What’s the matter?
Our mini topic for the first two weeks is What’s the matter? In this Science-driven mini topic we will be looking at rocks, soil and fossils. Today, we’ve been investigating the properties of rocks. We conducted an experiment to see which rocks were permeable and which rocks were impermeable.
We used pipettes to add three drops of water onto a flat surface of a rock. We then observed what happened to the water. We were looking to see if it would soak into the rocks or just sit there. Why don’t you ask your child about the difference between permeable and impermeable rocks and how this experiment helped us to discover if rocks were permeable or not?
You could also explore whether other materials are permeable or impermeable – materials like raincoats, for example!
Fruit kebabs
Year 3 have been practising their peeling and chopping skills today when preparing a variety of fruits to make their own fruit kebabs. We considered other aspects of selecting fruits such as seasonal availability, allergies and individual preference. Children were keen to try new fruits, both fresh and dried.
At a time of year when many people make healthy eating goals, we all agreed this was a great way to get one of your 5-a-day.
Let’s get sugar smart
Today has seen a new campaign launch by Change 4 Life, the government’s public health initiative, aimed at reducing the amount of sugar that children consume.
The free Sugar Smart App can tell you the amount of sugar in items by scanning the barcode, and then displaying the result as a number of cubes or in grams. The app can be used as a way of revealing the hidden sugar content in foods and to make us more aware of what children are consuming.
Public Health England, which runs the Change 4 Life campaign, hopes the Sugar Smart app and campaign will help combat tooth decay, obesity and type two diabetes and encourage families to choose healthier alternatives.
New SEAL theme…Good to be me
Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:
•Self-awareness – feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
•Managing Feelings – understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself –assertiveness skills, standing up for your views.
•Empathy
This theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘Good to be me’. The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners.
As part of our current mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.
The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:
Building emotional resilience
Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.
Coping with anxiety and worrying
Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.
Calming down
Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.
Assertiveness
The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.
Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour
The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened /under stress.
‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.
Swimming returns on 12 January
A reminder there is no swimming tomorrow or for the first week of next term. The next swimming session therefore will be on Tuesday 12 January.
At the play session last week, it was great to see all the children in the big pool showing great confidence in the water.
Following our Health themed week, it was also noticeable to see the increase in healthier snacks for after swimming with some children bringing fruit they had purchased from the tuck shop earlier in the day. Please also ensure your child has a water bottle at school (in addition to one in a packed lunch) to take to swimming.
In case you get chance to go swimming over the holidays, Leeds Let Get Active offers free swimming sessions at local leisure centres.
Den building
Our mini topic over the last three weeks has been The Village that Vanished by Anne Grifalconi. In this African folk tale, a village escapes from a group of slavers by dismantling their village and hiding deep in a forest. Today, we had a go at creating our own village with “Chris the Den Man” and made it vanish. Here are the finished results (before the village vanished!).
Bedtime reading
We like these top tips to promote bedtime reading from Book Trust.
Although these are specifically for children who are starting to read by themselves, there are plenty of tips to support children of all ages.
(The Book Trust’s advent calendar is brilliant, too!)
8Rs for learning
Resilience, resourcefulness, readiness, responsibility, risk-taking, responsiveness, remembering and …reflection.
This week we complete our 8Rs SEAL theme. Children will have the opportunity to not only reflect on their learning in general but also reflect on how the 8Rs supports their learning.
Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today…
Can your child remember the 8Rs and the associated animal?
Maths and English
Maths
This week in maths, we’ve been looking at mental methods of subtraction. We started the week by looking at a method called “forcing bonds”. Let’s have a look at this in practice…
To make this calculation easier, we can start by subtracting down to the previous ten. This would mean we would subtract four to get to thirty.
Having subtracted four, how much more would we need to subtract the full eight?
We would then subtract the remaining four which gives us an answer of twenty six.
We’ve also looked at the “add and adjust” method of subtraction which we usually use when subtracting nine.
To start, we add one to our nine which gives us ten. As a class we agreed that finding ten less is much easier than subtracting nine.
We would then use a blank number line to clearly record our methodology.
We then have to “adjust” our answer because we want to subtract nine not ten. To do this we add one back on.
English
In English, we’ve been looking at how to punctuate direct speech. Here is an example of correctly punctuated direct speech.
We use inverted commas (speech marks) before and after speech in a sentence. Ask your child how their “speech hands” can help them punctuate speech.
Direct speech is always finished with punctuation – usually a comma. Can your child think of any other punctuation that could be used at the end of direct speech? Since this punctuation is part of the speech it must come before the closing inverted commas.
After speech we often see the word said or a synonym of said. We’ve been exploring said synonyms in class.
To make our speech sentences more interesting, we’ve also looked at adding in adverbs. Adverbs describe a verb and in this sentence the verb is said.
Library
I hope your child has enjoyed having a book from our library. Please could you make sure they bring their library books back to school next week as we are having a rotation of stock.
One of your 5 a day for free
Our weekly fruit tuck shop runs on a Tuesday playtime. It’s for Key Stage 2 children, with a charge of 20p per portion and a pre-payment option available.
Today, as part of health week, all children, including Reception and Key Stage 1, were invited to an extra tuck shop free of charge. This gave children who might not normally come to the tuck shop the chance to try it out.
It was great to see everyone enjoying a fruit-filled playtime.
