Walk to School Week winners
Lots of families joined in with Walk to School Week last week. The Buffers and St Phillips car parks were busy with people walking some of the way, if they couldn’t walk all the way from home. Thank you for joining in and helping to make our school and community an even happier and healthier place to be. Here are some of our lucky winners!
Reading champion
We have been getting very excited about the KS2 Reading Champion Competition that is running across school and Leeds. They are searching for the best young reading ambassadors in Leeds, KS2 children who advocate reading for pleasure and encourage others to find their own love of reading.
Each class voted for a Reading Champion for their class. The nominations were brought to the Junior Leadership Team and they voted for an overall winner. They chose Ella from Year 6. She will now write a letter of support for the competition and she will be up against other schools across Leeds.
Good luck, Ella!
Science: Pollination
Pollination
We learned all about the importance of bees today in our lesson on pollination.
When the bee digs into the next flower the pollen on her body rubs off onto the stigma of the new flower. This is called pollination. When the pollen lands on the stigma it travels down the style towards the ovary. Once the pollen reaches the ovary it hopes to find an ovule to attach to.
The children loved this video on the importance of looking after our vital pollinators – the message is clear!
We looked more closely at the reproduction in plants and the parts of a flower which help make new seeds. The children loved the cross over between science and art.
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Walk to School Week 16-20 May 2022
Next week is Walk to School Week (or scoot or ride).
We hope you’ll all try to take part in this, even if you can’t walk from home. The Buffers Pub and St Phillip’s Church have agreed for us to use their car parks so everyone has the opportunity to walk part of the way.
Remember to bring your raffle tickets each day you walk to put in your class boxes to be in with a chance of winning a prize!
Let’s get active!
Precious, pretty plants in pots
We’ve had many WOW! moments this week with our science topic, Plants.
We’ve watched our wonderful cress seeds germinate in just a few days, while testing which conditions are best for growth. Amazingly, some of the cress seeds have germinated without water – but after careful discussion we came to the conclusion that there must have been some moisture in the soil already allowing them to germinate. We’ve been nurturing with much care.
Now outside the classroom, we have repotted our broad beans now that they have started to grow. We carefully planted our delicate beans into the larger pots as we’ve learned that they space for the root to spread out. These we germinated without soil, just simply tissue paper and water. Hopefully soon, we’ll see a bit more growth in the soil over the next couple of weeks.
Inside the classroom, we have set up another observation experiment which is testing how water travels up the stems of flowering plants. The white flowers are in coloured water (food dye) to show how water is transported up the stem (like a straw). At the time of this photo, nothing had changed… look out for our results. The children made some accurate predictions about what they think the flowers might look like tomorrow.
Living and Learning – Democracy
Living and Learning: I can take part in democratic decisions.
This week, we have been learning about democracy as part of our Living and Learning.
In class, we voted for who we thought was a Champion Reader. We talked about the importance of reading regularly and reading a variety of different texts.
The candidates were voted for anonymously by the members of each class.
The winners were:
3,4 A – Jimmy
3,4 B – Jessica
3,4 C – Archie
Well done to everyone who took part. A great example of democracy in the classroom!
The day Y3,4 met a real poet!
Yesterday, we were lucky enough to welcome Andy Tooze into our school.
We watched him perform some of his poems and had a go at writing our own (in just seven minutes!). The children had a lot of fun and felt inspired. Today, each class read their poems aloud and published them in a book.
If your child would like one of Andy’s books, please let your child’s class teacher know. They cost £5 each when ordered through school.
Summer Term 1 Science: Plants
This term is all about growing plants. Included in this post is a list of our new vocabulary for this topic.
Yesterday, we looked at some typical flowering plants and identified their parts and functions. Photos are some children’s work will follow.
I was so impressed with the knowledge the children already had!
We progressed to ‘plant’ our own broad beans so we can see the journey they take from seed to shoot and root (simply put into a cup with water and cotton wool -we’ll check what’s happened next week).
You can support your child at home by planting your own seeds in your garden, or in a flower pot and just observe over time the changes that take place.
Or, you can watch these excellent video clips.
| stem | holds the plant upright and supports the leaves; contains tubes that allow water to travel from the roots to the rest of the plant | |
| roots | helps anchor the plant into the soil; takes up water and nutrients from the soil | |
| leaves | catch sunlight and use this to make food | |
| photosynthesis | how plants turn sunlight into food | |
| pollen | a dust-like powder that causes plants to make new seeds | |
| pollination | transferring pollen from the male parts of a flower to the female part of a flower so new plants can be made | |
| stamen | the male part of the flower which produces pollen | |
| stigma | the female part of a flower that pollen attaches to during pollination | |
| seed dispersal | the way seeds get from the parent plant to a new place so that they can grow into new plants |
Herea re some lovely pictures of children’s flowers they drew using oil pastels:
Living and Learning: First Aid
This week’s Living and Learning statement:
I know how the emergency services can help.
We talked about keeping safe, hazards, calling for help and casualty help. The children were really engaged in their learning and acted out many role play situations.
Maybe ask your child – what is a hazard?
What does LIONEL stand for?
- Location. Tell them where the emergency is and where you want them to arrive.
- Incident. Tell them what has happened.
- Other services. Do you need more than one?
- Number of people that are involved.
- Extent of the injuries. What types of injuries do people have?
- Location. Repeat again where they need to arrive.
Here is the video we watched.
Further information linked to first aid can be found at:
Living and Learning: health and prevention
Our Science and Living and Learning lessons have been all about microbes, handwashing, health and preventing illness this week.
We have talked about how microbes can be harmful but also how some can be good for us. We have set up an experiment about growing mould. We are testing to see which conditions are best for mould growth.
Hand washing
Washing our hands is really important. All the children could all talk about this, with our experiences of Covid-19!