How far can germs travel when someone sneezes?
Do you know how many food groups there are on the eat well plate or how many hours sleep a school aged child needs?
These were some of the health facts that Year 2 discussed today.
Health Week visitors
It’s been a great start to Health Week. We’ve looked at different types of exercise so far, playing basketball and learning about the benefits of Pilates on our posture and long term health.
Perfect Posture
Brilliant Basketball
We’ve also worked with d:side on the dangers of drug abuse and are looking forward to starting our health carousel tomorrow where we’ll work with all of the KS2 staff on a range of different aspects of health.
AstroPi
This week’s topic is all about technology. We’ve learnt how to write in HTML to create a webpage and we’ve then styled it using a programming language called CSS.
We’ve then been launching and programming our own Raspberry Pi which is a tiny computer that can be plugged into a monitor and controlled by a mouse and keyboard.
We had to work together to build our computer and this required quite a bit of problem-solving.
Finally, we had our computers made and ready to programme.
All that we had left was tackling the tricky language of Python to programme a message for Tim Peake to send home from the ISS on Christmas Day.
Tim is actually taking two Raspberry Pi into space so we also looked at how ‘sensor hats’ can collect data in space for us to compare to conditions down here on Earth.
Basketball
This afternoon, in our PE session, we’ve been learning basketball skills with Carnegie coaches.
Supporting your child
Learning workshops are a chance for you to find out more about the best ways to support your child’s learning at home. The last of these workshops took place last night – a Maths one.
Once again, parents and carers who came were very positive:
- ‘Discovering the Maths videos on the website and knowing the expectations for times tables for different year groups was good.’
- ‘Very useful session and well-delivered. Will help reinforce learning at home.’
- ‘I’ve now got a better understanding of the on-line resources and the language to use at home. I’ve a clearer understanding of what [my Reception daughter] will be doing now. It was well-structured and delivered.’
Thank you to Mr Owen and Miss Rushbrooke for running these sessions – much of the feedback chose to praise them:
‘I enjoyed listening to both teachers highlighting the teaching and ideas in school and how to support at home. Thank you for offering your time.’
Whilst this was the last learning workshop, we have other events coming up to support your child at home:
- Homework open afternoon, 2.40pm on Wednesday 02 December – parents/carers of children in Years 1 – 6 are invited into the classroom to help you to be aware of the standards of homework in your child’s class; it will also give you an insight into how we give feedback to your child even if the homework does not appear to be marked.
- Core skills open morning, 9.00am-10.30am on Tuesday 08 December – we invite all parents/carers into school to see some Maths and English teaching and learning taking place, and then to review what was observed with Mr Roundtree and/or Mrs Weekes (those who came last year found it helped to know what was happening so they could talk more with their child about their learning, and it raised some expectations, too!).
- Reception phonics teaching, 9.00am-9.30am on 20 / 21 / 22 January – the second chance to see how your child is learning these essential skills to support reading and writing; over the course of the three mornings, all Reception parents/carers are expected to attend.
- Core skills open morning, 9.00am-10.30am on Wednesday 27 January – a second invitation for parents/carers to see some Maths and English teaching and learning taking place.
- Topic open afternoon, 2.30pm on Thursday 17 March – you’ll get a chance to share in the review of the Big Topic on Life which will be coming to its end (parents/carers are welcome, too, although Reception children will not necessarily have joined in on this whole-school topic).
- Reception phonics teaching, 9.00am-9.30am on 27 / 28 / 29 April – the third chance to see how your child is learning phonics; again, all Reception parents/carers are expected to attend on one of the mornings.
5-a-day
This morning, we worked with children from Y1 and Reception class thinking about what foods count toward your daily target of 5 portions of fruit and vegetables. We then tasted had time to taste some!
Read some good guidance about this.
Self-image
This morning we’ve been looking at ourselves and talking about the ways that we are different and the same.
We talked about how boring it would be if we all looked the same.
It’s all about health
This week is the first themed week of the year and it’s all about health.
Over the week classes will work with different visitors to school including:
- d:side (drug education)
- Catering Leeds (food nutritionists)
- Leeds Force basketball
- Leeds City Council road safety team
- Tsukuru Judo Academy
- Leeds University dental students
- Rachel Frazer – Yoga teacher
- Heart Research UK
- Dr Natwar – Corner House dental surgery
- Claire Sparrow – pilates teacher
There will be lots of learning in class too – hand washing, body image, emotional health, 5 a day and much more. Keep an eye on our class news pages to find out more.
On Monday 23 November, 3:00-3:30pm, there will be an information session for parents, led by d:side, where you can find out more about the drug education sessions delivered to each class this week. No need to book – just come along.
19 November 2015
Our homework this week is practice makes perfect and is due Wednesday 25 November.
In Maths, we’ve been focussing on methods of addition. Your child will have six calculations to practise these methods. There are two class news posts from earlier this week which will help to explain the methods we’ve been using.
Try going through the calculations with your child:
- challenge them to explain how they reached a certain answer
- get your child to teach you something they’ve learned from their homework
- encourage your child to justify why they reached their answer and not another answer
As always, please ask if you’ve any questions or concerns.
Health Week
This week is a themed week. We’ll be focussing on health, discussing ways in which we can keep ourselves healthy. That might include food and drink choices; ensuring that we’re being active enough each day; maintaining personal hygiene through hand-washing and brushing our teeth thoroughly; and being aware of our mental health.
There are lots of visitor sessions to look forward to: drug education, judo, pilates, basketball and ‘Learn by Heart’. Additionally, the children will work with other teachers each discussing a different aspect of health.
Help at home by discussing how you stay healthy and ask what special learning the children have been doing each day. Will what your child has learnt affect any of the choices (s)he makes from now on?
