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.)
Creative homework
Year 3 made such a great effort with their homework last week. We enjoyed discussing their different ideas and looking at all their wonderful work:
Maths
We’ve been learning how to compare sets of objects using the language ‘more’ and ‘fewer’. The children were challenged to prove a set had fewer objects than another.
This is how they presented their learning.
Phonics
Thank you to everyone who attended the phonics sessions last week. We hope you found them useful.
Here are some captions and sentences your child can write at home. The new phonemes ar, ai, er, or, air, oi, ear, oo, igh, ow, ee, ur These will be taught over the next few weeks.
- Mark and Carl got wet in the rain.
- The farmer gets up at six in the morning.
- Jill has fair hair but Jack has dark hair.
- Jim has seven silver coins.
- I can hear an owl hoot at night.
- Nan is sitting in the rocking-chair.
- Bow down to the king and queen.
- Gurdeep had a chat with his dad.
- I can see a pair of boots on the mat.
- It has been hot this year.
20 January 2017
Times Tables
Year 5 are generally pretty good at recalling their times tables up to 12 x 12. Starting this week, we will focus on one times table each week. This week we will focus on the 3 times table. However, children will not be tested on questions like “What is 3 x 5?”. Instead, we will focus solely on related facts. Here are some examples of the kind of questions children may be asked:
- What is 2100 ÷ 3?
- What is 15 x 0.3?
- What is the product of 0.3 x 0.8?
These questions can be tricky so we’ll focus on manipulating numbers using facts we already know in class. Please ensure your child is applying this knowledge when they are practising at home.
Highlights of the week
Well, it’s been a very busy week for Year 4!
Many thanks to all who turned up for our class assembly. The children worked very hard to put this performance together. They were incredibly proud of themselves and each other. We hope the water cycle song hasn’t driven you round the bend too much!
Yet again, Year 4 produced some superb homework showing what they know about solids, liquids and gases. We are constantly amazed by the creative ideas the children come up with. These are on display in the classroom and you are very welcome to pop in and take a look.
Our adventure through time has begun with the arrival of a life size Tardis in the classroom! We’re using this as a reading area and it’s proving very popular with adults and children alike!
During this topic, we will focus on transport through the ages. Working along a timeline, we’ll explore transport inventions, how different people travelled, why people travelled and many other aspects of transportation.
The Stone Age is where we have begun. This week we have studied this period of time and also created our own cave paintings – photos to follow…
For our maths lessons we’re exploring fractions. On Thursday, I gave the children a task to complete that involved some reasoning. The children had to explain and prove their thoughts and ideas. Here are some children at work. Their task was:
- TRUE OR FALSE?
- ONE THIRD IS LARGER THAN TWO FIFTHS
This is how they evidenced their ideas.
Mr Owen and I are looking forward to seeing you all again at forthcoming parents’ evenings. Please return your slips and we can allocate you a preferred time slot promptly.
As always, we encourage you to pop in with any concerns or questions you may have.
Year 2 athletes
Part of our PE Premium funding is invested in the Leeds Active Schools programme. This gives us access to a range of physical activity competitions and experiences.
Fifteen children from Year 2 were very excited to take part in the Active Schools KS1 Sports Hall Athletics Competition at Farsley Celtic this week.
It certainly looks like they have enjoyed all the field and track events. Well done for representing our school so well.
Creative House Homeworks
There were lots of excellent creative house homeworks to choose from this week. Here are our favourites:
