Spring Term 2017
News Letter
Dear Parents, Carers and Children,
Welcome to our Spring Term 2 Newsletter, it has been a short but busy term. Educational
visits, science week and other events have enhanced our curriculum and learning
experiences for the children.
Thank you for your continued support. The children looked fantastic in their World Book Day
costumes and loved having a reading themed day with all their favourite book characters.
The KS1 Dance festival took place at Hamer Primary School. Our Year 1 pupils did us
proud with their interpretation of an African Dance. Mrs Nicholson and Mr Patterson
accompanied the children and said they were amazing. We are all very proud of them.
You may have noticed a few changes around the buildings and grounds of the school. We
have solar panels being installed on the KS1 Roof. We hope to save money off our
considerable fuel bill and reduce our carbon footprint in order to help the environment.
Year 3 have also helped to enhance our school environment by planting over a 100 new
trees – with the help of The City of Trees project.
http://www.cityoftrees.org.uk/
The pupils had a fantastically muddy time and they can’t wait to measure how much the
trees grow over the next few years.
We have been successful in securing some National Lottery Funding. This money is going
to be used to improve our play facilities and encourage active break times and an alternative
to football and Freddie Fit activities. We hope the work will be finished in plenty of time for
the children to play on it in the Summer Term.
The summer term is when children take part in statutory assessments. The results of these
assessments are collected by the Department for Education and are shared with parents. It
is very especially important that pupils are in school and on time during these times.
Year 6 SATS
KS1 SATS (Y2)
Year 1 Phonic Check
8th May to 11th May
Throughout May
12th June to 16th June
Parents and carers are reminded that schools cannot authorise term time holidays. If you
choose to take your children on holiday during term time you are affecting their education.
For example 2 weeks out of school means 45 lost lessons. Both parents can be fined per
pupil if their child’s attendance falls below the expected standard. Moorhouse expects at
least 96% attendance. The full policy can be viewed on our website.
We have become aware that some pupils have Facebook accounts. Facebook is for ages
13 and above. If pupils have an account then they have used false information to set the
account up. Social media can be fantastic but its use comes with great responsibility. We
have a digital safety newsletter on our website and parents & carers can sign up to receive it
direct to their email account. Please be aware that over the last 3 years the school has had
to report 5 incidents to the police where children have made choices online that have put
themselves in danger. We have regular Digital Safety lessons in school, but parents and
carers need to be aware of the challenges to young people’s safety also in order to support
their child. Please see our Twitter and Website for details.
Naomi Raw, our school nurse is holding regular drop in sessions. There is no appointment
necessary. You can talk to her about any health worries you may have about your child.
For example:
Sleep, eating problems, bed wetting, eczema, asthma, inoculations, head lice, anxiety
issues.
17th May 2017
11th July 2017
8:30 – 9:30
3:00 – 4:00
Nursery
This half term our topic has been Traditional Tales.
The children have been looking at a range of books including Goldilocks and the Three
bears, The Little Red Hen, Cinderella and Rapunzel.
They are using words now to describe story settings, events and principal characters and
talking about how stories are structured.
They have really enjoyed the Puppet Theatre and are performing traditional tales to their
audience starting and ending stories with ‘Once upon a time and happily ever after.’
As part of this topic the children have taken part in lots of activities, including World Book
Day, where they dressed up as their favourite character and read their favourite book.
Other activities have included a visit from a ‘Witch’ who read them lots of stories, food
tasting, baking bread, making porridge and toast and making jam tarts.
Reception
Barn Owls and Snowy Owls have been learning about 2d and 3d
shapes this half term. They have enjoyed going on a shape hunt
around school and have made different shapes with their bodies
in PE. See what different shapes you can find around your
house.
Year 1
Year 1 have had exciting term learning all about Neil Armstrong and Space. An alien visited
our classroom! We built a trap and wrote some instructions for how to catch an alien. We
watched the film ‘Baboon on the Moon’ and wrote a diary based on the Baboon’s day.
We have been learning number facts in mathematics. We have been doubling and halving,
recalling number bonds to 10 and counting in 2s and 5s.
We had lots of fun on world book day! We loved dressing up as our favourite book
characters and enjoyed a book share with Year 6.
We took part in the IPLCN dance festival at Hamer Primary School. The children performed
an African dance to Jambo Bwana- they were fantastic!
We went to Milnrow Library and chose books for our independent reading time.
Next term our topic is ‘Polar Explorers.’
Year 2
Easter already! The weeks are flying by. In the last couple of weeks of term we have been
joined by Mr Lawton, some of you met him at our recent parents evening. Mr Lawton is
joining us in Year 2 for his final teaching practice.
We have continued to work on our dinosaur topic over this half term. We have created some
silly riddles and simile poems and have just finished writing our own ‘Dinosaur Diary’ based
on the Julia Donaldson book of the same title.
We have recently visited the library in Milnrow where each child chose their own book. They
will be reading these over the coming weeks during their choosing time.
In maths we have been perfecting our number line method for addition and subtraction and
have been applying this to word problems. We have played shop a few times in class to
practise our number skills and have then used our coins to find the right money to pay for
our shopping.
We have finished our Science topic on materials and will be learning about plants next term
and how they grow. We will also be looking at animals and humans and how they are suited
to the environment that they live in.
We have created some dinosaur models out of clay and have thought carefully about the
features of our dinosaur. In our topic lesson we have learned the difference between a
mammal, reptile and fish. We know that the dinosaurs are related to modern day reptiles.
Some of us have reptiles as pets and have been able to talk to the class about them.
We have finished our R.E topic on Christianity with the Easter story. Over the last few
weeks we have learned about the inside and outside of a church; Vicar Graham at St Anne’s
let us have a look around the church and was kind enough to answer some questions.
We are hoping to visit Lancashire Railway next term to get our next topic ‘Around the World’
to an exciting start. Have an egg-citing Easter break.
Year 3
This half term we got the chance to plant trees on our school field. The first week was rather
wet and muddy. The children worked really hard and didn’t complain about the weather (in
fact we had to drag them inside for home time!) The following week we had glorious weather
and the children managed to plant the last of the plants and even found some buried
treasure.
Our British values assembly this half term was about ‘Individual Liberty’. As part of our
assembly some of the children decided to write a poem all about individual liberty. They
worked hard to make sure their poem rhymed following a rhyming couplet pattern.
Individual Liberty Poem
Individual liberty,
Means everyone is born free.
You can make good choices,
And listen to all voices.
Children in all schools,
Still have to follow rules.
There are laws we obey
So everything will be ok.
We are all equal, the same,
To be unkind is a shame.
We can make up our own mind,
But we must always be kind.
Individual liberty,
Means everyone is born free.
Written by Omara, Bailey, Grace, Olivia, Jacob, Owen
Year 4
Year 4 have been very busy with our new topic! We have been learning about modern
Europe and World War II. We visited the Imperial War Museum North to come up with some
questions for our topic. We also researched the evacuation of children in 1939 to help us
with our evacuation letter in English. Mr Patel’s Granddad spoke to us on the phone to tell us
about his experience of being evacuated.
We also won an attendance award this half term! We were very proud to have the best
attendance of any class that week. In music we have been learning to play the ukulele. We
have also been picked to represent Moorhouse at a song festival next term!
For red nose day Ms Brougham challenged the school to make her laugh, every time she
laughed she would make a donation to charity. We had so many fantastic jokes, but Fadil’s
was our top pick: When is it best to buy a bird?..............When it goes CHEAP CHEAP!
Year 5
Year 5 have had a whirlwind half-term, including two school trips!
The first was a visit to Milnrow Library where the children were able to choose their own
book to borrow. They enjoyed reading them and looked after them with care.
The second was a visit to Greater Manchester Fire Safety Centre. As one of the first groups
to visit the destination, it was an exciting and enlightening experience which the children
enjoyed. They learnt about basic fire safety, CPR and fire prevention in different areas of the
home. They were fantastic and a credit to the school.
Well done on a good half-term Year 5!
Year 6
Since half-term, some children have started attending booster lessons for Reading, Writing
and Maths. So far, they have enjoyed these sessions and are looking forward to continuing
them up until the tests in May.
Year 6 went with Year 5 to the Fire and Rescue Training and Safety Centre in Bury where
we dressed up like firefighters; learnt to look out for dangers in different scenarios and found
out about different situations that the fire service are involved in.
We will be completing our Key Stage 2 tests in the week beginning 8th May. Tests are taken
on the same day in all schools throughout England and further details will be given out after
Easter. On the Friday after the tests, we are looking forward to going on our Robinwood trip.
If your child would like to go on this trip, places are still available.
Football team
Our year 3/4 and year 5/6 football teams are looking super smart in the Moorhouse new
sports kit, ready for their next tournament!
Finally, we wish all our families a very happy Easter Holiday. Let’s hope we have
fantastic weather and we can play out and have lots of fun. Stay safe and we will
see you all on Tuesday 18th April 2017.