Takeover Day
Next Friday, 20 November, is Takeover Day.
What is Takeover Day?
It’s a national initiative organised each year by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield OBE. Takeover gives children and young people the chance to work with adults for the day and to be involved in decision-making processes. Children and young people benefit from the opportunity to experience the world of work and make their voices heard, while adults and organisations gain a fresh perspective on what they do.
Recently our School Council discussed how children could be involved in ‘taking over’ at school. Takeover activities will include school dinners (representatives from Year 4), the office (representatives from Year 5), assembly (representatives from Year 6) and KS2 tuck shop on 24 November (representatives from Year 2).
In addition there will be opportunities within class where children will takeover. For example, spelling/times table tests, parts of lessons, PE warm ups and guided reading.
Check our class news pages to see this in action.
Make a noise about bullying
Next week it is national anti-bullying week.
Our school definition has recently been reviewed by the School Council and remains unchanged.
‘Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.’
This year the theme of the week is Make a noise about bullying and our children are familiar with another STOP message to address this, start telling other people.
Leeds Anti-Social Behaviour Team will once again deliver Show Racism the Red Card workshops across school and in class children will discuss these aspects of bullying:
- Our definition of bullying (above)
- Types of bullying – cyber-bullying and prejudice-based bullying related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and belief, special educational need and disability
- What to do if children experience bullying. The key message is to tell someone (start telling other people)
Bullying resources can be found at…
- http://www.childline.org.uk/explore/bullying/pages/bullying.aspx
- http://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/
- http://www.youngminds.org.uk/for_parents/worried_about_your_child/bullying
Children tell us what they would do if they were bullied: ‘I would tell an adult, teacher or someone I trust.’
All classes have access to their class SEAL box or a whole school worry box where they can tell an adult any concerns about bullying or any other issues.
Track and field stars
Well done to our athletics team who came second in the first round of the North East Leeds Sports hall athletics at Allerton Grange – a great achievement. It was a new event for the school and, despite a few nerves, everyone performed to the best of their ability in every event. Well done to all the children involved and to parents for their support. Look out for details of the next round.
If you’d like to continue athletics, there is also a local athletics club that runs at Scott Hall Leisure Centre.
Basketball Come and Try, Thursday 19 November
We have a few spare places to come to the basketball come and try event at Roundhay School on Thursday 19 November.
- What? Basketball session led by Leeds Force basketball club
- Where? Roundhay School
- When? Thursday 19 November, 3.30pm-5.30pm
- Who? Open to all KS2 classes
Please contact the office if you are able to come to this event. Children will be supervised at the session but need to be dropped off and collected from Roundhay School.
Enjoying the library
We took our English lesson to the library today, exploring different types of story openings in the perfect surroundings. DAD helps our writing – description, action and dialogue. We compared different books and their beginnings.
Homework that’s ‘out of this world’
As always, Year 5 have really impressed me with this week’s homework. We were tasked with showing what we know about the solar system and we had some fantastic ideas: informative books, puzzles, models and diagrams adorned our classroom. We really enjoyed exploring each other’s work.
Here are some we really wanted to show you at home.
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Malham
We had a fantastic day in Malham last Monday (2 November) due to the great weather we enjoyed and the great geography learning we did (both physical and human).
On our return, we wrote a newspaper article to inform others about our day so, rather than tell you about it myself, I’ll show you a couple of the reports we wrote alongside some great pictures.
Look at how drastically the weather changed along our journey!
Finally, we returned from our fairytale land of blue skies and warm weather back to foggy Leeds.
Top vegetable choices
If your child chooses school dinners, they are served two portions of vegetables or vegetables and a portion of salad with each meal. As we are all aware of the importance of eating vegetables, all children have been consulted on their favourite vegetables based on the vegetables that currently feature on the school dinner menu. The most popular choices will now feature more regularly on the menu.
We would also like your views on school dinners. Look out for the school dinner survey due to be sent out next week.
Some great PE
With a new half term, we’re changing focus in our PE lessons. Students from Leeds Beckett University joined us today and we really enjoyed their session. It tired us out and was great fun, too! We look forward to working with them each Wednesday this half term. 
Don’t forget to always have your PE kit in school on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Welcome back
A quick welcome back for the second half term. We’ve got an exciting run up to Christmas, kicking things off with our trip to Malham Cove and then taking on a new and exciting topic.
Topic – Mission to Space
We’re leaving Holidays behind for the second half of the Autumn term and jetting off into space. Tim Peake is to be the first English astronaut to go to the International Space Station in December of this year and Year 5 and 6 are joining many primary schools across the country on a project that looks into what he will experience there, culminating in his launch on 14 December. Through Science, English and Maths, we’ll boost our understanding of Space and try to answer the many questions we already have about it.
To help at home, see what books you can find at the local library or research the project at home by googling ‘Tim Peake Space Project’ to find out more.
Maths
Alongside many space-related maths ventures, over the next couple of weeks we’ll be learning about multiplication and division. We need to be able to multiply numbers up to 4 digits by one or two digits (4653 x 3 or 2353 x 22) and divide up to 4 digit numbers by one digit (3603 / 3). It’s also important for us to understand the terms ‘factor’ and ‘multiple’ and to know and recall prime numbers.
To help at home, use Mathletics multiplication and division activities for extra practice and see what real maths you can get up to together. Maybe you’ve got a recipe to make 12 butterfly buns and you need 500 for a wedding! There’ll be some multiplication to get what you need for that from the shops.
English
The half term begins with our imaginations in overdrive as we take on the challenge of writing adventure stories set in Space. We’ll practise speech punctuation and complex sentences before planning our own stories and then making them into exciting adventures to be enjoyed by each other in our reading area.
To help at home, point out and pick up on descriptive language in the books your child is reading and discuss how they could use this in their own writing. Keep practising spellings and make sure that their meanings are understood and they can be written correctly into a sentence.
