Mr Roundtree, Author at Moortown Primary School, Leeds

18 September 2015

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due on Wednesday 23 September 2016.

To discuss holidays.

Over dinner one day, discuss the topic ‘Holidays’ with the people in your house:

What is the best holiday you’ve been on? (This might be a family holiday, a day out or even a school trip.)
Why do people go on holiday?
Where do people go on holiday and why?
Where would your dream holiday destination be?
What would you like to find out about in our Holidays Big Topic?

Talk Time homework – This involves a discussion topic eg ‘Should animals be kept in zoos?’ Children should make notes (even pictures, diagrams etc) ready to participate in a class / group discussion on the topic. Please make sure you write a comment about the Talk Time discussions in the homework books.

Top Tips: Turn the telly off! Sit around the dining table! Have a chat and share opinions and ideas! Children should talk with family, friends and each other. (Your child should write some notes in their Homework Books.)

Great first lot of homework

What a great start to homework this year!

To design/create a ‘Lost Thing’

Our bottle top collection

Shaun Tan, the main character and author of our topic book ‘The Lost Thing’, spends his time collecting bottle tops. He kindly shared with us a picture of his collection at the front of his book. He’s managed to collect a whole range of weird and wonderful designs so we decided to create a collection of our own to rival his.

We’ll reveal our whole collection very soon…

Newsletters

Here are the first newsletters of the year.

This term’s newsletters have been emailed and paper copies will be sent home later this week.

This year, we’ll publish the newsletters on the website, too. Here are the first half-term’s…

Reception provide their own newsletters and lots of photos, top tips and news on their class news page.

11 September 2015

Children have been given a new Learning List book, which gives lots of great tips for learning spellings as well as being designed to allow children to practise independently.

This week’s spellings are all words that include ough:

thought

bought

ought

nought

brought

ought

rough

tough

enough

cough

Every minute counts…

Is your child ever late for school? Did you know…

5 minutes late each day = 3 days of school lost in a year
10 minutes late each day = 6.5 days of school lost in a year
15 minutes late each day = 10 days of school lost in a year
20 minutes late each day = 13 days of school lost in a year
30 minutes late each day = 19 days of school lost in a year
19 days lost in a school year is likely to lead to one whole grade lower in SATs across all subjects

Too much screen time?

You might have heard about this research recently. Although it focuses on older pupils, we think it’s just as relevant for primary-aged children: too much screen-time can undermine learning.

You might have heard about this research recently. Although it focuses on older pupils, we think it’s just as relevant for primary-aged children: too much screen-time can undermine learning.

An extra hour a day of television, internet or computer game time in Year 10 is linked to poorer grades at GCSE, a Cambridge University study suggests, as reported by BBC on-line.

The researchers recorded the activities of more than 800 14-year-olds and analysed their GCSE results at 16. Those spending an extra hour a day on screens saw a fall in GCSE results equivalent to two grades overall.

The researchers analysed the habits of 845 pupils from schools in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk at the age of 14 years and six months. They researchers correlated the data with the pupils’ GCSEs, taken the following year.

Pupils who did an extra hour of homework and reading performed better than their peers.

On average, the 14-year-olds said they spent four hours of their leisure time each day watching TV or in front of a computer. The researchers found an additional hour of screen-time each day was associated with 9.3 fewer GCSE points at 16 – the equivalent of dropping a grade in two subjects. Two extra hours of screen-time was associated with 18 fewer points – or dropping a grade in four subjects.

Interestingly, a teacher in school accidentally discovered similar results. When teaching about data and statistics, she asked the class how many TVs were in the home. Broadly speaking, those who reported fewer TVs in their homes were children who were making the best progress.

Fun in maths

Having reminded ourselves of place value this week, we used all of our refreshed knowledge to play some maths games and challenge ourselves along the way.

Beanbag drop

Somebody threw the beanbags into the basket and everybody had to write down the number it made.

Then, that person took charge and asked us questions about our number. How many thousands? What is 100 more/less? What is this number rounded to the nearest 10,000?

Target challenge

We rolled a die to decide how many digits we were working with. Then, we picked a target (the greatest number, a multiple of 5, the number closest to 6000). Each person then picked a playing card for us to write into our place value grid aiming for that target. Sometimes we all won and sometimes one person had thought more carefully.

Questions dice

For this, we roll the die to make a number and then we had to roll again to choose a question. Sometimes we had to add 100, sometimes we had to take 10. It really helped us to understand what each digit was worth in that number.

11 September 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 16 September 2015.

To create your own ‘Lost Thing’.

In our first mini-topic of the year, we’ve been reading Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing’. We’ve asked lots of questions to find out more about it:

What is the lost thing? Where has it come from? Who left it there? How does it feel to be left there?

Now, create your own ‘Lost Thing’ and think about these questions for your own design. You might decide to design and label an image or you could gather odds and ends from around the house to make your ‘Lost Thing’ in 3D.

Creative homework. This involves a creative piece of open-ended work based around an ‘I can…’ statement eg ‘I can use research skills to find out about a country.’ ‘I know how instructions are used’ Only one rule: don’t use more than one page of A4 (unless your teacher says otherwise!). Content will be a balanced mix of subjects.

Top Tips: Be as creative as you like! Chat about ideas with your child: Could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, foldout ‘extras’ on the page…?

Friday football returns

Our Friday Football Club is open to everyone in school, from Reception to Year 6. The new season starts on Friday 18 September.

This is a great way to get younger children to learn the basics of football – passing, control and dribbling. The sessions are delivered in a fun and engaging way, ensuring all players get lots of touches of the ball in a non-pressurised activity, encouraging them to use both feet and develop their fundamental skills.

For the older children, they train like the professionals in the unique Total Footballers Clubs; they work through a fun skills and games programme developed by an in-house ex-professional footballer and delivered by qualified F.A. coaches. They’ll learn new skills as well as develop the ones they already have. Most importantly, they’ll have fun doing it with a football at their feet.

Want to sign up? Please follow the online booking process.

Want to know more? Please contact TSC Sports and Dance Coaching on 0113 3226115 with any questions you may have, or ask Paula or Nicky in the school office.