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29 November 2013

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a test on Friday 06 December 2013.

29 November 2013

The spellings this week are all words with silent letters, e.g. knee, gnat, wrinkle.

29 November 2013

The homework this week is creative. The children are invited to respond to something from either a cultural or spiritual perspective.

I can respond to a book I’ve recently read.

We’d like children to present their responses about a recent book they’ve read. We’re interested to hear your child’s opinions and any connections they might have made between the book and their own life. This book review might include pictures, an interview (you could write a fictional script between an interviewer and a character), a letter (eg to or from a character, or perhaps even the author) – anything which might include your child’s responses!

However, your child might prefer to do the following:

I can show what Eid, Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas or another festival means to me and my community.

Before half-term, some children in school will have celebrated the Muslim festival of Eid. A couple of weeks ago, some children in school celebrated the Sikh and Hindu festival Diwali, and more recently, children of Jewish faith might have celebrated Hanukkah. Finally, in a few weeks, Christians (and many non-Christians) will be celebrating Christmas. We invite children to respond to the sentence above – they might include a recount (like a diary entry), pictures, an interview (perhaps in a script).

Attendance matters

Our attendance data is looking great so far this year – thank you to all of you who are respecting new guidelines around avoiding term-time absence, which is having a big impact on our attendance and therefore on your child’s learning.  The table below lists attendance this year up until 22.11.13 (final column), which you can compare with the same period last year, and the overall figures for the whole school year.

Don’t forget that each row for last year and this year is a different group of children, so you might want to compare Year 1 last year (95.8% for this period) with Year 2 this year (97.7%) – a great improvement for the same children (and parents / carers) here!

Attendance data is something which Ofsted and other educational bodies look closely at.  For example, Fischer Family Trust reports on attendance by breaking down figures for different groups in school.  They report, for example:

• children who attain well at Moortown have better attendance figures than similar children nationally
• most ethnic groups (but not all) have better attendance than the same groups nationally
• boys and girls have the same attendance data at Moortown

Once again: thank you to all parents / carers who are trying hard to maintain good attendance for their child.

Getting ready to write!

The children are progressing quickly with their phonics learning and reading. Alongside blending to read, the children also need to segment words to spell. Children often find this harder and lack confidence in their ability to write.

In Reception, the children take part in shared writing activities where they can ‘have a go’ on whiteboards with the support of adults. We then encourage independent writing in all the areas of provision. This includes writing a label for their model, writing a shopping list in the role-play shop or writing a letter to a friend. We value all the children’s attempts at writing and model writing (and making mistakes) to them.

You can help at home by:

• Providing plenty of different types of pens and pencils and encouraging your child to use a correct grip
• Encouraging them to use the school’s handwriting style and to use lower case letters; we teach that a capital letter is required for the first letter in a name and at the beginning of a sentence
• Spelling is harder than reading words – praise, don’t criticise. Little whiteboards and pens are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting
• Remember that at this stage children’s phonetic attempts are valued. They will learn the correct spellings of words later.  We want the children to become confident writers by ‘having a go’ and using their phonetic knowledge independently.
• To be able to write, children need to be well co-ordinated through their whole body, not just their hands and fingers. Games that help co-ordination include throwing balls at a target, under-arm and over-arm, and bouncing balls – also skipping on the spot, throwing a Frisbee, picking up pebbles from the beach and throwing them into the sea.

Have fun!

22 November 2013

We are revisiting one of our key spelling rules this week. The spellings are all words where you have to drop the y for an i when adding ly.

22 November 2013

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due in on Wednesday 27 November 2013.

I know what bullying means and how to stop it.

At the start of this week we had anti-bullying day with classes having the chance to talk about what is bullying, what are the different types of bullying and how can we stop it.

As part of your discussion you may find our school definition of bullying useful, as agreed by our School Councillors:

Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, more than once and on purpose.

Alongside this definition we have used the following prompts for the children to remember:

• Several
• Times
• On
• Purpose

• Start
• Telling
• Other
• People

The purpose of Talk Time homework is to encourage a conversation around current learning. Any notes made in their homework book should be there to aid them as a prompt when it is discussed in class the following week. For this reason, teachers tend to give verbal feedback during their homework feedback session in class.

The world of work

This week it is Money and Enterprise week and two visitors came to talk to us about setting up and running a business.

Meg from Radish bookshop in Chapel Allerton talked to us about how businesses can help others. In her shop are a range of Fairtrade items alongside the books that she sells. Well done, Isaac, for remembering the term Fairtrade and winning the book prize from Meg.

Harriet from a shop called Chirpy, also in Chapel Allerton, talked to us about how she set up her business and the importance of choosing a good name and advertising her shop to encourage customers to visit. She had lots of interesting products to show us. On the height chart she brought, Lewis was as tall as a wheelie bin!

Call and say hello to Meg and Harriet if you are visiting Chapel Allerton.

Fun fit

The Shuffles Fun Fit after-school club has been running this half-term including a different energetic activity every week.

There has been a mix of street dance, breakdance, multi-sports, short tennis, football coaching, relays & fun games with the main aim to keep the children active and to have fun.

We will continue to offer the club in the Spring and Summer terms and we intend to use some of our PE and school sports government funding to fully subsidise this and other physical activity after-school clubs. Look out for more details when the Spring after-school clubs information is sent out.

‘I like going to Shuffles fun fit club because we do a different fun thing every week.’

Several times on purpose

During anti-bullying day, Year 1 had some great discussions about bullying.

We looked at our school definition, focussing on the fact that bullying takes place more than once rather than a one-off incident.

Bullying is where you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, more than once and on purpose.

Using material from the go givers website, we talked about how words can hurt others as much as being hurt physically.  The class were able to identify lots of people they could tell about any bullying incidents.

Then we were involved in an anti-bullying dance workshop with Flex Dance Inc.  Well done, Lewis, for knowing that David Cameron is our prime minister.  Here we are in rehearsals.