Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year begins on 08 February 2016 and this year it is the Year of the Monkey.
Year 1 found lots of similarities to celebrations that we may experience including spending time with family and friends, enjoying special food, wearing new clothes and sending cards and presents.
- ‘I wear new clothes for Diwali.’
- ‘We give presents for birthdays.’
- ‘We decorate our home when it is Christmas.’
- ‘We have special food when it is Eid.’
The Chinese zodiac follows a twelve year cycle, each of the years being named after an animal. The Chinese believe that people born in a particular year take on the characteristics of the animal associated with that year.
We watched the story of how the order of the animals was decided and the children were encouraged to find out what animal they are.
For Chinese New Year, there are lots of events happening in Leeds if you want to get involved.
Gong Hey Fat Choy!
School Council elections 11 February
Our current school councillors held their final meeting today as we prepare to elect our new school council. This year’s election date is Thursday 11 February.
Children from every class, including Reception, are encouraged to prepare a speech to present to their class as part of the election process. Our whole school homework before the election date (05 February) will give children the chance to plan their speech.
Thank you to our existing school council who have been involved with many decisions and discussions throughout the year. On today’s agenda, there have been discussions around the new school dinner menu, classroom reading areas, e-safety and general suggestions put forward by children in each class. It appears they have enjoyed the role as they all intend to stand again at the elections.
A Science experiment
Here are some photos from when we tested different materials to see if they would be a good material to make an umbrella from. We found out that wood and plastic would keep us dry. However, we agreed that a wooden umbrella would be quite heavy to hold above your head! The class worked as scientists by making sure they treated each material the same by dropping 50 drops of water on them all. They recorded all their findings and analysed them afterwards. Mrs Maqbool and I were really impressed! Well done!
A big thank you!
Thank you to all the people who donated money at the end of the Whoops-a-Daisy Angel performances. Altogether, we raised a fantastic £287.78! This will be split between our two charities: St Gemma’s Hospice and Cancer Research.
Library books
This week, we visited our lovely school library and the children chose books to take home for the week. They were really enthusiastic about choosing their own book and were allowed to choose any book they wished from the Key Stage 1 choice of books. Please ensure your child looks after their book and returns it to school on Friday 15 January. If your child wishes to keep the book for longer then that is fine, but please note that a new book will not be issued without the return of the old one! I hope you enjoy reading together.
Have a lovely weekend!
Squashed sentences!
The first week of the new term is over and the class have settled well into their routines again. We have been learning to add two 1-digit numbers by bridging 10 (see previous post), reading and writing words with the suffix -ing, and learning how not to ‘squash’ our sentences.
A squashed sentence is when two sentences are squashed together without any punctuation.
An example: I went camping it was fun.
This should be: I went camping. It was fun. (…or some other punctuation, but not a comma)
We can also join two sentences with conjunctions.
An example: I went camping and it was fun.
This week, we were focusing on separating two squashed sentences with a full stop. Children found it easy to identify where the full stop should go to separate the sentences when listening to a squashed sentence being read, but found it less easy to do this in their own writing.
To help at home, you could ensure that children are pausing at full stops in their reading. You could also write two sentences which are separated by a full stop in the incorrect place, such as I went. Camping it was fun. Read the sentences together and see if your child could fix it.
‘Squashed sentences’ are something which spoils some older children’s writing, and it’s hard to get out of the habit later on. Please practise this lots at home!
Maths
Happy new year! It’s nice to see all the children happy to be back at school!
This week, we have begun adding numbers up to 20. We have looked at the method of ‘bridging 10’. The following is taken from a parent guide to addition from Oxford Owl. It is available online here: https://primarysite-prod-sorted.s3.amazonaws.com/abbots-hall/UploadedDocument/06bb6ca9993b4b29bf6b805cbb2b9ea4/OxfordPressParentSupportAdditionlines.pdf
Instant recall of number bonds to 10 is essential to make the group of 10 with ease. Please practise these number bonds with your child to secure this understanding. It can be as simple as saying ‘7’ and your child quickly replying with ‘3’. A good time to do this could be during car journeys or when walking to school together. Frequent practice will embed these number facts.
Thank you for your ongoing support.
Let’s get sugar smart
Today has seen a new campaign launch by Change 4 Life, the government’s public health initiative, aimed at reducing the amount of sugar that children consume.
The free Sugar Smart App can tell you the amount of sugar in items by scanning the barcode, and then displaying the result as a number of cubes or in grams. The app can be used as a way of revealing the hidden sugar content in foods and to make us more aware of what children are consuming.
Public Health England, which runs the Change 4 Life campaign, hopes the Sugar Smart app and campaign will help combat tooth decay, obesity and type two diabetes and encourage families to choose healthier alternatives.
New SEAL theme…Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
•Self-awareness – feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
•Managing Feelings – understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself –assertiveness skills, standing up for your views.
•Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
As part of our current mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.
The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened /under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.
Bedtime reading
We like these top tips to promote bedtime reading from Book Trust.
Although these are specifically for children who are starting to read by themselves, there are plenty of tips to support children of all ages.
(The Book Trust’s advent calendar is brilliant, too!)
