing promotions last week, we’ll continue this and write our own promotional text for a boat trip up the River Amazon. This will be followed by writing recounts.
Help at home by looking at the language used in adverts and read it to each other in your best ‘M&S voice’. Have a meal where only ‘writing talk’ is allowed. Everything you say must be in full sentences as though you were writing it down.
What’s on the menu in Brazil?
As part of the whole school Holidays topic, Year 5 and 6 have been ‘visiting’ Brazil. Following some research about popular foods in this South American country , we’ve recreated our own Brazilian dish. This was taken from a recipe book donated by the Brazilian restaurant Cabana. There is even a branch in Leeds if you’d like to try some more traditional Brazilian dishes. Our dish was a vegetarian version of moqueca (fish stew).
Take a look at our food preparation and tasting. Ask your child what skills they were using. Maybe you’ll get chance to try this at home as a few children were motivated to cook this for their family at home.
- ‘I love it and my favourite part is the courgette.’
- ‘I really like it, especially the coconut milk.’
- ‘I really like the sauce. This is new to me.’
- ‘It’s amazing – the best stew I’ve ever tasted.’
More great Creative homework
Last week’s homework has filled the classroom with Lego.
I can design a Lego mosaic/model.
Some of us chose to design a model for a First News competition commemorating the Queen becoming the longest reigning monarch.
Some of us chose to design a model linked to the Holidays topic.
Well done, Year 5. Keep it up.
What’s going on in class
Having thoroughly enjoyed our mini-topic ‘The Lost Thing’, we’ve now started a Big Topic called ‘Holidays’. The topic began by exploring two suitcases and predicting where we could be visiting (real and imaginary) in the next 8 weeks. We then look at the top ten holiday destinations from the UK in Summer 2015 and researched one of these countries in greater detail.
Topic – In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be planning a holiday abroad, looking at temperature, rainfall and all sorts of other important deciding factors. We’ll delve into the world of physics to understand how planes stay in they sky and boats don’t sink as well as starting to compare the UK to a (currently mystery) destination in the Americas.
Help at home by searching flights online, looking at how long it takes and discussing the children’s idea for how the plane works.
Maths – Alongside this, we’ll learn lots about other countries by understanding graphs, tables and charts in our maths lessons. We’ll need to answer basic retrieval questions as well as compare data and use graphs that might be less familiar to us (pie charts).
Help at home by exploring different ways of presenting data and see which you think are the clearest and what makes them easy to understand (labelled axes, titles etc).
English – We’ll look at different types of sentences (simple, compound and complex) and practise writing these accurately before moving on to writing discussions to put forward different sides of an argument.
Help at home by discussing guided reading books and how sentences vary their openers, some are very short and some very descriptive and there are different joining words (but, because, although) used to link ideas together.
We’re loving maths.
In addition to our Maths lessons each day, Y5 have a maths carousel on Mondays and Thursdays. We do a variety of maths-based activities that are fun, logical and allow us to practise our skills in a range of contexts.
Maths challenge table – This involves activities based on our current or previous learning. We can work independently and it often requires us to think differently or apply our learning in context.
Times tables – We practise our times tables independently and have come up with fun and creative ways of doing that on our own. (Below, we’re playing bingo.) There are sometimes maths puzzles to complete on the table we’re learning at the time too.
Maths puzzles – Can be anything but at the moment we are learning how to play Su-Doku, taking on the countdown challenge and completing logic puzzles in pairs.
Mathletics – We all love Mathletics and in the carousel we have the opportunity to use it in school, whether we want to go on Live Mathletics or complete activities.
Holidays
We’ve kicked off with our new Big Topic, ‘Holidays’ by delving into suitcases and guessing where we’ll be going.
Mr Owen and I each brought our suitcases packed for a particular holiday and, from the evidence we gathered, we guessed where each person was heading and thought about who we’d most like to go with and why.
Mr Owen’s suitcase
As Mr Owen had scarf, hat, gloves and four pairs of socks, we decided he was heading somewhere cold. He’d packed his walking boots, a waterproof coat and he didn’t pack his passport.
Not many people wanted to join him on his holiday!
Miss Rushbrooke’s suitcase
Miss Rushrooke’s also contained walking boots but these were accompanied by insect repellent and an insect hat. We thought she might be going walking in the jungle. She had sun cream and beach-wear, too, and had packed a snorkel, camera and… her passport. 
Lots of Y5 wanted to join Miss Rushbrooke on her holiday. I wonder why?
We’ll be exploring a UK break and a holiday abroad through this topic and these cases give us clues as to where we’ll be going.
To help at home, discuss what they children know (and don’t know) about different countries. Can they find them on a map or tell you what continent they’re in. Do they know whether it’s hot or cold and why this is given their location (poles and equator). We’ll also be discussing currencies in maths and the different time zones across the world.
