Newsletter Issue 13
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Friday 7th December 2012
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Dear Parent/Carer,
First of all I would like to thank everybody who supported the Christmas Fayre last Saturday. School staff, parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, children and other members of the community came out in their droves to support a fantastic event. I heard many comments about how lovely the event was, how well supported it was and how there was a real community atmosphere. My thanks to the children who opened the Fayre with their fabulous singing and recorder playing and to Miss Thackeray and Mrs Moore for organising this lovely touch.
Thank you PTA
On behalf of the school community, I would like to say a massive thank you to Clare Perry and the PTA, who have organised two incredible events for our children this half term. Both events took a huge amount of organisation and hard work, all of which was carried out in each lady’s own time whilst juggling jobs and child care duties. The total sum raised from the event came in at £1,621.02, which is just brilliant! I know that these kinds of events will continue into 2013 and I am very much looking forward to supporting the PTA and their ideas for the coming year. We will let you know the sum raised as we gather that information.
James
James Driver had his operation last week and I’m sure most of you now know that it went well. James will remain in hospital for the next few weeks for the start of what will be a long recovery but he is hoping to be out of hospital by Christmas and we hope to welcome him back to school sometime in January. I know that everyone will join me in wishing James and his family all the very best… we’re all thinking of you.
Nursery
Our Nursery children are so lucky to have not just the best Nursery teachers in the world but also a beautiful learning environment in which to thrive. The outdoor area is being enhanced once more through the addition of a beautiful area of Astroturf leading through the “woodland area” and down into a large play area with benches. All we need now is some decent weather to fully enjoy it!!
Phone numbers
It has been brought to our attention on a couple of occasions recently that we do not have the most up to date contact details for some parents. Please ensure that if you have moved house or changed mobile number recently, that the school is informed of any changes. Thank you!
Christmas dinner
For those who have paid for a Christmas dinner, please be reminded that this will be served to the children on Wednesday 12th December.
After School Clubs
It was wonderful to see children in charge of a stall at the Christmas Fayre. They were selling incredible outcomes created in After School Clubs. As well as cards created during my photography club, I also noticed Mrs Brook’s sewing club’s Christmas decorations (I sneakily purchased two before the doors opened!) and Mrs Steel’s card making club’s fabulous festive cards. Thank you to all those who offered these great outcomes to the stall.
Mr Reynolds
I seem to be thanking Mr Reynolds a lot lately but I do feel that I must show some extra appreciation at this time of year! Mr Reynolds is working incredibly hard to make sure that our school grounds are safe and that our school is warm and clean. If Mr Reynolds had £1 for every “sick cleaning duty” he had carried out this year, he’d be a richer man! Not an easy job and much appreciated! And on that merry note…….
Christmas date reminders
18/12/12- 2:00 p.m – 3:00 p.m Year 3/ 4 Christmas Production
19/12/12- 10:00 a.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- 7:00 p.m- 8:00p.m Choir Concert at
20/12/12- 11:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m Reception Production
21/12/12- 10:00 a.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….Take extra care on the roads and paths.
Mrs Dale
Nursery newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
The excitement has continued to build this week as we have learned more about the reasons we celebrate Christmas and of course we have been rehearsing our songs and lines for the Christmas Nativity!
THIS WEEK
This week has been our assessment week which was an amazing opportunity for the children to show us their fabulous learning. We are delighted with the progress the children continue to make in their phonics, reading, writing and numeracy and would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all our fabulous parents and carers who provide super support.
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will continue to enjoy the excitement of Christmas. We will be making our calendars to impress you with and in our Numeracy sessions we will be counting, matching numbers and having a go at writing fabulous numbers. Please spend some time with your children spotting and writing any numbers you see in your local environment. Our phonics focus remains on rhyming so please continue to share Nursery rhymes and maybe even think of a word that rhymes with your child’s name (Max and fax/ Lucy and juicy etc.)
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 the lines for the Nativity! The singing is coming along really well, but we really need your support in learning these lines.
Have a wonderful weekend
Thank you for your continued support.
Mrs Steel and the Nursery Team.
Reception newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
The excitement has continued to build this week as we have learned more about the reasons we celebrate Christmas and of course we have been rehearsing our songs and lines for the Christmas Nativity!
We are very impressed with all the superstars who have learned their keyword spelling and would like to say a huge WELL DONE! Keep up the amazing effort.
THIS WEEK
This week has been our assessment week which was an amazing opportunity for the children to show us their fabulous learning. We are delighted with the progress the children continue to make in their phonics, reading, writing and numeracy and would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all our fabulous parents and carers who provide super support.
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will continue to enjoy the excitement of Christmas. We will be making our calendars and Christmas cards to impress you with and in Numeracy we will be introducing addition, using pictures to support our calculations. Your children may be coming home with new vocabulary they have learnt in their maths sessions so prepare to be amazed! Our sounds of the week are; ur Roy 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 key words; will, that, this, then, them and with.
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.
Have a lovely weekend!
Thank you for your continued support.
Miss Lambert, Miss Pyatt and the Reception Team
Key Stage 1
Home Learning:
The whole Key Stage is buzzing with excitement for our upcoming trip to the theatre to watch Jack and the Beanstalk. In preparation for the trip we would like the children to tap into their creative flair to make anything they would like about the tale. They might choose to draw or design a 3D set that they think would be cool for the theatre to use. Can they label this with the materials that might be used for each bit? Maybe they could design the giant’s castle, build a beanstalk or make lollipop puppets of the characters. Some children might like to use the computer to re-write the tale or do a plot overview with a collage of pictures they copy and paste from the internet. Anything goes this week, who will make something innovative and creative?
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News:
Assessment week is over!
What a busy week we have had! Assessment week is always quite intense with so much for the children to revisit around writing, numeracy, reading and spelling but once again they haven’t failed to amaze us with their performance, concentration and learning from the half term. We are in the process of analysing the results from the week but needless to say we can all smile about how incredible our children are.
Key Stage One Christmas performance
Costumes have already started coming in, children are reciting their lines to us and rehearsals begin next week. Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm around this; it is shaping up to be a performance to rival that of The Carriageworks! Just a quick reminder that the deadline for having costumes in by is this Monday (the 10th of December) so that dress rehearsals can take place next week. We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday 19th 2pm - 3pm and Thursday 20th of December 6pm – 7pm.
The Carriageworks:
Our school trip is upon us! Next Wednesday, 12th of December, we will jump on the coach and be whisked off to the theatre to watch Jack and the Beanstalk. Lunch will be eaten in school before we leave in time for the 2pm performance. Although this is an extra-curricular trip please can we remind you that all children must come to school wearing their school uniform. Our projected arrival time back at school is 5:15pm. All the children will need to come back into school to collect their belongings before leaving through their class’s normal home-time door.
A polite reminder…
It is no secret that winter is upon us and it is FREEZING outside! Please can you make sure your child brings a warm winter coat to school every day. Whilst we are able to monitor the children going out for morning playtime, the children go out as and when they finish their lunch at lunchtime play. Please can you reiterate to your child the importance of putting their coat on at lunch and keeping it on throughout break time.
Literacy
For assessment week the children took part in a whole school ‘cold write’ (similar to the star writes that we do every other week except the stimulus is unknown to them until the morning before the write). Every child in school has written a letter to Mrs Dale about how they think she should spend the money raised at the School Disco and the reasons why - with hotdogs, pop, glow sticks and tattoos flowing-a-plenty we managed to raise an amazing £237 for the school! If Key Stage one gets their way we could end up with anything from a new slide in the playground to a swimming pool to a monster truck…and the reason? ‘All these things make us happy and we are better learners when we are happy’ – we’ve got some clever, cunning eggs!
We will be moving on to writing instructions for the last two weeks of term.
Numeracy
Every class has really impressed us not only with their ability to draw upon the strategies we have been focusing on throughout the whole term in numeracy but also with their ability to verbalise why and how they work out certain number problems. It’s really wonderful to see the children’s enthusiasm and interest in numeracy, they genuinely enjoy filling out the numeracy tests and it’s because of this we have seen year one children sitting the year two SATs paper and had year twos sitting the level 3 paper. Truly fantastic! We will continue focusing on addition and subtraction for the last two weeks of term to really consolidate our learning and make sure that the children can apply this learning when such problems aren’t presented in an isolated ‘addition/subtraction week’. We are all quite excited about a new structure we are going to trial in which the children self-assess their knowledge and understanding against a focussed question for the day and then choose the level of challenge by table that they want to learn at for that lesson. We will feedback on its success but are all hoping it will inspire further ownership around their learning and help form a mature and open-minded approach to numeracy.
Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter
This week has been our assessment week and we’ve been very proud of the children’s mature and sensible attitude towards their learning; every child tried their absolute best, which is always great for us teachers to see! This week has also seen us kick off our rehearsals for our Christmas production (which is just over a week away, with performances on Tuesday 18th December and Wednesday 19th December). Those children with speaking parts have been trying very hard to learn their lines at home and remember who they speak before and afterwards so thank you with your support on this. We get very excited about our Christmas production every year and look forward to this being another cracker!
Home Learning
Thank you for continuing to support your child with improving their star write challenges, we have been very pleased to see the children are not simply copying their writing, but are thinking about how to make it better by reading the target their teacher has set them. We feel this support from you at home is valuable in ensuring your child makes progress, so thank you for working with us on this. We have also been very impressed with all the reading going on at home, both in books and online via our Bug Club scheme. Keep up the great work!
Topic
In our topic sessions this week, the children have been writing their very own letters of thanks to the lovely people at the Leeds Grand Theatre. They have really enjoyed writing for a real purpose and the final letters look fabulous! We are going to be sending them all to the theatre in a pack, so fingers crossed the children will get a reply soon!
Christmas Production
Next week, we will be having rehearsals for our production. The children are trying very hard to learn their lines and remember their stage directions as well as the lyrics to all the fantastic songs. Each class has learned their own dance for their class song- why not ask your child to show you how it goes? We have been blown away by the great enthusiasm for the production from boys and girls alike, which is great! We hope you are all aware of the costume your child needs but if not, please ask them or your child’s class teacher for clarification.
Jam Jars!
During our last week of term, we will be doing lots of fun, crafty Christmas activities, which will be exciting for the children. In order to do this, we are asking that every child brings a glass jar in. So far, we have had some in but are not close to the 90 we need so that all children can participate. If you can recycle any jam jars, or jars from pasta sauce that would be great! Don’t worry about lids, no lids are fine too! Thank you!
Spellings to be tested on Monday 17th December (the children already have their spellings for this Monday)
Group One
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Group Two
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slightly
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passed
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lightly
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jumped
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useful
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shouted
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truthful
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tried
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doubtful
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cried
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travelled
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spiteful
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explored
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skilful
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discovered
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lovely
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explained
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nicely
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funded
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Have a lovely weekend! Team 3/4
UKS2 News Roundup:
· This week, our achiever is given to all the children in 5/6M. Last weeks literacy sessions saw the children write their own fable which included their own moral message. There was such a high standard and imagination from all children, which has therefore resulted in our KS2 achiever being shared across the class.
· This half term, the children have been learning about Buddhism in RE. Chokga from the Ratnasanbhava Buddhist Centre in Leeds visited school on Wednesday afternoon to speak about her beliefs, practices and approach to everyday life. Chokga commented on how well the children in Year 5/6 listened and she was very impressed with how well they were able to talk about their learning. Well done everybody!
· PE for each class is now as follows: 5/6M and 5/6B on Monday; 5/6G on Tuesday
· Dates for your diary
Tuesday 11th December: Year 5/6 South American Carnival at 2:15pm in the hall.
Monday 17th December: Year 6 visit to Rodillian to watch their pantomime. We will be leaving school at 11am and return before the end of the school day. Please make sure you have a packed lunch.
Thursday 20th December: Christmas Party. Donations of cakes, crisps, biscuits or sugar free drinks are welcomed. Lunch will be as usual. Remember to bring your party clothes to change into!
Friday 21st December: Christmas Service and Carols Around the Tree led by Year 5/6
Numeracy:
· This week, the children have been solving multi-step problems using their knowledge of percentages, fractions, the four operations and the inverse.
· In mental maths we have been focussing on all of our times tables this week. 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 4 operation skills ( + - x ÷) to some Christmas problem solving activities to get us into the Christmas spirit!
· Times Table Challenge is on Friday 14th December so get practising! Visit www.teachingtables.co.uk and click on the bingo machine to prepare!
Literacy:
· In Literacy, the children have been improving their travel guide adverts that were written in Topic using a number of features including adjectives, adverbs, figurative language, prepositions and super sentence starters.
· Next week, we will be continuing to write a travel guide based on a trip to Lapland . The children will be looking to use enticing and inspiring language to help sell the trip to potential travellers. Visit the following link to find out more about Lapland . http://www.laplandfinland.com/In_English.iw3
· SPELLINGS: Our focus continues on homophones - who’s, whose, mourning, morning, steel, steal, past, passed, feet, feat, fort, fought, aisle, isle,
Other areas of the curriculum:
· In Topic, we have started the final preparations for next week’s carnival. We have been studying the different types of carnival masks and headdresses and have designed our very own using many different resources.
· 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 begun to practise our Christmas songs in preparation for the Carols Around the Tree in a couple of weeks.
· In Music, 5/6B have continued to practise their music reading skills when playing traditional Christmas songs using Garageband. 5/6G have been developing their samba music using percussion. 5/6M have been developing their recorder skills and practicing patterns of notes that have been repeated in one piece (ostinato).
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