New SEAL theme…Good to be me

Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:

• Self-awareness: feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
• Managing feelings: understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself.
• Empathy

This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.

As part of our current science mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.

The theme also links with Moortown’s Got Talent, our upcoming annual talent show.

The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:

Building emotional resilience

Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.

Coping with anxiety and worrying

Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.

Calming down

Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.

Assertiveness

The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.

Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour

The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened / under stress.

‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.

End of term

The end of term is almost upon us and what a busy one it has been!

Mr Owen and I have been very impressed with the learning,the behaviour and the mature attitudes shown from all the children. This last week, we have enjoyed a super trip to the theatre, card making, puppet making, parties and our own little secret Santa surprise. You’ll have to wait until Christmas to enjoy that one!

Here a just a couple of quotes from the children about the autumn term:

• “I really enjoyed our big topic, especially making our picture frames.”
• “Going to Allerton Grange for STEM week was awesome!”
• “The STEM fair was very exciting. I enjoyed seeing all the different projects.”
• “Writing the character descriptions of Grandma was fun.”
• “Our SEAL sessions have really helped us to manage our feelings and cope with any difficulties.”

Finally, we would like to wish you all a very happy holiday and look forward to seeing you all in the new year.

Merry Christmas

Just a quick message to say Merry Christmas and enjoy the holidays. Have a well-earned rest but keep up some reading over the break.

We love reading!

Our Creative homework was to convince someone that they should love reading and we had some very persuasive pieces of homework:

• stories to read
• PowerPoint slides telling us about the benefits of reading
• sequels to existing books
• videos

Here are some for you to enjoy.

Christmas Party!

Dancing – then statues!

Santa’s Setbacks

A big well done to all children in Year 2, Year 1 and Reception who have performed three fantastic shows this week.  Even after many rehearsals, we’ve been very impressed with the children’s focus and enthusiasm.   Here is the cast…

Thank you to all family and friends who came to watch.  We hope you enjoyed the show.

The Witches

On Tuesday, we had a brilliant time at West Yorkshire Playhouse watching The Witches.

Both classes had a great time and enjoyed seeing Roald Dahl’s famous story come alive.

There’s always lots on at the theatre – why not take a look? https://www.wyp.org.uk/about/whats-on/

Cookery skills

This morning, Year 2 had chance to develop their cookery skills while following a Christmas themed recipe.

We have recently been learning about instructions so we were able to identify some of the features of the recipe such as the title, what you will need, subheadings, numbered instructions and imperative verbs (bossy words to tell you what to do).

Can you identify the following skills and equipment that we used?

School Meals

Our school dinner menu is usually changed on a termly basis but this is now changing to half yearly.  Our new menu will therefore be from February 2017.

When we return from the Christmas holiday, we will start on Week 3 of our current menu until the new menu is introduced.

09 December 2016