Be Food Smart
Be Food Smart is the latest health campaign from Change4life. Our everyday food and drink can contain surprisingly high amounts of sugar, saturated fat and salt, meaning most of us are eating more than we realise. National Child Measurement Programme data shows that one fifth of Reception and one third of Year 6 children are overweight or obese.
Public Health England has launched a free app, which families can use together to uncover how healthy their food choices are. The Be Food Smart app allows you to easily scan the bar codes of branded products, as well as supermarket favourites, to see how much sugar, saturated fat and salt is lurking inside.
This week, on a Good to be me theme, one of our parents spoke at a whole school assembly. She talked about changes she made to her diet and physical activity levels to become healthier.
One change she made was to have a healthy breakfast. We need this to give us a good start to the day.
Breakfast can have surprising amounts of sugar, saturated fat and salt. In fact, research has shown that children are eating nearly half their maximum daily amount of sugar before they get to school. See how sugar stacks up at breakfast time.
Having read this research, one family in school have recently made a change from sugary cereals to low sugar alternatives such as porridge and shredded wheat. Interestingly, at this same time, I commented to the parent that the particular child had become more focused in lessons.
Change4life provides lots of ideas for eating well and getting active, including ideas for packed lunches. The new lunchbox section has lots of simple, tasty and healthy tips for hassle-free lunches.
School Saving Club
The next School Saving Club paying in date is 02 February 2017 at 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 Miss Hale.
For your information the paying in dates for the rest of the year are:
- 23 March 2017 3.15-3.45pm
- 18 May 2017 3.15-3.45pm
- 13 July 2017 3.15-3.45pm
If your child would like to open account, please ask at the office.
E-safety – an important message from the Leeds Safeguarding Children Board
The Director of Leeds Children’s Services has encouraged us to share the following, which comes from Leeds Safeguarding Children Board:
There are reports in the media today about an e-safety incident involving primary age children from Leeds. Just to be clear, the incident did not take place in school or through an ‘app’ approved by school, but was reported to the school by concerned parents. The incident is now being investigated by West Yorkshire Police.
This incident has highlighted a number of safeguarding issues raised recently about smartphone ‘apps’ including Live.ly, ooVoo, and music.ly amongst others. These apps are supposed to only be able to access contacts on the user’s phone, but it appears that quite quickly unknown individuals are able to join group chats. Therefore, these apps are not safe for children to use as there is a significant risk of inappropriate contact by unknown individuals.
Our advice to parents is to ensure that their children do not have access to such apps on their phone and to check that all appropriate privacy settings are switched on, to make sure that children are protected when using any internet site. If a child experiences or expresses concerns about online activity, it must be reported to the police using 101 and CEOP. Wherever possible, a screen shot or a mobile phone picture of the concern should be taken for reporting purposes.
There is some useful information on the LSCB website about online safety with some useful tips for parents.
After-school club availability
Some of our after-school clubs, starting from next week, are now open to other year groups.
Monday
- Dance (Mr Lynch) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.
Wednesday
- Gymnastics (run by Leeds Gymnastics) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.
Thursday
- Dance (Miss Marsden) – This club is now open to Reception.
Please contact the office, by Thursday 26 January, if your child would like a place on these clubs.
Creative Science homework
My usually up-to-date posts on Year 6’s consistently fantastic Creative homework has slipped since the Christmas break and I can only apologise. Better late than never, here’s a sneaky peek into our ‘Science is all around’ homework from a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t possibly not post it as I was even more amazed that usual.
Can’t wait for our next instalment! As always, we looked at everyone’s work and then took a closer work at one person’s in particular to comment on their work individually.
Entertainment through the ages
We kicked off our new Big Topic last week: Time Travel – Entertainment. We began by thinking about some key periods in history and wondering about what sort of entertainment was around at the time.
Then, working together, we used our knowledge of dates to put key time periods in chronological order, matching major forms of entertainment as we went.
Here’s our final piece of work to go on our topic wall for us to refer to as we for the next eight weeks.
Learning skills
As well as learning key historical facts and information in our Time Travel Houses and Homes topic, we are also developing other skills.
For example, while learning about houses in the Victorian times, in our topic lesson today, we were also focusing on reading skills, working with others and thinking skills.
The BBC Primary History website provides more information about the Victorian times.
Take a look at our representation of back-to-back terraced houses, common at this time to house poor Victorian families.
Help at home: spelling
When you’re helping your child at home with their spellings this week, use our spelling display to help. It has the learning points we’ve discussed in class and some examples of the kinds of questions we use to challenge pupils understanding.
Spelling is really important and we must ensure that children are learning and applying spelling conventions/rules instead of just remembering spellings for the test on a Friday.
Class Assembly – Weds 25 January 2.40pm
Please join us this Wednesday, at 2.40pm, for our class assembly.
We’ll be sharing our recent learning and would love for family and friends to come along and watch. For this assembly, the children have written the whole of it themselves so it will be great fun to watch.
See you Wednesday, if not before.
Internet safety: understanding terms and conditions
Many of us, maybe even all of us, ignore what is written in the terms and conditions of the internet and software services that we use on a daily basis. We really should, but who has time to do that? And don’t we trust those companies to look after our data properly?
We tell children to be careful online, but as adults we ignore many of the rules, so why would children be any different?
The Children’s Commissioner published a report recently called ‘Growing Up Digital’. The report makes interesting reading, but one aspect particularly caught media attention…
Around half of 8 – 15 year olds use Instagram. The ‘Growing Up Digital’ report authors asked legal firm, Schillings, to look over the 17 pages of Instagram’s Terms and Conditions, written at a level that could only be understood by a graduate. Schillings’ own lawyers simplified the T&Cs to help children (and the rest of us, probably) understand what they mean.
Here are two of the reader-friendly clauses:
“Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that.” (Or, put more simply: we can sell the stuff you upload without asking you or paying you.)
“We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert.” (Or, put more simply: we can send you stuff and you won’t know it’s an advert.)
In their simplest form, these clauses are really quite thought-provoking. We all have a right to know about this, and children need educating about it. It would be worth talking to your child about Instagram’s simplified Terms and Conditions, or another social networking site.
(Incidentally, it’s worth remembering that most sites have guidance around age restrictions – like most, Facebook specifies users should be 13 years old or older.)