Testing times…
Do you have a child Year 2 or Year 6?
If so, they will be taking the national curriculum tests (SATs) in May 2016. The tests will provide information about how your child is progressing, compared to children the same age nationally. The results are used to ensure that schools are teaching their pupils the essential knowledge and skills in the subjects that are the early building blocks. This is to ensure every child reaches their full potential. There are changes to the tests this year at both key stages. This is because the tests are based on the new national curriculum, which your child has been taught since September 2014.
The Standards and Testing Agency has published a leaflet and short video for parents about the 2016 tests.
After school snack
Our savoury scones, using cheese, sweetcorn, carrot and courgette, went down a treat as an after school snack today.
Ask your child:
- How do we get ready to cook?
- What equipment did we use?
- What were the ingredients?
Here are some of the skills we used – can they remember any others?
How are you feeling?
Across school, we’ve been trialling the use of colours to represent children’s emotions. Children are then encouraged to think whether this is a blocker or driver for their learning.
- ‘I feel blue because I am calm.’
- ‘I feel red because I had a fall out at lunchtime.’
- ‘I feel orange because I am excited to celebrate my brother’s birthday.’
Here is a new website to support young people’s emotional wellbeing in Leeds.
‘If you’re a young person, MindMate can help you understand the way you’re feeling and find the right advice and support. If you’re a parent, carer or professional, MindMate can help you support a young person you know.’
Children are also encouraged to speak with an adult, friend or use our class SEAL boxes to share any worries.
Leeds Let’s Get Sugar Swapping!
Following the introduction of the Change4life Sugar Smart App, the Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge has been launched to ask families, schools and other organisations to share the amount of sugar they have saved by making sugar smart swaps. The Change4Life website has lots of information to help you to look for sugar on food labels if you are unable to access the app.
Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge features a city totalizer to record the number of sugar cubes saved, with prizes available at random to top swappers.
Doggy drama
We’ve had a great afternoon, practising our drama skills. We’ve used our class novel – The 100mph dog – as our stimulus to do lots of drama about dogs. We’ve become dogs, making friends and enemies. We’ve discovered the first dog. We’ve protected our wolf pack and fought challengers. We’ve told the story of how dog and man became friends. Finally, we created our own – fairly gruesome – story about dogs! 
Creative shape homework
Here are the five homeworks as chosen by the class:
Wigton Moor girls’ football try outs
Are you interested in playing girls’ football and in Year 2, 3 or 4?
Places in Years 5 and 6 also available.
Children and Young People’s Plan
The ambition of Leeds City Council is for Leeds to be a child-friendly city. A child-friendly version of the city’s Children and Young People’s Plan has recently been launched; it was designed in consultation with pupils from primary and secondary schools across Leeds. As well as being a fun activity sheet, it is also a good way to share the city-wide vision directly with children and to raise their awareness of what Leeds City Council are doing to make Leeds the best city for children to live and grow up in.
The plan was recently reviewed by our School Council.
If you would like a printed copy of the plan, please ask at the office.
Children and young people are the future of our city, which is why we put them at the very heart of the growth strategy. We want Leeds to be a compassionate city with a strong economy, and it is really important that all our children and young people are supported to achieve their full potentials. The city-wide partnership approach in promoting and achieving the aims of the Leeds Children and Young People’s Plan is key to this.
Today’s menu
Have you seen our new menu board on display in the dining room? This is updated daily to show the school dinner menu including the main course, vegetarian main and jacket potato option. If your child has their school dinner in the main hall they are encouraged to have a look at the board at the start of the day, playtime or at lunchtime.
You’re also welcome to have a look with your child/children.
The full weekly menu is still available, displayed on the dining room window and in our school meals section.
The Summer term menu has also been published with details of any new dishes. How to encourage others to try new dishes was recently discussed by our School Council. Suggestions included:
- Tell your friends if you have tried one of the new meals.
- Have a taster of a new meal.
In response to this, children can request a small taster of a new meal alongside their lunch. New dishes will be highlighted on the menu board.
I work co-operatively to help a group.
As part of our SEAL learning, Year 2 had some great suggestions for how to work co-operatively to help a group so we put it to the test.
There was some great teamwork, where all the group were included, listening and using motivation to solve the group challenge.
