Y4 Skipping Festival
On Wednesday this week, many of the Y4s participated in a skipping festival held at Leeds Trinity University. They competed against five other schools in different techniques – including individual efforts such as the double bounce and the pretzel – and team efforts such as ‘run in, jump out’. Throughout the afternoon, there were also whole group sessions to try out different skipping exercises to music.
The children represented the school so well, showing a fantastic attitude to their teammates and trying their best, even when the competition was tough! Well done to everyone, you made us proud. 
3,4A Class News
It’s been great to see everyone back at school this week! In Writing, we have started to look at promotion texts and their features, including present tense, questions, commands and alliteration. We will be writing our own promotion about York. This links in with our new Geography topic – Explorers! We have started off by learning about global climate zones and then focusing in on the countries in Europe. Later on in the topic, we will be comparing the two cities of York and Venice.
On the same theme, we have used a non-fiction text about York to practise different reading skills including retrieval, summarising and understanding the meaning of words in context..
In Science, we have been completing our unit on light. We carried out an experiment to see what happened to the size of the shadow when we moved a light source further away from an opaque object.
Help at home by asking us what we discovered! Feel free to quiz us on the terms opaque, translucent and transparent too.
Soluble or Insoluble?
This half term, Year 5 and 6 have started a new Chemistry topic: Materials and their properties.
In this week’s Science learning, we learnt all about which materials are soluble (do dissolve in water) and which materials are insoluble (don’t dissolve in water).
We tested each material by placing an amount into a cup of water and observing whether they dissolved or not.
Independent variable: the material
Dependent variable: the solubility
Control variable: the amount of the material, the amount of water, time observed for, temperature of water
We found out which materials were soluble and recorded our results in a table!
Help at home: Ask your child to define: soluble, insoluble, dissolve, independent variable, dependent variable and control variable!
3,4C Class News – Science
This week, we investigated:
How does the distance between an object and a light source affect the size of a shadow?
We made a prediction, carried out the experiment and recorded our findings. We concluded that the shadows decrease in size when the light source is moved further away from the object.
Help at home by encouraging your child to discuss their findings from the experiment.
3,4 B Class news
It’s been a busy first week back after the Easter holidays!
Our new topic this half term is ‘Explorers’. This is a geography-based topic involving looking at climate, economy and tourism. This week we have focussed on the different climate zones and identified countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. As we move through the topic we will begin to focus primarily on York and Venice – comparing and contrasting the two cities.
In PE we are developing our basketball skills. This week we have been learning how to pass the ball with increasing accuracy – using bounce and chest passes. The children increased the distance of their throws to add more challenge. We then used our skills within Possession Ball – a fast paced team game where points are earned for successfully passing the ball to another team member without interception by the opposition.
Help at home by continuing to help your child access TTRS. Y3s, please focus on x3, x4 and x8. Y4s, focus on the times table you feel least confident with and please ensure you are doing regular TTRS soundchecks to increase your speed and confidence across all times tables.
Have a lovely weekend!
Living and Learning – personal hygiene
This week, our whole-school Living and Learning statement is ‘I know the importance of personal hygiene, including handwashing.’
In KS1, we have been discussing lots of different ways that we can keep ourselves clean and healthy such as regularly having a shower or bath, cleaning our teeth using toothpaste and washing our hands.
In 2C, we conducted an experiment where we filled a bowl of water and sprinkled pepper on the surface. The surface of the water represented our hands and the pepper represented germs. We dipped one finger into the bowl each and saw that the pepper attached itself to our fingers when we did not have soap on them. We then dipped one finger into soap and then into the water and saw that the pepper moved away from our skin and onto the side of the bowl. This showed us just how powerful soap is and how important it is that we wash our hands regularly.
We identified lots of areas around school that are touched regularly by lots and lots of people. We know that these areas are ‘hotspots’ for germs, and if we touch them, it’s best to wash our hands afterwards.
This includes: doors, door handles, anything in the toilets and play equipment. It is important to wash our hands with soap so that we do not spread germs to others, or pick them up. Germs can be harmful and might make us poorly. We also identified places in the home that might be hotspots for germs, within the bathroom and kitchen.
Help at home: by identifying some ‘hotspots’ for germs within your home. Discuss the importance of handwashing and encourage children to follow the handwashing guide to ensure their hands are super clean!
How to wash your hands NHS song | NHS (youtube.com)
(Please note this is a YouTube video. Make sure you watch your child when using YouTube as adverts or unwanted videos may follow. Thank you.)
Class novel – The Worst Witch
We are using The Worst Witch, by Jull Murphy, as our class novel this half term. We will link reading and writing learning with it too, as well as enjoying immersing ourselves in the story. We already love Mildred and her cat!
Help at home by talking about what has happened so far or read along with us (but no spoilers!).
PE – Hulk Smash
All Year 1 and 2 classes are learning a new games this half term to improve our agility, balance and coordination. We started the game this week – bouncing balls, moving and bouncing and adding in actions to make is more difficult. You have to really ‘smash’ bounce the ball to have enough time to do a spin before catching it, for example.
Help at home by asking your child to explain how to play the game (and maybe even play a game together).
Here are some pictures from 1,2B’s lesson.
PE – basketball
This half term, we are developing our basketball skills. Today we were learning how to pass the ball with increasing accuracy – using bounce and chest passes. The children increased the distance of their throws to add more challenge. We then used our skills within Possession Ball – a fast paced team game. There was some brilliant dribbling and passing and even better communication between the children We ended the lesson working on our personal best challenges. How fast can we dribble the ball between a set of cones? They will do this each week and hopefully break their previous records!
Happy Easter from 1A
Thankyou for allowing your child to participate in our egg rolling competition. We had lots of fun! Well done to our winners.
Our Easter disco class pics.
Have a wonderful holiday. Looking forward to all that lies ahead in the Summer term!