Newsletter
Issue 9
|
Friday 8th November 2013
|
Dear Parent/Carer,
Welcome back to the new half term. I hope you all had a lovely break and feel raring to go for the run up to Christmas- Only 47 days to go until Christmas Day!
Children’s Mayor of Leeds
Representing our city on
Thursday was the amazing Georgia in Year 6. Georgia was shortlisted to become
the Children’s Mayor of Leeds 2013-14 and was invited to an exclusive event
along with celebrities and important members of the city community. Although Georgia
did not win, we must recognise this incredible achievement and I know you will
all join me in congratulating her. Well done Georgia; you are always a winner
to us!
Scooters and bikes
Please feel free to allow your
child to bring their bikes or scooters to school once more. I would advise
strongly that you provide your child with a lock, which can be attached to the
bike rail at the back of the school. I must stress that it is at your own risk
that these are left on the premises. Cycling or scooting to school is a
wonderful, active way to carry out the journey and I would not like to
discourage this.
New
Zealand Rugby Team
Next Tuesday, 15 pupils will be
accompanying our Active Team; Miss Mees, Mr Malley and Miss Pensom to an
exclusive event whereby they will be able to watch a New Zealand Rugby squad
training session. The children will then be meeting the players, gathering
autographs and having their photos taken with team members. What a fabulous and
exciting opportunity for our children! I can’t wait to hear all about it.
Year 6
Maths competition
A
huge well done to Evan, John, Izzy and Bethan in Year 6 for competing in the
Leeds Junior Maths Challenge at Leeds Grammar School on Wednesday. Back in
October, the children were placed in the top 20 highest-scoring schools out of
approximately 50 schools from across Leeds during the semi-finals and as a
result, were invited to compete in the finals on Wednesday. The competition
involved answering challenging mathematical puzzles and logical problems as a team.
Although the children didn’t win, we are still so incredibly proud of the
children for their dedication and enthusiasm throughout the competition; they
really were a credit to our school!
Children in Need
Next Friday is Children in Need day. We have always supported
this charity and feel that it is for a cause very close to our hearts. We are
inviting children to wear their warmest and best pyjamas especially for the
day. We are asking for a £1 donation. If you would like to buy a Children in
Need wristband (optional), they will be on sale each day next week either in
the office and the school captains will also come around classes in the
afternoon to take donations of £1. Thank you.
Mrs Beckwith
I am very sad to inform
you that our wonderful Mrs Beckwith will be leaving us next Friday. Mrs
Beckwith has been with us for 15 years and is one of our longest standing
members of staff. Over the years, Mrs Beckwith has worked with a great many of
our pupils, past and present and I have personally had the great pleasure of
teaching in a class supported by Mrs Beckwith. Everyone who has worked with Mrs
Beckwith will agree with me that her commitment to and love of our school has
been immeasurable. Her positive approach and love for life has meant that she
has made a very many good friends but most of all, the pupils who have been
supported by Mrs Beckwith have benefitted massively from her professional and
warm hearted approach to teaching and learning. We will all miss you, Mrs
Beckwith!
PTA News
It's manic at PTA HQ
organising the Xmas Fayre. We have heard from Mrs Claus and she has put the
30th November in Santa's diary so he will be able to attend our Fayre and speak
to all our wonderful and well behaved children! Before the half term holidays I
mentioned that we would be asking for donations to make our Xmas Fayre the best
yet so here goes..... If you have any bottles, cans, chocolate, sweets, good
quality unwanted teddies, gifts please send them to school for our tombolas.
Due to the success of the donated cake and bun sales at our previous events we
will be having a stall to sell the wonderful and tasty goodies which you will
hopefully be very generous in donating again.
By Monday every child will have brought home a book of raffle tickets to sell, which have cash and many other prizes to be won. We understand that some parents may have more than one child at school and will therefore be in receipt of more than one book of tickets. If you are able to sell them all, fantastic, if not please bring any monies and unused tickets to the SCHOOL OFFICE in an envelope marked for the attention of the PTA.
One last thing, thank you to all the teacher, parents, grandparents and carers who have already pledged their time to help out at the Fayre, if anyone else is available to help for an hour or so, or to ask any questions, please contact us at robinhoodprimarypta@gmail.com.
By Monday every child will have brought home a book of raffle tickets to sell, which have cash and many other prizes to be won. We understand that some parents may have more than one child at school and will therefore be in receipt of more than one book of tickets. If you are able to sell them all, fantastic, if not please bring any monies and unused tickets to the SCHOOL OFFICE in an envelope marked for the attention of the PTA.
One last thing, thank you to all the teacher, parents, grandparents and carers who have already pledged their time to help out at the Fayre, if anyone else is available to help for an hour or so, or to ask any questions, please contact us at robinhoodprimarypta@gmail.com.
Have a great weekend!
Mrs Dale
Nursery newsletter
NEWS ROUND UPWe have had an explosive week this week! The children have all really enjoyed the learning we have been doing about bonfire night and they had an amazing time at our Bonfire parties. Thank you for the party food – it is lovely to see the children having a great time.
THIS WEEK
It was great to see the
children come bouncing into school with big smiles on their faces after half
term and it was lovely to hear about all the exciting things they had been
doing with you at home. Our classroom was transformed over the holidays and new
exciting areas of provision have been set up (see the FS blog). The children
have been very keen to access the new areas and have been engaging in some
wonderful and creative role play with their friends, which is a pleasure to
watch and be involved in. In Literacy this week we have learnt about how to be
safe when we go to bonfires and we have learnt all about The Gunpowder Plot. We
have made fabulous fireworks to display and made our own Bonfire Parkin for the
celebrations.
NEXT WEEK
Next week we are starting
off the week learning about Remembrance Day and the children will be writing a
kind word on a poppy petal and they will be making their very own poppy. Their
learning will be used for a display and all the poppy petals will be put
together to make one big poppy. No doubt our classroom will be looking even
more amazing by the end of next week. To support the children’s learning on
Monday we ask that the children wear something red to school, this can be
instead of their uniform. The rest of the week will be spent preparing for our
very own celebration; we will write our own invitations, make party hats, make
decorations and bake yummy party food. We will have our celebration parties on
Wednesday morning and Friday afternoon.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
·
Please read with your child for at least 5
minutes every night.
·
Please send your child into school in
something red on Monday (11th November) and we would also appreciate
it if they could bring in one item of party food on either Wednesday morning
(13th November) or Friday (15th November).
Have a great weekend!
Mrs Steel, Mrs Chin and Miss Fox
NEWS ROUND UP
We have had an explosive
week this week! The children have all really enjoyed the learning we have been
doing about bonfire night and they had an amazing time at our Bonfire party. At
our exciting bonfire party we set our own fireworks off and we made our own
firework noises using bubble wrap. We enjoyed using and eating our chocolate apples
that the children had made as part of our science learning (changing states) and
the children once again really enjoyed sharing their bonfire food with their
friends. Celebrations just wouldn’t be the same without yummy food to share!
THIS WEEK
It was great to see the
children come bouncing into school with big smiles on their faces after half
term and it was lovely to hear about all the exciting things they had been
doing with you at home including trips to Windsor Palace and even Spain. Our
classroom was transformed over the holidays and new exciting areas of provision
have been set up. We now have a fire station and our very own firework viewing
area which you can see on our Blog. The children have been very excited to
access the new areas and have been engaging in some wonderful and creative role
play with their friends which is a pleasure to watch and be involved in. In
Literacy this week we have learnt all about how to be safe when we go to
bonfires and we have learnt all about The Gunpowder Plot. The children produced
some fantastic fire safety display posters which are now displayed in our
classroom to remind us how to keep safe. In topic they have made some fantastic
splat paintings using syringes and pipettes. It was very action packed outside
this week as well. The children had made their own fire engine and were rushing
to the scene of the fire where they quickly threw buckets of water onto the
burning buildings. In numeracy the children have really grasped the concept of
simple addition and we were super impressed. You are fantastic mathematician’s
guys! In phonics they have learnt to read the Phase 3 sounds j, v, w and x and have learnt to read the words; will, that, this, them, then and with.
NEXT WEEK
Next week we are starting
off the week learning about Remembrance Day and the children will be writing a
kind word on a poppy petal and they will be making their very own poppy. Their
learning will be used for a display and all the poppy petals will be put
together to make one big poppy, so no doubt our classroom will be looking even
more amazing by the end of next week. To support the children’s learning on
Monday we ask that the children wear something red to school, this can be
instead of their uniform. The rest of the week will be spent preparing for our
very own celebration where we will write our own invitations, make party hats,
make decorations and bake yummy party food. When we have gone through all the
preparation we will have our own celebration on Friday. In phonics we will be
learning the sounds; y, z, zz and qu and the words of the week are; for, see, too, look, now and down.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
·
Please read with your child for at least 5
minutes every night.
·
Please send your child into school in
something red on Monday (11th November) and we would also appreciate
it if they could bring in one item of party food on Friday (15th November).
Have a great weekend!
Miss Lambert, Miss Pyatt and the Reception team.
Key Stage 1
|
Home Learning:
To support our numeracy learning from the
week please support your child in learning their number bonds to 10 and then
20. Below are two links to youtube videos that we have used in class. These
facts need to be rote learnt and recalled rapidly so that your child can
solve mental arithmetic and addition problems with more than 2 numbers by
finding bonds or near bonds. Test your child by saying a number and seeing if
they can call the matching bond back to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpoFxwKBwE8 Number facts to 10.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOeljq70-_Q Number facts for 20.
Please
encourage your child to show you what they have learnt this week in maths
(the strategies we have taught are cited below) and answer some challenging
addition problems using counting on, 100 squares or the Malteser system. Each
child should do at least 10 sums…make sure that your child doesn’t just pick
numbers that end in a zero!
|
News:
Welcome
back!
We hope you had a lovely time at half term
and got to spend some quality family time together! It certainly feels like
half term brought the winter winds with it so please make sure that your child
comes to school each day with a warm coat, hat and gloves.
Cereal
boxes:
Thank you so much for all the cereal boxes
that have come in so far to help our D&T in week 3. We’re really looking
forward to making a Jungle Book puppet stage out of them!
Literacy
Autumn 2 brings with it a new unit of study
in literacy; we are leaving factual, non-chronological report writing behind
and sinking our teeth into some fictional, narrative writing. Each class in the
key stage is looking at a different Julia Donaldson book as a starting
stimulus: Year 1 are walking through the forest with a brave little mouse who
finds The Gruffalo, Year 1-2 are soaring high with the witch and all her
friends in Room on the Broom and Year 2 have met one of the kindest and
sweetest fictional characters The Smartest Giant in Town. The beginning of the
week saw us becoming familiar with the characters and plot within our stories
through dramatization. The objective throughout this was for every child to use
expression, both vocally and physically by experimenting with freeze framing
certain sections. We moved on to having a more in depth look at what happens as
each story progresses and linked this to the traditional ‘story mountain’: an
opening in which we meet the characters and find out where the story is set,
the build-up in which the protagonist’s journey begins and other characters are
introduced leading to the climax that inevitably brings with it some kind of
problem, tension or drama! After reaching the top of the ‘story mountain’ here,
tales move into the resolution in which the climactic problem is solved somehow
and can therefore bring about the ending be it a happy one or a sad one! The
children will continue build their own story up around their class’s book this
week and next, changing either the plot, character or settings leading to a
star write next Friday in which we will be looking for conjunctions, adjectives
and purposeful verbs and adverbs that suit the animal or person they are
describing.
Numeracy
We have also moved into a new unit of study
in numeracy for the next two weeks; addition. We have stolen a literacy format
and started every numeracy session consolidating number formation with a bit of
‘number handwriting’! Number formation is so important at this stage of each
child’s schooling and the only way to get them formed correctly every time is
practise – please do support this at home too! Our mental maths throughout the
week has had a tight focus around number bonds to five, ten and twenty. These
number facts act as a real stepping stone for the children as they work towards
rapid recall of addition sums and also understanding number so each day we have
tried to beat our score with how many bonds we can recall. Each class have used
songs and videos to support consolidate these number facts – the links can be
found below. We then moved onto addition sums reciting our mantra: “Biggest
number in your head, just count on” ensuring that the children used their
fingers to count on carefully. The journey progressed from simple units
+ units, into teens and tens (34/76) add units, before moving onto tens + units
that bridge into the next ten (i.e. 24+9=33) and then into tens + tens both
with round tens and mixed units. Our focus this week was to get the children as
secure as possible with all the different strategies they can employ to solve
addition problems depending on the difficulty of the sum. These strategies are
rote counting on from the biggest number, using their hundred square and
circling the biggest number before rote counting on and striking off each
number as they go and seeing which number they land on. Our final method is
using the Malteser system, which is really helpful when adding two bigger
numbers. The children go through 3 steps upon getting their addition sum: step
1 – label the columns in both sides of the addition sum with tens and unit
hats, step 2 – partition the numbers using Malteser packets for the tens column
or single Maltesers for the unit column, step 3 – count up the tens in both
tens columns and then count on in ones in both unit columns to find the answer.
There is so much to remember and much care to be taken in solving such problems
so we are spending next week on the same unit but looking at addition in day to
day word problems too. Ask your child to show you what they can do at home!
Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter
We’ve
had a fantastic start to our new half term and have been overwhelmed (once
again) by the variety and quality of the half term’s home learning. This has
been a great start to our new exciting topic ‘Multimedia Madness’. As Christmas
is fast approaching we will be holding auditions for the Christmas production
next Tuesday lunch time in Mrs Brook’s
class room. For the auditions we would like children to practice a short
performance. This might be singing, telling a joke, reading a short piece from
a book or any other wonderful act that will show off their amazing talents. We
would like to see as many children audition as possible, however each year
preference is given to year 4 pupils but there are lots of parts so we do
encourage year 3’s to come along as well.
Home Learning
As
well as the children reading daily and practicing their weekly spellings, we
would like everyone to be learning their Times
Tables. We will now be testing the children weekly on a different times
table as this will help us all greatly when solving multiplication and division
problems. Links to any on line games to support your child with this will be on
our phase blog. The times table we will be testing next week is the 7 Times Table.
Numeracy
This
week in numeracy the children have been learning how to multiply numbers by
both ten and a hundred and also how to use the grid method to solve
multiplication problems. They have all tried super hard to set out their grids
accurately and follow the steps in order to reach the end answer. This involves
drawing on last half terms addition written strategies, using column addition.
Next week we will be learning the written strategy of the bus stop method in
order to solve various division problems.
Literacy
This
week in literacy, the children have been learning the difference between formal
and informal writing and when we would use these. We had lots of fun acting out
different scenarios where we would use a formal or informal tone e.g. meeting
the queen. We have also learnt lots of different persuasive techniques to use
in our writing and put these to good use when writing a letter to Mrs Dale
persuading her to get rid of our school uniform. Next week we will be learning
how to use lots of different sentence openers in our writing to make it more
interesting and how to write a balanced argument.
Spellings
These
Spellings will be tested on Monday 11th
November.
Group One
|
Group Two
|
coat
|
describe
|
boat
|
climate
|
coach
|
immediately
|
goat
|
escape
|
toes
|
telephone
|
goes
|
investigate
|
home
|
furniture
|
rose
|
texture
|
hose
|
figure
|
rope
|
sculpture
|
creature
|
Reminders
·
Please can all Year 4 children remember to
bring their swimming kit and goggles if needed every Friday. They may also
bring a snack to eat on the coach on the way back to school. This can be a
biscuit or a piece of fruit.
·
Please ensure your child’s PE kit is kept in
school from Monday-Friday every week.
·
Now that the weather is wet and windy, we ask
that your child must bring a coat to
school every day.
·
Just a gentle reminder to ensure all of your
child’s belonging (especially PE kits, hats and gloves and school jumpers) are
clearly labelled with your child’s full name.
Have a fabulous weekend!
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
Welcome back everyone! We hope you have had a
lovely holiday!
News Roundup:
Home Learning
A very big well done to the Year 6 children
who have been busy completing their Splat the Sats packs! Also, we have been impressed
so far with some of the Year 5 Inventions Home Learning; we’ve had some
fantastic outcomes and it appears that we definitely have some future inventors
amongst us! For those Year 5 children who have not yet managed to complete
their home learning, we are extending the deadline until Thursday November 14th.
All Year 5 children need to have an idea as they will be using this during our
Topic sessions. We are asking the Year 5 children to think of an invention with
a transport-related theme. They may want to design and/or make their own mode
of transport, or they may wish to create an item which might be used whilst
using a mode of transport. The children can present their home learning however
they choose (model, poster, video, booklet, presentation etc).
Leeds Junior Maths Challenge:
A huge congratulations to Evan. John, Izzy and
Bethan in Year 6 for attending the Leeds Junior Maths Challenge final at Leeds
Grammar school this week. It was super that the children reached the final out
of over 50 schools across Leeds and although they didn’t win, we are all
incredibly proud of them for getting so far! Well done, guys!
Achiever of the Week:
Achiever of the week goes to all of 5/6Ma for their
fantastic attitude towards our science learning. All children have shown a
fantastic enthusiasm and have impressed with their fantastic subject knowledge
and predictions during many different investigations. Congratulations to all
pupils in 5/6Ma, you all thoroughly deserve it!
Children in Need:
Next Friday in aid of children in need, pupils will
be able to come dressed in pyjamas for the day. We ask that children contribute
£1 to raise money for this fantastic cause.
Core Subjects:
Numeracy:
In Numeracy this week, we have been learning about multiples,
common multiples and factors, prime numbers and using brackets. The children
have needed to apply all of their times tables in order to succeed with this
and we have already noticed a huge improvement with the speed and accuracy of
their times tables. We do however, ask that the children continue to practice
their times tables regularly, especially their 6, 7, 8 and 9 x tables as there
is still some room for improvement here. See our blog for a good interactive
resource to help!
Next week, the children will be learning how recognise
the place value of decimals, how to order and compare decimals and how to
extend sequences in steps of decimal tenths and decimal hundredths!
Literacy:
In Literacy this week, pupils have been re-editing
and improving their year 5/6 survival guide. For the remainder of the week
pupils have been working hard to improve their knowledge of grammar and
punctuation through a rotation of classroom activities.
Next week pupils will be identifying the key
features in a range of different advertisements. Pupils will then apply these
features into an advert for a transport invention of their choice.
SPELLINGS: This week, the
spellings are: chaotic, chemist, electrical, quality, quicken, accommodate,
school, recur, stomach, technology. Your child has received a copy of these
spellings which have been glued into their planner. They will be tested on these
words on Friday November 15th.
Other areas of the curriculum:
PE: This week pupils have focused on travelling in
gymnastics. Pupil’s explored different methods of travelling and combined them
with jumps and flight to perform their own sequence.
Spanish:
In
Spanish, the children have been learning all about objects and items in the
classroom.
Science:
This
week, the children have been learning about forces in actions. We have learnt
about friction and gravity and have used newton meters to measure forces.
ICT:
During
our ICT sessions, the children have been researching famous robots and their
function in everyday life. They have also explored the Lego Mindstorms software
which requires programming a robot to follow commands. A great start to an
exciting unit!
Once
again, please ensure that your child comes to school with the appropriate PE
kit each week. 5/6M and
5/6MO PE sessions are on Mondays and 5/6G PE sessions are on Tuesdays. As the
PE unit this half term is Gymnastics, the children only need their plain white
PE t-shirt and black shorts.
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