Polished performance
This week is the final week of our Autumn term after-school clubs.
It was great to see so many parents come to watch the routine learnt by children attending the popular dance club led by Edward Lynch.
Edward has worked with class teachers in curriculum PE to develop their teaching of dance and his enthusiasm for this subject has certainly rubbed off on the children who attended this club.
- ‘It was an amazing club.”
- ‘I like dance even more now.’
Healthy packed lunches
As it is health week, copies of our Guide to Healthy Packed Lunches have been given out at lunchtime today as a reminder for children who choose to bring a packed lunch to school.
We encourage at least one piece of fruit or vegetable in packed lunches and snack items occasionally, as a treat, but aim for healthy options. Lots of learning has taken place in health week looking at quantities of sugar in drinks and the importance of drinking water to keep hydrated. We therefore encourage water which is freely available for packed lunch children.
There were also some prizes for healthy packed lunches.
It’s all about health
This week is the first themed week of the year and it’s all about health.
Over the week classes will work with different visitors to school including:
- d:side (drug education)
- Catering Leeds (food nutritionists)
- Leeds Force basketball
- Leeds City Council road safety team
- Tsukuru Judo Academy
- Leeds University dental students
- Rachel Frazer – Yoga teacher
- Heart Research UK
- Dr Natwar – Corner House dental surgery
- Claire Sparrow – pilates teacher
There will be lots of learning in class too – hand washing, body image, emotional health, 5 a day and much more. Keep an eye on our class news pages to find out more.
On Monday 23 November, 3:00-3:30pm, there will be an information session for parents, led by d:side, where you can find out more about the drug education sessions delivered to each class this week. No need to book – just come along.
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.
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.
Basketball Come and Try, Thursday 19 November
We have a few spare places to come to the basketball come and try event at Roundhay School on Thursday 19 November.
- What? Basketball session led by Leeds Force basketball club
- Where? Roundhay School
- When? Thursday 19 November, 3.30pm-5.30pm
- Who? Open to all KS2 classes
Please contact the office if you are able to come to this event. Children will be supervised at the session but need to be dropped off and collected from Roundhay School.
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.
Athens or Sparta – which was better?
As part of our Holidays Big Topic, we have been studying Ancient Greece. In class today, we split into two groups, Athenians and Spartans, to debate which polis (city) was better.
Our team leaders were picked based on how each polis used to decide their leaders. Athens had a democracy so that group had a vote. Sparta was ruled by a tyrant so the group didn’t get a say as to who would lead them. After that, we split into groups and decided why each polis was better than the other. 
We then debated our points but could not decide overall which polis was better.
Why not ask your child which polis they think is better?