Virtual after school clubs
Aimed mainly at primary-aged children, a different theme has been assigned for each day of the club – Adventure Monday, Tuesday Play, Wild Wednesday, Thinking Thursday and Fun Friday.
Find out more: https://www.youthsporttrust.org/AfterSchoolSportClub
Living and Learning: I know how to STOP bullying
Our recent Living and Learning statement has been: I know how to STOP bullying.
STOP is a key message linked to bullying. In our school, STOP stands for two things:
- the definition: Several Times On Purpose
- the solution: Start Telling Other People
Recently, our school council (now called the Junior Leadership team) met to review our school definition of bullying and our child friendly anti-bullying policy. Thank you to the JLT for their valued contributions. As a result, our definition and policy have now been updated.
Child friendly anti-bullying policy
What is bullying?
In our school, this is what bullying means:
Bullying is where you hurt someone, physically or emotionally (including online), several times on purpose.
What might bullying look like?
If any of these things happen several (lots of) times, it is bullying.
- Hurting peoples’ feelings, for example, name calling, teasing, threatening, ignoring, leaving people out or spreading rumours
- Hurting peoples’ bodies, for example, hitting, punching or kicking
This could be in person or online (cyber bullying) and could be because of someone’s race, disability, gender, appearance, age or any other protected characteristic.
What could you do if you are being bullied?
Start
Telling
Other
People
Who could you tell?
- Miss Beatson, Mrs Bald, or Mr Roundtree (they are child protection staff)
- Any other members of staff
- Friends
- Someone in your family
- A trusted adult
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your classroom Living and Learning Box or the whole school worry box
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Our views on bullying
STOP bullying – bullying is wrong! We’re a happy and healthy school.
As part of our Anti-bullying week, we had creative homework where the children showed that they knew how to stop bullying. Thank you to those children who have sent their homework. We have enjoyed looking at it in our homework review and sharing our ideas. (send any completed homework to Stjamesy3y4@spherefederation.org)
String telephones
Today in Science, we have been exploring how sound travels.
We learnt that sounds get quieter as the distance between the sound source and your ear increases. Sounds travel as vibrations. As the sound waves travel, the particles of whatever they are traveling through vibrate, or move quickly on the spot. The further the vibrations travel, the more they spread out. As they spread out through more and more particles, the vibrations become smaller and smaller. This causes the sound to get quieter and quieter. This is why sounds get quieter and quieter as you move further away from the source, until you eventually can’t hear the sound at all.
We experimented with a string telephone. We found that when we were talking in our normal voices we couldn’t hear each other across the hall. However, when we used the string telephone, we could still hear our partner. This is because when we use the telephone the vibrations of our voice travels through a solid – the string. However, when our voice went into the air, the vibrations spread out and got smaller as they travelled.
The string and the cups are solid, so the particles are much closer together than the particles in the air, which is a gas. The sound energy can travel from particle to particle far easier in the solid string telephone, so the sound of your voice is louder over the same distance than it was in the air.
Timestables rockstars
As a school, we buy into Times Tables Rockstars. This is a fun way for your child to practise their times tables. We use it, at least weekly, in-class but it would be really good if you could use it at home, too.
Each child has got their own login – if you’re not sure of their login/password then please email and I can send another one home.
At the end of year 4, they will take part in a times tables test. They will answer a range of times tables questions and need to score full marks to pass. They will have 5 seconds per questions to answer. Looking below, Year 4 are on their way to answering their 10 times tables and 11 times tables.
It would be great if, even for just 5 minutes a day, they practised their times tables. If you need any help logging in or have trouble accessing it, please let me know. Send an email to Mrs Rowlet at beckyrowley@spherefederation.org
Healthy eating assemblies
The whole federation joined together to take part in an assembly about healthy eating last week. It was very exciting to see the other classes in the other schools! We had these booked in for Health Week last summer, which had to be cancelled.
The Leeds Health and Wellbeing Team delivered the assembly where we learnt all sorts of interesting things about keeping healthy and finished off with an interactive quiz.
What’s that coming over the hill…
This week in our writing, we have been learning to use adjectives (gives more information about a noun) and expanded noun phrases ( adds more detail to the noun by adding one or more adjectives). The children have been using these to describe their greek mythical creatures. Have a look at a few of our descriptions (copied exactly from their books – how fantastic are our writers!):
Over the hill came a monster…It was a three-eyed, prickly faced monster. Its face was as stripy as a zebra! It has two ears on each side of its head and a patch of freckles on its nose. It had a four-armed, purple body like a purple, slimy alien. It was as small as a mouse and you would barely see it coming! Its footsteps were so quiet adventurers can’t even catch one! It has six legs. On one side it has three spikey feet and on the other it has three human feet. The finger nails were as sharp as a knife. It had a ripped, beautiful butterfly shirt and one eye closed at one side of its face. It kind of had the nose of a lion. After hours, it finally ran away silently. (Leah)
Over the hill came a monster… Its head looked like a tiger. Its enormous eyes would surely be able to see everything but the scariest part is that it has venomous, purple prickles on its back! There’s more about this monster, it has dark spots and black stripes on his arms. The legs are like a human, feet even with shoes on! It has ears like a polar bear, pretty good to hear with. The last and smallest part is the really sharp teeth. Some even as sharp as a shark! So now you know it’s scary if you see it run! (Jacob)
Over the hill came a monster… with its smelly and venomous spots. Its eyes as big as boulders could catch anything at the corner of his eyes! They glistened around the gloomy, eerie forest. The ears would point out like razor, sharp knives scaring the other animals. Feet as small as cute as little bunny paws. Its neck was as wavy as an aliens’ arm. The legs were as long as the alphabet and were as bendy as a sheet of paper. It makes sounds which are as noisy as a monkey and it chomped on its food hungrily. It also has lived for over 100 years. (Siana)
Living and Learning: I can show perseverance
This week, our living and learning statement is “I can show perseverance”.
The children were able to describe that perseverance was “keeping on going when things get difficult” and “not giving up”. We talked about the different ways we could show perseverance in school and at home.
During our living and learning session, we practised perseverance. In pairs, we had some tangrams to complete.
“We had to persevere to make the different shapes because it wasn’t easy and we couldn’t do it the first time we tried.”
The children have been fantastic at showing perseverance in school this week especially during their maths learning.
Reading detectives
Many mythical creatures were made up of different animals combined to make one beast. In our reading lessons, we have been using our inference skills to work out which animals were combined to make up these mythical beasts.
First, we listened to and read the description and tried to draw the beast.
The Sphinx was a female monster with the body of a lion, the breast and head of a woman, eagle’s wings and a serpent-headed tail.
Triton was a fish-tailed sea god, the son of Poseidon, king of the seas. He is blowing a conch-shell trumpet. In his other hand, he holds a staff.
Pegasus was an immortal, winged horse which sprang forth from the neck of Medusa.
Then, we matched the images to the description – the monsters were easy to match because the text gave us key information (tail, wings, horse).
Christian Value: Friendship
This half term, our Christian Value has been friendship.
We have thought about how we can be a good friend and what we can learn from the Bible about friendship. We learned that Jesus teaches us to be a good friend to all – he told a story about how the good samaritan was a friend to someone who was supposed to be his enemy.
In our reflection areas, we had two challenges: a friendship flower and how to be a good friend.
For our friendship flower, we thought about who was a good friend or someone we were thankful for and wrote or drew a short thank you thought or prayer for them.
We took the friendship finger challenge and thought about all the things that make a good friend. We thought about how we could be a better friend.
Foundation stage have also been learning all about our Christian value of friendship. They’ve created a friendship tree and friendship stones whilst thinking about the qualities they would like in a friend.
Look out for next half term’s Christian value: perseverance.
Living and Learning: I recognise mental health is important
This week, our Living and Learning statement was “I recognise mental health is important”. At school, we understand how important our mental health is which is why the first question we asked at parents evening was about how each child has coped since coming back to school and the changes due to covid.
To support this learning, we have been looking at the different emotions that the children could have been/ have been experiencing and how this can impact their mental health and what mental health is.
We looked at different emotions, when we might feel them and how we could react to those emotions and feelings.
Together, we created a feelings wall – it showed us that all feelings are acceptable and we talked about the different strategies that we could use to overcome/deal with any negative feelings.
Our Living and Learning lesson involved using some resources from the Anna Freud website and it has lots of advice and links for children and families if they need support around mental health.