Author: Mrs Taylor

Thank you to those parents who were able to join us for our watch us while we work session this week. It was lovely to see so many.

Here’s a summary of what we covered and how we are encouraging the children to become more responsible for their learning at home.

Spellings – use the spelling guide for ideas to help with learning weekly spellings.

Sentence practice – use a picture as a stimulus for writing sentences including asking questions about what they can see.

Daily reading – we thought about some of the reading skills the children are learning in Year 2 (fluency, prosody (using expression in their voices), retrieval, interpret and learning new vocabulary). Reading needs to happen daily to build up these skills. A brief note in their reading record books is needed after reading at home. We will continue to monitor the use of e-books at home. Please alert us to any access issues.

Maths – our number tennis games included counting in 2s, 5s and 10s and number bonds to 10 and 20. Play these when you’re in the car, walking to school or making breakfast. Hit the Button is a great online game to build up the recall of these facts.

Numbots certificates are awarded every Tuesday and it’s great to see children already achieving their next levels in Year 2.

Finally, here’s the help at home section of the website.

Please get in touch if you need any further support with your child’s learning at home.

We have received details about the LSSA cross country races for this year. These races take place on a Saturday and children compete against pupils from other Leeds schools.

Please note, parents/carers are responsible for taking and supervising their child/children at these events. There will be a parent representative.

There are opportunities for Year 3 and 4 girls and boys to race 900m and Year 5 and 6 girls and boys to race 1500m.

Race 1 – Saturday 19th October 2024 – Woodhouse Grove School

Race 2 – Saturday 9th November 2024 – Cardinal Heenan Catholic High School

Race 3 –Saturday 14th December 2024 – Prince Henry’s Grammar School

Race 4 – Saturday 18th January 2025 – Middleton Park Subject to confirmation from LCC

More details about race 1 will follow shortly.

Here are some of our Key Stage 2 children taking part in one of the races last year.

Manners are words and actions that we can do to help us be kind and respectful to others. Good manners help us to get on well with others.

We thought about examples of good manners and we did some role play to model these good manners.

We linked our daily poem and our reading fluency text to manners to reinforce this important aspect of Living and Learning.

Help at home: reinforce this message about using good manners at home as well as at school. Encourage your child to greet the adults on the gate as they arrive at school.

Also, have a go at this manners quiz to check your child’s understanding.

In Year 2, in preparation for joining their letters, we are beginning to teach the children cursive handwriting.

This handwriting guide, which the children have brought home this week, shows the order in which we will be practising these letters.

Well done to Seerat who has already had a go at writing the alphabet using cursive handwriting at home.

Also, in addition to the weekly spellings, we have been checking the children’s spelling of the tricky words from Year 1. These are words that are commonly used in writing but you can’t always your phonics knowledge to help to spell them.

The children will be bringing this learning home so you can see which of these words they need to work on. Putting these words in sentences would be great practice to do at home.

Any questions, please do come and ask us.

Help at home: use these prompts to ask your child what we have been learning so far in Year 2.

At the start of the new school year, in our Living and Learning lesson, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life. This also links to the British Value of rule of law.

Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…

Why do we have rules?

What rules can you think of?

What places have rules?

Who makes the rules?

Rules tells us what to do.

We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.

Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.

Rules help us to be happy and healthy.

Our reading fluency text for this week was all about rules too.

In our school we have three school rules.

Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.

Following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to learn.

We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.

Next week, we will be thinking about our rules about online safety at school. Your child will bring home their Being online – acceptable use agreement for pupils and parents/carers which should be read through, signed and returned to class.

Any questions, please do ask.

Help at home – think about our three school rules and talk with your child about what that might look like or sound like in the classroom, the playground or at lunchtime. Here are some examples the children thought of. Being ready would mean looking at the speaker, being respectful would mean laughing with not laughing at someone and being safe would mean washing our hands before lunch to stop spreading germs.