School Savings Club dates for paying in
The School Savings Club paying in sessions for this year are at 3.15-3.45pm on the following dates (the penultimate Thursday of each half term).
- 12 October
- 07 December
- 01 February
- 22 March
- 17 May
- 12 July
If you’re unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be deposited to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
Information will shortly be sent home about the accounts and if your child would like to open account, please enquire at the office. There is an extra incentive for pupils in Year 3 as Leeds City Council will add £10 to your child’s account.
Maths in Reception
What is two?
In order to give children a deeper understanding of number we are investigating small numbers in our maths learning. This week, we’ll focus on the number 2 and what ‘two’ means.
Here are some ideas to help your child understand the ‘twoness of two’:
- Explore body parts which come in pairs, eyes, legs, nostrils etc
- Look at 2 x 1p, look at 2p, a £2 coin
- Cut fruit in half: one apple, 2 pieces of apple.
- Look at pairs of shoes, socks and boots
Investigating in Science
Each week, Year 6 are taking on a Science investigation. For the last two weeks, we’ve been discussing whether we can find out the answer to this question:
How long does it take for a 10/11 year old to run 100m?
Last week, we prepared for the investigation by finding out how far 100m would be in our playground, discussing how we would organise ourselves as a class, and preparing data recording sheets.
On Friday, we carried out the investigation which actually tired us out quite a lot.
We decided that each person should run three times which would then allow us to create an average time for that person. So that we didn’t skew our results, each person in the team ran before taking on their second go; this meant each person had the same rest time between runs.
Data was recorded for each person and all groups made very good choices in recording their data in a sensible and organised manner.
This week, we managed to calculate an average for each person. Next week, we’ll create a group average which we’ll then use to create a class average and decide whether this information can be used to answer our original question.
Explorers
Year 2 launched into the whole-school Explorers topic this week by becoming explorers in our local area.
We looked out for physical and human features as we explored.
After our visit, we discussed what we liked and disliked about our local area. A lot of the children had noticed litter on the ground, sometimes very close to a bin, and that was something they didn’t like. Because of this, we are planning some litter picking in the coming weeks.
Traffic was also something that was commented on.
We will be using our maths skills this week to record just how much traffic there is around school. This traffic survey will be exchanged with Scholes (Elmet) Primary and St James (CE) Primary to make comparisons.
We’ve had a great start to the big topic so far and are looking forward to lots more exploring. Below is an overview of the topic.
In this Big Topic, your child will become an intrepid explorer, embarking on an amazing adventure of discovery. Children will compare the physical and human geography of different localities. They’ll use maps, atlases and globes to help them plan journeys into the unknown! Geography learning will be key in this whole-school topic, thought the children will also enjoy other subjects, too. Maths skills, for example, will be used – children might look at positional language, coordinates, or statistics. Your child will also be encouraged to explore and learn about their own locality. Why not involve your child when planning a trip to explore some local attractions like Leeds Art Gallery or the Yorkshire Sculpture Park?
Explorers
This week, we’ve become explorers as part of our new big topic. Explorers is a geography driven topic that will see us embark on a journey round the world. Year 4 are all aboard and we have set sail on our adventure. Along the way, we are likely to encounter a few tricky situations! Luckily, as a group, we decided on the necessary items required to survive.
Let our journey begin.
First of all, navigation was at the top of our list.
We set to work looking at atlases, maps, compasses, globes and directions. In class, we studied paper maps and compared them to how we navigate our way today. Ask your child how they remember the points on a compass.
It was fascinating to find a location on a map and then on Google Earth. Year 4 navigated their way around the world looking at places of interest.
Working with a partner, the children could identify and name such things as: rivers, mountains, settlements, famous landmarks, continents and more.
A few children also set to work on a jigsaw of the United Kingdom. Working with Mrs Charlesworth, they looked at the names of regions and counties within our country. Sadly, one piece was missing!
After all that travelling, we were exhausted!
Time to relax in our very own dinghy.
Stay posted for the next part of our exploration.
It may get bumpy!
From Party Poppers to Human Number Lines – Year 3’s Weekly Round-Up
Welcome aboard!
This week marks the beginning of our Explorers topic and so we welcome our newest member of the Year 3 team.
A vote was taken to decide their name; introducing… Bobby the astronaut!
(Somehow, tables 1, 2, 3 and 5 didn’t take to the Table 4 suggestion.)
To delve into the mind of an explorer, we had lots of lively discussion about what sort of items they should pack into their travel bag.
From fast food menus (“No! How will they deliver to half way up a mountain?” vs “Yes – we could use the paper to start a fire.”) to party poppers (“We shouldn’t pack it – setting them off could scare animals.” vs “Yes – if we discover a new species, we need something to celebrate with.”), we debated it all. We also used maps to locate supplies lost by our flying ship in a terrible storm:
In maths this week, we’ve been ordering numbers to 1000. This was quite a tricky skill, so we made sure to keep our brains engaged with some active maths. Here we are creating human number lines:
Next, we put our skills to the test in a place value number line challenge. We made actions to help us remember the steps for putting numbers on a number line!
Our English theme for the week has been grammar. We’ve looked at conjunctions, proper nouns, verbs and pronouns. For example, we extended sentences using conjunctions:
Our rusty, old car broke down.
Our rusty, old car broke down although it wasn’t really broken.
Our rusty, old car broke down although it wasn’t really broken, so we had to get a taxi.
To improve the flow of our writing, we looked at changing proper nouns for pronouns. For example:
Jessica waved at Felix and Felix waved back at Jessica.
Jessica waved at Felix and he waved back at her.
Balance, coordination and team work were all skills we used in our PE lesson this week! Maybe one of us will be the next Kyle Wilson!
I’ve been absolutely blown away by the creative homework this week. Each child interpreted the task in their own way and produced some wonderful results. We really enjoyed discussing our own efforts and the effort of others. Here are some highlights, featuring the character Dark himself!
Well done to certificate winners Setayesh and Musa! Both of you are an asset to this class and it’s great to see such enthusiastic and responsible learners!
Homework
Ever wondered what it would be like to be shipwrecked on a desert island? Well, we have!
Our homework was a creative one.
I can show what I think it would be like to be Robinson Crusoe.
This homework was designed to whet children’s appetite for our new class novel, which we started to read this week.
Robinson Crusoe was a man who was shipwrecked on a desert island. For this homework, we wanted children to imagine they’ve been shipwrecked with no technology, just some basic tools.
- What would they do first?
- What would they need?
- How would they survive?
How would they try and contact home or get off the island?
Well, the children certainly got creative. Using the ideas above, we saw some fabulous ideas with such attention to detail.
We enjoyed looking at and commenting on each other’s work. Take a look for yourselves.
Practice that feels like play!
Practice that feels like play! Does this sound beneficial for your child? Have a look at IXL. It’s an online tool where you can access different activities to help your child practise basic skills.
It’s split into year groups, specifically looking at English and Maths, then each subject is broken down into sections. You can get a flavour of the activities by hovering over the title and can have a go at some of them – it looks great fun and very child friendly. The questions are all interactive and there are detailed explanations for new concepts.
There is a small monthly fee if you wish to sign up. Take a look – it might be something you want to explore.
Ukulele
Year 4 have started to learn how to play the ukulele.
The whole class are thoroughly enjoyed these weekly sessions, and so far have really impressed the music tutor. The children have begun to learn some of the basic notes and finger positions. They will, in time, go on to playing songs.
Explorers
This week, we’ve become explorers as part of our new big topic. Explorers is a geography driven topic that will see us embark on a journey round the world (not literally!) as we start to see that the world is bigger than we think.
Yesterday, we started by scouring through some atlases to see where in the world we’d like to explore further (LO: Where would you like to explore?). Then, we saw some images of amazing places from all seven continents (ask your child to name the seven continents) and imagined how cool it would be to explore them. In our books, we chose our favourite place and said ‘I know…I think…I wonder’.
Today, we became virtual explorers by using Google Earth to explore some places we fancied visiting. We discussed the physical and human features of place and compared some of them to a place we are all familiar with: Moortown. It turns out, the Great Barrier Reef is nothing like Moortown Corner!
After being ‘wowed’ by the wonders of modern technology, we used a good old fashioned OS map to explore some places a little closer to home (LO: What can I learn from a map?). We discussed what we knew about each place just from looking at the map and then we used a key to decipher what some of the symbols meant (ask your child if they can remember any).
When we started to read our class novel, we noticed a map on the inside cover. Isabella, the main protagonist, is about to embark on a journey that will see her explore the mythical, dangerous land in which she lives. We presumed the Isle of Joya was a completely fictional place until we noticed something on this page…
After typing the latitude and longitude into Google we discovered that they are for an actual place: La Gomera. It turns out, the novel is loosely based on the author’s holidays to the Canary Islands as a child – obviously, she’s added in some mystery and magic! To link with our map learning we created our own key and added symbols to the map of Joya. We used some of the setting descriptions within the book to help and predicted what might lie in the forbidden woods!
So, in our topic this week we’ve explored using OS maps, explored using atlases, become virtual explorers and explored a fictional land.