Matheletics has changed…
…to Spellodrome!
Two years ago, we entered into a three year contract for the whole school. We’ve incorporated Mathletics sessions into the weekly routine in school, and classes have sometimes been given Mathletics Practice Makes Perfect homework. Of course, we also hoped that you would encourage your child to log-in regularly at home, too.
As a school, we’ve been really happy with Matheletics. However, with one year left in our current contract, we thought it was time for a change. Spellodrome is created by the same people, so we’ve decided to swap to this for the final year.
Why?
Well, put simply, our children’s spellings need to be better. Despite being one of the top performing schools in the country in the phonics screening check which Year 1 children do (we received a letter from the Department of Education congratulating us for having 100% of children pass in 2015), our children’s spelling accuracy isn’t good enough.
We’re finding many children use their phonics knowledge to spell words which are phonetically readable, but not accurate. By this we mean, for example, Moortown might be Moretown, English might be Inglish, phonics might be fonicks. (I’ll include a couple of other examples below.) All these words can be read, but there are so many ways to make sounds in our language, and children are choosing the wrong ways (not weighs!).
Also, many children aren’t applying some common spelling rules which would really help – and which teachers practise a lot with their classes:
- double up for a short vowel sound (think of the difference between hoping and hopping; able and apple; diner and dinner)
- drop the ‘e’ for ‘ing’ (take becomes taking – no ‘e’; like becomes liking; accommodate becomes accommodating)
- drop the ‘y’ for an ‘i’ (so try becomes tries; party becomes parties; quality becomes qualities)
So, for the next year at least, the whole school is using Spellodrome. Please, please make sure (not shoor!) your child is regularly logging in.
Also, and probably more importantly, they should be reading. Reading will help to familiarise children with correct spellings in the correct contexts – and has so many other benefits, too (studies have found that children who read fiction for pleasure have increased empathy and better mental health in years to come).
Netball after-school club
High 5 netball club will move to a Tuesday evening after the Easter holiday for four more sessions, until our main Summer term after-school programme starts (week commencing 16 May).
Children who currently attend the club on a Thursday, and also any new members, are welcome to attend. Please return the permission slip sent home this week.
This continues to be a free club subsidised by part of our PE Premium.
Eatwell guide
Public Health England have launched a new Eatwell Guide. This relates to the Eatwell Plate, a key resource used in school, to show how much of what you eat overall should come from each food group.
Holiday activity idea
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 Youth Council
All young people aged 10-18 in Leeds can now join the Leeds Youth Council (LYC).
Board game fun!
We all really enjoyed learning about different types of punctuation through a board game last week. Sometimes we landed on a ‘tricky tester’ and had to answer a test question. On our next go we could land on ‘dastardly dictation’ where we had to listen to a sentence and write it with the correct punctuation.
Everybody had fun while making sure they were checking their answers and learning from it, too.
Eat, digest, do!
As part of the Science in school workshops led by Leeds University students, Year 5 and 6 took part in an interactive session all about the digestive system.
This included learning about what happens to food inside our body, the different parts and functions of the alimentary canal, what makes your tummy rumble and how far your food has to travel from one end to the other… A great addition to our current Life topic!
Thank you to Miss Mathias for providing this informative session.
- ‘I learnt how long the small intestine is – child is 5m and adult is 6-7m.’
- ‘I learnt how food gets through your body.’
- ‘I learnt what things are called in the digestive system and what everything does.’
- ‘I have learnt that your digestive system has lots of different parts.’
KidsHealth website provides a summary of what we learnt.
I can work with money
Last week’s Creative homework was based on Maths and the children really got their creative juices flowing to produce some great pieces of work.
Lots of our money homework is now on our Maths challenge table so the children can practise their skills through games, questions and challenges that have been set by each other.
World Book Week
Year 5 love books so we had a great time celebrating this last week. On Monday, we visited the Book Fair to see what great new books we could get for ourselves. There were some great choices for £1 which we could all go for with our free book voucher and those of use who had money to spend found some fantastic books.
Then, Thursday brought us World Book Day and a whole host of book characters strolled into the classroom. What a fantastic array of costumes that really got us in the mood for our book themed day.
We dived into the story of ‘The Day the Crayons Quit’. We began by imagining what the crayons would say to Duncan before reading the story and writing our own letters back to the crayons.
HURRAY FOR BOOKS!
