Robot Rumpus
You might have noticed a new addition to your families as a robot may have come home from Year 1. There were some very imaginative and creative robots designed and made in Year 1 this week to finish off our mini topic. Here are a few of them:
Walk to School Week
Walk to School Week will run alongside our themed week where children are encouraged to take a walk in the community on their way to school, maybe even picking up a piece of litter on the way.
Two walk to school competitions will run over the week – firstly, the return of our Where’s Wally challenge (using our walk to school website video) and also a reward for the class who make the most journeys to school on foot during the week.
Each day your child walks to school they should put a counter in their class’ totaliser jar. Even by parking further away from school your child could then to do the final part of their journey by foot. By Friday, the class with the most journeys to school on foot will win a martial arts session with John Weatherall, White Rose martial arts.
We hope you will support this initiative in helping children make a healthy start to their day and also helping towards reducing congestion at our gates.
Who do you think you are?
Our next whole school themed week, based around identity, diversity and community, will be taking place next week, from Monday 18 May 2015.
A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education.
Events during the week will include looking at our own identity including belonging and body image, diversity of people around us – this might include race, age, religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender. There will be various visitors to support this. Classes will also be getting out into the community working with local organisations such as our local charity, St Gemma’s Hospice; local care homes; Moortown Community Group; and taking pride in the local community by litter-picking.
Identity day
Following a suggestion from one of our school councillors, Friday 22 May will be a non-uniform identity day. Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend; a team they are part of or support; or traditional dress to represent their heritage. We invite a £1 voluntary donation and proceeds will be shared between St Gemma’s Hospice and the Nepal earthquake appeal.
Who do you think we are?
Do you think you’d recognise some of our staff in their early years? This photo competition will run throughout the week with details to follow separately. Again, proceeds will be shared between St Gemma’s Hospice and the Nepal earthquake appeal.
We’ll keep you up to date about events during the week through Twitter and the class news pages on our website. It’s going to be a busy week!
Our website and Twitter continue to keep you up to date with key community events. Upcoming events include the Roundhay Park Fun Run on 20 June and the PTA Summer Fair on 04 July. We hope you can support these.
11 May 2015
THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!
Boxes, kitchen rolls, packaging and other junk material is urgently needed!
We are making robots on Thursday 14 May and urgently need materials for their body parts. Please send any suitable junk material in before and on Thursday.
Thank you.
Hedgehog habitats
On Friday, we looked at what would make a good habitat for a hedgehog. We decided it would need to be warm, dry and sturdy so, with the materials we could find, we worked in teams to make our own.
We were pretty proud of our final hedgehog houses and Mossy the hedgehog seemed to like them, too!
Mrs Burke was so impressed that she’s put them in Reception’s nature garden to see if any hedgehogs decide to move in. It also gives Year 2 the chance to be the teacher, passing on all of their knowledge about nocturnal animals to Reception. Stay tuned to see if we have any visitors.
What’s going on? 11.05.15
For the week beginning 11 May, our topic continues to focus on night time but we’re really exploring the animal world. Bats, foxes, badger, owls and hedgehogs will be the topic of conversation as we think about describing what they look like as well as thinking about how they behave. Lots of us have wondered why they come out at night so we shall focus on how these animals are adapted to night time.
Maths
Everyone will revisit multiplication and division this week. It’s great to look at them together so that we can understand them as opposites. Practise times tables at home (particularly 5s as this will be our test on Friday), thinking about how we can use this to know division facts too eg 4 x 5 = 20, so 20 / 5 = 4. When do you use division and multiplication at home? Maybe when you’re sharing sweets or making a recipe bigger to feed the whole family.
English
Unfortunately, we’ll be delving into Mr Twit’s revolting beard! I wonder how many synonyms for disgusting we can learn and if we can remember all of the food that gets stuck in his bristly hair. Ask your child what they think about Mr Twit and why they think that using events from the book.
If you have any questions, pop in and see us.
Creative homework – If I ran the country…
As we’ve all had election fever this week, Year 2 imagined what they would do if they won the election and became Prime Minister. Here are some of their ideas.
Ismail even recorded his speech for us to watch and he was very convincing. Quite the aspiring leaders!
Creative homework – Night Time
As we’re learning about night time, the children did a Creative homework showing what they’d learnt about night time so far.
Josh wrote a great poem all about night time.
Ben created a night time mind map with a dark background.
Albert made night time jobs out of Lego!
We also thought about what we didn’t know about night time and, therefore, what questions we’d like answering. Here are a few…
Isaac wondered…
Noorpreet pondered…
Grace asked…
Ripley queried…
Lewis speculated…
Ben quizzed…
Thomas probed…
Ishaan deliberated…
What a curious class we are! I only hope we can find at least some of the answers before we leave Year 2!
Celebration for ‘Nothing’
As we come to the end of our learning about ‘Nothing’, Year 1 enjoyed a celebration event.
During this topic, children have learnt how to look after and care for ‘Nothing’ by keeping him safe and healthy and in turn how they can apply this to their own lives.
Here are some of the comments made by the children to Nothing:
- ‘I like to be friends with you.’
- ‘I like you being our friend.’
- ‘I hope you enjoyed your party.’
- ‘I liked it when you came to my house.’
- ‘I hope you can come to my house.’
- ‘I hope you have a good time at your new class.’
- ‘I hope they make you safe.’
- ‘Remember don’t put other peoples’ medicines in your mouth.’
- ‘Bye, bye, Nothing.’
Phonics sessions
Thank you to all the parents who attended last week’s phonics sessions, the third of three rounds of ‘open mornings’ over the course of the year. Nearly all children had a dad, mum or other relative attend, taking the time to learn more about how we teach phonics and thinking about you can can support at home. Here are a few of the comments:
- “Love these sessions – they are very helpful. It’s amazing to see the class learning and seeing the improvements and progress over the year. Very effective in helping parents to help their children.”
- “The children were so well-behaved and paying attention. Great to understand more about how they blend words and to see how the class is progressing.”
- “Lovely session. Very informative and great to see the children working.”
- “Surprised at the level – much higher than expected.”
- “Loved seeing the techniques used to create sentences and understand them.”
As you can see, visitors found the session entertaining and informative. There were lots of comments about the high level of children’s learning.