School Savings Club paying in dates
Please note a change of day for the remaining School Savings Club paying in dates.
If your child has a School Savings Club account, we hold paying in sessions on the penultimate week of every half term.
Thursday 18 October 2018 3.15-3.45pm
Thursday 13 December 2018 3.15-3.45pm
Thursday 07 February 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 20 March 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 15 May 2019 3.15-3.45pm
Wednesday 10 July 2019 3.15-3.45pm
If you are unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be paid in, to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Mrs Tiffany.
If you would like your child to open an account, please enquire at the office. Pupils in Year 3 can still take advantage of the £10 incentive offer.
Spelling Practice
As there are lots of difficult words on the Year 5/6 spelling list, spelling practice is essential. Here are two good examples from our class this week.
Kai has practised the words, noting down the words he found difficult and exactly which part he was unsure of. This is a good example of really reflective spelling practice.
Amrit was really creative with his practice which will help the spellings move to his long term memory, particularly if there’s a story to go with the cartoon.
Creative Homework
We enjoyed our homework review today because there were some fantastically creative pieces to share.
Here are some of our favourites:
This week’s standard of homework was brilliant to see – keep it up, Year 6.
Living and Learning – body image guide for parents and carers
Our focus in Living and Learning, for the rest of this half term, is body image.
What is body image?
Body image describes our idea of how our body looks and how we think it is perceived by others. This can include our thoughts and feelings about our height, weight, shape, skin colour, and our appearance and attractiveness more broadly.
This parent and carer guide has been designed to give practical ideas to support your child in building their emotional resilience in this area.
Great competitors
Well done to pupils who have represented school recently in sporting competitions.
Congratulations to our Year 3 qualifier in the West Yorkshire cross country final. She ran a fantastic race at the event at Temple Newsam.
In wet conditions last Friday, our Year 5/6 hockey team competed in the Leeds Quick Sticks competition. Well done to all the children involved.
Thank you to parents and carers who supported these events by transporting the children.
Why is travelling actively to school important?
Sustrans have recently published this article about the importance of travelling actively to school.
With just two weeks to go, Sustrans Big Pedal, is one way we will be encouraging active journeys this term alongside our year round Living Streets WOW sustainable travel initiative where the children record how they travel to school on our daily travel tracker.
Sustrans Big Pedal is the UK’s largest inter-school cycling and scooting challenge, that inspires pupils, staff and parents to choose two (or three) wheels for their journey to school. We would love everyone to be involved. For the first time, walking (and park and stride) will be counted alongside cycling and scooting.
This year’s Big Pedal will run for five days, from 25th March to 29th March.
You might also be interested in a current bike promotion from our local Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative branch.
Practice Sculptures
Leading toward our modroc sculptures we’ll be making as part of our art learning, we practised creating the main shape using newspaper and masking tape this afternoon.
Sometimes is was frustrating and other times is was surprisingly successful.
These models will help us focus on the main shape of our model when we start using wire to create the base for our modroc.
Living and Learning: What influences us?
In our living and learning session this week, we discussed what influence means and what we think influences us.
The children came up with lots of ideas of what can be an influence on their lives and choices – both positive and negative: parents, friends, teachers, social media, adverts, games, famous people…
They worked as a group to create a diamond nine to represent which of these they felt influenced them most and which influenced them least which led to lots of interesting discussions.
At home, discuss this together, thinking about how friends, for example, can influence us positively and how they can influence us negatively.
Exploring Sculpture
As part of our topic learning around Fighting Fantasy, we’re working towards creating a modroc sculpture of the sort of creature you might come across in Firetop Mountain.
Today, we thought about what sculpture is, looking at some examples and discussing which we like best and why. At home, share any sculptures you know about and see whether your child likes it and why/why not.
Active travel update
Here’s an update on our latest active travel initiatives for this half term.
Living Streets WOW Travel Tracker
Meltem from Living Streets visited school for an assembly today to launch a new challenge for our WOW active travel tracker.
Currently, children record how they get to school on the WOW daily online travel tracker and those who complete at least one active journey per week to school (bike, scoot, walk or park and stride) are rewarded with a themed monthly badge.
As this has been a big success, with increased active journeys and less journeys by car, from March, we will be challenging children to make at least three active journeys per week to earn their monthly badge.
There were some queries that were raised at the assembly.
Can your three active journeys be different?
Yes – active journeys include walking, biking, scooting and park and stride so as long as your journeys are any of these three in a week you would qualify for a badge.
What can be included as park and stride?
Ideally park and stride is where you park away from school and walk the final 5-10 minutes to school. This ensures that areas close to school are free from traffic. Marks and Spencer has many spaces available for families to park and walk the final part of the journey to school.
Sustrans Big Pedal 2019
Get set… the Big Pedal is back! We’re taking part in Sustrans Big Pedal 2019, the UK’s largest inter-school cycling and scooting challenge, that inspires pupils, staff and parents to choose two (or three) wheels for their journey to school. We would love everyone to be involved. For the first time, walking (and park and stride) will be counted alongside cycling and scooting.
This year’s Big Pedal will run for five days, from 25th March to 29th March.
On each day, schools compete to see who can get as many of their pupils, staff and parents cycling or scooting to school then our results will determine our final position in the national league table.
If you need the car to bring your child to school, perhaps you could park and stride the last part (our suggested park and stride site is Marks and Spencer car park).
The Big Pedal will run alongside our year round Living Streets WOW sustainable travel initiative where the children record how they travel to school on our daily travel tracker.
Why we’re taking part
It’s a great way to get more of our pupils travelling to school in an active way. Also, schools will be entered into a daily prize draw for rewards including equipment and accessories if over 15% of our school community cycle, walk or scoot on that day of the challenge.
What do you need to do?
All you need to do is encourage your child(ren) to cycle, scoot, walk or park and stride to school every day during the event, and join them on their way.