Newsletter Issue 12
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Friday 30th November 2012
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Dear Parent/Carer,
December is just about upon us, the Christmas tree is up in school and it’s the Christmas Fayre on Saturday. I am feeling festive! It’s such a magical time of year for children and I hope that we create some wonderful childhood memories for our children this Christmas that they can think back on and remember as adults.
Donate a bauble!
We thought it would be lovely this year, if the children brought in a bauble from home to help us dress our tree. If your child would like to bring in a (unwanted) bauble from home, they will help to make the decoration of our tree a team affair!
Sickness bugs
As often happens at this time of year, the children are catching sickness bugs at an alarming rate. Please ensure that you keep your children off school for 48 hours after their last bout of sickness or diarrhoea. Thank you.
Judy Murray
We had a celebrity Mum in school this week. On Monday Year 1/ 2 welcomed Judy Murray, mother of Andy Murray, who came in to help the children develop their sporting skills through active and fun activities. Judy got the children enthused in physical activity by setting up 6 simple but fun games in the hall, which could also be played at home. We are very grateful to Lyla (Year 1) and her parents, without whom this fantastic event would not have been possible. Lyla won a competition earlier in the year with the prize being a sports session with Judy Murray for her and her class. My thanks to Miss Mees, who organised the event so very efficiently. A brilliant afternoon was had by all!
Our visitors from Finland
This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming Eeva and Jaana from Finland
Friendly Faces
Yesterday, Miss Hinton and I were invited by Louise to look at the incredible learning taking place in Friendly Faces this half term. We were both left very impressed by the high quality festive outcomes that we saw. Our school engages the children in brilliant learning even after Mr Reynolds has put down the shutters!
School dinners
I, along with many members of staff, have sampled the school dinners this week and have all commented on how delicious they are. Around 230 children and staff have signed up for a school Christmas dinner, which is a huge indication of how much our dinners are enjoyed. My thanks to Debbie and her staff for helping to keep our children’s tummies full, whilst promoting healthy and nutritious eating.
Photography Club
Well done to Jenny in Year 6, whose Christmas card design idea was chosen by our visiting graphic designers to adorn the front of all the Christmas cards sent out by Leeds Children’s Services. Her fantastic design will be seen by thousands! Well done, Jenny.
Christmas date reminders
1/12/12- 10:30a.m- 12:30p.m Christmas Fayre
18/12/12- 2:00 p.m – 3:00 p.m Year 3/ 4 Christmas Production
19/12/12- 10:00a.m Nursery Christmas Production
19/12/12- 2:00 p.m- 3:00 p.m KS1 Christmas Production
19/12/12- 6:00 p.m- 7:00 p.m LKS2 Christmas Production
20/12/12- KS1 and UKS2 Christmas Parties
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20/12/12- 6:00p.m- 7:00p.m KS1 Christmas Production
20/12/12- 7:00p.m- 8:00p.m Choir Concert at
20/12/12- 11:00a.m- 12:00 p.m Reception Production
21/12/12- 10:00a.m Nursery Christmas Production
21/12//12- LKS2 and Nursery Christmas Party
21/12/12- 2:00 Year 5/6 Christmas Service and carol singing
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Have a great weekend….I hope to see as many of you as possible at the Christmas Fayre tomorrow.
Mrs Dale
Nursery newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have all been very excited this week as we have started learning about Christmas and what we will be doing during advent to prepare ourselves. The excitement in the classroom has been amazing! All the children have really enjoyed decorating our Christmas tree and they are producing some wonderful play in our arctic area and Santa’s workshop! We have made two very sparkly advent calendars and our classroom and the staff are now completely covered in glitter!
THIS WEEK
In literacy this week we have been learning about what we do during advent, we have discussed putting up our Christmas trees, singing carols, writing our letters to Santa and going to visit him. In numeracy we have been practising counting to 10 and the children are getting better and better so well done you superstars! We have been practising all of our nativity songs and lines this week; we are impressed by how much the children know! We can definitely tell they have been practising but please keep practising at every opportunity to make them even more amazing.
NEXT WEEK
Next week in literacy we will be learning about the Christmas story to help the children understand the reason that we celebrate Christmas. In topic we will be making a fabulous nativity display for our classroom and we will be practising our nativity lines and songs. In numeracy we will be learning lots of different counting songs for us all to join in with. We will also be transforming ourselves into scientists next week and finding out for Santa which material he should wrap his presents in this year.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Please listen to your child’s fabulous reading once a day and comment in their reading record. Please feel free to drop in and change their books when you pick them up.
· Please practice counting to 10 and beyond with your child at any opportunity. Please also practise writing and recognising the numbers 1-6 with them. If your child can do both of these then please help them go even further.
· Please practise writing the first letter of your Child’s name and if they can do this try going even further with them.
· Please practise singing our nativity songs with your child.
Thank you for your continued support.
Mrs Steel and the Nursery Team.
Reception newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have all been very excited this week as we have started learning all about Christmas and what we will be doing during advent to prepare ourselves. The excitement in the classroom has been amazing! All the children have really enjoyed decorating our Christmas tree and they are producing some wonderful play in our arctic area and Santa’s workshop! We have made two very sparkly advent calendars and our classroom and Mrs Friar are now completely covered in glitter!
Mrs Dale’s office was incredibly full this week as 26 fantastic children achieved their sounds and words of the week certificates. We are very proud of all the children as they are really trying their hardest to achieve the certificates. Keep it up you superstars!
THIS WEEK
In literacy this week we have been learning about what we do during advent, we have discussed putting up our Christmas trees, singing carols, writing our letters to Santa and going to visit him. This week in phonics we have learnt the diagraphs ai, ee, igh and oa. yet again these are tricky sounds but the children continue to amaze us with their enthusiasm and determination to learn the sounds. Our key words this week were the tricky words; you, all, they, are, my and her. In numeracy we have been learning about ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd etc) and have been learning the 12 days of Christmas song to help us. We have been learning all our Christmas songs for our nativity this week. We are impressed by how much they know, you can definitely tell they have been practising, but please keep practising them at home so they become even more confident.
NEXT WEEK
Next week is assessment week so that we can see all the wonderful new things the children have learnt over the last half term. In literacy we will be learning about the Christmas story to help the children learn the reason that we celebrate Christmas and we’ll be making our very own books about the nativity story. In topic we will be making a fabulous nativity display for our classroom and we will be practising our nativity lines and songs. Our sounds of the week are; oo (as in book), oo (as in scoop), ar (as in star) and or (as in corn). We will be looking at the Mr Thorne website, the words and pictures BBC website and the Ror the Zebra website to help us learn these sounds. All of the websites can be found through Google. Our key words this week are to be able to write the tricky words; I, go, no, to, the and into.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Please listen to your child’s fabulous reading once a day and comment in their reading record.
· Please practise counting to 100 and recognising and writing numbers to 30 with your child.
· Please practise and recap the sounds we have already learnt.
· Please help your child practise their letter formation. Please remember that hairy letters is fantastic.
· Please support your child in accessing the bug club website. We have seen how many have accessed it so far so well done to those children!
· Please help your child learn their nativity lines if they have been given some and please all learn the nativity songs with your child.
· We will be asking for the nativity costumes to be sent in the week beginning the 10th of December if you have any questions or queries about this then please come and ask us.
We hope you have a lovely weekend that isn’t taken over by Christmas shopping.
Thank you for your continued support.
Key Stage 1
Home Learning:
The children have spent the last four weeks looking at other authors’ story structures and amending the settings, characters and events. We would like them to take this knowledge and use their own imagination to apply their learning into a story of their own. Use the story starter, “It was another dark, dull day when ‘X’ peered out of the window and moaned, “I’m SO bored because every day is the same! If only I could have an adventure all of my own.” Little did ‘X’ know, everything was about to change”. Encourage your child to think of at least two settings to travel through on their way to an exciting and tense climax before moving on to a resolution to the drama. Promote the use of time connectives (first, afterwards, eventually), adjectives to describe the places and characters and ambitious verbs and adverbs to convey how the character is moving or talking that match the happenings at each stage of their story (“an angry eagle swooped down and quickly snatched the magic key from ‘X’s hand). They can either verbalise it as you scribe, create a mini comic strip or write to their heart’s content…but as always the importance of capital letters and full stops is paramount!
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News:
A celebrity comes to Robin Hood!
On Monday we welcomed Andy Murray’s mum into our school for a fun filled afternoon of sport! Thanks to Lyla B’s creative flare for inventing games for children and their families, Year 1-2 were able to partake in a workshop devised and run by Judy Murray’s ‘Set for Sport’. The children showed off their ball skills working through different stations of activities. It was such a wonderful afternoon which these children were fortunate to have experienced but fear not, those children not in year 1-2 will benefit from a book of activities left by Judy. The children’s behaviour and enthusiasm showcased the school so well that Judy tweeted afterwards that she wished she’d been a teacher! We’re famous!
Key Stage One Christmas performance
Every child in Key Stage one has brought home a slip informing you of their character for the Christmas performance this week. On it you will find the outfit your child needs to have by the 10th of December (apologies for the miscommunication on the date for having this ready by!). Some children in year 2 have speaking parts which were also sent home this week, please support your child in memorising and practising their lines to ensure the performance of a lifetime on the Wednesday 19th December, 2:00pm – 3:00pm and again on Thursday 20th December, 6:00pm – 7:00pm. We kindly ask you to bring the children back to school on Thursday at 5:30pm so they can participate in the evening performance too.
Assessment Week
Can you believe it’s that time already?! Next week our mid-point assessments will take place in reading, writing and numeracy. Miss Hinton has already started the year 1 phonics screening checks and the results have been amazing for this point in the year! We’ve no doubt that the happy news will continue through to next week with any gaps in learning by individuals being highlighted and addressed. Tune in to the newsletter in 2 weeks’ time for an update.
PTA Christmas Fayre
Join us for some fun and frolics at the Christmas Fayre this Saturday from 10:30am. Donations are still being taken by our dedicated PTA and will still be gratefully received on the day. It’s sure to be a lovely day in which we can mingle and further strengthen our community bonds. See you there!
Literacy
We have continued studying traditional tales in literacy, rotating the literature (We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Gorilla and Where the Wild Things Are) between the classes in the key stage. The ‘Story Mountain
Numeracy
This week saw the end to our subtraction learning journey. We have immersed ourselves in the language around subtraction and the methods with which to solve such problems, finding answers by pulling the numbers out of word problems and either partitioning with Maltesers or numbers and even going into column subtraction. The final stage to this unit allowed the children to apply all the knowledge they gathered to solve missing number problems, which also allowed them to pitch the challenge themselves and really take ownership for pushing their learning on.
Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter
We have had an exciting and fun week in LKS2! We have been super impressed with the children’s team work when working together to create their spectacular inventions. We had a magical time on Thursday during our trip to the theatre. The play was fantastic and it was lovely to hear the children singing along to the songs we learnt last half term. We would like to say a big thank you and well done to all of the children for being so sensible and mature, we were extremely proud of them.
Home Learning
Thank you for supporting your children to improve on their weekly star write challenge at home. We have been blown away with the children’s improvement to their writing, their beautiful presentation and the pride they take in their learning. This has impacted greatly on their star write challenge this week and we are very pleased. Please continue this amazing support. Please also continue to encourage your child to read and record it into their reading records.
Literacy
We have continued to develop our persuasive writing techniques this week in Literacy. We have been blown away with the children’s use of adjectives to make their writing more interesting and create a picture for the reader. In addition to this, the children have been trying really hard to include a range of persuasive feature in their writing such as superlatives, comparatives, questions, quotes, statistics, and adjectives. We are looking forward to seeing all of these features in their assessed writes next week!
Numeracy
This week in numeracy the children have been applying their knowledge of mental strategies to different mathematical concepts such as money. Not only this, the children have been improving the pace of solving their calculations and then checking them with a written method. We have also seen a great improvement with our calculator skills, well done 3/4. Next week the children will have a chance to show off their amazing mathematical skills as it is assessment week.
Topic
The children have been designing and making their own inventions this week in topic. We have been blown away with the children’s team skills and problem solving skills when working with their partner. Their inventions have been carefully constructed out of boxes and then carefully painted. Not only this, the children have been creating persuasive posters to advertise their invention to the world.
Spellings to be tested on Monday 10th December (the children already have their spellings for this Monday)
Group One
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Group Two
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news
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furniture
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screws
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texture
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stew
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figure
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flew
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sculpture
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drew
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creature
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grew
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picture
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glue
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temperature
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jewel
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mixture
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clue
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signature
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blue
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Reminders
· Please can you bring in any jam jars. We are starting to collect them in preparation for our Christmas lanterns.
· Please continue to learn lines for the Christmas Production as we are starting to rehearse and stage it next week.
UKS2 News Roundup
· Our Achiever of the week goes to Aaron Spear who, after only being with us for 2 weeks, has produced some phenomenal outcomes in all subjects. His fable story in literacy has included lots of our key features, his leaflet about the Incan civilisation in South America is packed full of facts and he’s even been teaching the whole class how to sign a few words. Truly wonderful and a real asset to the phase and school. Well done Aaron.
· Next week we will be carrying out regular assessments in reading, writing and numeracy. The children are all very familiar with the process and they should see this as an opportunity to show us just how amazing they are.
Dates for the Diary:
· On Tuesday 11th December we will be holding a celebration afternoon in the style of a South American carnival. We will have lots of things to show you from our topic lessons this half term, so if any parents and carers wish to join in the with the ‘Samba beat’ and take a look at the wonderful learning, please come along to see us from 2.15pm. We will hopefully have some tasty South American biscuits to share with you too.
· Our Christmas party will take place on Thursday December 20th. The children are welcome to bring in crisps, cakes, sweets, biscuits and sugar-free drinks if they wish to contribute. The children will have their school dinner as usual and some goodies in the afternoon during the party.
· Our Christmas Service is on Friday 21st December in the school hall at 2:00pm, followed by our annual Carols around the Tree - we look forward to sharing some festive cheer ready to start the Christmas holidays!
Reminders:
· For PE, please ensure that you have a plain white T-shirt and black or blue shorts. Pumps can be worn though trainers are not suitable.
· Don’t forget to bring in your planners every day, especially on Monday when they will be stamped and signed – try to aim for at least 4 entries per week of reading and remember, stickers are up for grabs!
· We will be getting a little messy in Art next week, so please bring in an old shirt to paint in if possible!
Numeracy:
- This week in Numeracy, we have been using all of our known facts about number and the 4 operations to solve ‘Jungle-based’ word problems and puzzles. We have been finding areas, using algebra, working with calculators and even calculating dinner menus for celebrities – what a week!
- In mental maths we have been focussing on our 9 times table. If you would like any further practise, visit http://robinhood56.blogspot.co.uk/ and click on Numeracy. There is a link to Hit the Button which is being used to practise all times tables. There are also lots of free iPad apps to help with times tables – Multiple Wipeout is a particular favourite of ours.
- Next week, we will be applying our knowledge of inverse, percentage and fractions to some Harry Potter investigations!
Literacy:
- In Literacy this week, we have written our very own fable using many of the classic features we identified last week. We have focussed on the use of adverbs and adjectives for description, as well as the use of adverbial clauses to add a little bit of extra detail.
- Next week, we will be travelling back to
- SPELLINGS: this week we have been focussing on homophones (words that sound the same but are spelt differently). This week’s spellings are: profit, prophet, draw, drawer, principle, principal, led, lead, alter, altar
Other areas of the curriculum:
- In Topic, we have continued to look at the historical civilisation of the Incans. We have painted and decorated our Incan clay gods with metallic paints and pens. We have also produced some collaborative art of Incan style images, all of which you will be able to see at the Carnival in a couple of weeks.
- In ICT, the children have been continuing to develop their South American documentaries using iMovie ready to show at our Carnival!
- This week in Spanish, we have continued to learn about the different types of music and musical instruments and have developed conversations in order to express our likes and dislikes.
- In Music, 5/6B have continued to look at the musical notations on a keyboard and have applied this when reading the music to play classic Christmas carols on the piano using Garageband. 5/6G have got into the spirit of the
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