11 September 2015
The homework this week is talk time and is due in on Wednesday 16 September.
I can talk about what I am going to do to make sure I have a successful year.
For more information about homework and the types of homework, please read the first page of your child’s homework book. If you have any questions, please ask.
11 September 2015
The spellings this week are the numbers one to ten.
| one |
| two |
| three |
| four |
| five |
| six |
| seven |
| eight |
| nine |
| ten |
This links to our work in maths this week. Common mistakes are writing the word two as tow and four as for. You might look at the corresponding tens numbers and see how the spelling changes or stays the same. Unfortunately, there are some frustrating differences. For example, four changes to forty and five to fifty.
The children will be tested on all ten spellings on Friday. If you have any questions, please ask.
Too much screen time?
You might have heard about this research recently. Although it focuses on older pupils, we think it’s just as relevant for primary-aged children: too much screen-time can undermine learning.
An extra hour a day of television, internet or computer game time in Year 10 is linked to poorer grades at GCSE, a Cambridge University study suggests, as reported by BBC on-line.
The researchers recorded the activities of more than 800 14-year-olds and analysed their GCSE results at 16. Those spending an extra hour a day on screens saw a fall in GCSE results equivalent to two grades overall.
The researchers analysed the habits of 845 pupils from schools in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk at the age of 14 years and six months. They researchers correlated the data with the pupils’ GCSEs, taken the following year.
Pupils who did an extra hour of homework and reading performed better than their peers.
On average, the 14-year-olds said they spent four hours of their leisure time each day watching TV or in front of a computer. The researchers found an additional hour of screen-time each day was associated with 9.3 fewer GCSE points at 16 – the equivalent of dropping a grade in two subjects. Two extra hours of screen-time was associated with 18 fewer points – or dropping a grade in four subjects.
Interestingly, a teacher in school accidentally discovered similar results. When teaching about data and statistics, she asked the class how many TVs were in the home. Broadly speaking, those who reported fewer TVs in their homes were children who were making the best progress.
Fun in maths
Having reminded ourselves of place value this week, we used all of our refreshed knowledge to play some maths games and challenge ourselves along the way.
Beanbag drop
Somebody threw the beanbags into the basket and everybody had to write down the number it made.
Then, that person took charge and asked us questions about our number. How many thousands? What is 100 more/less? What is this number rounded to the nearest 10,000?
Target challenge
We rolled a die to decide how many digits we were working with. Then, we picked a target (the greatest number, a multiple of 5, the number closest to 6000). Each person then picked a playing card for us to write into our place value grid aiming for that target. Sometimes we all won and sometimes one person had thought more carefully.
Questions dice
For this, we roll the die to make a number and then we had to roll again to choose a question. Sometimes we had to add 100, sometimes we had to take 10. It really helped us to understand what each digit was worth in that number.
11 September 2015
This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Wednesday 16 September 2015.
To create your own ‘Lost Thing’.
In our first mini-topic of the year, we’ve been reading Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing’. We’ve asked lots of questions to find out more about it:
What is the lost thing? Where has it come from? Who left it there? How does it feel to be left there?
Now, create your own ‘Lost Thing’ and think about these questions for your own design. You might decide to design and label an image or you could gather odds and ends from around the house to make your ‘Lost Thing’ in 3D.
Creative homework. This involves a creative piece of open-ended work based around an ‘I can…’ statement eg ‘I can use research skills to find out about a country.’ ‘I know how instructions are used’ Only one rule: don’t use more than one page of A4 (unless your teacher says otherwise!). Content will be a balanced mix of subjects.
Top Tips: Be as creative as you like! Chat about ideas with your child: Could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, foldout ‘extras’ on the page…?
Leeds Children’s mayor
Could you be the next Leeds children’s mayor? Year 6 are invited to take part in this annual programme. Pupils write a short manifesto (400 words maximum) saying how they would improve Leeds if they were the Children’s Mayor. The manifesto must be based on one of the 12 Wishes for a more child friendly Leeds.
What would you do to make Leeds a better city for other children and young people?
If you’d like to take part then please complete your manifesto by 23.09.15 and the class will vote for the entry that will be submitted. Only one entrant can be submitted per school.
Friday football returns
Our Friday Football Club is open to everyone in school, from Reception to Year 6. The new season starts on Friday 18 September.
This is a great way to get younger children to learn the basics of football – passing, control and dribbling. The sessions are delivered in a fun and engaging way, ensuring all players get lots of touches of the ball in a non-pressurised activity, encouraging them to use both feet and develop their fundamental skills.
For the older children, they train like the professionals in the unique Total Footballers Clubs; they work through a fun skills and games programme developed by an in-house ex-professional footballer and delivered by qualified F.A. coaches. They’ll learn new skills as well as develop the ones they already have. Most importantly, they’ll have fun doing it with a football at their feet.
Want to sign up? Please follow the online booking process.
Want to know more? Please contact TSC Sports and Dance Coaching on 0113 3226115 with any questions you may have, or ask Paula or Nicky in the school office.
Grammar, punctuation and spelling
The last news post about reading offered you lots of different ways to support your child’s reading. Here are some more ways to help your child whilst reading; these are more related to helping your child’s understanding of grammar, punctuation and spelling.
Word
- What does … mean? Can you think of another word that means the same/similar?
- Which word tells you that… ?
- Which word describes… ?
- Find two verbs / adjectives / adverbs on this page.
- Pick a descriptive word from the text, write it down and, using a thesaurus, write down five synonyms (different words with almost identical or similar meanings) and antonyms (words of opposite meaning) for that word.
- Write down any words you had difficulty reading.
- Write down any words that you don’t know the meaning of, then find them in a dictionary and write the meaning.
Phonics
- Can you write a list of other words with the ‘oo’ sound in (or choose a different sound, depending on sounds in book).
- Using one or two words from this list, write your own sentence.
- Can you find these sounds in another book?
- How many words can you find on this page beginning with ‘c’ or ‘br’ or ending in ‘ck’ (again, choose a letter string that is appropriate – think about what spellings your child has recently been learning).
- Play ‘I spy’ with words that begin with ‘br’, ‘cl’, ‘dr’ for example.
Punctuation
- Can you find the speech marks, exclamation marks, question marks, full, stops, commas?
- Can you write some sentences using some of the above punctuation?
Welcome back
Hello all and welcome back.
It will be great to see everybody back in school having had a long summer to refresh ourselves. I’m excited to be in a new classroom and year group as, I hope, our new Year 5s are, too. We’ll be diving straight into a great mini-topic based on a picture book by Shaun Tan (more below) which has some amazing artwork. Each week, I’ll post on here an overview of what we’ll be focussing on in English, Maths and Topic. This means that people at home will be able to get an idea of what the children will be learning and what they might need support with.
English starts with us recapping our grammar, recognising nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions and conjunctions while we enjoy our class picture book. This will run alongside developing our skills in descriptive writing by using all of those different word classes effectively. To help at home, test each other on what type of word is on a road sign or in a recipe. Here’s a list of definitions and examples if you need a refresher too and there are some posters in the playground…
noun – can be an object (the table, a book, an orange), a place or person (Miss Rushbrooke, Leeds, Moortown Primary School).
adjective – gives information about a noun (large table, clever Miss Rushbrooke, wonderful Moortown Primary School).
verb – an action word (to play, to sneeze, to hink). These might have ed or ing added to the end, too.
adverb – gives information about the verb. You might say how (play nicely, sneeze extravagantly, think carefully), where (play on the grass, sneeze in assembly) or when (play after dinner, sneeze all through the night).
conjunction – joins two sentences together (We went to bed because we were tired. It’s raining so I’ll get an umbrella.).
preposition – indicates where or when (in, around, under, through, after, whilst).
Maths will be kicked off by ensuring we are able to read numbers up to 1,000,000 and we understand what each digit in that number is worth. This will involve ordering, comparing and rounding numbers before then applying this knowledge to real life contexts. To help at home, notice numbers around you and say them out loud. Decide which is bigger or smaller and test each other by asking what is 100 more or 10 less.
Topic will be focussed around Shaun Tan’s ‘The Lost Thing‘. We’ll look at art by Salvador Dali and take on the role of news reporters as we write a class report on the discovery of the ‘lost thing’.
SEAL New beginnings
As we start the new school year, our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme focuses on New Beginnings.
We have three new members of staff making a new beginning at Moortown, Mrs Wells, Mr McKeon and Mr Lawton, alongside new children joining our school and our new Reception class.
‘I make someone feel welcome‘ is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme.
New beginnings allows children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on how they or others may feel in a new situation or setting. This SEAL theme offers children the opportunity to see themselves as valued individuals within a community, and to contribute to shaping a welcoming, safe and fair learning community for all.
During the theme, the key areas of learning are empathy, self-awareness, social skills and motivation.
Through discrete SEAL lessons, circle times and across the curriculum, children will explore feelings of happiness and excitement, sadness, anxiety and fearfulness, while learning (and putting into practice) shared models for calming down and problem-solving.
New Beginnings supports the development of a learning community in each classroom where all members feel that they belong. Class contracts, produced at the start of the year, allow children to contribute to how they feel they can achieve a safe and fair learning community.