Uncategorised

On-line safety

Thanks to the parents / carers who attended one of the two on-line safety workshops this week, led by experts from the NSPCC and O2. Parents were very positive about the sessions:

• “Very useful, especially the resources that I found out are available and the leaflets for further reference.”
• “Very informative and educational. Gave real-life examples. Definitely inspired to go on NSPCC website to educate myself more.”
• “Opened my eyes to lots of apps I had never heard of.”
• “I got some very useful tips on online safety. Has made me reconsider the lack of restrictions we have at home.”
• “Really eye-opening. Great to know where I can go to check apps out.”

11 March 2016

The homework this week is creative and is due in on Wednesday 16 March.

I can design a flowerbed.

We’ve been asked to take part in a competition to design a flowerbed as part of ‘Leeds in Bloom’. The competition is open to all children in Leeds and the winner will have their design planted into reality somewhere in the city centre.

The guidance advises that children’s designs are a pattern or collage rather than a garden scene or picture.

Find out more.

11 March 2016

Here are the spellings for this week:

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.

07 March – plant update

This weekend, new life has been brought into Year 3. Our plants have started to sprout!

I can work with money

Last week’s Creative homework was based on Maths and the children really got their creative juices flowing to produce some great pieces of work.

Lots of our money homework is now on our Maths challenge table so the children can practise their skills through games, questions and challenges that have been set by each other.

World Book Week

Year 5 love books so we had a great time celebrating this last week. On Monday, we visited the Book Fair to see what great new books we could get for ourselves. There were some great choices for £1 which we could all go for with our free book voucher and those of use who had money to spend found some fantastic books.

Then, Thursday brought us World Book Day and a whole host of book characters strolled into the classroom. What a fantastic array of costumes that really got us in the mood for our book themed day.

We dived into the story of ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’. We began by imagining what the crayons would say to Duncan  before reading the story and writing our own letters back to the crayons.

HURRAY FOR BOOKS!

Working co-operatively

We compared working co-operatively with working alone in our SEAL session this week. The challenge was to pick up as many cubes as you could in 30 seconds. Why not ask your child which was more successful working alone or as a pair?

Writing in Reception

What is a sentence?

The children have been busy developing their concept of a sentence this term.

Explaining to young children what a sentence is can be difficult. Through reading, children quickly learn that a sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. They are told that a sentence makes sense on its own and is complete; that it consists of an idea. How to recognise when they have written a sentence is more difficult.

How you can help at home:

• When reading with your child, point out the sentences and punctuation
• Encourage your child to think of the whole sentence(an idea) and say it aloud before they begin to write
• Get them into the habit of rereading and checking their writing
• Read a sentence aloud and ask your child to count the words
• Model speaking in sentences and give your child lots of opportunity to construct sentences orally