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.
Learning workshop
Don’t forget our Learning in Reception and Year 1 workshop on Tuesday 10 November at 2.30.
See you there!
Learning to write
The children are progressing quickly with their phonics learning and reading. Alongside blending to read, the children also need to segment words to spell. Children often find this harder and lack confidence in their ability to write.
In Reception, the children take part in shared writing activities where they can ‘have a go’ on whiteboards with the support of adults. We then encourage independent writing in all the areas of provision. This includes writing a label for their model, writing a shopping list in the role-play shop or writing a letter to a friend. At the moment the children are busy writing spells! We value all the children’s attempts at writing and model writing (and making mistakes) to them.
You can help at home by:
- providing plenty of different types of pens and pencils and encouraging your child to use a correct grip
- encouraging them to use the school’s handwriting style and to use lower case letters; we teach that a capital letter is required for the first letter in a name and at the beginning of a sentence
- praising – spelling is harder than reading words so praise, don’t criticise. Little whiteboards and pens are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting
Don’t forget our learning workshop this week and our phonics mornings next week.
Top vegetable choices
If your child chooses school dinners, they are served two portions of vegetables or vegetables and a portion of salad with each meal. As we are all aware of the importance of eating vegetables, all children have been consulted on their favourite vegetables based on the vegetables that currently feature on the school dinner menu. The most popular choices will now feature more regularly on the menu.
We would also like your views on school dinners. Look out for the school dinner survey due to be sent out next week.
Have you seen Leaf Man?
We have really enjoyed reading the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.
After reading the story, Reception children went to look for Leaf Man around school.
We sorted leaves and learned their names.
The children have printed leaves, mixed autumn colours and made their own leaf people.
Where is Leaf Man?
Phonics learning in Reception (and at home!)
At Moortown Primary, we follow the ‘Letters and Sounds’ programme.
At the moment, we’re focussing on Phase 1 where children learn to identify alliteration and rhyme which will pave the way for the systematic learning of phonics.
The children are taking part in lots of activities where they listen attentively to sounds around them, such as sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Singing a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and reading books to and with the children helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.
We’re also learning to ‘sound talk’. The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word: d-o-g = dog. This merging together is called blending and is a vital skill for reading.
Children will also learn to do this the other way around: cat = c-a-t. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. This is called segmenting and is a vital skill for spelling.
All of this learning at the moment is oral (spoken). Your child won’t be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.
Ways you can support your child at home:
Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.
When sounding out, try to avoid the ‘uh’ sound – say ‘sssss’ rather than ‘suh’, ‘mmmmm’ rather than ‘muh’. This is to keep the sound as ‘pure’ as it can be so there’s no confusion with extra, unwanted sounds when blending and segmenting words.
Say: ‘A tall tin of tomatoes!’ ‘Tommy, the ticklish teddy!’ ‘A lovely little lemon!’ This is called alliteration. Use names, for example, ‘Gurpreet gets the giggles’, ‘Milo makes music’, ‘Naheema’s nose’.
Teach them ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’ and other tongue twisters.
Find real objects around your home that have three phonemes (sounds) and practise ‘sound talk’. First, just let them listen, then see if they will join in.
- ‘I spy a p-e-g – peg.’
- ‘I spy a c-u-p – cup.’
- ‘Where’s your other s-o-ck – sock?’
- ‘Simon says – put your hands on your h-ea-d.’
- ‘Simon says – touch your ch-i-n.’
- ‘Simon says – pick up your b-a-g.
Finally, note in some of the examples above that a phoneme (a sound) can be made up of two (or more) letters, so ‘ck’ (as in sock) and ‘ch’ (as in chin) make particular sounds.
Find out more about phonics in our Phonics Guide.
Our first week!
Welcome!
Welcome to Reception Class!
Following our series of home-visits, we’d like to say thank you all for welcoming us into your homes. It was lovely to meet you all and get to know your child a little bit more.
We hope you’re as excited as we are about this new chapter in your child’s life and hope you’ve been provided with all the information you need. As always, please ask if you are not sure about anything.
The children will all begin this week, with the last children arriving on Thursday.
After your first day, school will begin at 8.50am and finish at 3.15pm. Please bring your child into the classroom and help them in the different learning areas to have a go at a learning challenge. Take this time to look at your child’s learning journey.
We try to get the children to be as independent as possible early on, so please let them hang their coat up and sort themselves out while you wait in the classroom.
At 3.15pm, please wait at the gate to the Reception outdoor area to collect your child.
See you soon!
Newsletters
This term’s newsletters have been emailed and paper copies will be sent home later this week.
This year, we’ll publish the newsletters on the website, too. Here are the first half-term’s…
- Year 1 and Year 2 newsletter
- Year 3 and Year 4 newsletter
- Year 5 and Year 6 newsletter
- The whole school newsletter
Reception provide their own newsletters and lots of photos, top tips and news on their class news page.
