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20 September 2013

This week is creative homework. Just to remind everyone, this means that the homework can be presented in a variety of different ways – it’s up to you and your child! The only rule is that you can only use one page of the homework book (but you can come up with your own sneaky ways of enlarging the space if you need to!).

Homework needs to be handed in on Wednesday 25th September 2013.

I can explain similarities and differences between humans and animals.

It’s up to you how you do this but if you’re stuck here are some suggestions:

• Choose one or two animals to concentrate on
• Compare images
• Think about skeletons, movement, behaviour or habitat
• Write a descriptive paragraph

Happy homeworking!

13 September 2013

This week’s homework is Talk Time and is due on Wednesday 18th September.

How does it feel to do something new?

Below are the guidance notes taken from the school’s Homework Policy for Talk Time homework:

Talk Time

Teachers have noticed that, in some instances, a lot of time has been taken on the presentation of the Talk Time homework. Children are welcome to do this although it is not necessary. The purpose of Talk Time homework is to encourage a conversation around their current learning. Any notes made in their homework book should simply 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 talk time session in class. We want our children to be expert talkers, using a variety of sentences and expressions, and able to back up their points or disagree with others in a polite way – this is more important than written notes for Talk Time. Simply: it’s hard to be a good writer if you’re not a good speaker, so Talk Times using ambitious words, useful phrases, interesting sentences is the best way to support your child.

Make a note in your child’s homework book that you have discussed this question with them.

Top Tips

We have discussed the homework as a class and have decided that the best way to answer this question is to all try something new ourselves (whether that be a new food, a new experience or a new route to a familiar place) and discuss how that felt.

Year 2 PE days

Please make sure your children have their PE kits in school on Tuesday and Thursday as these are our days for PE.  This is an essential part of our curriculum so it’s really important that children have the correct clothing so that they can fully participate in these lessons.

Here is a reminder of what they should be wearing for PE (copied from our uniform policy):

PE: children should wear white t-shirt, black shorts / tracksuit bottoms and pumps

Thank you for your support.

New SEAL theme – New beginnings

As we start the new school year, our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme focuses on New beginnings. 

We begin this half term with a focus on manners: I can greet someone politely.

Subsequently, I can make someone feel welcome is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme of New beginnings.

New beginnings allows children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on how they or others may feel in a new situation or setting.  This SEAL theme offers children the opportunity to see themselves as valued individuals within a community, and to contribute to shaping a welcoming, safe and fair learning community for all.

The key areas of learning throughout this theme are empathy, self-awareness, social skills and motivation.

Through discrete SEAL lessons, circle times and across the curriculum, children will explore feelings of happiness and excitement, sadness, anxiety and fearfulness, while learning (and putting into practice) shared models for calming down and problem-solving.

New beginnings supports the development of a learning community in each classroom where all members feel that they belong.  Class contracts, produced at the start of the year, allow children to contribute to how they feel they can achieve a safe and fair learning community.

Time for a Smart Restart?

Coming back to school after the holidays is a great time to make a fresh start and to get into a healthier routine for the new term. Change4Life’s brand new campaign – Smart Restart – has now launched and encourages families to take on one change for the better, for six weeks.

Have you seen the TV advert for the campaign?

Research by Public Health England shows that sticking to a healthy routine right from the start of term can have real benefits. Children that do more physical activity have improved concentration levels, enjoy good relationships with classmates and have fewer reports of problems. It is also associated with lower levels of worry amongst children.

So by signing up for the free Smart Restart, you will receive offers, discounts and lots of support with the free app, emails and texts to help you stick to your chosen healthy change all the way through to half term. You can also enjoy Disney family fun and games in the kids’ zone.

From super lunches to beat the treats, there are a variety of changes to follow. Let us know how you get on.

Safety, health and social benefits of walking to school

In association with Leeds City Council and Living Streets we are taking part in this year’s Walk to school week.  We all know how congested the area around school can be at the start and end of the school day and so this week we are asking children to take part in the Leeds City Council Ben E. Fit competition.

Children who walk, or scoot, to school or walk part of their journey (at least five minutes, maybe by parking further away than usual) every day will be entered into a prize draw.

On Wednesday, Leeds City Council will deliver a whole school Walk to school assembly followed by pedestrian training for Year 1 and Year 2.  We also start our scooter skills training this Friday for some of our Key Stage 2 children.

Why walk to school?

Our walk to school video has lots of facts and tips about walking to school.

According to Living Streets, there are many benefits to walking to school related to health, safety and the environment.

Time and money

• Trips to and from the school gates by car waste thousands of hours of parents’ and other road users’ time and cost an average of £400 per family per year
• At the peak time of 8:35am on week days in term time, the school run generates approximately 21per cent of all trips by urban residents in the UK
• 16% of school journeys under a mile are driven to school. This distance could be walked in 20 minutes

Safety

• Driving the school run denies children the chance to develop road safety skills, independence and an understanding of their local environment
• Child pedestrian collisions on the walk to school peak at about 12 years of age. This could be due to parents not preparing their children for travelling independently and practising road safety skills when their children are younger
• Parents of children who are driven to school overestimate the risks of abduction and ‘stranger danger’ while underestimating the risks of traffic

Benefits for your children

• Children who walk to school are actively engaged with their community and have better knowledge of their local area
• Children who walk to school have wider social networks: In a study by Living Streets, 84 per cent of the children who walked to school reported always or sometimes meeting up with classmates on the way to school, while only 66 per cent of those who were driven to school had the opportunity to do so
• Walking to school improves children’s social development in future years
• The more contact children have with their natural environment, the higher they score in tests of concentration and self-discipline
• Short-term and even superficial exposure to natural areas through brief walks have been found to have positive effects on mood, reducing feelings of anger and anxiety
• An American study found that after as little as five minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (i.e., running, walking), children were able to concentrate more

Health benefits of walking for parents and children

• 24.5 per cent of adults and 14 per cent of children (aged two to ten years old) in the UK are obese and obesity can reduce life expectancy by 9 years on average
• Young people who are obese are likely to have lower levels of fitness, suffer from social discrimination and have low self-esteem and lower quality of life
• Research has suggested that, without appropriate intervention, overweight or obesity could affect as many as nine out of ten adults and two out of three children by 2050
• Walking one mile (1.6 km) can burn at least 100 calories of energy and walking two miles (3.2 km) a day, three times a week, can help reduce weight by one pound (0.5 kg) every three weeks
• Three out of ten boys and four out of ten girls do not cover the recommended minimum of one hour a day of physical activity
• Children who generally travel to and from school by car, bus or other vehicle are more likely to be overweight at age 5 than those who walk or cycle

The environment

• The school run is adding two million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year
• It is estimated that 17% of the total school carbon emissions can be attributed to school travel

26 April 2013

There will be no new words to learn this week. Instead, there will be SATs style spelling tests of words that the children are unfamiliar with.  I suggest children spend time each night looking through old spelling lists and trying to remember rules, especially:

• drop the ‘e’ for ‘ing’ eg hope / hoping, accommodate / accommodating
• drop the ‘y’ for ‘i’ eg happy / happiness, fury / furious
• double up for short vowel sounds eg diner / dinner, coma / comma

Spelling tests will be given at several points in the week.

Super Science Day

We used static electricity to make the can roll without touching it!

Magnificent Monet

Year Six have used Monet as a stimulus for some artwork to convey the mood calm.
They looked at Monet’s style of painting in dabs and slabs with flat ended brushes and tried this technique to produce their own calm Monet-style artwork.

It’s the Spring half-term holiday next week…

It’s half-term holidays next week, so there are no specific homework tasks, times tables or spellings next week.

Of course, regular practice and learning can still happen: reading each day, swimming, tables practice, trips to the library, walks around Roundhay Park… A personal recommendation from me: take a visit to Leeds Art Gallery -the Liberty and Anarchy exhibition is great!

All will help your child have a happy and healthy holiday!