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.
Arctic report
We’ve worked hard across Topic and Writing over the last three weeks. As part of our Explorers topic, we decided to find out all about the Arctic. We started off by thinking up questions we’d like answered about this area before sorting them into categories. This created the four subheadings for our report:
- Where and what is the Arctic?
- Its Exploration
- Indigenous Animals
- What does the future hold?
Then, we spent four lessons finding out and making notes. In one lesson, Miss Rushbrooke acted as the expert and taught us all about where and what the Arctic is and we made notes.
We also found out lots about ‘Its Exploration’ through reading; ‘Indigenous Animals’ through internet research (with lots of discussion about reliable sources); and ‘What does the future hold?’ by watching some information videos.
Once we’d gathered everything we needed, we put pen to paper to pass the information on in the form of a report. Here’s Ollie’s first paragraph:
Finally, (that’s right, we’re not done yet) we worked with a partner to thoroughly edit each other’s writing and there was some great teamwork going on.
Fantastic project from Year 6 which they’ve put huge amounts of effort into right from beginning to end.
School Council excitement
We listened to all of the school councillor candidates yesterday and there were many very impressive speeches.
Today, we entered the polling station first thing and voted for our chosen candidate. Mrs Weekes then added up all of the votes and our new Y6 school councillors were announced in assembly this afternoon. Very well done to Edward and Megan.
Preparing for Assembly
Year 6 are working in groups to prepare for our class assembly which is on Wednesday 1 November.
You’ll have to come along to see what it’s all about.
School Council elections
Our School Council elections will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 19 October. All children have the opportunity to vote at our polling station using the following instructions.
Before voting, please read the following:
- Vote once for one person.
- Place one X only on this ballot paper beside the name of the candidate you have chosen.
- Do not write or mark anything else on the ballot paper; if you do, your paper will be invalid and your vote will not be counted.
- When you have marked the ballot paper, fold the paper and place it in the box provided.
Votes will be counted tomorrow and our new School Council will be announced at the end of the day. This will be made up of two children from each class with the highest number of votes.
Good luck to all our candidates.
City of Leeds basketball
City of Leeds basketball club recently led a PE session for Year 5 and delivered our basketball after-school club in the summer term.
Here are details of their sessions available locally.
There is also a new girls-only session at Allerton High School on Monday evenings, 6pm – 7.30pm, ages 7 – 14 years. The first two sessions are free and then it is £5 pay to play.
Planning an exploration
After the half term holiday, Year 6 are going to Fountains Abbey. We’ve been learning about the human and physical features of this site and comparing them to Machu Picchu in Peru.
This year, the children are taking control of their trip. We spent the afternoon looking at maps of the site and the timings of the day so that the different groups could plan what they were going to do while we’re there.
We decided that giving each other jobs would be a good idea so each child has a role:
- map-reader
- photographer
- time-keeper
- visitor surveyor
- artist
It can be quite difficult to work in such a big group but the children did a good job discussing jobs and making sure each person was happy in the end.
Bonfire themed menu
Catering Agency, our school meal provider, will be running a special themed menu on Friday 03 November. Please contact the office, before Wednesday 18 October, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
- Posh dogs in finger rolls or Vegetarian meatballs in finger rolls
- Curly fries
- BBQ baked beans
- Rocket lolly
- Fresh fruit and yogurt
