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Love talking!

Parents sometimes ask us why we set Talk Time homework occasionally.

It’s important to help your child with speaking and listening because:

• Your child’s ability to speak and listen well will be a good foundation for their future learning
• If they are good speakers and listeners they will do better at reading and writing
• If they can communicate well with others, it will help them to make friends more easily
• They will become more independent and be able to learn about the world
• Your child will learn to express their feelings and not become frustrated so easily

At school younger children will learn to:

• Think about what they say and choose the right words
• Speak fluently and confidently
• Listen to instructions from the teacher
• Listen to their classmates before speaking and take turns

As they get older they will:

• Join in group discussions and make useful points
• Present to an audience, expressing their opinions clearly
• Take part in decision-making and debate
• Learn how language varies in different situations

How can you help?

Put listening to your child first:

• Show your child how to be a good listener by listening to them and others
• Be patient: don’t interrupt or finish their sentences for them
• Give your child your attention: don’t check your mobile phone at the same time as they are talking to you, for example
• Show you’re listening: ask questions about what they say, ask their opinions
• Listen to your child reading aloud regularly

Be a clear speaker:

• Speak confidently, using the right words and set an example by talking in full sentences
• If English is not your first language, the most important thing is that you speak your own language confidently and well
• Use clear, simple directions for tasks and behaviours
• When your child follows direction, show you notice: praise them for listening to you

Get involved every day:

• Discuss their day with them when you see them after school
• Try to have a family meal together as often as possible
• Encourage your child to talk about their views and interests with others
• Ask them about their homework and get involved with it
• Switch off television and laptops well before bedtime: chat or read a bedtime story together instead

Have fun speaking and listening together:

• Play family games together, like I Spy, Charades, Chinese Whispers and Articulate
• Nursery rhymes, songs, jokes and puppets are an important way of helping younger children learn language
• Re-tell familiar stories and have fun making up your own
• With older children, read books and poetry aloud together
• Discuss and debate issues in the news

…and look at these websites for a few more ideas:

• www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/songs
• www.ican.org.uk
• www.literacytrust.org.uk
• www.britishcouncil.org
• www.talkingpoint.org.uk

Love reading!

It’s fairly clear that when parents ask how they can best support their child at home, the simple but most effective response is to encourage positive attitudes towards reading.

There have been quite a few reports and news stories recently about the importance of reading.  One of the most surprising, perhaps, is the news that keen readers do better at maths.  The study suggests that reading for pleasure is more important to a child’s development than how educated their parents were, leading to a 14.4% advantage in vocabulary, a 9.9% advantage in maths and an 8.6% advantage in spelling.

Other studies back this up: reading plays a key role in children’s development.

Young people who enjoy reading very much are nearly five times as likely to read above the expected level for their age compared with young people who do not enjoy reading at all.

Research also shows that reading for pleasure has a positive impact on children’s attainment in reading assessments. Children who read for pleasure have enhanced levels of text comprehension, an increased knowledge of grammar and show improvement in their writing. They also have more positive attitudes towards reading than their peers.

The advantages of reading for pleasure go beyond academic achievement. Other benefits include an increased breadth of vocabulary, pleasure in reading in later life, a better understanding of other cultures, better general knowledge and even a greater insight into human nature.

Research by the National Literacy Trust indicated a number of concerns about children’s reading habits. The researcher found that only three young people in 10 were reading daily in their own time and that the number of children and young people who enjoyed reading ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’ had barely changed since 2005 (50% in 2011 and 51% in 2005). The researchers went on to suggest that many children and young people enjoyed reading but that it was ‘pushed out’ in favour of other activities.

In fact: developing a love of reading can be more important for a child’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic background.

Phonics

We are busy learning to identify alliteration and rhyme which will pave the way for the systematic learning of phonics.

The children are taking part in lots of activities where they listen attentively to sounds around them, such as sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Singing a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and reading books to and with the children helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

We are also learning to ‘sound talk’. The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word: d-o-g = dog. This merging together is called blending and is a vital skill for reading.

Children will also learn to do this the other way around: cat = c-a-t. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. This is called segmenting and is a vital skill for spelling.

This is all oral (spoken). Your child will not be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.

Ways you can support your child at home:

Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.

11 October 2013

This week’s homework is talk time.

There has been lots of learning going on in art this week.  There are so many artists who have drawn and painted faces.  Giuseppe Arcimboldo painted faces using images of fruit.  Here is one of them:

           How does it make you feel?

           Do you like it?  Why?

            What does it make you think of?

These are just some questions to help you talk about the painting.

We are looking forward to hearing your views when we discuss this on Wednesday 16 October.

11 October 2013

Here are this week’s spellings.  As usual, there will be a spelling test on Friday 18 October.

Let’s all go shopping!

Today, Year 2 were all rich and went on a big sweet shop in our maths lesson. We had to find out how much the items on our shopping list were and then find the correct coins we needed to be able to pay for them. We really enjoyed using the coins (but were very disappointed when we realised they were only plastic).

After talking as a class, we decided it would be really good practice to try our new skills out with real money when going to the shops. Why not ask us to find out how much something is and let us see if we can pick out the coins we need to pay for it?

Outdoor learning!

The Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum emphasises the importance of the outdoor environment. As you know, we have enhanced our outdoor area to improve the quality of learning experiences for the children:

• Being outdoors has a positive impact on children’s sense of well-being and helps all aspects of children’s development.
• Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things in different ways and on different scales than when indoors.
• It gives children first-hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world.
• Outdoor environments give children freedom to explore, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant.

Misleading headlines on attendance

If you’ve seen the headlines in the Yorkshire Evening Press today (04.10.13), please don’t be misled.  First, it’s important to know that nothing has changed since previous communications on the subject, despite this front page news story suggesting otherwise.

Here’s my response to a few of the misleading points:

• ‘You can take holidays in school time’ – This headline reads like parents / carers have got the green light to go on holiday in term-time – this is not true and has never (in my time in education) been true.  Parents / carers might have chosen to do so in the past (we can’t physically stop families at passport control!), but schools and local authorities have never happily authorised this.  Some schools in the area have not authorised holidays for many, many years.  Moortown Primary has been playing catch-up with these schools because our attendance figures have been lower than other schools – they’re better now, and that’s down to stronger policies and your cooperation.  Thank you.
• ‘Parents faced with fines for taking children on holiday in school term time have been thrown a lifeline…’ – I wonder who has thrown this ‘lifeline’.  Nothing new has happened to warrant this story: there is no backing down on policy, there is no relaxing of rules.  One of our parents this afternoon commented on the use of the term ‘lifeline’ to me: ‘it’s hardly a matter of life and death’.
• ‘The Department for Education…said that local authorities could interpret the rules as they saw fit’ – That’s certainly true, but the DfE rules are clear: headteachers should not authorise unnecessary term-time absence.  This is backed up by Ofsted, who routinely use attendance figures in their inspections of schools.  Moortown policy matches Leeds policy.  Leeds policy is not in any way in conflict with national policy.  Here’s an extract from School Attendance: statutory guidance and departmental advice (Department of Education, 2013):

Can a parent take their child on holiday during term time?  Head teachers should only authorise leave of absence in exceptional circumstances… Leave is unlikely, however, to be granted for the purposes of a family holiday as a norm.

Can a school fine a parent for taking their child on holiday during term time?  Yes. Parents have a legal duty to make sure that their child aged 5-16, if registered at a school, attends that school regularly. If taking an unauthorised term time holiday is grounds for issuing a penalty notice according to the local authority’s code, and if the leave of absence for holiday was not authorised by the school, either the school or the local authority may issue a penalty notice.

The Deputy Director of Learning, skills & universal services for Leeds City Council comments on the article:

The headlines are extremely misleading and encourage people to believe at first sight that not only is Leeds giving permission for heads to authorise parents to take their children out of school for holidays in term time, but also that the Local Authority are in direct conflict with the DfE. Neither of these are true. We are making plain to the YEP through formal channels our concerns about their reporting of this issue. Moreover the DfE are aware of the article and the misrepresentation.

The main body of the article is largely a reasonable discussion of the issues around the new legislation and clearly states that ‘the DfE has said today that the decision by Leeds City Council is not illegal and is in keeping with the legislation’.

To reiterate the Leeds stance: in line with new government legislation headteachers are no longer allowed to authorise any requests for holidays in term time. Only leave requested in exceptional circumstances can be authorised.

Thank you for your support and cooperation around improving our attendance in recent years, and for your continued cooperation to make sure your child’s attendance, and therefore his / her learning, continues to improve.

Doctor Doctor

A real doctor came to visit us at school today.  She spoke to us about her job as a doctor and she told us how we can keep ourselves healthy.  We were able to use her stethoscope – did you know that if you listen to your tummy with a stethoscope you can still hear your heartbeat as well?  We discovered that our tummies make very strange noises!  A few of us had our pulses checked, fortunately we were all very healthy!

04 October 2013

This week’s homework is practice makes perfect.

Handwriting is very important and the sooner we get it right the better!

This week’s homework is practising round and back to form letters like a and c.   If you are not sure about the handwriting scheme, please take a look at the website so that you are able to support your child – there is a very useful guide which goes through the basic rules that we follow.