Newsletter Issue 17
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Friday 18th January 2013
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Dear Parent/Carer,
Well, what a cold and frosty week it has been. Thank you to everyone for braving the cold and sometimes challenging conditions and getting your children into school on time. Your child’s attendance and punctual arrival in school is so very important in ensuring no learning time is missed. The school aims to keep attendance above 95% overall in order to remain Outstanding in this area, so thank you all in your continuing support to ensure we maintain this high standard.
Severe weather
In the event of severe weather resulting in a school closure, please be reassured that you will be contacted via text, the local radio stations will be informed and Leeds City Council website will also list the school as closed. Unless you are informed otherwise via one of these sources, please always assume that school will be well and truly open! There should be no need for you to contact school and ideally we ask that you refrain from doing so as we would need to keep the lines free in order to communicate with staff if necessary. Thanks.
PTA
The PTA is once again active in organising new events for 2013. I met with Clare and Stephanie this week to discuss potential developments for the PTA this year and it all sounds really exciting. I am in discussions via the school council on how best to spend the PTA funds raised so far but it’s wonderful to know that plans are already being made to organise further events. I wholeheartedly support the PTA in all that they are achieving and urge you to get involved if you can in any way. We have a very friendly and proactive team who need your help so if you can give up any time at all, please join Clare, Stephanie and the other members at The Gardner’s Arms Pub on Thursday 24th January ‘13 at 8:00p.m.
Our new website
This week, our new website has gone live. We will be updating sections on an on- going basis but for now, I invite you to take a look and see what you think of the format. I feel that the sections are much clearer and easier to navigate and at present, there are the usual links to blogs, including the newsletter blog. The Learning Zone is also active and an easy way for your child to access both The Bug Club and I am Learning. We have further plans to make sure that you are as well informed as you can be, but if you have any comments or ideas that would help us to make the website better for you, please do let us know.
Young Voices
I am getting really excited about the Young Voices event, which takes place next week at Sheffield Arena. Miss Thackeray has organised our participation in an incredible event, which celebrates the value of singing on a HUGE scale!! Around 10,000 school children and their guests will be heading to Sheffield on Wednesday night to take part in the biggest performance of their lives. Our choir will be in attendance and will no doubt thoroughly enjoy singing the wide range of songs that they have learnt in preparation for the event. This is the first time Robin Hood has been involved in this annual event but I am told that the evening is magical and that the sound of thousands of children singing enthusiastically together can get a little emotional! I am sure I will have something to say about it next week! My sincere thanks go to Miss Thackeray for organising our involvement.
Miss Darroch
Finally, I have some lovely news to end with. I am delighted to announce that Miss Darroch and her husband Robbie are expecting their first child in June. I am sure you will all join me in wishing Miss Darroch a very happy and healthy pregnancy. A little top tip from me: Stock up on some sleep while you can!
Take care this weekend. It’s meant to get really rather snowy and ever more cold. I am currently pondering on how many snowmen I will be forced to build!
Have a really great weekend!
Mrs Dale
Nursery newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have had a fantastic week learning all about superheroes. The children are really engaging with this topic and as a result there is a lovely buzz within our setting. The role play the children are engaging in is terrific and is really helping to develop their social and speaking and listening skills. The children are really impressing us with their attitudes to their learning and the progress they are making is tremendous. This really would not be possible without all the fabulous support you are giving them so thank you and we hope you can see and take pleasure in the progress your child is making just as we do.
THIS WEEK
In literacy this week we have imagined ourselves as real superheroes and have engaged in some wonderful superhero drama activities which have helped develop the children’s speaking and listening skills. In phonics we have now moved on to aspect 4 in phase 1 which is Rhyme. We will be using lots of exciting games to help the children learn how to do this and can you please play rhyming games at home with your child whenever you get the chance. In numeracy we have been ordering ourselves in height order and talking about who is the shortest and tallest.
NEXT WEEK
In literacy next week we will be creating our very own superhero puppet family. Your faces and your child’s will be attached to superhero bodies and you will shortly be flying, swinging or jumping over the New York
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.
We hope you had an exciting week in the snow.
Mrs Steel and the Nursery team
Reception newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have had another fantastic week learning all about superheroes. The children are really engaging with this topic and as a result there is a lovely buzz within our classroom. The children are really impressing us with their attitudes to their learning and the progress they are making is tremendous. This really would not be possible without all the fabulous support you are giving them, so thank you and we hope you can see and take pleasure in the progress your child is making just like we do. Mrs Dale’s office was very full last week as 30, yes 30 children achieved their sounds and words of the week certificates, with some fantastic children achieving their first certificate. No doubt this week we will have even more!
THIS WEEK
In literacy this week we have written our very own superhero stories, which were more imaginative and creative than anything the adults could have come up with, we definitely have some budding authors in reception. In topic we have advertised our super powers to the rest of the school by making some fantastic posters. We have also created our very own comic strips. This half term in phonics we are revisiting all the digraphs (two letters that make one sound) we learnt last half term. This week we have reviewed the sounds, ai, ee, igh and oa and the key words were the tricky words; have, said, come, some, like, do and so. In numeracy we have been comparing our heights and using the vocabulary ‘tallest’ and ‘shortest’. We then developed our knowledge even further and measured the buildings the superheroes were on top of using unifix cubes.
NEXT WEEK
In literacy next week we will be creating our very own superhero puppet family. Your faces and your child’s will be attached to superhero bodies and you will shortly be flying, swinging or jumping over the New York
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Please help your child practise their letter formation. This half term we will be really pushing the children’s handwriting and presentation so please also encourage them to write beautiful letters at home.
· Please support your child in accessing the ‘Bugclub’ website and ‘I am learning’. The main focus of this week’s home learning is for the children to be accessing these interactive resources at home, if you can’t access them for any reason please let us know and we will be happy to help you with any problems.
· Please read with your child as often as possible and comment in their reading record to let us know how they are doing at home.
We hope you had an exciting week in the snow.
Miss Lambert, Miss Pyatt and the Reception Team
Home Learning:
Next week we will be looking at our topic of Ocean Explorer’s from a geographical perspective, thinking about global warming, how this affects temperature, and reading thermometers and weather charts to tell the temperature. For this week’s home learning we would like the children to make a weather diary about their weekend in the snow. Ask your child to include how they felt at certain points – excited because it snowed, nervous in case they woke up and it had melted, disappointed that the snow disappeared.
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Well, we braved the elements and trudged down to the bottom of the playground, zipped up and booted to survey the building site to add inspiration to our recounts unit in literacy. The whole key stage was buzzing on Monday morning; the value added by taking learning outside the classroom really does have a huge impact. The magic of the adventure was only added to by the fact that the snow was falling and we were able to lose focus for a few minutes whilst we caught some falling flakes in our mouths! Everyone really engaged with the reasons for the trip and benefitted from vocalising our success criteria for our writing (time connectives, connectives, past tense) during the walk. We’ve no doubt that the writing this will harness will be some of the best yet.
Although it is a week late, we thought that we should feedback on how successful our reading day was last Friday. It was so great to see so many of you sharing a book with your child over a slice of toast and a cup of tea before school and let it be said that the fun continued throughout the day! We introduced the children to some classic cartoon characters and superheroes from our youth, including Popeye and Super Ted (first time we’ve felt truly old when they had never heard of them!) before developing our own super heroes. A great day was had by all!
Photostory 3:
We have been transferring our knowledge about Christopher Columbus and Captain Scott into Photostories on the computers this week. Photostory 3 is a fun and accessible piece of software onto which you can upload photographs, music and text that then play as a slideshow movie. All the children have really enjoyed seeing their learning in this format especially as the outcome can be seen so quickly. If you would like to share this with your child it is a free download – Google ‘Photostory 3’.
New website:
Over Christmas our new website became live and it looks great. From our home page you can click on links to our blog, Bug Club, I am Learning and Robin Hood TV – upcoming productions to look forward to!
Literacy:
Like we said above the recounts topic is proving to be very enjoyable for everyone. We are trialling a new structure in literacy which focuses more on the children’s spoken development of sentences before writing. Scaffolding the process in this way is embedding the skills necessary for producing well developed, full and thought through sentences that the children self-evaluate and improve. Our hope is that the continuation of this process will realise the use of connectives to develop a compound sentence in becoming a natural skill for every child in our key stage, making the step on to using adjectives and adverbs to engage the reader easier.
Numeracy:
First and foremost, a big thank you for all of the effort you put in, in making some beautiful and creative home learning last week with your children about 2D and 3D shapes. We say it often but the message continues to be true: the support that you provide at home around our in-school learning really does consolidate and further the children’s knowledge and understanding within our topics. We have focused this week on naming and describing the features of 3D shapes using the key words – faces, vertices and edges. This learning culminated in 2 days-worth of shape challenge, seeing the children building models, making shapes with nets and dividing shapes to create new shapes. Next week we will move onto lines of symmetry and making patterns with shapes.
Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter
We have had yet another amazing week in LKS2 full of exciting and inspiring learning. We have been busy learning our first song in sign language ‘Go Banana’s’ and are very proud of the children for their commitment and dedication in learning each of the signs correctly.
Home Learning
For the children’s home learning we would like you to encourage your child to read at home as much as possible, and record this reading in their reading records. As we are working hard to develop our reading comprehension, why don’t you ask your child to retell part of the story? Please also encourage your child to access their Bug Club account online if they are part of the scheme. Thank you for your continuing support with helping the children to learn their spellings every week. We are really pleased with those who practice hard to get 10/10.
Literacy
This week, as part of our narrative unit, we have been writing lots of descriptive sentences, describing different characters appearances. The children have been continuing to develop their use of effective adjectives focusing on characters; height, build, age, hair and eye colour, clothes and other distinguishing features. We’ve had lots of fun listening to various descriptions and trying to draw an accurate picture of the person being described. We have also created our own characters that we have written descriptive sentences about including both adjectives and similes. Why not ask your child to describe a character for you to draw and see how detailed their descriptions are. Next week, we will be planning and writing our own stories with a focus on how to use adverbials effectively to describe how a character moves and speaks.
Numeracy
In numeracy, the children have been solving addition word problems about length. The children have worked hard to unpick the word problem, pulling out the relevant information and choosing an appropriate strategy to solve the problem. The children have also been learning how to convert the different units of measure in order to give their answers in either mm, cm, m or km.
Topic
This week we have been learning about Ancient Egypt and seen where it fits on a timeline of other periods we study in 3/4. We’ve also studied the different uses of the Nile for Ancient Egyptians and why the Nile was important for farming. We put all our new found knowledge onto fact cards that we stuck onto our working walls. Next week we will be learning all about the pharaohs and even creating our own pharaoh masks.
Spellings to be tested on Monday 28th January (the children already have their spellings for this Monday)
Group One
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Group Two
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rain
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string
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tail
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stripe
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chain
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strip
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again
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strong
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captain
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stride
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high
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stringent
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light
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strangle
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night
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strict
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might
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strap
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right
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Reminders
· PE this half term is invasion games. Please ensure your child brings their PE kit into school on a Monday and keeps it in school until Friday.
· We check Reading Records every Monday morning, please ensure your child brings in their signed Record so we can reward all of their fantastic reading.
Have a lovely weekend!
Team 3/4
UKS2 News Roundup:
· Our achiever of the week is Grace Allen for a fantastic approach to all her learning and a wonderful kind attitude to all her class mates. Well done Grace, you’re a star!
· Thank you to Year 6 parents and carers who attended the meeting with their child’s class teacher this week. We value the opportunity to speak to you about your child’s progress to date, their next steps and how we and you as a partnership can support them in their learning. The revision books that we shared with you are available to purchase online, however we have heard reports of them being out of stock. We are looking into possibly buying a set for school that we can then lend out to our pupils. Watch this space! Year 5 parent consultations will be held later in the Spring term.
· Robin Hood has a new school website! Take a look by visiting http://www.robinhood.leeds.sch.uk. Access to I Am Learning is now through the pupil’s Learning Zone, an area which will be developing over the next term.
Reminders:
· PE for 5/6B and 5/6M is on Monday afternoon. 5/6G will have PE on Tuesday. This half term, the children are learning basketball skills indoors so trainers or pumps are needed.
· For pierced ears, only small studs should be worn. No dangly earrings please!
· This week, the focus has been on fractions. The children have been finding equivalent fractions and simplifying them (making them easier to understand). They have also been learning how to convert improper fractions to mixed numbers and vice versa as well as finding fractions of amounts. There are fraction videos and games to practise at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/fractions
· In mental maths, the 7 times table has been the focus. Hit the Button is being used to practise these number facts. This can be accessed via the Year 5/6 Blog Visit http://robinhood56.blogspot.co.uk and click on Numeracy. There is also a link to the Bingo Machine which is used during the Times Tables Challenge.
· Next week, we will be learning how to increase and decrease toys from the Toy Story film by various percentages. We will also be learning about ratio and proportion to help us when solving multi-step word problems.
Literacy:
· This week in Literacy, the children have been using a range of sentence starters to write formal sentences and have been contributing ideas towards a paragraph for a letter from the charity Hearing Dogs for Deaf People to children at Robin Hood. Conjunctions and connectives are being used to link sentences and ideas. The children have planned and written their own letter from the charity. You can find out more about the charity we’ll be raising money for by visiting http://www.hearingdogs.org.uk/
· Next week, the children will be delving into the world of adverts, looking at examples from TV, Radio and magazines. They will be working in small groups and pairs to write their own adverts to promote a given product.
· SPELLINGS: our focus will be on spellings with the prefix im or in: improbable, important, impossible, impress, imbalance, indistinct, inspire, inspect, inadequate, incorrect, immediately.
Other areas of the curriculum:
· In Topic, Miss Gascoigne’s group have been using sketching skills and ICT tools on Smart Notebook to design their own variation of the Hearing Dogs for the Deaf logo, which will eventually be placed onto packaging. Mr Malley’s class have been designing a range of signs using Smart Notebook and making prototypes using cardboard and various stencilling techniques. Mrs Brook’s group have been designing and making templates for our own key rings, which we will then be sewed using a variety of stitches.
· In Spanish we have been learning the alphabet. You can practise at home using the following link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/guide/alphabet.shtml
· In ICT, the children have been exploring Prezi and how this web based programme can be used to present information.
· In Music, 5/6B have been playing compositions using the notes B, A and G. They have also been playing pieces which contain an ostinato. 5/6M have continued with their samba-themed percussion workshops with Mr Major. 5/6G have been exploring the instrument on Garageband using the iPad.
· In PE pupils have been learning the correct technique for the chest pass in basketball and applying this to small sided game scenarios.
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