Author: Mr Roundtree

Creative homework – Night Time

As we’re learning about night time, the children did a Creative homework showing what they’d learnt about night time so far.

Josh wrote a great poem all about night time.

 

Ben created a night time mind map with a dark background.

Albert made night time jobs out of Lego!

We also thought about what we didn’t know about night time and, therefore, what questions we’d like answering. Here are a few…

Isaac wondered…

Noorpreet pondered…

Grace asked…

Ripley queried…

Lewis speculated…

Ben quizzed…

Thomas probed…

Ishaan deliberated…

What a curious class we are! I only hope we can find at least some of the answers before we leave Year 2!

08 May 2015

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due Wednesday 13 May 2015.

I can talk about my favourite book character.

This week, Year 2 have been writing character descriptions. We have been looking at characters from different Roald Dahl stories and we’ve talked about their appearance, behaviour, likes and dislikes and our opinions of them. In particular, we’ve looked at the characters from The Twits. Can you ask your child about their favourite book character and talk about how you would describe them?

From our Homework Policy:

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.)

Talk times

Use the ideas in The Key Jar to open up some thought-provoking discussion.

At Moortown Primary, we really value the importance of speaking and listening:

  • the more a child listens well to lots of speaking, the more (s)he will be able to understand and use and write
  • the better a child speaks, with interesting words and structures, the better (s)he will write, with interesting words and sentences

Thanks to the parent (Reception, Year 4) who recently mentioned a great resource. I’ve shared it with teachers, but why let them have all the good ideas?! Use the ideas in The Key Jar to open up some thought-provoking discussion at home or on a journey.

(Find out more information here.)

Phonics sessions

Thank you to all the parents who attended last week’s phonics sessions, the third of three rounds of ‘open mornings’ over the course of the year. Nearly all children had a dad, mum or other relative attend, taking the time to learn more about how we teach phonics and thinking about you can can support at home.  Here are a few of the comments:

  • “Love these sessions – they are very helpful.  It’s amazing to see the class learning and seeing the improvements and progress over the year.  Very effective in helping parents to help their children.”
  • “The children were so well-behaved and paying attention.  Great to understand more about how they blend words and to see how the class is progressing.”
  • “Lovely session.  Very informative and great to see the children working.”
  • “Surprised at the level – much higher than expected.”
  • “Loved seeing the techniques used to create sentences and understand them.”

As you can see, visitors found the session entertaining and informative.  There were lots of comments about the high level of children’s learning.

01 May 2015

This week’s homework is creative and is due on Wednesday 06 May 2015.

If I ran the country I would…

It’s the General Election on Thursday 07 May so how would you like the country to be run? At home, get your child involved in thinking about what we are voting for and how it might change things across the country. What are the main parties called and what kind of things are they promising? Then, in as creative a way as you like, think about how you would run the country and what your main policies would be (as a serious bid or with crazy ideas just for a bit of fun).

Your child could…

  • create a speech for people to vote for you
  • draw a ‘Theme Park Map’ of the country as it would look if you ran it
  • create a manifesto
  • write a story with you as the prime minister
  • write a letter to the prime minister suggesting the policies you would put in place
I look forward to the interesting ideas you come up with for the country’s future.

24 April 2015

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 29 April 2015.

  • What do you know about night time?
  • What questions would you like answered about night time?

With the launch of a new topic for Summer term, I’d like the children to think about what they already know about night time (the night sky, people, animals, changes) and what they don’t know but they’d really like to find out. Thinking about questions they’d like answering means we can keep the topic closely linked to the children’s interests with them excited about their learning.

As always for Creative homework, the choice is yours, but here are a few ideas of what you could do.

  • An oral presentation.
  • An interview with your child.
  • Question and answers (but some answers may be missing).
  • A night time poem.

Welcome back!

I hope everybody’s had a great Easter holiday and are ready to return to school fresh-faced! This half term darkness will descend on Year 2 as we take a look at night time. We’ll delve into the depths of space to look at the planets, moon and stars before plummeting back to Earth to think about the jobs people do at night and animals that have become adapted to night time.

This week (20.04.15)…

Maths

This week, we’re exploring number by looking at rounding to the nearest ten, doubling and halving, place value (hundreds, tens, units) and knowing inverse operations (add-subtract, multiply-divide). Our tables focus will be 2s so lots of counting in 2s at home, walking to school, going up stairs will be very helpful. We’ll then think about how knowing our 2 times tables means we know our 20 and 200 times table, too.

I got 7 Easter eggs but my friend got double that amount. How many eggs did my friend get?

English

English will be very closely linked to our night time topic as we learn how to write information texts. Organising our writing using a title, introduction, subtitles and matching information will be important this week so, when reading at home, choose a non-fiction book and discuss how it is organised and why this is useful.

Topic

Night time will kick off with a trip into space to explore what it is we see in the night sky. We’ll learn about our solar system and its planets as well as what stars are and the Greek legends that tell the story behind the constellations of stars we see at night. At home, stay up late and do some star gazing. See what questions the children have and ask them to write them down (using the correct punctuation) and bring them in for us to discuss.

27 March 2015

Year 2 will not have any spellings this week as we are doing mock SATs papers next week which will include a spelling test. To help at home you can practise spellings from previous weeks or see how your child does with common words that they haven’t necessarily had to learn.

Attendance matters

How many people have 100% attendance? Which class has the best attendance so far? What does ‘persistent absence’ mean?

With just four days left of this half-term, we still have 146 pupils who have 100% since 23 February – and that’s despite a bad case of chicken pox spreading like wildfire amongst our younger children!

For the whole year so far, there are 48 pupils with 100% – almost a quarter. In alphabetical order of surnames, well done Farhaan, Owen, Isaac, Ben, Ethan, Henry, Bella, Jack, Will, Vijay, Sam, William, Faye, Alexandra, Mia, Hibba, Byron, Lewis, Albie, Edward, Grace, Sachpreet, Isabelle, Natasha, Phoebe, Musa, Umaimah, Manya, Nico, Oliver, Aisha, Ethan, Lucas, Isabelle, Finn, Zeewa, Georgie, Alexander, Neive, Alex, Grace, Megan, Ebonnie, Albert, Archie, Jorja, Noah and Ethan!

As for each class, here are the attendance rates (with last year’s figure for the same period in brackets):

  • Reception: 96.7% (96.1%) …that’s a great increase, so well done!
  • Year 1: 97.3% (97.1%) …well done!
  • Year 2: 96.4% (98.0%) …please help us increase this year’s figure.
  • Year 3: 98.3% (97.6%) …this year’s figure is amazing – just like the class last year as Year 2.
  • Year 4: 97.3% (96.7%) …another increase – great! 
  • Year 5: 96.1% (97.9%) …please help us increase this year’s figure.
  • Year 6: 97.3% (97.0%) …well done – the fifth class to have a higher attendance rate than last year!

We’re really happy with the fact there are five classes with higher attendance rates than last year. For the whole school, our attendance rate is 97.1%. This is good, although last year was just a little better: 97.2%%.

Thank you to all parents who have tried so hard to ensure your child is happy and healthy and at school as much as they can be.

Some important news: from September 2015, attendance lower than 90% will be regarded as persistent absence. This means we would contact the local authority’s Attendance Team with regard to visiting to support and advise families where attendance is too low. This would include three children in Reception, one in Year 1, three in Year 2, three in Year 4 and one in Year 5 – eleven children in total. (Year 3 and Year 6 have no pupils where attendance is lower than 90%.)