Author: Mr Roundtree

It’s the half-term holidays…

…and so there’s no specific homework next week. This is in-line with our Homework Policy.

During the half-term, please encourage your child to read each day, even if just for 15 minutes. As well as their current book, reading comics, newspapers, websites are all good – and why not take a trip to the library!

It would also be really helpful to help your child brush up on their times tables. Children in Year 2 should know x2, x5 and x10 (and the related division facts) by the end of the year – so give them a head start now! By the end of Year 4, children should know all their tables up to 12 x 12 (and the related division facts).

And make sure they enjoy the break, too: perhaps an autumn walk, a day out, a trip to the cinema… There are lots of things going on in Leeds – check them out.

Whatever you get up to, we’re looking forward to seeing you again on Monday 30 October.

School Council excitement

We listened to all of the school councillor candidates yesterday and there were many very impressive speeches.

Today, we entered the polling station first thing and voted for our chosen candidate. Mrs Weekes then added up all of the votes and our new Y6 school councillors were announced in assembly this afternoon. Very well done to Edward and Megan.

Planning an exploration

After the half term holiday, Year 6 are going to Fountains Abbey. We’ve been learning about the human and physical features of this site and comparing them to Machu Picchu in Peru.

This year, the children are taking control of their trip. We spent the afternoon looking at maps of the site and the timings of the day so that the different groups could plan what they were going to do while we’re there.

We decided that giving each other jobs would be a good idea so each child has a role:

  • map-reader
  • photographer
  • time-keeper
  • visitor surveyor
  • artist

It can be quite difficult to work in such a big group but the children did a good job discussing jobs and making sure each person was happy in the end.

13 October 2017

This week’s spelling is an activity based around –tious and -cious endings. There will be a test next week (Thursday 19 October) which will focus on both -fer endings and -tious and -cious.

Next week, we’ll focus on words ending in -tious and -cious. Here are some words which end in these sounds. Work out the root word for each of them and think about how this can help you to decide whether the spelling is with a ‘t’ or a ‘c’.

vicious, precious, conscious, delicious, malicious, suspicious, ambitious, cautious, fictitious, infectious, nutritious

In your book, I might see:

  • the words listed next to their root word: ambitious >>> ambition (some are harder than others)
  • practice of the root words, using the tips at the back of your book
  • an explanation of how to turn a root word into one with a -tious ending and why it is a t not a c

Exploring our local area

We had a great homework review today as the homework completed on exploring the local area was top notch. Archie created a great video of walking to school but with the camera around his dog’s neck; Edward presented a bird’s eye view of some local landmarks to us; Neive created a video of her exploration; and Ollie created a ‘guess where’ game for us to play.

Here are some more for you to see at home.

Photos of going to the shops

Lift-the-flap map with information about each area
Map with places labelled with pictures
A diary entry of a walk around the area

Some great quality spelling work this week, too, which was great to see, having discussed this as a class last week.

Sensational Semi-colons

This was our first lesson on how to use semi-colons in a list.

We had to place the semi-colons and commas correctly.

We worked in groups so that we could discuss our decisions and help each if needed.Using ‘contributions tokens’ helps us to make sure that everyone is contributing equally to group discussions. (Ask us how this works.)
By the end of the lesson, most of us could change a sentence which just required commas for a list into one which needed semi-colons.

What an act of folly!

Y6 are taking part in yet another competition!

Fountains Abbey is hosting a ‘Design a Folly’ competition, the of winner of which will have their folly built in the grounds of the abbey itself.

Yesterday, we were visited by Chris Hinett, an architect who is working on the project. He helped us to mark out the size of the actual folly on the floor of our classroom so we could understand how big it would be when it was built.

We had to move all the tables and chairs it was so big!

Then, he taught us about scale and how our designs for the folly would have be drawn at a 1:20 scale. We learnt this in relation to how tall we were. Our actual height is a 1:1 scale and, if we drew ourselves as half the size, this would be 1:2.

We drew around ourselves (1:1 scale).

Then had a go at drawing us at 1:20.

Finally, we used our Maths skills (divide by 20) and Chris’s fancy ruler to check how close our drawings were. Our attempts were pretty close and Zack’s and Owen’s were pretty much spot on.

We finished the session by looking at some examples of follies and sharing our initial ideas before getting some ideas jotted down in our Arty Ideas books. We’ll be finalising our entries next week for them to be sent off over half term.

Great artwork

We’ve been working on perspective in art to be able to create drawing which are in proportion. We started off by exploring shading as a technique to make things look 3D. Then, we moved on to using one-point perspective to draw a corridor or a street. This week, we tried out two-point perspective and drew a street from the corner rather than the middle of the road.

Nico got a certificate for his work on two-point perspective this week. (In the display above, his picture is the middle one on the right hand side.)

Grace has enjoyed it so much, she created this entire city at home and brought it in to show us!

Spelling Practice

Each week, the children bring home either a spelling activity or a list of spellings to learn. Unfortunately, a number of children haven’t been completing this task to a high enough standard and some haven’t completed it at all.

We all looked at some good examples today and we’ll be working hard to ensure we’re all producing such good spelling practice from now on.