As I write this at 7.30 on Friday morning, I can hear the sound of pouring rain – let’s hope the half-term is drier so we can get out and about! This week’s message has a last minute reminder, a safety message, and some information about our Autumn term topics.

School day

There’s only a few hours left to complete this short survey about changes to the school day. We’ll close the survey at 5.00pm today – just a couple of hours. At the time of writing, 154 of you had submitted your views – thank you for taking the time to pass on your comments.

Firework safety

With many organised events cancelled due to tight budgets, West Yorkshire Fire Service is fearful that this may mean more families try to replicate a display, and that this may pose a greater risk to the safety of our children. Please speak with your child about the dangers of fireworks.

At the same time, it’s worth discussing the important role firefighters play in our community – in recent years, there’s been an increase in attacks on firefighters.

We’re all historians

This half-term, we’ve been historians. It would be great if you encourage your child to continue their History topic at home.

Children in Years 1 and 2 learnt about a significant British historical event: the Great Fire of London. Your child learnt about life at the time of the Great Fire of London. They discovered where the fire started and how it spread so quickly and the innovative ways that it was extinguished. Importantly, they thought about the different sources of evidence that helped us answer these questions, including Samuel Pepys’ diary. Finally, they learnt about the significant changes that occurred as a result of the fire, such as legal changes about the way houses were built and the beginning of a fire service in London. Link your discussions about firework safety with the history behind this event. Check out the Fire of London website – a great way to support and deepen children’s learning.

Ancient Greece was the topic for our Year 3 and 4 children. Your child began by sequencing periods of British history and seeing where the ‘golden-age’ of the Ancient Greek civilisation sits alongside British history. They then learnt about two contrasting city states: Athens and Sparta. Your child learnt about the type of government these states had and what the lives of the people living there were like. Ask your child about the influence that Athens has had on the world (they might mention democracy, mathematics, philosophy, literature, culture…) and how the civilisation ended. For a rainy half-term diversion, a visit to Leeds City Museum (next to Millennium Square) would be great because it has some Ancient Greek exhibits.

Children in Years 5 and 6 learnt about Stone Age to Iron Age Britain and contrasted it with Ancient Egypt. Your child began by looking at and creating timelines to gain an understanding of chronology. They learnt about the advances and innovations that occurred during the New Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. They then learnt about the Ancient Egyptian civilisation and contrasted this with what was happening in Britain at the same time. Speak with your child about the differences– it’s a stark contrast! As before, a trip to Leeds City Museum would be a great half-term day out – it has some Ancient Egyptian exhibits, including Nesyamum, the 3,000 year old Leeds mummy!

We’re all artists

Next half-term, we’re all artists. As well as creating some masterpieces, we’ll look at the work of various artists, architects and designers. To gain a head start, encourage your child to check out the work of our featured artists and designers:

• Years 1 and 2: Georges Seurat and Bridget Riley
• Years 3 and 4: Sir Christopher Wren and Zaha Hadid
• Years 5 and 6: William Morris and Orla Kiely

Have a happy and healthy half-term break. Remember, the first day of next term is a training day: see you all on Tuesday 01 November.

This week’s message includes some ways to support your child at home with Maths, written by Mrs Allaway (who celebrates a significant birthday today – happy birthday, Paula!). Sandwiched in between, a couple of useful reminders…

School day

Have you let us know your thoughts on changes to the school day? Our very short survey is open for one more week.

Maths

What are we learning in Maths?

In Key stages 1 and 2, our Maths curriculum is divided into blocks of learning. These include different aspects of maths such as place value, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, geometry, fractions, measures and statistics. Each block is broken down into a sequence of small manageable steps in learning, with each step building on the previous one.

Years 1 and 2

In the autumn term, our blocks of learning are place value, addition and subtraction, and shape.

A significant amount of time is spent on developing a deep understanding of the composition of numbers so that children become confident and fluent in both counting and recalling number facts. The crucial number facts are simple addition and subtraction facts. Regular short bursts of practice on NumBots will help with this. In school, we use a wide range of practical resources to support understanding of these key concepts.

When learning about shape, children are supported to recognise, draw, compare and sort different shapes alongside using the related mathematical vocabulary.

Years 3 and 4

In the autumn term, we cover three blocks of learning: place value; addition and subtraction; and multiplication and division.

It’s essential that children become increasingly fluent with whole numbers and the four operations, including number facts. These facts need to be really secure so that children can develop efficient written and mental methods and perform calculations accurately with increasingly large numbers. Times Tables Rock Stars will help with learning times tables up to 12 x 12.

We continue to use a range of practical resources. We use these to support children’s understanding of concepts and procedures – so they can see the maths. Ultimately, the expectation is that children can do the maths without the resources.

Years 5 and 6

In the autumn term, our blocks of learning are place value, the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) and fractions.

Children extend their understanding of the number system and place value to include much larger numbers – up to 10 million.

Children are supported to become fluent in written methods for all four operations, including long multiplication and division. Children develop their skills to solve a wider range of increasingly complex problems that draw on these arithmetic skills.

When learning about fractions, children develop their understanding of equivalent fractions and use these to add and subtract fractions with different denominators. In order to be successful with this, children need to be fluent with times tables. Short bursts of regular practice on Times Tables Rock Stars will help to keep these skills sharp.

As always, speak to your child’s teacher if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns about your child’s learning in Maths.

JLT elections

We’ve recently launched this year’s Junior Leadership Team election process. Our Junior Leadership Team is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.

The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with a representative from each class chosen democratically by their peers.

Here are some of the qualities our junior leaders think are needed to be an effective JLT member.

• use the 8Rs for learning
• be respectful and polite
• help others
• be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
• share and be confident with your ideas
• let others speak
• accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
• be friendly and approachable
• follow our school rules and make good choices in class and around school

This weeks’ whole school homework is all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections next Thursday 20 October.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

It certainly feels like Autumn these days – as well as shorter days and autumn colours, another sign of Autumn is the excited children showing us their conkers collected on the way to school! This week’s message includes two important messages (about medical conditions and attendance), and two more parts (about communications and this week’s Watch Us While We Work).

Attendance update

In the last school year (2021-22), the national average was 95.4% attendance. Our school attendance was 94.7% – we were below the national figure.

We all know that attendance matters – the more your child is in school, the more they learn and the more they develop social skills.

Attendance is even more important following the disruption in learning caused by Covid – we’re now starting to identify gaps in learning and working hard to address this, but we need your child at school.

Thank you to everyone who makes sure their child is in school as much as possible.

Medical conditions

When your child joins school, we always ask about any medical conditions so we can support your child in school. This includes letting us know about allergies. This is a reminder only: please do make sure you tell us about medical conditions, especially nut allergies and other food allergies. Based on what you tell us, we’ll make reasonable adaptations to meet your child’s needs.

A word about how we communicate

A small number of you told us in the Summer 2022 annual parent/carer survey that we send home too many communications. We’ve thought hard about the comments, but also considered other feedback that tells us you welcome how we communicate. In the end, we’ve decided that we’re getting it about right for most of you. However, we thought it might be useful to let you know the different ways that we communicate things with you.

Firstly, anything urgent (such as the cancellation of an after-school club) or a quick reminder about something (like the photographer being in school) is sent by text. If you have the School Gateway app, it may be useful to set it so you receive notifications of messages. Texts are automatically sent to your app, if you have it installed (it’s free for us to communicate with you this way).

The weekly Friday message contains important information (eg nuts, attendance and about things coming up, such as parent-teacher meetings) as well as other information that we think you might find useful (eg like this one). We usually use sub-headings to help you navigate the message so you can find the information you need.

Most letters are emailed out to you, too. We’re moving away from sending out hard copies of letters (it’s better for the environment to send things electronically and things sometimes don’t always get to you if they’re sent home in book bags). Please try to check your emails daily, so you don’t miss anything important.

For anything relevant to your child’s class, check out the Class News pages of our website (we recommend doing this at least once a week). Nursery and Reception tend to put reminders on their Class News page, as they don’t have a homework page.

Your child should bring home a hard copy of their weekly homework, but you’ll also find it on the Homework page of the website.

Finally, we do have Facebook and Twitter. These just provide additional little snippets, if you want them, but nothing urgent or important will be posted on social media as we realise that not everyone accesses these things.

Finally, a thank you…

…to everyone who attended this week’s Watch Us While We Work session. It was great to see so many of you in school, keen to get a flavour of school life  (eg ‘I thought both organisation and classroom content was great’) and to pick up some tips to help you continue to support your child at home (eg ‘We could practise counting in tens more’).

Look out for the next session: Thursday 26 January 2023.

Have a happy and healthy, awesome and autumnal weekend!