World Book Day Thursday 04 March – Zoom sessions
It’s World Book Day on Thursday 04 March and we thought that children might like to join in with the celebrations on our Zoom calls by getting dressed up as one of their favourite story characters, or you might want to bring your favourite book instead. You might have a costume already at home, or a t-shirt with a picture of your favourite character on the front.
Please DO NOT purchase anything special for the Zoom call, we’re sure that everyone has something at home that you could use.
If you’re struggling to find something or your child doesn’t want to dress up, that’s fine as well. Again, please don’t worry or feel you need to buy something.
Year 3/4 are very much looking forward to sharing some stories, books and characters this week.
PE days reminder
On the days your child has PE, they should come to school in their PE kit as detailed in our uniform policy . (Track-suit bottoms instead of shorts would be good on colder days. Footwear : black/brown/grey/white flat shoes which are safe to run around in.)
Footwear on PE days could be children’s ‘school shoes’ which are often a ‘trainer’ style anyway, if you want to avoid having to buy 2 pairs of shoes.
Please find below the days each class has allocated PE times, which will be taught outdoors, except in extreme weather.
- F2 Sunshine and F2 Rainbow (Miss Parling & Mrs Allen-Kelly/Mrs Wilkins) – Wednesday & Friday
- 1KN (Miss Lowry/Mrs Lake) – Monday & Friday
- 1,2V (Mrs Latham) – Thursday & Friday
- 2C (Mr Gathercole) – Monday & Thursday
- 3,4N (Mrs Wadsworth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
- 3,4E (Mrs McCormick) – Tuesday & Thursday
- 3,4O (Mr Catherall) – Monday & Tuesday
- 5,6S (Mrs Hogarth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
- 5,6M (Mr Lindsay) – Wednesday & Friday
- 5,6B (Mr Freeman) – Monday & Friday
Year 3/4 Walking Champions
A few weeks ago, I posted a challenge for children in Year 3/4 to walk the equivalent of the National 3 Peaks – a distance of nearly 40km and a total of 50, 330 steps! This is not an easy challenge by any means. The goal was to walk the distance in 8 weeks.
Remarkably, some children have already walked the distance – twice! Well done, Sam!
I’ve been amazed with the effort from so many of our pupils. Thank you to everyone who has taken part so far. There is still time to complete the challenge so don’t worry if you haven’t started yet. Maybe the sunshine and Spring feel to the air will inspire you to get out and walk, run, scoot or climb.
There have been a few stand-out moments.
Here are some of William’s routes around the area.
Thank you to another pupil who produced a wonderful PPT of his efforts throughout half term. I love the pie chart!
There’s still time to complete the challenge at either Bronze, Silver or Gold level. Just keep a track of your steps and distances and show them to your teacher.
We’ll hand out the certificates to everyone at the end of March 2021.
Happy Half Term – stay active with our 3 Peaks Challenge!
Well done to William, Sam and Emma who have been actively counting their steps on our ‘3 peaks challenge’.
If you would like to keep up with the challenge over half term, then see details below.
The Sphere Year 3/4 Team would absolutely love you to be part of this awesome challenge this February and March. We want to get you walking or running (or scooting!) as much as you can over the next two months.
Every time you do a walk or run, add the distance completed (and your time taken to complete this) in your chart. We will be adding up everyone’s distances each week to see how many of us can ‘climb’ the National three peaks. In topic this week and next, we will be learning about some mountains in the UK, so what could be better than a virtual mountain climbing challenge!
The three mountains in the challenge are the highest in each country in the UK:
- Snowdon, in Wales (1085m) Distance: 7 miles / 11.75 km
- Scafell Pike, in England (978m) Distance: 5.5 miles / 9 km
- Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1345m) Distance: 10.75 miles / 17km
You can record your steps taken (paces). The whole route is 37.75 kilometres long, and the average human step (or pace) is 0.75 metres. So you have to take 50,333 steps in total to complete the Three Peaks. Recording steps (paces) taken is easy – you can use a Fitbit, pedometer or just count your steps. A phone can track how many steps you take and how far you walk all by itself, if you walk with an adult who has a phone.
The idea is to make this as much fun as possible, to motivate you to get outdoors and maybe encourage as many of your family and your friends to do the same thing.
You don’t have to do the whole route. Maybe you can choose to ‘walk’ just one mountain, or two – it’s up to you and what you can achieve.
Throughout the month, we will share photos and graphics of the distances you’ve travelled. From this, we can show who has travelled up the peaks and what location we can reach together. Hopefully, we can find ways to help you during this challenge and through this you can share stories, pictures and videos with those joining in this challenge. All ‘Three peaks in eight weeks’ challenge walkers will receive certificates for effort and participation:-
Mountain 1 = Bronze; Mountain 2 = Silver; Mountain 3 = Gold.
Class News 3,4 NV
Hi everyone,
Well done for another week of fabulous home learning! It has been great to know how well you have been doing through the emails, zoom calls and phone calls home!
What a great way to end this half term – fossil making, creating a rock friend, reading about volcanoes and lots more!
Well done to those of you who have continued with TTRockstars and/or Numbots. I can see that so many of you are practising.
Have a happy, healthy and safe half term break. We have some exciting learning planned for you next half term!
Mrs Wadsworth
Amazing Writing!
It’s lovely when people send in their learning – as teachers, we really want to see it!
Thanks to these superstars who have sent in their writing recently. There’s lots of things I love about these pieces – pay particular attention to the impactful vocabulary and the varied sentence starters. Well done, everyone!
3,4 NV Class News
Hi everyone,
I hope that you are all keeping happy, healthy and safe. It has been great to hear from so many of you through our zoom chats and phone calls home. Well done to those of you who have emailed me your work. I know you are all working really hard at home – keep going, you’re doing an amazing job!
Keep up with the fabulous efforts on TTrockstars and Numbots. I am checking weekly to see who is using it! Why not have a go on it today?
Here are a few pictures from some of our home learners over the last couple of weeks.
Take care,
Mrs Wadsworth
Newsworthy writing
From Mr Catherall, who is leading the Y3,4 home learning writing sessions…
Hi everyone
I hope you’re all happy, healthy and safe. I wanted to share with you – and celebrate – some of the awesome writing that’s been sent in by children across our federation. Home learning is tough. There are many challenges, for children and adults, but these superstars have been ready, resourceful and resilient learners. (Can you remember the other 8Rs for learning?)
In the Y3,4 phase, we spent last week building up to writing our own news report about a (made-up) volcanic eruption. This links to our geography and science learning.
Here are a small selection of the wonderful examples we’ve been sent in from all three schools. If you’d like to send yours in, I’d love to see it (send me an email – olliecatherall@spherefederation.org).
From my class at Scholes (Elmet)… I love the varied sentence starts in this one (Late on Friday night, On Saturday, In the escape).
We’ve got a budding journalist at St James’ CE… I really like the news report structure here.
Back to Scholes (Elmet) for some another great piece… This time, I really like the main news section (the first paragraph in bold) because it’s exactly like you’d read in a newspaper or online.
Some amazing writing from Moortown… I love the expanded noun phrase (the orange, glowing liquid) and the vocabulary (predicted, nightfall, terrified) in this one.
Another super piece of writing from my class at Scholes (can you tell I’m proud?!)… There’s a lot to celebrate here – particularly the vocabulary (menacing, catastrophic, awoke, ear-splitting, historic)…
Back at Moortown for another great example of journalistic writing… I particularly enjoyed the use of questions to engage the reader and the way this writer has presented their news report in the style of a newspaper.
Another impressive report from Scholes… In this one, I love the vocabulary (citizens, fled on foot, vast amount).
Whatever writing you’ve managed to do at home, well done! After the last lockdown, writing was one of the few areas that we noticed children hadn’t progressed in. Try to help by completing at least one of the writing lessons each day (and always keep a focus on handwriting).
Three Peaks in eight weeks – walking challenge!
The Sphere Year 3/4 Team would absolutely love you to be part of this awesome challenge this February and March. We want to get you walking or running (or scooting!) as much as you can over the next two months.
Every time you do a walk or run, add the distance completed (and your time taken to complete this) in your chart. We will be adding up everyone’s distances each week to see how many of us can ‘climb’ the National three peaks. In topic this week and next, we will be learning about some mountains in the UK, so what could be better than a virtual mountain climbing challenge!
The three mountains in the challenge are the highest in each country in the UK:
- Snowdon, in Wales (1085m) Distance: 7 miles / 11.75 km
- Scafell Pike, in England (978m) Distance: 5.5 miles / 9 km
- Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1345m) Distance: 10.75 miles / 17km
You can record your steps taken (paces). The whole route is 37.75 kilometres long, and the average human step (or pace) is 0.75 metres. So you have to take 50,333 steps in total to complete the Three Peaks. Recording steps (paces) taken is easy – you can use a Fitbit, pedometer or just count your steps. A phone can track how many steps you take and how far you walk all by itself, if you walk with an adult who has a phone.
The idea is to make this as much fun as possible, to motivate you to get outdoors and maybe encourage as many of your family and your friends to do the same thing.
You don’t have to do the whole route. Maybe you can choose to ‘walk’ just one mountain, or two – it’s up to you and what you can achieve.
Throughout the month, we will share photos and graphics of the distances you’ve travelled. From this, we can show who has travelled up the peaks and what location we can reach together. Hopefully, we can find ways to help you during this challenge and through this you can share stories, pictures and videos with those joining in this challenge. All ‘Three peaks in eight weeks’ challenge walkers will receive certificates for effort and participation:-
Mountain 1 = Bronze; Mountain 2 = Silver; Mountain 3 = Gold.
Children’s Mental Health Week
Children’s Mental Health Week is taking place on 1-7 February 2021. This year’s theme is Express Yourself.
Here are some activities and ideas for you and your child(ren) to complete at home together. You can also download it here.
Expressing yourself is about finding ways to share feelings, thoughts, or ideas, through creativity. It is about finding a way to show who you are, and how you see the world, that can help you feel good about yourself.
As parents and carers, you play an important role in your child’s mental health. Check out the free resources.
Don’t forget to email your teachers with any photos or messages of your activities about Children’s Mental Health Week.
Thank you!