Odd socks day
We launched anti-bullying week today by taking part in Odd Socks Day.
There were all kinds of sock colours and designs on show celebrating the fact that we are all different and unique. Thank you for supporting this.
Here’s some of the Year 2 selection.
Sport at Allerton Grange High School
Last week, Year 4 walked to Allerton Grange High School for a sports session. We were all impressed with the organisation demonstrated by the older students. Year 4 were engaged right from the start thanks to the motivating energy from the leaders. It was great to see the high school students interacting with all the children and offering support to those who lack confidence in sport.
Thank you, Allerton Grange!
New kit awarded from Premier League Primary Stars
Following our application to the Premier League Primary Stars Kit and Equipment Scheme, we’ve heard our bid has been successful!
As a result, we’ll receive a new kit for school later in the year. This will be of great use for the football team and for other competitions.
School Council, when they meet for the first time on Wednesday, will be discussing the possible team colours. The final choice will be made democratically: each school councillor will vote for their favourite.
Which would you choose?
Phonics
Thanks to everyone who came to the phonics mornings last week. We hope you found them useful. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
In Phase 2 of our phonics programme (Letters and Sounds), children will be taught the phonemes (sounds) for a number of letters (graphemes), which phoneme is represented by which grapheme and that a phoneme can be represented by more than one letter, for example, /ll/ as in b-e-ll. We use Jolly Phonics actions to help children remember these phonemes. Each week the children will bring a set of letters home to learn. Please practise these every day and keep them in their book bag for us to add to.
Your child will be taught how to pronounce the phonemes correctly to make blending easier.
Sounds should be sustained where possible (e.g. sss, fff, mmm) and, where this is not possible, ‘uh’ sounds after consonants should be reduced as far as possible. (e.g. try to avoid saying ‘buh’, ‘cuh’).
Set 1: s a t p
Set 2: i n m d
Set 3: g o c k
Set 4: ck (as in duck) e u r
Set 5: h b l
We will begin learning ‘tricky words’ this week which are words which are not phonetic. Please help your child to read these by recognition. The first tricky words are the and to which we will be sending home for the children to learn.
Now the children have knowledge of some letters and their sounds, try to encourage them to write words independently. This might just be the initial sound of a word. Let them write something important to them. This could be a label for their drawing, a list or a letter to a friend.
Allerton Grange sports leaders
Over the year, Year 2-Year 6 will visit Allerton Grange to take part in PE sessions organised by their sports leaders.
There are many benefits of these sessions:
- Allerton Grange sports leaders have the opportunity to practise and develop their skills with a class
- the sessions support our positive relationship with Allerton Grange
- our pupils visit a local high school
- the children get to enjoy a PE session in a different environment and see positive role models (the leaders)
- the sessions give a positive image to physical activity
- pupils reinforce their road safety knowledge as they walk to Allerton Grange
Topic – Did wealth matter?
LO: RIC
To link reading to our current topic (Time Travel – Transport), the children in Year 4 were asked: “Did wealth affect the way people travelled?”
One of the history age related requirements for Year 4 is that, children recognise that the lives of wealthy people were very different from those of poor people.
With this in mind, the class were given a RIC reading starter as a fifteen minute activity at the beginning of our topic lesson. You have probably heard your child talking about RIC reading activities. These sessions are fairly short and the children have just three questions to answer all with a different focus. This is done independently and, when complete, we discuss the responses to the questions. Purple pens are used to mark, correct, edit and improve answers.
This was our topic themed RIC this week.
Retrieve (fact finding)
What can you see, that is the same, in all three pictures?
Interpret / Inference
Would you need to be rich to stay in these rooms? Explain
Choice (language, structure, presentation, thinking about the choices made by the author/director/artist)
What do you think the illustrator is trying to do by showing these images?
R I can see beds, doors, mirrors, walls and pillows.
I Yes. They look like bedrooms from old Victorian houses. The third one looks like it would cost a lot of money.
One bedroom looks posh because it has a sofa in. The top room looks very small. I’m not sure if that is a sink or a toilet? Rich people wouldn’t have a toilet next to a bed. Two of the rooms look comfortable because they are bigger.
C I think the pictures show what Victorian bedrooms looked like. Maybe how much houses cost and how big they were? They are all different sizes and only rich people had a sofa in their bedroom. To show that if you had a lot of money you could have a bigger house.
After this activity, we discussed the class system in Victorian times and the impact wealth had on peoples’ lives. I questioned the children more about the images.
“Where do you think they were taken?
What have they got to do with transport?
Are they all in the same place?”
There were some superb responses and the children were intrigued to find out more. With a few clues, I informed the class that the rooms were all cabins on the Titanic! This then created lots more discussion about the famous disaster. Next, we will look at a cross section of the ship and where each type of cabin was situated. Did this affect survival rates?
October active travel prize winners
We’ve awarded the final voucher prizes for our October active travel prize draw.
Well done to Isla, Year 2, and Jasraj, Year 4, who won the week 4 and overall October month prizes for travelling to school in an active way.
The Living Streets’ WOW interactive travel tracker allows children to record, in class, their daily journey to school and children will continue to be awarded themed badges at the end of every month for travelling actively.
An active journey includes:
- walking
- scooting
- biking
- park and stride
We want to reduce the number of cars outside school so if you do have to travel by car, we recommend parking away from the school gate maybe at our preferred park and stride location, Marks & Spencer.
As always, keep safe while travelling.
Why is a square number called a square number?
Using counters and cubes, we investigated what square and cube numbers are and why they were given those names. Once we figured it out, it became pretty obvious.
Who is Ada Lovelace?
This week, as part of our Time Travel topic, learning all about inventions, we’ve been focusing on local inventions and inventors. Having explored what inventions have come from Leeds, we now know that a female, British inventor was responsible for the first form of computer programming.
At home, as us about Ada Lovelace and the work we did on creating and debugging algorithms which she made possible over 150 years ago.
Computing Unplugged
Did you know that Ada Lovelace, who was a British inventor, was the first person to invent the computer program? In her honour, Year 5 have enjoyed some offline computing today. We will learn more about Ada tomorrow.
They had six different stations, each with its unique brief. For example:
Children had to design algorithms to achieve a goal…
…such as collecting coins in – aptly named – ‘Coin Collect’ whilst avoiding traps…
…or they had to debug an existing algorithm in ‘Spot the Mistake’. (Challenge your child to define debugging.)
It was frustrating and challenging at times.
But when we succeeded, it felt great.
In ‘Treasure Hunt’, we wrote an algorithm to guide our Bee-Bot from the pirate ship to an area on the map to hide the loot. Our team mates had to predict which co-ordinates the algorithm would take the Bee-Bot to…
… and at station ‘ABCs’, we predicted spelling which word (using the Bee-Bot) would give the shortest and longest algorithm, explaining our reasoning for why we thought so. Of course, then we had to prove it.
We also used logical reasoning to find the best route back for Stanley (from our class novel, Holes) to his tent for his shower – every piece of code used was in exchange for one minute of precious showering. Was it worth it to cut through Tent F and trade 5 minutes of tub time? It was important to avoid the lethal lizards!
At the ‘Pocket Money’ station, we had to find the best routes for collecting different totals. A challenge was to show finding £2.54 in three different ways.
Well done to Year 5 for working brilliantly in their teams.