Our message this week is an important one because it’s all about reading. The message comes from Mrs Latham (our Phonics and Early Reading Leader) and Mr Catherall (our acting Reading Leader, covering a maternity).

Early Reading and Phonics

We’ve started the year as we mean to go on – reading! Our Reception children have started Phonics lessons already – they’re rapidly acquiring the skills to become readers. We use the government validated systematic synthetic phonics scheme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

Children in Year 1 and Year 2 have also got back into Phonics lessons quickly. The lessons happen every day and last half an hour (Reception children build up to this over time). In these lessons, children are taught how a letter or letters (graphemes) match to sounds (phonemes).

We also have reading practice groups for children to use and apply their phonics skills. These are small group sessions, led by an adult, where children read a book that’s matched to the phonics phase for the children in that group. The time to do this has been made available by moving to allocating e-books for children. The e-books are essential for children to share their phonics reading success at home. Please make sure you hear your child read the e-book every week.

Year 1 or 2 children who have secure phonic knowledge will begin to access a wider variety of books in school and to take home.

Children will also take a sharing book home to develop a love of reading. These books are to enjoy together and read for pleasure. Enjoy stories, predict what might happen and use different voices for the characters. Information books (non-fiction) can also be so much fun to share – finding out facts and discussing new information. Above all – make it fun!

Our recent reading workshop explains phonics and early reading in more detail.

Key Stage 2

‘Reading for pleasure is the single most important indicator of a child’s success.’ (OECD 2002)

Should my child be reading at home?

In Sphere Federation schools, we insist that children read at home. Failure to do so would mean that children are missing out on the numerous benefits of reading. Research tells us that children with reading difficulties are more likely to experience mental health problems later in life. To give our children the best chance of becoming readers at home, we ensure that reading at home is celebrated.

What should my child be reading?

Occasionally, we get feedback that adults at home aren’t sure what book their child is reading and when it should be in school. As children progress from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2, we want them to have more choice and ownership of what they read.  For some families, this can feel less structured than it might have done when children were lower down school. Because of this, we’ve made some changes to how we read in Key Stage 2. Starting after the October half-term, we’ll be moving to a more structured system for reading at home.

What will this look like?

Our children are provided with the opportunity to read a variety of rich texts in school and at home. Children are always involved in the process of choosing what book they read at home and we place a high emphasis on choice of text. To ensure our children read a suitable range of suitable texts, we rotate between ‘solo reading’ and ‘group reading’ on a half-termly basis:

• Autumn 1: solo reading
• Autumn 2: group reading
• Spring 1: solo reading
• Spring 2: group reading
• Summer 1: solo reading
• Summer 2: group reading

Next half-term, your child will be ‘group reading’. This means, they’ll choose a book that they’ll read alongside some of their class mates. They’ll be set a target page to read to and will discuss what they’ve read with their group and an adult.

What if my child wants to read other books, too?

We love this! We’d really encourage you, if you can, to have lots of books at home. A trip to a book shop can be a wonderful and inspiring shared experience as a family – especially as the days are getting shorter and wetter! If you prefer to shop online, great! We’ve recently signed up with Love Reading 4Kids. This is a great site with a huge range of books at good prices. And, if you buy through this site you can support us here school – we’ll receive 25% of the value to spend on books!

This week’s message has some information about an event coming up for Key Stage 1 and 2 parents and carers. The rest of the message includes some updates about our annual surveys, one for parents and carers and one for children. 

Watch us while we work

Coming up at school is a short open session for current KS1 and KS2 parents/carers to join us in class to watch the teaching and learning of some essential Maths and Reading skills. The session is a great way to find out how you can support your child at home.

The session is at 9am on Tuesday 04 October. You’re welcome to visit us – there’s no need to reserve a place. We invite you to spend time in just one class. (For those of you with more than one child, you might want to come again for a second session on 26 January to visit a second classroom.)

Parents and carers of children in Reception have the opportunity to attend separate Stay and Learn sessions.

Annual survey follow-up

In the summer (18 August), we presented some of the main findings of this year’s annual survey. (You can still read this by scrolling through a few news items here.)

We always consider the feedback we get from the survey.

This year, we’ve taken on board a useful comment about uniform: we’ve dropped the words ‘ideally with logo’ from our uniform policy. This
hopefully makes it clear that we have no expectation that your child should wear a sweatshirt with the school logo.

You also told us that you’d like us to be stricter about branded clothes. We agree. We’ve responded by addressing the fact that some children were wearing branded clothing for PE. We’ve bought spare kit for these children to change into and are regularly sending uniform reminders home.

We hope you’ll agree that the children look really smart when the uniform policy is adhered to.

We’ve responded to other comments, too. The fence around the KS2 wooden equipment has been replaced and our KS2 toilets are being cleaned and monitored regularly.

Some parents mentioned homework. Homework is always a challenge to get right as some people think there’s too much and some not enough. At primary school, we feel that practice is key as far as homework is concerned – that’s why we have prioritised reading, spelling, times tables and number fact fluency. Talk Time and Living and Learning offer the opportunity to join in with discussion with family members. Remember, you might wish to supplement the activities we provide with additional materials.

A few parents mentioned it would be good to have a wider choice of after-school club activities and more sports teams. We’ll hopefully be able to introduce more of these over the next term. If you’ve any ideas for the kinds of clubs you’d like to see, please speak to Miss Hague at the gate.

Pupil survey

At around the same as the parent/carer survey is released, we ask children in KS2 to complete a quick survey, too. This helps us identify strengths and possible areas to develop.

This year, children rated provision in Science, Art, DT, Geography, History and Music and PE higher than nationally, and six of these were rated significantly or very significantly higher.

All statements relating to attitudes to learning in school were recorded as higher than national average; two were rated significantly higher. However, attitude to homework was lower than national – please do make sure your child engages with our homework expectations.

Finally, and importantly, of the five safeguarding statements, four were recorded as higher than the national average, two significantly (with the other one in-line with national).

This all goes to prove that our school is a happy and healthy place to learn.

Talking of which, have a happy and healthy weekend!

This week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who’s our Science and Foundation Subjects Leader. In this message, Mr Wilks introduces your child’s current topic…

What do we mean by topics?

Topics are the vehicle for delivering much of the learning in the foundation subjects (eg Art, History, Geography). Each half-termly topic has a driving subject – the main focus for teaching pupils knowledge and skills.

There are opportunities for enrichment through other subjects. For example, learning in an art topic may be enriched by geography learning about where an artist was born and lived.

Read more about the intent, implementation and impact of our topics.

What is this half-term’s topic?

This half-term, we’re historians. We’ll develop our understanding of the past, both in Britain and the wider world.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skills and vocabulary: see pages 27 and 28 of our Curriculum Statement.

Each phase also has key historical concepts which will feature within most lessons. These historical concepts are themes that are revisited, strengthened and deepened during your child’s journey through the history curriculum. See page 24 of the Curriculum Statement.

Years 1 and 2

In this topic, children learn about a significant British historical event: The Great Fire of London.

Children will learn about life at the time of the Great Fire of London. They’ll learn where the fire started and how it spread so quickly and the innovative ways that it was extinguished. Importantly, they’ll learn about the different sources of evidence that have helped us answer these questions, including Samuel Pepys’ diary. Finally, they’ll learn 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.

The key concept that children will learn about in this history topic is innovation.

Years 3 and 4

In this topic, children learn about Ancient Greece.

Children begin by sequencing periods of British history and seeing where the ‘golden-age’ of the Ancient Greek civilisation sits alongside. They’ll then learn about two contrasting city states: Athens and Sparta. Children will learn about the type of government these states had and what the lives of the people living there were like. They’ll then debate which city state was the best. Next, they’ll focus in on the influence that Athens has had on the world: democracy, mathematics, philosophy, literature, culture… Finally, they’ll learn about how the civilisation ended.

The key concepts for this topic are civilisation, government and innovation.

Years 5 and 6

In this topic, children learn about Stone Age to Iron Age Britain and contrast it with Ancient Egypt.

They begin by looking at and creating timelines which sequence the periods of British history and also placing Ancient Egypt on this timeline. They’ll learn about the advances and innovations that occurred during the New Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. They’ll learn about and understand that the sources of evidence we have are limited to archaeological evidence. They’ll then learn about the Ancient Egyptian civilisation and contrast this with what was happening in Britain at the same time – it’s a stark contrast!

The key concepts for this topic are innovation and civilisation.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they have been learning in class. The class news pages are a good place to go to find out more about what the children are doing.

Find some books from the library which match what your child is learning. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of books about the history your child will be learning about.

Watch television shows about history. Horrible Histories is great (regardless of your age!).

The BBC Bitesize history webpages have been revamped this summer and have lots of information about the history being covered this half-term.

If it’s a rainy weekend and you’re looking for something to do, why not spend a morning or afternoon in a museum? A visit to Leeds City Museum (next to Millennium Square) would be great for all children but especially for Y3,4 and Y5,6 children as it has some Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian exhibits, including Nesyamum, the 3,000 year old Leeds mummy!

London’s a bit far for a rainy weekend but the Fire of London website is great and will support and deepen children’s learning.