Having fun!
11 September 2015
Children have been given a new Learning List book, which gives lots of great tips for learning spellings as well as being designed to allow children to practise independently.
This week’s spellings are all words that include ough:
thought
bought
ought
nought
brought
ought
rough
tough
enough
cough
Every minute counts…
Is your child ever late for school? Did you know…
- 5 minutes late each day = 3 days of school lost in a year
- 10 minutes late each day = 6.5 days of school lost in a year
- 15 minutes late each day = 10 days of school lost in a year
- 20 minutes late each day = 13 days of school lost in a year
- 30 minutes late each day = 19 days of school lost in a year
- 19 days lost in a school year is likely to lead to one whole grade lower in SATs across all subjects
Welcome to Year 3
We have had a fantastic week getting settled into our new classroom. All the children have shown an impressive attitude to learning which is great as it means we can get on with all the learning I have planned.
It has been great meeting some of you in the playground. Please feel free to pop in anytime after school if you have any questions.
11 September 2015
The homework this week is talk time and is due in on Wednesday 16 September.
I can talk about what I am going to do to make sure I have a successful year.
For more information about homework and the types of homework, please read the first page of your child’s homework book. If you have any questions, please ask.
11 September 2015
The spellings this week are the numbers one to ten.
| one |
| two |
| three |
| four |
| five |
| six |
| seven |
| eight |
| nine |
| ten |
This links to our work in maths this week. Common mistakes are writing the word two as tow and four as for. You might look at the corresponding tens numbers and see how the spelling changes or stays the same. Unfortunately, there are some frustrating differences. For example, four changes to forty and five to fifty.
The children will be tested on all ten spellings on Friday. If you have any questions, please ask.
Too much screen time?
You might have heard about this research recently. Although it focuses on older pupils, we think it’s just as relevant for primary-aged children: too much screen-time can undermine learning.
An extra hour a day of television, internet or computer game time in Year 10 is linked to poorer grades at GCSE, a Cambridge University study suggests, as reported by BBC on-line.
The researchers recorded the activities of more than 800 14-year-olds and analysed their GCSE results at 16. Those spending an extra hour a day on screens saw a fall in GCSE results equivalent to two grades overall.
The researchers analysed the habits of 845 pupils from schools in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk at the age of 14 years and six months. They researchers correlated the data with the pupils’ GCSEs, taken the following year.
Pupils who did an extra hour of homework and reading performed better than their peers.
On average, the 14-year-olds said they spent four hours of their leisure time each day watching TV or in front of a computer. The researchers found an additional hour of screen-time each day was associated with 9.3 fewer GCSE points at 16 – the equivalent of dropping a grade in two subjects. Two extra hours of screen-time was associated with 18 fewer points – or dropping a grade in four subjects.
Interestingly, a teacher in school accidentally discovered similar results. When teaching about data and statistics, she asked the class how many TVs were in the home. Broadly speaking, those who reported fewer TVs in their homes were children who were making the best progress.
Fun in maths
Having reminded ourselves of place value this week, we used all of our refreshed knowledge to play some maths games and challenge ourselves along the way.
Beanbag drop
Somebody threw the beanbags into the basket and everybody had to write down the number it made.
Then, that person took charge and asked us questions about our number. How many thousands? What is 100 more/less? What is this number rounded to the nearest 10,000?
Target challenge
We rolled a die to decide how many digits we were working with. Then, we picked a target (the greatest number, a multiple of 5, the number closest to 6000). Each person then picked a playing card for us to write into our place value grid aiming for that target. Sometimes we all won and sometimes one person had thought more carefully.
Questions dice
For this, we roll the die to make a number and then we had to roll again to choose a question. Sometimes we had to add 100, sometimes we had to take 10. It really helped us to understand what each digit was worth in that number.
11 September 2015
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 16 September 2015.
To create your own ‘Lost Thing’.
In our first mini-topic of the year, we’ve been reading Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing’. We’ve asked lots of questions to find out more about it:
What is the lost thing? Where has it come from? Who left it there? How does it feel to be left there?
Now, create your own ‘Lost Thing’ and think about these questions for your own design. You might decide to design and label an image or you could gather odds and ends from around the house to make your ‘Lost Thing’ in 3D.
Creative homework. This involves a creative piece of open-ended work based around an ‘I can…’ statement eg ‘I can use research skills to find out about a country.’ ‘I know how instructions are used’ Only one rule: don’t use more than one page of A4 (unless your teacher says otherwise!). Content will be a balanced mix of subjects.
Top Tips: Be as creative as you like! Chat about ideas with your child: Could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, foldout ‘extras’ on the page…?
Leeds Children’s mayor
Could you be the next Leeds children’s mayor? Year 6 are invited to take part in this annual programme. Pupils write a short manifesto (400 words maximum) saying how they would improve Leeds if they were the Children’s Mayor. The manifesto must be based on one of the 12 Wishes for a more child friendly Leeds.
What would you do to make Leeds a better city for other children and young people?
If you’d like to take part then please complete your manifesto by 23.09.15 and the class will vote for the entry that will be submitted. Only one entrant can be submitted per school.
