We have chicks!
Year 3 and 4 are having an eggcellent time this week!
This morning, we arrived in school to find two of our chicks have hatched!
Photos to follow soon…
School Council Elections
Next week, we’ll be holding elections in school for new school councillors. Two children are elected from each class, including Reception. In the past, the school councillors have played an important role in major decision-making such as choosing our school charities, selecting playground equipment and choosing the colour of our uniform. Please talk to your child about the elections and encourage them to stand. They will need to be confident in speaking with older children and adults. If your child would like to stand, they need to tell us by Friday and be able to talk about what they would like to do for the school and its pupils if they were elected. They will deliver this speech early next week and the elections will be held on Thursday.
A class poem
Year Six had a very successful afternoon on Tuesday when they wrote a class poem based on a randomly chosen theme: the family.
The input from the children was excellent and we worked very hard to keep the rhyming and pace of the poem consistent, as well as the humour and fun.
We hope you like it!
The Family
Brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
Grandpa Joe in his baggy pants,
Cousin Jim and Grandma Ann,
Mum and Dad and baby Dan.
Live together in a great big house,
Nephew Max and his small pet mouse,
Rabbits, fish, cats galore,
Sleeping curled up on the floor.
Children’s toys lay here and there,
People tripping everywhere,
Bang! Crash! There they go,
Grandpa yells, “That hurt my toe!”
Baby Dan in his high chair,
Smearing food in his own hair,
“Oh no!” cried Mum, “Not again!
Get back into your play pen.”
It’s bath time now in our family home,
Bubbles, soap and lots of foam,
Dry yourself and off to bed,
“Peace and quiet!” the parents said.
Children gone to the land of dreams,
Adults have tea and a custard cream,
The day is over, the day is done,
A family day jam-packed with fun.
Our homework policy
Our Homework Policy was written to support and engage as many learners as we can, and to provide opportunities for others – family, friends – to support in a positive, constructive way. It’s great to see more and more children are putting more and more effort into their homework. Recently, a few parents have asked about expectations. I hope the following will clarify what we can expect and what you can expect:
Talk Time
Teachers have noticed that, in some instances, a lot of time has been taken on the presentation of the Talk Time homework. Children are welcome to do this although it is not necessary. The purpose of Talk Time homework is to encourage a conversation around their current learning. Any notes made in their homework book should simply be there to aid them as a prompt when it is discussed in class the following week. For this reason, teachers tend to give verbal feedback during their talk time session in class. We want our children to be expert talkers, using a variety of sentences and expressions, and able to back up their points or disagree with others in a polite way – this is more important than written notes for Talk Time. Simply: it’s hard to be a good writer if you’re not a good speaker, so Talk Times using ambitious words, useful phrases, interesting sentences is the best way to support your child.
Creative
This is where your child’s creative juices can flow! Creative homework is an opportunity for your child to choose whatever they want to demonstrate some learning. For example, the Y3 and Y4 homework this week is Creative: I can show what I know about food chains. Your child could present all their learning in so many different ways, from a diagram with notes to a story or comic strip. Parents’ and carers’ role is to support, encourage, help but (obviously) never to take over and do the homework! Teachers always look forward to seeing how creative children can be. If you notice the work has not been marked, please don’t worry. Teachers will have looked at and celebrated the homework in another way – the work might have been viewed by the whole class using a visualiser which allows the work to be projected to the whole class and a discussion of ‘stars and steps’ will happen. Peer assessment is also effective – children are very able to share what’s good and what needs improving! These sorts of verbal feedback strategies are often more effective than a written comment because it’s more instant and it makes sure the child understands (and their work is praised publicly!).
Practice makes Perfect
This is similar to what you might consider traditional homework: it may be a worksheet or a writing task (such as Y5’s current homework: I can write instructions). Practice Makes Perfect is useful homework when something has been taught in school but needs consolidation. The work should be fairly straightforward for the child as there should be no need for new learning, so just some encouragement from you is needed. However, it would be a great time to get your child to teach you – they should be able to explain the key points or processes! We use this type of homework less often because usually the best practice is where a teacher can keep feeding back and presenting new challenges when they see it as appropriate. Teachers mark these activities in line with our marking policy.
As always, please ask if you’ve any questions or concerns.
Great effort from everyone!
This is just one of the comments that was made about the Year 1 assembly on Thursday 19.01.12.
Well done to all of the children for making a great effort in the assembly; the confidence and pride was very evident throughout the assembly.
“Really well done, a confident, happy and relaxed class and it showed!”
Another parent commented: “Excellent confident voices. Well done! I’m scared of the wolf.”
We would like to say a special well done to…
- Manya for learning a lot of words: she was so confident and took the responsibility of learning her words.
- Haider showed that he can stand up in front of people and speak confidently and he has asked for more words next time!
- Luke and Owen for their very clear speaking voices.
“Another great example of all the children participating with great confidence and such positive peer review.”
Well done to Year 1 and thank you to all the friends and family who came along to share our assembly.
Learning to write
Now that your child knows lots of letter sounds, they are keen to use their phonic knowledge to write. The process of writing is not easy and research has shown that for some children, especially boys, holding a pencil can be physically painful if the muscles of the thumb and fingers are not strong enough.
Why not try some of the following activities at home to help develop the necessary muscles for writing:
- paint with fingers and with a variety of brushes
- use dough and plasticine to pound, roll, mould and pinch
- use scissors, hole punches and staplers
- pick up and sort collections of pulses, pasta and buttons
- let your child help prepare fruit and vegetables by cutting and pealing
- do up buttons and zips independently
Please encourage your child to write at home and hold the pencil correctly. However, remember that if your child’s muscles are not ready, forcing them to write at length may put them off. Practising a little every day and doing some of the above activities is far more beneficial than a longer period of writing practice.
This week’s phonemes
This week, the new phonemes are ai, ee, igh and oa.
Remember to say the letter names (‘ay’, not ‘ah’) and encourage your child to join up the letters when writing.
This week’s ‘tricky words’ are my and was.
Moortown Tower
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd12TKqQl38&feature=g-upl&context=G2a2bf28AUAAAAAAAAAA
Our first Big Topic of the year was Our House. Moortown Tower is the final piece of work which brought together a lot of the learning we have done throughout the topic.
Thanks, parents, for all the shoeboxes!
What a great week!
Year Six should be congratulated this week on the amount of learning that has gone on in class.
Children have been working with new maths partners. Bronwen and Angel have achieved great success, as have Bradley and Adam. Matthew has worked extremely hard: so hard he received a cerificate in assembly, with Mr Roundtree also noticing his progress in reading. SEAL has been all about having the right to learn and taking responsibility for our own learning; Lauren‘s suggestions in this lesson were outstanding.
I’d also like to say well done for the excellent homework produced by the class and the amazingly sensible, mature and informed discussion we had about charities afterwards.
Here’s to another great week next week!
Expanded column method for addition
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKJRAajMsKw
The expanded column method is a way to add that makes links between how we might add mentally and the standard column method that we’ll move on to very soon. We believe it’s important to teach this method so our children have an understanding of numbers and the number system and not just able to carry out a process.
