18 October 2013
It’s time to get your creative juices flowing again for this week’s creative homework.
I can show a healthy balanced meal.
It’s entirely up to you how you do this, make is as creative as possible! Maybe you could…
- Cook a meal at home that has a balanced amount of each food group.
- Take pictures of your work.
- Create a meal on a paper plate using dried food.
- Think about both sweet and savoury food.
Don’t forget about: Donny Dairy, Colin Carbohydrate, Victor Vitamin, Freddy Fat and Peter Protein.
Finnish visitors
As you know, we had visitors from Finland last week as part of an on-going project to look at each other’s schools and reflect on outstanding practice. In their words, here are some of the key features that impressed the visitors from their time at Moortown Primary:
- warm and friendly school where all children are known by name
- consistent and positive approach to behaviour
- enthusiastic teachers
- lots of talk for learning
- a headteacher who is looking to improve practice all of the time and who gets actively involved in lessons and learning
- teachers (and the headteacher) working with groups of children and sitting on the same level as them eg on the carpet
- significant social and emotional awareness
- children know what is expected from them
- standard of maths is high from an early age
- good “learning” noise
A general comment that was made by the visitors was the fact that all five of the Leeds schools have bright displays reflecting learning. The Finnish teachers commented that if a Finnish child were to come to a Leeds school, they might feel like they were visiting the circus – but they also described their own classrooms as being more like a hospital ward! They questioned whether so much on display was distracting for the pupils. We asked our children in assembly; the response from the children was that they liked the displays and that they used them for prompts. When asked whether they were distracting they said they weren’t because it was what they were used to.
Mrs Weekes and Miss Rushbrooke will be visiting Finland in March 2014 and will be reflecting on any practice that could be successful here.
Thanks d:Side – we learnt lots!
Today, Catherine, from d:Side, came to visit to give us lots of information about our body and keeping it healthy. Judging by the responses, the class have learnt lots so far in our Doctor Doctor topic. We also managed to learn about what makes a healthy lunchbox and the safe use of medicines.
- “I learnt all about bodies, bones and muscles.”
- “I learnt that we grow when we are asleep.”
- “There are veins to take our blood around.”
Gymnastics
We’re continuing to learn new gymnastic skills on Thursday afternoons. This week, we’ve been practising different jumps and travelling along the benches in different ways.
Dance at Allerton Grange
Recently, we went to Allerton Grange to hone our dancing skills. The session was led by a group of pupils from Allerton Grange who taught us a dance to a song from the Lion King. Check out our lion faces…
Talk time homework
The discussion we had about the talk time homework this week was fantastic. The children had loads of really interesting things to talk about and to show. Thank you for your support. It is much appreciated!
Topic baking
Last week, children baked and then decorated their own house-shaped biscuits. The children first designed their houses on the new laptops in The Space and then made the biscuits. The following day, they decorated their biscuits and used their design as a guide.
We also made a big gingerbread house which we gave as a gift to our visitors from Finland!
11 October 2013
We are revisiting one of our key spelling rules this week: double up for short vowel sounds. This week’s spellings are all in the past tense so have ed endings as well (but be careful – sometimes ed sounds like a t!).
| 1. | snapped |
| 2. | trapped |
| 3. | stepped |
| 4. | flipped |
| 5. | slammed |
| 6. | dripped |
| 7. | stuffed |
| 8. | slipped |
| 9. | popped |
| 10. | plodded |
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:
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.