Stanningley Primary School

What a fantastic performance ALL of the children from Year Five and Year Six gave! We are all incredibly proud of each and every child involved in the show and hope that you all enjoyed the production. It will certainly live on in our memories for some time!

We had a fabulous Sports Day! In the morning we helped Reception Class enjoy their very first Sports Dav and in the afternoon we competed brilliantly.

We dressed up for the jubilee, either in 50s costume or in red, white and blue and we created some jubilee artwork.

We enjoyed a fabulous day at Nell Bank Activity Centre, learning team building and problem solving skills. The sun shone and everyone had a wonderful time!

We are creating our own Spanish cafe, complete with a delicious menu in Spanish!

We had some super Y6 entries in the school science competition!

Our class reading volunteer and school governor, Mrs Travis-Jones, helped us to celebrate our achievement with a special cake!

During SATs week, we really enjoyed coming to Breakfast Club to get ourselves off to the best possible start.

The school councillors organised a decorated Easter egg competition and presented prizes to our class winners and participants.

We spent the half term working towards a Samba festival where we performed with other schools from across Leeds, including a showcase of our own Samba piece.

To investigate how light travels in straight lines and how we can use this to understand reflection, we observed what we could see behind us with a mirror and how changing the angle of the mirror changed what we could see.

We learn a lot in our sessions with visitors such as d:side about "Drugs awareness" and "Sex and Relationships Education".

Renowned author and ilustrator, Chris Mould, visited our school to talk about his life as an artist and, in particular, his illustrations for the new edition of Ted Hughes' The Iron Man.

We have been learning about Rites of Passage which coincided with the confirmation of a member of our class! He was able to share his thoughts and feelings with us, as well as telling us about his special day.

As part of our work on the circulatory system, we investigated the effect of exercise on our breathing and heart rates. We recorded our pulse and breathing rates in the classroom and then went out to exercise vigorously and recorded these rates again. We noticed that our pulse and heart rates both went up when we exercised.

We enjoyed a special Zoom with author Georgina Stevens who told us all about her new book: "Climate Action: the Future is in our Hands." This linked with our Geography topic which was all about the impact we have as humans on our planet.

Members of the St. Giles Trust visited us to deliver two sessions to help us to make the best choices if we ever feel pressure to join a gang or carry a knife. We learnt that there will always be support from trusted adults, such as teachers, if we need help in dealing with these issues.

Artist Michael Crowe brought his London-based "Spaghetti Club" - a children's art club- to Year 6 as part of the Leeds Art Gallery "Kids as Critics" project which is a unique colaboration between our school and the gallery. As well as taking part in lots of creative activities in individually made booklets during the day, we learnt about conceptual art and heard Bruce McLean's responses to our questions to him about his film "I want my crown". Artist Fran Heap had been commisioned by the gallery to make a crown for our class which we can keep! It was sent to us in a parcel which Michael unwrapped and we enjoyed wearing it all day!

We had a wonderful visit to Leeds Art Gallery where we worked as film critics: watching I Want My Crown by Bruce McLean and trying out our ideas about the film and particularly thinking about the movements that Bruce McLean does in the film.

We had a whole day visit from The National Holocaust Centre, learning about the real life experiences of Jewish children in Nazi Germany and listening to first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors.

We spent some time thinking about our chosen film: I Want my Crown By Bruce McLean. Together we thought of six questions that we would like to ask the film maker.

We are invited by Leeds Art Gallery to take part in a project called Kids as Critics which is running alongside Radical Reels: a celebration of film at the Art Gallery. We will be working with independent film maker and artist, Michael Crowe, who is based in London and there will be an opportunity for us to visit the Art Gallery towards the end of November. We started by sending Michael and Leeds Art Gallery some videos of us talking about our favourite films.

This term, our Science topic is Electricity. We have been investigating what happens to the brightness of a bulb when we increase the voltage of the batteries in the circuit.

We are learning how species evolve to maximise their survival in a given environment. We used a variety of tweezers and chopsticks to pick up seeds and investigated how the shape of the implement affected how many seeds we could pick up in a given amount of time. We linked this investigation to our knowledge of how some species of birds' beaks have adapted to allow them to access a particular food source in their environment.