Writing & Geography – Letters to Steve Reed
This half term’s geography learning has culminated in a letter to our Environment Minister, Steve Reed.
We want to urge him to take climate change even more seriously after what we’ve found out about how it’s impacting the world around us.
We have been learning about how melting ice caps, due to global warming, and therefore rising sea levels have been catastrophic for places around the world like Kale Island in the Solomon Islands.
We have learnt about how this change in sea level and more extreme weathers are leading to a rise in coastal erosion. Places like Skipsea suffer directly with damage to people’s homes, a decrease in tourism and sadly, in rare cases, loss of life.
We are writing to Steve Reed with several recommendations for how he can make effective changes. In addition, we are including a range of persuasive devices like flattery, emotive language and rhetorical questions.
Help at home by rereading this post to find all the examples of formal language.
“We wrote the letters into our books. Then we edited them and published them onto laptops to save paper,” explained Charlie.
Raheem said, “We’re writing this to make sure that Steve Reed will listen to our concerns.”
“It’s a nice experience because it’s a change from our normal handwritten letters or writing lessons,” beamed Luca.
Cross Country Leeds Final
*** UPDATE*** Congratulations to our Year 3 girls team and one of our Year 4 runners who have qualified for the West Yorkshire Cross Country Final.
We were very proud of our eight Key Stage 2 children who took part in the Leeds Cross Country Final at Temple Newsam this week.
In muddy, slippy, wet conditions they all put in 100% effort in their races and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing against the best runners from across Leeds.
We’ll wait to hear if we have any qualifiers for the next round, the West Yorkshire Final.
Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.
Safer Internet Day
This year, Safer Internet Day’s theme is Too Good To Be True and focused a lot on avoiding scams.
We joined a live lesson by the BBC which told us the following ways to check for scams:
We looked at apps and games and their age restrictions. We discussed why these were in place and it was mainly for our safety. Check out the other reasons below.
Help at home by making sure any profiles or games are fully private.
Would you click on the scam?
We also watched a play produced by the NSPCC about the dangers of sharing images online. You should never share photos which give away your personal information. If you’re ever unsure about anything, talk to a trusted adult.
We also looked at misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes. Challenge your child to define these terms and give an example!
New school meal menu
After February half term, we start our new menu which runs to the end of the year. It can be viewed here. Please review this with your child to help with their selection at the start of the day. We continue to offer meat free Mondays.
The cost of a school meal is £2.75, which should be paid in advance on the School Gateway app. We’re happy to accept payment for the week, month, half term or term. We prefer two weeks’ notice to change lunch arrangements.
All children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 receive free school meals. If your child is in Year 3 to Year 6, and you are on benefits or a low income, your child may be eligible for free school meals.
Some people like to choose a mix of school dinners and packed lunch for their child – that’s absolutely fine, as long as it’s a the same pattern of school dinners and packed lunches every week. Just let office staff know which days you’d like to opt in for a school meal in the week, and which days you’d prefer to provide your child with a packed lunch.
We continue to gather feedback from children on our school meals. Shortly, we will be reviewing our vegetable choices to help to eliminate waste.
If you have any feedback. please do get in touch.
Living and learning: online safety assembly
This week, Louise from West Yorkshire Police came to deliver a whole school assembly all about staying safe online.
There were lots of clear online safety messages around content, contact and conduct.
At the end of the assembly, the children reflected on what they were going to do after hearing Louise’s messages.
I am going to ask my adult to take off the chat on my Roblox settings.
I am not going to accept friend requests from people I don’t know.
I am not going to play games that have a age rating older than me as they won’t be appropriate for me.
Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.
Living and learning: internet safety
Today, we welcomed back fan favourite Dave from d:side who spoke to us about being safe online.
We discussed the importance of having a secure, private account on any social media profiles. Snapchat is especially dangerous because of its Snap Map feature which needs to be turned off as it’s automatically on when you sign up.
We looked at lots of scenarios where someone had made a mistake with sharing information online and we corrected their actions.
This scenario brought up the topic of consent because nobody should ever post picture of you without asking for your permission. Likewise, you should never do the same to other people.
Lastly, we had a good discussion about age restrictions for games. They are a guideline, not the law, but they’re in place for a reason. Whatever you do, ask your adult if you’re unsure.
Help at home by making sure any apps are private and secure, and any games are age-appropriate.
PE: dance
Over the last two weeks, our focus in PE has been dance.
We’ve learnt about two elements of dance so far: space and tempo.
For space, imagine the stage is full of a fresh covering of snow and every time you move across it, your footprints show where you’ve been. The idea is to cover a range of the space so that the audience is more entertained.
For tempo, it’s the speed in which you perform each dance move. Imagine the beat of different songs – some are fast and lend themselves to more energetic, exciting moves and some are slow, where more careful and dramatic movements would be more appropriate.
We’ve all had chance to perform for the rest of the class and hear some positive feedback.
Help at home by just putting on some music and having a dance!
National Storytelling Week
It’s national storytelling week! Y6 were pleased to join a webinar hosted by author Tola Okogwu. She’s written Onyeka, among lots of others, and took us through how she comes up with her amazing story ideas.
We could interact with Tola and she even picked Luca’s idea of the character having super stretchy legs as her super power! Check it out below.
We loved thinking creatively to start off this magical tale so help at home by finishing it off or starting a new one with your own ideas!
KS2 ice skating Planet Ice
As part of our involvement with Leeds Well Schools Partnership, a group of twelve Key Stage children recently took part in an ice skating session at Planet Ice.
After getting kitted out with our ice skates, we ventured onto the ice with some children being very hesitant. Our instructor taught us how to get up safely if we fell (and there were quite a few falls!), how to move forward on our skates and how to glide. All the children had a great attitude to learning these skills and showed excellent resilience and support to each other. By the end of the session, there was some great progress made and lots more smiles! Well done to all the children who took part.
This event was incredibly popular with over 90 children requesting to take part. If you would like to give ice skating a go, then have a look at the sessions available at Planet Ice. We’d recommend it!
Yorkshire Air Ambulance
This year, our Junior Leadership Team democratically selected Yorkshire Air Ambulance as our new school charity to support.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance is an independent charity providing a lifesaving rapid response emergency service to 5 million people across the whole of Yorkshire. Money raised keeps both of their air ambulance helicopters maintained and in the air.
This week, we welcomed representatives from Yorkshire Air Ambulance for an assembly to hear first hand about the excellent work they do and how our donations will help the charity.
Did you know it costs £21,000 per day to keep the Yorkshire Air Ambulance running.
It’s great to hear the children have already got ideas of how we can raise money for YAA. They are encouraged to put these ideas into our class Living and learning boxes for the Junior Leadership Team to consider.