Takeover day
The running of school today was taken over by… our very own children! Dinners were served by Year 4, Y5 children were in the school office and even assembly was taken over by Year 6 (what a good job they did!).
The class were successful in taking over registration, giving out book bags and homework, giving out ‘cool class tokens’ in assembly and dismissing the class for lunch. They did a great job and they showed how responsible and mature they were. Well done!
Taking the register 
Giving out ‘cool class tokens’
Taking the register
Phonics feedback
Mrs Burke and the other Reception staff were delighted to welcome nearly all parents / carers into the classroom this week to watch the Reception children learn phonics – so important in developing reading and writing skills.
Parents who visited either on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday gained an insight into the general teaching that goes on in Reception, but more specifically learnt about how we teach phonics and how they should support their child’s learning at home:
‘It was useful to see the step-by-step process in which the children are taught so that I can attempt to support in a similar fashion at home. It was helpful to hear the language used in context (grapheme, phoneme etc).’
‘Very informative and well-organised. Definitely helps with how to support at home.’
Lots of parents left impressed by the children’s learning behaviour:
‘I was happy to see how well the children are engaged.’
Finally, we asked how we can make these sessions even better. We had a couple of suggestions – a longer session was suggested, and the session a little bit earlier in the year. We’ll consider these, although in previous years we’ve tried different things and this seems about right for most people. One parent suggested that we should remind others ‘that phonics is not the be all and end all’ and that we should ’emphasise the importance of reading for fun’ – we agree. The purpose of the session was kept quite specific, but Mrs Burke will include some reminders about this in subsequent newsletters because we certainly want to promote a love of reading.
Thanks again to everyone who came along. The next sessions are on 20, 21 and 22 January.
Creative homeworks
This week’s favourite anti-bullying homeworks as chosen by the children:
Column addition with regrouping
Earlier in the week, we were looking at column addition without regrouping (you may recognise this as “carrying the ten”). Since then, we have moved onto column addition with regrouping.
Let’s have a look at this calculation. To solve it using column addition, we would have to line up our columns first. 
In class we’ve been using hundreds, tens and ones counters to help us solve column addition questions. We’ve been drawing hundreds, tens and ones grids (HTO grids) to arrange these counters. 
We’d start by representing the top number on our HTO grid. We have one hundred, two tens (twenty) and nine ones.
Next, we’d add the ones column together by adding three more ones counters in our ones column.
After that, we’d “regroup the ones” by replacing ten ones counters with one tens counter.
We can’t have a tens counter in the ones column so we move it to the tens column.
We’d represent this regrouping in our written calculation like this. We have two ones left (two) in the ones column and an extra ten added to the tens column. 
Following that, we’d add up the tens column. We need to add three extra tens to do this.
We have five tens in the tens column and one extra ten from our regrouping totalling six tens (sixty).
Finally, we’d turn our attention to the hundreds column. In this instance, we don’t need to add anything up in the hundreds column.
For more information or if you need any advice talking about this at home, check out our calculation videos or catch me after school.
Column addition
This week in Maths, we’ll be looking at column addition. Today, we’ve been looking at how to layout column addition correctly. We’ve also been discussing the language associated with column addition.
We’d describe the three digit number here as having digits in the ‘hundreds’, ‘tens’ and ‘ones’ columns. We would use this knowledge to help us line up the second number underneath (lining up columns correctly).
The ‘tens’ column and the ‘ones’ column are lined up correctly here.
We’d start by adding up the digits in the ‘ones’ column.
Then, we’d add up the digits in the ‘tens’ column. Ask your child what they’d do to add the digits in the ‘hundreds’ column together.
Below is a common mistake. Can your child explain what has gone wrong with this?
Our videos present various mental and written methods used to teach calculations.
Moortown 2 – 3 Our Lady’s
This evening, our Year 6 football team made the short trip to Our Lady’s Catholic Primary School.
Despite the wintery conditions, Moortown were ready for battle and made a very strong start. After several minutes of early dominance, Bailey poked the ball in to give Moortown the lead.
However, the game did not ‘pan out’ as Moortown had hoped. Remembering previous games, in which one goal hasn’t been enough to secure victory, Moortown took the risk and continued to attack. After a quick counter-attack, Our Lady’s drew the game level: 1-1.
Despite being very resourceful in finding different ways to unlock the sturdy Our Lady’s defence, Moortown could not convert their pressure into goals. In fact, for the 10 minutes either side of half time, the game became very scrappy. It was Our Lady’s who benefitted, scoring further unanswered goals to make it 3-1.
Moortown knew they had to respond and respond they did! The last 10 minutes saw both teams miss numerous chances as the game opened up. Each player took responsibility for their performance and, with two minutes to go, Moortown pulled a goal back: 3-2. Could they?
Unfortunately, with the light fading, the final whistle blew and Moortown suffered another narrow defeat. Captain for the day, Lennox, reflected on the game: “It was a hard game but it was very fun. I thought everyone was very resilient!”. Well summarised, Lennox (and thanks for mentioning our 8th ‘R’ for learning).
Next week, Moortown face Immaculate Heart of Mary in what is sure to be another close encounter!
Phonics open mornings
Don’t forget our phonics mornings this week.
Don’t worry if you haven’t returned the slip – just turn up on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning at 9am.
We will demonstrate how we teach phonics and provide you with ideas for supporting your child’s learning at home.
See you all then!
Spells, potions and slime!
Takeover Day
Next Friday, 20 November, is Takeover Day.
What is Takeover Day?
It’s a national initiative organised each year by the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield OBE. Takeover gives children and young people the chance to work with adults for the day and to be involved in decision-making processes. Children and young people benefit from the opportunity to experience the world of work and make their voices heard, while adults and organisations gain a fresh perspective on what they do.
Recently our School Council discussed how children could be involved in ‘taking over’ at school. Takeover activities will include school dinners (representatives from Year 4), the office (representatives from Year 5), assembly (representatives from Year 6) and KS2 tuck shop on 24 November (representatives from Year 2).
In addition there will be opportunities within class where children will takeover. For example, spelling/times table tests, parts of lessons, PE warm ups and guided reading.
Check our class news pages to see this in action.
Make a noise about bullying
Next week it is national anti-bullying week.
Our school definition has recently been reviewed by the School Council and remains unchanged.
‘Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.’
This year the theme of the week is Make a noise about bullying and our children are familiar with another STOP message to address this, start telling other people.
Leeds Anti-Social Behaviour Team will once again deliver Show Racism the Red Card workshops across school and in class children will discuss these aspects of bullying:
- Our definition of bullying (above)
- Types of bullying – cyber-bullying and prejudice-based bullying related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and belief, special educational need and disability
- What to do if children experience bullying. The key message is to tell someone (start telling other people)
Bullying resources can be found at…
- http://www.childline.org.uk/explore/bullying/pages/bullying.aspx
- http://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/
- http://www.youngminds.org.uk/for_parents/worried_about_your_child/bullying
Children tell us what they would do if they were bullied: ‘I would tell an adult, teacher or someone I trust.’
All classes have access to their class SEAL box or a whole school worry box where they can tell an adult any concerns about bullying or any other issues.