Stanningley Primary School

Here are a collection of photographs from the picnic today! A great deal of fun was had and it was such a lovely way for the children to spend their final day together!

As part of our end of year celebration, the children were presented with their Best Book (a collection of their best work from their time at SPS), a personalised autograph with comments from all of the staff, a personalised pen, a photo book and a FANTASTIC hoodie! I am certain that they will treasure it all for years to come! A special mention to Chloe Hepple for receiving Outstanding Female Sportsperson of the Year and Ethan Nyahasha for receiving Outstanding Male Sportsperson of the Year! Also, a huge congratulations to Harry Watling for his positive attitude and contribution to sport!

Today, the class were incredibly lucky to have a science lesson that was delivered by science teachers from Crawshaw Academy. They learnt about the expectations for children in science lessons when they start KS3 and this was incredibly beneficial. They also carried out an investigation about osmosis using Haribo bears! It took some willpower not to eat these but as NO EATING is a number one rule in a science lesson, all children managed!

Today, the children have had a FANTASTIC day! The school was selected to take part in a special day full of activities that are all cricket related. In our first session, the children were incredibly lucky to take part in a practical lesson with the coaches from 'Chance to Shine' and an England and Yorkshire cricket legend - Matthew Hoggard! All of the children were absolutely amazing and they made us all very proud. Hopefully, we will have some cricket stars of the future in our class!

Today, Y6 joined the rest of the school to raise awareness of dementia by wearing denim and donating £1 to go towards continuing the work of the Alzheimer's Society. The children all looked fantastic and understood the purpose of the day really well!

This term, the children are focussing on what our world will look like in the future. For the first lesson of the unit, we explored the local area and looked at facilities available to the public. Back in the classroom, we then considered what we would like to keep, change or improve. We had a really lovely afternoon and the sunshine was an added bonus!

This term, we are very lucky to have a coach from All Stars Cricket in school for PE each week! Every single child had a fantastic session today and thoroughly enjoyed learning the basic skills of batting, fielding and bowling. We are very much looking forward to the term ahead and the skills that are going to continue to be learnt!

The children looked incredibly festive today for our Christmas Dress-Up Day at SPS! Thank you all for your kind donations to the Cash 4 Kids appeal to help local families in need celebrate Christmas this year - it really does mean so much to us!

The children have worked incredibly hard on learning two Christmas songs that help to tell the Christmas story! These have been combined with Year Five who have also sung two songs to go alongside the story. Five children were incredibly brave and agreed to tell the Christmas story too - they spoke so clearly and it was lovely to hear their words. The performance was filmed and we will be uploading it onto the website soon!

This week, the children had a fantastic time creating rhythms with boomwhackers! We were so impressed with their ability to focus on working together to keep in time with one another. Well done Year Six!

In our science lesson today, the children recapped their knowledge of scientific symbols used within electrical circuits. They were then set a challenge to create various circuits with the equipment they were given! No child was given any instructions about how to do this - they had to work this out for themselves - and every single group succeeded! Well done!

In our PE sessions this term, the children are learning to compete in various indoor athletics events including the long jump, triple jump, baton relay race and many more events! They worked so hard today and were incredibly tired once the session was over!

Today was Children in Need and the children all donated £1 towards this fantastic cause and came to school in none school uniform. Many children also bought raffle tickets and won some amazing Pudsey Bear prizes - thank you all for your very kind donations! We had a lovely afternoon completing Pudsey Bear themed tasks and the children amazed me with their creativity!

Due to the poor weather, the children's PE lesson was indoor today but this was not a problem for them at all! They had an amazing time! They were split into teams and had to work together to retrieve beanbags from a hoop using certain parts of their bodies and only being allowed to maintain contact with the floor in specific ways!

Today, the children carried out an investigation to help prove that Darwin's theory of natural selection on the Galapagos Islands is indeed true! The children studied the different finches that Darwin came across on the various islands and the different beak types they had. They found out that the finches could only survive on islands where their beak enabled them to eat certain food types. In our investigation, we proved that finches with crushing beaks (see chopstick images!) would be able to survive on islands that are rich in seeds but that finches with probing beaks (chopsticks) would not because of that fact that they could barely pick any seeds up with the chopsticks! Lots of learning in a very fun and creating way!

In today's science lesson, the children have continued to explore adaptation and how animals have evolved to suit their environment over time. Each pair of children were given a white and newspaper background from which they were given a certain amount of time to pick up small pieces of white paper pieces and newspaper pieces off using tweezers. One child was acting as the predator (the child with the tweezers) and the other child had to scatter the pieces on the backgrounds whilst the 'predator' had their back turned. Once each child had taken their turn on each background, they counted up the paper types they had collected and recorded the amounts in a table. From the results, it was clear to see the most children selected newspaper pieces from the white background and vice versa! This practical session demonstrated camouflage (and how species have adapted to do this within their environments) perfectly!

The children in class six spent time during English lessons writing their speeches for their FINAL school council manifesto! I was so impressed with the content within these and the confidence of the children when they read out their manifesto to the whole class. Following this, the children had to vote via a secret ballot! Well done to all of the children who put themselves forward to be elected - it really isn't easy but you did not let it phase you one bit!

This week, Children in Class Six have had the opportunity to take part in Bikeability. These sessions aim to improve the confidence of the children when cycling whilst also ensuring that they know how to stay safe when cycling in the local community (especially on the roads). The children have had a fantastic time and achieved Level One and/or Level Two awards! Well done!