Football training
Thank you to all the children who attended football training tonight. Everyone was focused, positive and tried hard – well done!
Also, a big thank you to the parents who were able to help with walking and being an extra adult.
The children were glad to hear that we have some matches lined up too. Look out for a letter with more details.
Here are some action shots:
Mini-topic: ‘Loving Reading’
For the next two weeks, we will be completing a new mini-topic: Loving Reading.
The emphasis of the topic is all about enjoying reading. As you are aware, we already give reading a high profile within our class but this topic will put reading (and a love of reading) at the forefront of our learning.
Lots of research suggests that children who read for pleasure perform better at school and reading is certainly a life-skill!
As part of the mini-topic, children were given some reading challenges to complete over the next two weeks. It would be great if they could finish them all (some are easier to achieve than others).
You can help at home by:
- Encouraging your child to complete the challenges.
- Raising the profile of reading at home (Family reading time? A visit to a bookshop/library? Discussing reading over a meal?).
- Reading with your child regularly; whilst reading for pleasure is important, understanding what you read is even more so. The only way to be sure that children are practising their reading skills properly is to read with them and ask questions.
- Encouraging your child to read more than usual.
- Showing your child that reading can take many forms (fiction books, non-fiction books, e-books, audio books, magazines, newspapers, trusted websites, instructions, recipes, online news).
Again, we thank you for your continued support!
Holiday activity idea
Big Topic Review
A big thank you to those parents that were able to attend our open afternoon on Wednesday. We hope you enjoyed finding out about all the great learning that’s happened in Y6 during our ‘Life’ topic.
For those that didn’t attend, we reflected on each piece of learning we have done by writing down on big sheets something we remembered.
Then, we created a ‘diamond 9’ of the skills we have learnt/practised and some of the knowledge we have gained. It was interesting how everyone had different ideas of what they’d learnt most about.
Finally, we sat down to review our big topic book. It works as a diary of all the great topic-related learning we do!
If you’d like to find out more about our brilliant ‘Life’ topic, ask your child how they’ve found it.
How are you feeling?
Across school, we’ve been trialling the use of colours to represent children’s emotions. Children are then encouraged to think whether this is a blocker or driver for their learning.
- ‘I feel blue because I am calm.’
- ‘I feel red because I had a fall out at lunchtime.’
- ‘I feel orange because I am excited to celebrate my brother’s birthday.’
Here is a new website to support young people’s emotional wellbeing in Leeds.
‘If you’re a young person, MindMate can help you understand the way you’re feeling and find the right advice and support. If you’re a parent, carer or professional, MindMate can help you support a young person you know.’
Children are also encouraged to speak with an adult, friend or use our class SEAL boxes to share any worries.
Leeds Youth Council
All young people aged 10-18 in Leeds can now join the Leeds Youth Council (LYC).
This week’s maths learning
This week, in maths, we’ve been learning all about measures.
After exploring mass through weighing items using different methods, we moved on to capacity. We spent time measuring, estimating and converting between units. (Remarkably, we didn’t make much mess!)
You can help at home by:
- Encouraging your child to find examples of measures in every day life
- Encouraging your child to estimate the mass/capacity of things you find in the house (eg what do you think is the capacity of that glass? What do you think is the mass of the laptop? What do you think is the capacity of our bath? Hint: benchmarking helps – ask you child about this!)
- Practising converting between units (eg ml to litres, g to kg)
- Using the revision books handed out last week
We’ll continue our learning by solving problems involving different measures.
Eat, digest, do!
As part of the Science in school workshops led by Leeds University students, Year 5 and 6 took part in an interactive session all about the digestive system.
This included learning about what happens to food inside our body, the different parts and functions of the alimentary canal, what makes your tummy rumble and how far your food has to travel from one end to the other… A great addition to our current Life topic!
Thank you to Miss Mathias for providing this informative session.
- ‘I learnt how long the small intestine is – child is 5m and adult is 6-7m.’
- ‘I learnt how food gets through your body.’
- ‘I learnt what things are called in the digestive system and what everything does.’
- ‘I have learnt that your digestive system has lots of different parts.’
KidsHealth website provides a summary of what we learnt.
Computing with ‘Lego WeDo’
This half term, as part of our computing curriculum, we have been using a resource called ‘Lego WeDo’. We have built models of animals from Lego blocks and then programmed them to perform actions using the accompanying computer software.
So far, we have focused, and will continue to focus, on using and applying computational thinking concepts.
You can help at home by:
- Discussing your child’s learning with them;
- Talking about how computational thinking concepts effect our everyday lives;
- Encouraging them to think about how they may use some of these concepts without realising.
If, like me, much of this is new to you, or, if you’d like to brush up your own computing knowledge, there are some great websites that can help. Although it’s aimed at teachers, Barefoot Computing offers lots of support with the new curriculum, its key concepts and a breakdown of technical language.
Leeds Let’s Get Sugar Swapping!
Following the introduction of the Change4life Sugar Smart App, the Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge has been launched to ask families, schools and other organisations to share the amount of sugar they have saved by making sugar smart swaps. The Change4Life website has lots of information to help you to look for sugar on food labels if you are unable to access the app.
Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge features a city totalizer to record the number of sugar cubes saved, with prizes available at random to top swappers.
