Author: Mrs Taylor

Safer Internet Day 06 February

Splats Team Robot v Meanies e-Safety Show

As part of Safer Internet Day, on February 06, the pupils from Years 3 to 6 are learning and performing a show-in-a-day with Splats Entertainment e-Safety show.

The day is all about how we act online and in life. Each group of pupils work with the ‘Splats’ director where they learn their scene and then they make props in the classroom. The show is then being performed at the end of school at 2:30pm which we would like to invite you to attend. The day and performance is led by the ‘Splats’ director and the pupils join in and act out the parts.

It is a fun and light-hearted look at what is, of course, a very important issue of safety. The day is designed to get the pupils thinking, talking and developing their awareness of their online behaviour. We hope it will help facilitate discussion at school and at home and help the pupils be responsible and careful in their online activity.

Topics covered during the day include: keeping personal information safe; how we never know who we are talking to online; how to deal with any mean messages; how we never know how other people feel with what we say online; and if we are unsure of anything, we should always seek help from a trusted adult.

If you would like to come and watch the e-safety show, please complete the reply slip, on your child’s letter, and return to school as soon as possible as we have a limited number of spaces.

Mathletics

Have you looked at Mathletics recently?

This is a great online resource that supports maths learning at home.  You child has work assigned according to our learning in class so take a look with your child when you can.

Well done to Christina who continues to complete her assignments and regularly achieves a Mathletics certificate.

Please ask for login details if needed.

New school dinner menu

After half term, our school dinner menu will be changing.  This menu, provided by our school meals provider Catering Leeds, will be served until the end of the summer term.

Our School Council have recently repeated a vegetable survey to find out children’s favourite choices.  These preferences have now been incorporated into the new menu.

As well as on our website, the three week cyclical menu is also displayed on our dining room window for you to discuss with your child.   If you would like a printed copy, please ask at the office.

Have a look for the days ahead to make your child aware of what the daily meals are.  Following pupil and parent feedback, children now make their main meal choice at the start of the day.  This ensures they get their first choice of meal.

School meals continue to be free for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. If your child is in Key Stage 2, please check for eligibility for free school meals. (It’s important to check for eligibility for younger children, too, because school receives additional funding for each child who is eligible for a free meal, even when they’re free in Reception and Year 1 and Year 2!)

If your child would like to start having school dinners, please inform the office. A combination of packed lunches and school dinners is also available.

Children are consulted on school meals through our regular School Council meetings.  Feedback may also be given by speaking to an adult in school or completing a suggestions/comments slip and posting it in their class I want to say box.  We have a few new dishes on the menu which we encourage the children to try.

Thank you to parents who also raise questions and give feedback.  We can then ensure this is passed on to the kitchen staff.

Safer Internet Day 2018

Pupils will be taking part in different activities to support their learning of this important subject. As well as in class learning, children will have the opportunity to work with the following external visitors.

We welcome ‘Splats Entertainment’ who will be delivering e-safety drama workshops for pupils from Year 3 to 6. Children will be learning and performing a show in a day. Please see your child’s letter to request tickets to watch this show at 2:30pm on 06 February.

D:side, an online safety charity, will be visiting classes Y1-Y6 on 01 and 02 February to deliver internet safety sessions with the following focus:

  • What we use the Internet for (KS1)
  • What is / is not safe to share online (KS1)
  • What to do if we are not sure about the internet (KS1)
  • Using emails safely (KS2)
  • Social networking and safe profiling – including use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat, Oovoo, etc. (KS2)
  • ‘Chatting’ with care (KS2)
  • Responsible and safe use of the internet (logins, email, photography, password protection, personal information and self-protection). (KS2)
  • Using text and picture messaging (KS2)
  • Behaving responsibly (KS2)

Dave Hill, from d:side, will also be delivering an online safety workshop for parents/carers on Thursday 01 February at 2:30pm-3:15pm.  There will be chance to find out what your child has been learning in this area, to give you some skills and knowledge to keep your child safe online and to ask questions on this subject. There will be limited places for this workshop so please complete and return the response slip, on your child’s letter, if you would like to attend.

If you are unable to attend the workshop, please refer to the guidance that will be sent home with your child published by the NSPCC/O2. Further guidance can be found on our website.  There will also be a workshop for parents of older children later in the term, specifically looking at the use of social media.

Make-a-wish

This year, we’re supporting Make-a-wish as our school charity, chosen by the School Council.

Today, we welcomed John Russo, a volunteer from Make-a-wish, who told us about the charity, the kind of wishes they make happen and how the money we raise might be spent.

Children were asked to consider how we can support the charity over this year.  They could either write a suggestion for their ‘I want to say’ box or pass on their ideas to their class school councillors.

Skipping

This afternoon, Year 2 had a very energetic and challenging skipping workshop led by Jodi from Skipping School.  We covered lots of skipping skills that we’ll be practising in PE in the lead up to a Year 2 competition in March with other schools.

We learnt click jump, double bounce, speed bounce, hop and swap, side swing, partner skipping face to face and with the long rope we tried run jump out and keep the pot boiling.

Some tips that Jodi shared with us were:

  • hold the rope like a smiley face
  • have the smiley face behind your legs
  • keep your hands wide at the side
  • when you hear the click of the rope on the floor you need to jump

We look forward to seeing lots of progress over the coming weeks.

 

 

 

Preparing to multiply

We’ve now started learning about multiplication in our maths lessons this week using the concept of equal and unequal groups.  When describing equal groups, the children have used sentence stems to support them.

There are ____ equal groups with ____ in each group.

There are six equal groups with four in each group.  There are six fours.

It is important at this stage that children know what groups are equal and which are unequal.

We then made our own equal groups in lots of different ways.

What is this image showing?

How many groups?

How many in each group?

Well done, Jai – you showed great understanding of this concept.

Working together

In our Living and Learning session this week, we focused on how we can achieve, our strengths and our areas to develop.  This included how we can work well as a team so each group was set a challenge.  There was some great teamwork, turn taking, sharing and we eventually had a group that achieved the challenge.

This was also a good test of our resilience, one of our 8Rs for learning.

Take a look at this video all about not giving up.

 

Handwriting

We’ve been having a big focus on handwriting and presentation across all our learning – not just in writing books.

Our cursive handwriting scheme has just three rules.  Please refer to this when your child is writing at home, for example learning their spellings.  Before writing, ask your child about the lazy eight handwriting warm up that we do.

There are groups of letters that follow the same pattern when we write them.

We’ve been using an exciting prop this week to do big movements when writing letters.