Issue 30 2012-13

Newsletter Issue 30

Friday  10th May 2013

Dear Parent/Carer,

Another fantastic week of enriching learning; I particularly enjoyed watching our Indian dancer visitor (Annapurna) showing Year 3/ 4 some traditional dance moves. The performance triggered me to reflect on how much multicultural learning takes place at Robin Hood. Our displays celebrate different cultures from every angle; from the Japanese kimonos and koiniboro that hang up in the mall, to the South American artwork in the library, to the beautiful Ancient Egyptian masks on display in the Year 3/ 4 corridor. Our children receive quality experiences influenced by every corner of the globe during their time at our school.

Recycle for Schools

We recently asked for donations of old mobile phones amongst other technical devices to raise money through the O2 Recycle for Schools scheme. Thanks to all of your donations, we managed to raise £379. My thanks to the PTA for promoting this across school and thank you to Andy Armstrong and Katie Secretan who both approached me with this great fund raising idea.

Swedish visitors

We will soon be welcoming back some of our Swedish colleagues and friends as part of our continued involvement in the WHISE project. We will receive a visit from three of the team on the 21^st May, who will spend a day in our school to see how we approach teaching and learning, especially around our children with Special Educational Needs. We are building some very positive links with schools in Scandinavia and sharing what we do so well.

Numeracy workshops

We have had several requests for help from parents recently, who feel that they would like to know ways that they can best support their children with their Numeracy home learning. We have taken this on board and Miss Gascoigne and Miss Thackeray have planned several Numeracy workshops for parents of Key Stage 2 children to attend. The first two workshops will take place on 21^st May and 12^th June, both between 4:30 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. These sessions will provide you with extremely valuable information around the strategies that we teach in school to solve addition, subtraction and multiplication problems to children attaining between Level 3 and Level 6. We appreciate that not everyone can attend so we are aiming to film the sessions and post them onto our website.

School calendar

We are continually updating our school calendar on the website so please do make sure that you check it regularly if you are unsure about a date or time. Our aim is for the school calendar to be an accurate and helpful resource. For easy access, we will soon be moving the calendar link to the front page of our website.

Parentview

Your voice is important to us so please let us know how we are doing by posting your views on Parentview. Feedback helps to form evaluations on what we can do better and already we are working hard to improve communication between school and parents as a result of feedback given. Of course, it is also lovely to hear about the things we are doing very well. http://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/

PTA NEWS

Good luck to all those parents and children who are attending the Family Quiz tonight. We are sure you are all masterminds and the scores will be extremely high. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the teachers who have already pledged their free time to help at our Summer Fayre on 29th June. If any parents or carers are able to help out before during or after the event please contact us via robinhoodprimarypta@gmail.com.

Next week will see our fabulous and brilliant Year 6’s completing their Sats. The hard work and effort that has come from each and every Year 6 child this year has been nothing short of phenomenal so if your child is about to take their Sats, make sure they get plenty of rest and lots of hugs; we couldn’t be more proud of them.

Year 4 will also be getting excited about their residential trip to East Barnby next week. I can’t wait to report back on the fun the children have had next week.

Have a great weekend.

Mrs Dale

Nursery newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP

What a beautiful start to the week. The weather was fabulous and we really took full advantage of our outdoor area. The children have loved the story of the Queen’s Knickers this week and our classroom is now full of lots of brightly decorated knickers that we designed for the Queen.

THIS WEEK

In literacy we have designed and labelled some knickers for the Queen and then in topic we made them using fabric paints. The children really enjoyed this activity and we think the Queen would love to wear them. In numeracy the children learnt that anything can be counted and loved watching Mrs Steel’s daughter performing her hops and jumps. The children then went and did their own jumps and counted them. In phonics this week we have learnt the sound of the letter ‘m’. The children are amazing at spotting the letters that we have learnt so far (s, a, t, p, i, n) their next step is to be able to write the letters when asked.  We have continued to play phonics games concentrating on blending the words. The children have really enjoyed playing ‘What’s in the bag?’ and are doing really well at sound talking without our sound talk toy.

NEXT WEEK

Next week we are focusing on the story ‘Rapunzel’. In literacy we will be acting out the story and answering questions about it to ensure that we understand it.  Our literacy outcome this week will be a lovely picture of Rapunzel and they will write a super sentence below. This will give the children a chance to show us all how fantastic their pencil control is and how well they can write the letters they have learnt so far. In topic we will be finding out who can build the tallest tower for Rapunzel to live in and we will be making a Rapunzel display. Please remember you are welcome to pop into nursery at any time to have a look at your child’s wonderful learning. To support the children’s learning of Rapunzel we will be watching the Disney film ‘Tangled’ which is a PG. If you are not happy for your child to watch the film please fill in the form attached to the home learning. If you do not fill in this form we will assume that you are happy for your child to watch it.  This week in numeracy we will be focusing on counting; as most children can now count to 10 and back confidently we will now be pushing onto counting to and from 20 so that they are ready for Reception. The children will be taking part in two exciting maths activities the first will involve the children building towers and then counting how many blocks they have used and in the second activity they will use paint to print a tower and count how many prints they have used.   In phonics our sounds of the week the week are ‘n’ and ‘g’. We will be continuing with blending and segmenting in phonics but we will be focusing on how many phonemes (sounds) a word has in it for example the word ‘at’ has two phonemes and the word ‘cat’ has 3 phonemes.

A WARM WELCOME

We would like to welcome Miss Watson to our nursery who is a first year student from Leeds Trinity University. She is currently studying towards her Primary Education degree with a specialism in early years. She is a valuable addition to our team and the children are really enjoying the exciting activities she is planning for them alongside Mrs Steel.

A QUICK REMINDER

Please remember on sunny days to send your child with a sun hat and/or sun cream. Those children who come to school without these may not be allowed to play out in the afternoon. Please remember you are welcome to leave the sun cream with us at nursery.

Have an amazing weekend and fingers crossed for more sunshine.

Mrs Steel, Mrs Chin & Miss Fox

Reception newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP

The only way to describe how this week has gone is dramatic. On Tuesday the children discovered that a burglar had burgled our classroom and taken the Queen’s favourite knickers. We obviously immediately contacted the police and PCSO Niko came to show the children the CCTV of the burglar the police had found and then informed us what the police would be doing next. The children took it upon themselves to go and collect evidence using our brand new metal detectors and they made wonderful independent posters to inform people of the missing knickers.

THIS WEEK

As mentioned above we have read the story The Queen’s knickers and following this immersive learning experience the outcome was a letter written to the Queen to tell her about what had happened to her knickers. In topic this week the children made some amazing knickers for the Queen and I can’t express how wonderful they were. The children had used really delicate patterns to decorate them and the knickers really showed just how much the children’s motor skills have developed over the year. If the Queen has to cope without her favourite knickers for a while I’m sure she won’t mind wearing the ones the children made. They also made some scrumptious jam tarts because we heard someone stole those once too. In numeracy we have been introducing the children to the different coins and then they used the coins to buy some things for the Queen. In phonics we have read the words; ran, bear, can’t, know, again and cat and learnt to read and write the long e sounds; ea in heat and the split digraph e_e in here and eve.

NEXT WEEK

Next week the story we will be learning about will be Rapunzel. The children will start the week by performing the story of Rapunzel on our outside stage with other children as the audience. Our focus will be on the use of time connectives next week, so we will be playing lots of games with time connectives in and we will be encouraging the children to use them in their start write on Thursday. To support the children’s learning of Rapunzel we will be watching the Disney film ‘Tangled’ which is a PG. If you are not happy for your child to watch the film please fill in the form attached to the home learning. If you do not fill in this form we will assume that you are happy for your child to watch it. Our topic activities will have a science focus this week and we will be thinking about which material will be the strongest to use for Rapunzel’s hair and we will be designing a ladder to rescue Rapunzel from the tower. In numeracy we will be thinking about measuring and we will give the children a chance to use a ruler to measure the length of Rapunzel’s hair. In phonics we will be learning to read the words; long, things, new, after, wanted and eat and we will be learning to read and write the long e sounds; ie (piece, field), y (happy) and ey (monkey, keys).

A QUICK REMINDER

Please remember on sunny days to send your child with a sun hat and/or sun cream. Those children who come to school without these may not be allowed to play out in the afternoon. Please remember you are welcome to leave the sun cream in your child’s locker.

Have an amazing weekend and fingers crossed for more sunshine.

Miss Pyatt, Miss Lambert and the Reception Team.

Key Stage 1

Home Learning: As the year has progressed you might have noticed that the spellings have become progressively more difficult and therefore require time to be dedicated to learning them and sometimes understanding their meaning. In order to do this, we ask you support your child by explaining their meaning before applying the word into a sentence to give it a context alongside the description. For this week’s home learning please support your child in learning their spellings from across the half term. This can be a progressive journey throughout the week; starting from reading and then writing them whilst still looking at them, leading onto reading them and covering them up to spell them before finally you saying the word for them to spell.. Once they have learnt the spellings and meanings please encourage your child to select at least 10 that they would like to use in a sentence. This can be done in their home learning books (pictures are always welcome too!).

News:

It’s HOT!

Fingers crossed we are getting into the start of summer now and the sunshine will remain to be a daily feature. On days when the sun is shining the children spend their lunch times on the field, which is the cause of delight and almost a whole hour of running around and playing. As you can imagine, when they come back inside for their afternoon lessons they are thirsty and warm. With this in mind, it is imperative that every child should bring with them to school a water bottle, sun hat and sun cream (or at the very least have some sun cream put on their faces, legs and arms before school). Heat generated from the sun and exercise can cause headaches and lack of concentration, so your support around this would be very much appreciated. Please make it clear to your child that:

·         Water bottles must be taken home, washed out and refilled on a daily basis.

·         Sun cream in school is to be kept in their book bag and ONLY put on their own skin. This is important for everyone’s safety, as some children have allergies or sensitivities to certain ingredients.

·         Staff CAN NOT put sun cream on for them.

Literacy:

We are now into the 5^th week of our adventure stories, having swapped the focus books (Rainbow Fish, Hugless Douglas and Don’t Wake the Beastie) between the classes again. The children are continuing to expand their understanding of textual features such as speech marks, verbs and adverbs, adding description through the use of adjectives and using time connectives to order events. We have started to really encourage the children to paint the picture of how they envisage their stories with their words, so that their reader can also see the picture from their imagination. The results of this detailed description have been truly magnificent! The reading the children do at home coupled with the power of their creativity bear exciting and engaging writing from all. Our next star write will take place this Friday and will be done in their very own booklets.

Numeracy:

Our numeracy learning for the rest of the term has moved on from measurement and has taken a more tailored focus to meet the needs of the children in each class. The units we have opted to focus on are those that the children have recurrently slipped up on, based on our in class assessments from throughout the year and the half termly assessment we carry out. This week our main teach has been around ‘find the difference’ questions in their many varied forms (i.e. how many more? How much longer? etc). We began by looking at the different ways these problems can be solved, for instance if there is a small gap between numbers – like what’s the difference between 24 and 27, we can count on from 24 to 27 and see how many fingers we count on, or if there is a big gap – like 49 and 1, we would count back and see which number we land on.  Alongside the consolidation of this we have revisited the Malteser system, for partitioning and taking away two 2 digit numbers as well as sneaking in a few addition, division and multiplication problems to ensure the children are becoming better equipped with reading word problems and extracting the functions and key information from the questions.

Topic:

Next week the children will move onto their two week block on Art, focusing on the work of Andy Warhol and his use of bold colours to create four contrasting colours of the same image.  Thank you to every one for providing your child with a white t-shirt to draw their own Andy Warhol style image on the front using a chosen musical instrument.  Your children will be wearing their t-shirt in Celebration Assembly on Friday 24^th May; we look forward to seeing you there!

Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter

LKS2 had an exciting visit on Tuesday afternoon from a Bollywood dancer, who not only taught the children different Indian style dances, but also told us all some fascinating Indian mythical stories and performed some traditional Indian songs. A reporter from the Rothwell Record came to snap a picture of the children performing an Indian dance routine and we are looking forward to reading the article when it’s out next month!

Literacy

The children have had lots of fun during literacy this week becoming real life news reporters. We started the week hot seating various eye witnesses from different news articles, asking them to tell us the events of the story from their own perspective. We then rewrote our News articles from the previous week in the form of a script including lots of fantastic adjectives to describe. The children then worked super hard practicing acting these and even brought in props to further enhance their performances. The final news reports were truly brilliant and the children really impressed us with their clear and confident performances.

Numeracy

In numeracy this week the children have been learning all about the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentages and how to convert between the three. They have also learnt how to convert improper fractions into mixed numbers. Why not ask your child to demonstrate this to you? Next week we are going to be revisiting time, learning how to successfully read a 24 hour clock and how to read and navigate around a calendar.

Topic

After the children had a great time with our Indian dancer on Tuesday we then researched even more styles of Indian dance and the children have been busy practicing their own Indian dance routine. We have continued to practice our knowledge of the 7 continents and looked at the locations of the different countries.  

Residential

Can all year 4 children who are going on the residential ensure they meet in the school hall on Wednesday 15^th at 8:45 a.m. Can everyone be dressed in their own clothes and bring a water bottle so they can have a drink on the journey. Can we also ensure all clothes are clearly labelled so we can return any lost property to the rightful owners.

.Spellings to be tested on Monday 20^th May (the children already have their spellings for this Monday)

Please support your child in practicing their spellings every day to help them to achieve 10/10 in their spelling test every week.

Group One	Group Two
Friday	Wrong
Saturday	Wrinkle
Sunday	Wrist
May	Wreck
June	Wrapper
July	Write
August	Wrote
September	Wrap
October	Necessary
November	Especially

Reminders

·         Please ensure your child’s PE kit is kept in school from Monday-Friday every week.

·         As the weather is getting warmer please make sure your child is bringing a water bottle to school every day.

Have a lovely weekend!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Team 3/4

UKS2 News Roundup:

·         Next week sees our year 6 pupils take their final SAT’s assessments. We would encourage all pupils to have a great night’s sleep and a healthy breakfast to provide vital brain power for each assessment. All pupils should have confidence coming into this week, as their efforts leading up to the SAT’s have been fantastic!

·         This week’s achievers are Caison and Charlie in 5/6B. The boys have been given the achiever this week for their fantastic contributions to our 5/6 blog. The boys always offer their free time to help update our blog and their fantastic contribution is recognised and greatly appreciated. Well done boys!

·         As a result of feedback from some parents we will be holding ‘Numeracy Workshops’, where sessions will be delivered to demonstrate the key concepts taught in Numeracy sessions. Your child should have received further information regarding these sessions from their class teacher.

·         Dates for your diary:

·         13^th May: SATS week. The breakdown for the week is as follows:

Monday 13^th May- Reading paper

Tuesday 14^th May- Spelling, punctuation and grammar test.

Wednesday 15^th May- Numeracy paper A and mental maths test. 

Thursday 15^th May AM- Numeracy paper B. PM- Level 6 numeracy papers.

·         17^th May- Any pupils who have been given a rising stars grammar and punctuation book, please return this by the required date.

·         21^st May- Addition and Subtraction parent workshop (4.30pm- 5.15pm).

·         5^th- 7^th June- Year 6 residential to Robin Wood.

·         12^th June- Multiplication parent workshop (4.30pm- 5.15pm).  

Numeracy:

·         This week year 6 pupils have been coached around strategies from their previous SAT’s and mental maths papers. The year 5 pupils have consolidating their knowledge of time and been investigating world time zones.  Next week pupils will be creating their very own lunar theme park, which requires designing the park and calculating the profits/costs.

·         This terms times tables challenge will be held on the last Friday of term, 24^th May. We encourage all pupils to practice as much as possible as the current champions are certainly proving tough to beat!

Literacy:

·         This week pupils have been continuing to develop their writing of discursive texts. Pupils have developed further ideas for arguments for and against space exploration and have taken part in a whole class debate at the end of week.

·         Next week pupils will be learning how to write explanation texts and applying this into a context for their own alien creature.

Spellings: Next week pupils will be tested on the following spellings; attitude, develop, purpose, success, interrupt, serious, curious, organise, future, atmosphere.

Other areas of the curriculum:

·         This week in ICT the children have continued inputting procedures to program robots to manoeuvre over canyons, which the children have made. These models aim to replicate the surface of Mars.

·         This week in Spanish, pupils have created a class fact file of the planets in our solar system.

·         In PE this week pupils have been continuing to learn the Big Dance routine that will be performed by the whole school. Children have still to finish refining the whole section of the dance. The video resource is available online if pupils search Big Dance 2013.

·         In our TOPIC sessions pupils have continued their learning about space. This week pupils have been researching various space disasters. Pupils have applied their research into a newspaper article reporting and commemorating on these events.

·         In Music, 5/6M have continued to learn the Yellow Submarine by the Beatles on the recorder. Pupils have now combined different sections of the piece and performed a variety of notes effectively. 5/6G are continuing to explore several percussion instruments; including xylophones, and have continued to develop learning twinkle twinkle little star. 5/6 B have continued to develop their compositions on garage band. Pupils have been introduced to changing the dynamics in the track to affect the mood of the film.

Visit our blog: http://robinhood56.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Issue 29 2012-13

Newsletter Issue 29

Friday 3rd May 2013

Dear Parent/Carer,

We started the week with excitement in Year 5/6 with the fantastic trip to Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire. The children came back absolutely buzzing about what they had seen and learnt. It’s always a delight for us to see how much value the children get from these trips. Thank you to all parents and carers for getting the children to school an hour early so that the children could make the most of their time there.

BSL lessons

I had the pleasure of attending Mrs Spear’s first BSL lesson this week. Along with some parents and staff members, we learnt how to sign vowels, apply those to some simple names, ask a persons name, say “My name is” and ask if someone is right. It was so enjoyable and refreshing to be on the “other side”, so to speak! I can’t wait for next week’s lesson. I even received a Headteacher sticker from Callum Spear, when I tried out my new skills on him!

Rankin Dragons

Reception have had some special visitors this week. Miss Parker brought in her Rankin Dragons to share with the children, as part of their learning about the film, Shrek. They were able to hold them and learn all about them and were encouraged to use powerful adjectives to describe them. Thank you to Miss Parker for sharing her precious pets with us.

Sun cream and hats

We ask that as summer (finally) descends upon us, we all work together to keep the children safe from the sun. This week, the children have spent lunchtimes on the top field, so please can you ensure that you put sun cream on your child or children before they come to school as the weather warms up and jumpers are peeled off. Also, a sun hat or cap is a brilliant idea, if you have one.

Extreme readers

I am delighted to announce the winners of the Extreme Reading competition. We sure do have some extreme readers in our school and thanks to ALL children and families who got involved. However, the prize for the most extreme readers in our school goes to Hayden Tyndall (Nursery), Charlie Bruce (Year 1), Millie Parish (Year 3/4) and Jack Strachan (Year 5/6). All children will receive a book related prize.

PTA

I would like to extend my thanks out once more to the PTA for their continued support in organising fantastic events for our school community. We have the family quiz night and the summer fayre to look forward to this term. These events cannot be the success that they are without your help, so I urge and encourage you to contact the PTA and offer your help in running these events (even if it is just an hour or so) when you can. Thanks.

PTA NEWS

Thank you to all those of you that have returned your invites for the quiz night on 10 May. It has come to our attention that there was a delay in the invites being issued by some year groups so we are able to accept monies up until Wednesday 8 May. When sending in returns, please ensure you include your child’s name and your family name. We are sure it will be a fun night for all that attend, with plenty of questions the children will know the answers to and with a top cash prize of £75 it really is worthwhile coming along and taking part. Please don't forget that ALL monies raised from the PTA events goes towards your children's future, from fantastic PE equipment to the summer treats which are just around the corner. Over the next few weeks we will be asking for donations/help for our summer Fayre to be held on 29 June up on the school field, weather permitting. If you feel you can help us in anyway please contact us by email at robinhoodprimarypta@gmail.com.

Everyone, have a super loooooooooooong weekend! May the sun shine brilliantly!

Mrs Dale

Nursery newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP

The children were so excited on Wednesday to meet our visitors Sparky and Squirt who are Miss Parker’s pet Rankin’s dragons. The children were very brave and all had a go at holding them and touching them during our PSHE session. They were really gentle with the dragons and looked after them very well; no doubt the dragons will definitely want to come and visit us again soon. During this immersive learning experience the children learnt how to care for and handle animals and the vocabulary the children were using to describe the dragons was fabulous.

 THIS WEEK

In literacy we have been learning about the story Shrek and thinking about the characters and the setting of the story. The children have made swamps and have really enjoyed discussing the different properties of the materials to decide which they might find in Shrek’s swamp. We have also made an amazing display with pictures of the children holding the dragons and we have shown off some of their magnificent 2D castles too. If you come to visit us in Nursery you will be able to appreciate the children’s creativity. In numeracy we have been on an exciting number and shape hunt, trying to spot numbers and shapes in the environment. The children were very excited about this task and were super shape spotters. In phonics this week we have learnt the sounds of the letters ‘I’ and ‘n’. The children are becoming really confident with the letter sounds we have learnt so far, with some children accessing red band and trying yellow band books which is a fantastic achievement for nursery children. We have continued to play phonics games concentrating on blending the words the sound talk toy is saying. We have even managed to make words from the sounds we have learnt so far including; is, it and pin.

NEXT WEEK

Next week we are focusing on the story ‘The Queen’s Knickers’. In literacy we will be designing a pair of knickers for the Queen to wear and we will then use our fabulous writing skills to label the knickers. The children will then make their knickers in topic and we will hang them all up on a big washing line in our classroom. In numeracy we will be learning that everything can be counted not just objects. So Mrs Steel’s daughter, Hannah, will be performing some star jumps and other exercises which we will count and we will also be listening to the number of sounds we can hear. So this week if you are walking up the stairs count how many steps you make with your child or see how many cows or lambs you can count in the field. In phonics our sound of the week this week is ‘m’. We will be continuing with blending and segmenting in phonics but we will be concentrating more on the children segmenting the words. So they will be saying “in my bag I have a c_a_t” because the nursery children are so clever they no longer need the sound talk toy to sound the words out for them - they can do it themselves!

A QUICK REMINDER

Now that we are finally seeing some sunshine, please can you send your child in with a sunhat which they can keep on their peg. Although we are not allowed to apply sun cream to your child, you can apply it in the morning and then we can keep it safe for them and we will remind them to re-apply it at lunchtime. If you send sun cream in with your child, please ensure that it has their name on.

Have a lovely May bank holiday weekend and please remember school is not open on Monday.

Mrs Steel, Mrs Chin & Miss Fox

Reception newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP

The children were so excited on Monday to meet our visitors Sparky and Squirt who are Miss Parker’s pet Rankin Dragons. The children were ever so brave and they all had a go at holding them and touching them during our literacy session. They were really gentle with the dragons and looked after them very well, so no doubt the dragons will definitely want to come and visit us again soon. Following this immersive learning experience the children went away and wrote some amazing adjectives to describe the dragons.

 THIS WEEK

In literacy we have been learning about the story Shrek and thinking about the characters and the setting of the story. In topic this week the children have made swamps and have really enjoyed discussing the different properties of the materials to decide which they might find in Shrek’s swamp. We have also made an amazing Shrek display with pictures of the children holding the Rankin Dragons and we have displayed some of their magnificent star writing this week so that everyone who comes to visit Reception can appreciate how wonderful the children’s writing is. In numeracy we have been thinking about addition and subtraction and Shrek has been very busy going to and from the market buying vegetables. The children are now really starting to understand the concepts of addition and subtraction so please reinforce these at home wherever possible. In phonics we have read the words; took, school, think, home, who and didn’t and learnt to read and write the long a sounds eigh (quadgraph) in neigh, ey in grey and ei in veins.

NEXT WEEK

Next week we are focusing on the story The Queen’s Knickers. We don’t want to give too much away about what we will be doing in literacy but let’s just say the start of the week will be very dramatic when we realise the Queen’s knickers have been stolen and we will end our literacy sessions by writing a letter to the Queen. In topic we will be making our very own knickers for the Queen by printing repeating patterns on them and at the end of the week we will be making jam tarts and learning the Queen of Hearts rhyme. Outside we will be going on a treasure hunt with our brand new metal detectors to find the Queen’s missing treasure. In numeracy we will be focusing on money. We will start by looking at the value of different coins up to 10p and then by the end of the week the children will be buying items with their money and receiving change. So this week if you are shopping please take the opportunity to show your child all the different coins that we use to buy things with. In phonics following on from learning all the different sounds that make the long a sound we will be moving onto graphemes that make the long e sound including; ea in heat and the split digraph e_e in here and eve. The words we will be learning to read next week are; ran, bear, can’t, know, again and cat.

A QUICK REMINDER

Now that we are finally seeing some sunshine please can you send your child in with a sunhat which they can keep in their lockers. Although we are not allowed to apply sun cream to your child, you can apply it in the morning and then they can keep it in their lockers and re-apply it themselves at lunchtime. If you send sun cream in with your child to keep in their lockers please ensure that it has their name on.

Have a lovely May Day bank holiday weekend and please remember school is not open on Monday.

Miss Pyatt, Miss Lambert and the Reception Team.

Key Stage 1

Home Learning: Year One Throughout the year the children have been learning Pseudo words within their reading of Phonics words. To the children these are called “alien” words which are made up/pretend words but include a phonic sound. For example: groiks This starts with a ‘gr’ sound, has a middle “oi” sound and ends with an “s”. Home learning this week is as follows: The children will all be given a booklet with phonics sounds that we have covered across the year. Use the booklet to help practise reading the twenty alien words provided and then make up ten of your own. Please write these in your home learning books. These will be shared in class. The best alien words will win a prize! Year Two The Year Two children will also be given the same booklet with all the sounds practised so far. Once you have gone through these sounds with the children, support your child in thinking of different words and discuss whether it is a noun, adjective, verb or adverb. Each column needs to have at least 5 – 10 words. For example: Noun: Leeds Adjectives: Super Verb: Dance Adverb: Quickly The busiest sheet of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs will also win a prize!

Messages

Cakes and Buns

Thank you to all the parents who have supported their children in making tasty cakes and buns and bringing them in to school! The children have loved sharing and eating these with their class (The teachers have enjoyed a little taste too!) We thank you very much. Real life experience learning is extremely valuable to your child and we are sure they enjoyed taking part in this activity.

Art Attack

Thank you for providing your child with a white t-shirt for the up and coming Andy Warhol design project that will be taking place in Topic. This is a reminder that the t-shirts need to be in school by no later than Wednesday 8^th May as these will be used the following week in the children’s learning. We look forward to seeing the fabulous designs your child creates!

Spellings

Each week your child receives spellings to practise reading and writing at home. These are specific words set by the class teacher and are currently being used within each class during your child’s learning. It is extremely important that these are practised each week as the children are tested on them and these are useful words for children to use in both their reading and writing.

The week ahead

Topic

Next week the children will be broadening their horizons and listening to music from all across the world! They will be using their geographical skills and look closely at music from Africa, India, Mexico and the USA. The children will be listening to music and locating these countries on a world map. They will also be learning about the different clothes, landscapes and foods that people have in these different parts of the world and compare the similarities and differences. The children are really enjoying this half term’s topic and if you have any music from other parts of the world, we would be extremely grateful for your child to bring this in to school and share with the class!

Literacy

This week each class has started using a different story to help them write a new interesting adventure story! The children will be continuing to progress their understanding of nouns (A place, object or thing), adjectives (A describing word, verbs (A doing word) and the use of conjunctions (where they develop a sentence using words such as and or because).

“My best hugs are cosy because it makes me feel loved and protected” said Douglas.

Can you spot which is which?!

Numeracy:

This week the children have been having lots of fun with capacity! The children have been measuring different amounts of water using non - standard measurements (cups) and standard measurements (millilitres and litres). The children have also designed their own fruit drink using orange juice, lemon juice and apple and blackcurrant.  They have continued to build on their knowledge of reading scales and have started to look at finding the difference between amounts. Next week the children will be focusing their attentions on subtraction problems and “finding the difference”. This is a difficult concept to understand and allows children to either take away or add to find the answer.

For example:

What is the difference between 5 and 9?

What is the difference between 10 and 20?

Have a lovely bank holiday weekend and let’s hope the sun stays shining for us all!

Lower Key Stage 2 Newsletter

What an exciting week we’ve had in year 3/4! The children are thoroughly enjoying our India topic so far and are also making great progress with learning the Big Dance routine, which has a ballet focus this year so it isn’t easy! We’ve also been enjoying the warmer weather and have enjoyed taking our PE lessons outside for the first time this year!

Literacy

This week, the children have been learning to extend their ideas into compound and complex sentences. They wrote some fantastic news articles about Miss Pyatt’s accident, which happened during the Easter holidays and also reported on an event that has happened at school this year. These were then copied up to form a Robin Hood newspaper that will be displayed in our classrooms for everyone to read. We are all very impressed with the children’s attitude towards their journalistic writing and all children now have a good understanding of the different elements of a news article. Why not ask your child what orientation and reorientation mean?

Numeracy

In numeracy this week the children have been building upon their knowledge of 2D shape. They have been learning the names of different polygons, as well as identifying right angles and classifying different types of triangles. They have shown great enthusiasm in describing the different properties of 2D shapes, including the number of edges, vertices, right angles, lines of symmetry and whether the shapes are regular or irregular. See if your child can remember the four different types of triangle we also learned about this week!

Topic

Well, we have had an exciting week with our topic learning! We are sure you’ve probably all seen your child’s henna design already! They thoroughly enjoyed designing and then painting their own patterns. While some used stencils, some were able to paint their own designs free-hand and the results were fantastic! The children were also lucky enough to try on Indian saris with a partner and continue their PowerPoint presentations about India in ICT.

Spellings to be tested on Monday 13^th May (the children already have their spellings for this Monday)

Please support your child in practicing their spellings every day to help them to achieve 10/10 in their spelling test every week.

Group One	Group Two
they’ll	knowledge
you’ll	knock
you’re	knee
It’s	knight
It’ll	knit
I’m	knew
Monday	knife
Tuesday	know
Wednesday	known
Thursday	knuckle

Reminders

·    Please ensure your child’s PE kit is kept in school from Monday - Friday every week.

·    As the weather is getting warmer please make sure your child is bringing a water bottle to school every day.

·    Can all year 4 children going on Residential make sure they have paid any outstanding money to Mrs Smith in the office by next Friday 10^th May.

Have a lovely weekend!

Team 3/4

UKS2 News Roundup:

·        This week’s achiever is Bethan in 5/6G. Bethan produced a fantastic outcome using morpho on the iPad for her biography on Neil Armstrong in literacy. Well done Bethan your outcome is a fantastic example of what is possible using ICT. 

·        We would like to thank all pupils for their enthusiastic approach to our Jodrell Bank school trip on Monday. All pupils were a credit to the school and experienced a fantastic day of learning, through a range of engaging workshops and activities.

·        Can we please remind all year 6 children who have been given a rising stars grammar and punctuation book to continue to engage with this resource before the spelling and grammar test during SATS week.

·        Dates for your diary:

·        10^th May: Please can pupils have their leaver’s book profiles completed by this point. The profile can be emailed to the following address; leavers@robinhood.leeds.sch.uk and should contain no more than 400 words.

·        13^th May: SATS week. The breakdown for the week is as follows:

Monday 13^th May- Reading paper

Tuesday 14^th May- Spelling, punctuation and grammar test.

Wednesday 15^th May- Numeracy paper A and mental maths test. 

Thursday 15^th May AM- Numeracy paper B. PM- Level 6 numeracy papers.  

·        5^th- 7^th June: Year 6 residential to Robin Wood.

Numeracy:

·        This week pupils have been handling and interpreting a variety of data sets. Pupils have been taught a range of strategies to help them solve problems in a more strategic way.

·        Next week pupils will be revisiting time and learning about time zones. We will also be applying a variety of numeracy skills to an investigation.

Literacy:

·        This week pupils have been developing their understanding of discursive texts. Pupils have developed ideas for arguments for and against space travel and exploration. Pupils have been using connectives effectively to join ideas to provide balanced viewpoints in their writing.

Spellings: Next week pupils will be tested on the following spellings; original, gradual, generation, succeed, realise, between, awkward, amongst, complete, identify.

Other areas of the curriculum:

·        This week in ICT the children have been inputting procedures to program robots to manoeuvre over canyons, which the children have made. These models aim to replicate the surface of Mars.

·        This week in Spanish, pupils have extended their vocabulary to describe the planets in our solar system in more detail. 

·        In PE this week pupils have been continuing to learn the Big Dance routine that will be performed by the whole school. Children have recapped the steps to the first and second section of the dance and are now refining the whole section of the dance. The video resource is available online if pupils search Big Dance 2013.

·        In our TOPIC sessions pupils have continued their learning about space. This week pupils have been researching the planets in our solar system. Pupils have selected their favourite planet and have produced a travel brochure for their chosen planet.

·        In Music, 5/6M have continued to learn the Yellow Submarine by the Beatles on the recorder. Pupils are continuing to develop playing a range of new and established notes. 5/6G are continuing to explore several percussion instruments; including xylophones and have started to learn how to play twinkle twinkle little star. 5/6 B have continued to develop their compositions on garage band. Pupils have been introduced to the importance of a pulse in their track to set tempo of the piece.

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