Author: Mr Roundtree

Learning updates (Years 1 – 6 only)

Today, your child (Years 1 – 6 only) will go home with a copy of their Learning Update.

This is so we keep you up-to-date with how well your child is doing at school. At the end of Autumn 1 and Spring 1, we have our parent-teacher meetings (this year by Zoom), and at the end of Autumn 2 and Spring 2, we update you with these mini-reports. In the Summer term, we send you a longer, annual report.

As always, please contact us if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns.

(Children in Early Years will have a Learning Update a little later in the year.)

Emotions homework – 3/4E

The emotions homework this week was very popular with pupils- the most popular this school year! In fact, I was blown away by the children’s enthusiasm for this homework, and the learning we’ve done in school. Well done and a big thank you to everyone who sent in your homework.

We had poems, posters, photo-posters and rhymes.

Here they are:

Emotions emotions we all have emotions.

Emotions emotions can make you feel nice,

Emotions emotions can make you feel right.

Emotions emotions when you feel good or bad,

Emotions emotions when you feel happy or sad.

Emotions emotions in all different ways,

Emotions emotions can brighten your days.

Emotions emotions we all have emotions.

By Esmae.

03 December 2020 homework – photograph emotions

Writing Workshop – A Virtual Visit

Yesterday in Year 3/4, we had an amazing writing workshop with visiting author Adam Bushnell.

Each Year 3/4 class had approximately an hour’s creative writing all about Ancient Greek myths. The workshop was held via Zoom, which is proving to be effective in engaging our children.

Adam Bushnell was a primary school teacher and is now a published author of both fiction and academia. He works as a ‘visiting author’ in the UK and internationally delivering writing workshops and staff training. He is the author of fifteen books of children’s fiction including and he has recorded audio versions of some of  these books. His first novel, ‘Quests in Epica’ was released in the summer of 2016 and was illustrated by  multi award winning illustrator Ross Collins.

He has written The Kings of Ancient Greece – a great book for the children to read all about classic Greek myths.

Some feedback from 3/4 children:

“I loved it! He was really fun and full of facts.  I wrote my own Greek myth too!” 

“He made me want to write my best myth.”

“He brought the Ancient Greeks to life – almost!” 

Thank you to Adam who inspired our children at Scholes.

Ask your child about the virtual visit so they can share their experiences with you.

Our weekly message (the second of two this week – 11 December 2020)

This is the second weekly message of the week, following an important one yesterday about the end of term…

We’re sorry if the message yesterday confused you. To confirm: next week, we’ll close for the Christmas holidays at the end of the school day on 18 December, as planned, so Friday is a the last day of the school term.

This week, we’ve had the last two parent Zoom sessions – one for Early Years and one for times tables. The feedback from the sessions has been really positive because they’ve been easier to attend than coming into schools. Beyond Covid times, we’ll carry on hosting these sessions by Zoom.

One of the most popular sessions was one on phonics – it was very well attended. We’ve now recorded the sessions:

  • Phonics video 1 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) who are learning phonics at Phase 2.
  • Phonics video 2 – supports parents with children in Foundation 2 (Reception) and Year 1 who are learning phonics at Phases 3, 4 and 5, and information about the phonics screening check which takes place towards the end of Year 1 (although our current Year 2 children have all just completed the check).

Links to the two videos are also on our dedicated phonics page.

This week, a primary in north Leeds has had to close for the rest of the term because of positive cases of Covid-19. As a whole, numbers in Leeds are reportedly in decline, which is good news, but please let’s all stay Covid-cautious. It’s thanks to your cooperation that Sphere Federation schools have been relatively unaffected by the pandemic so far.

The rest of this week’s message has various items…

Asda free meals

Asda supermarket cafes are providing children under the age of 16 with a meal completely free of charge via a takeaway service. There are no minimum spend requirements or restrictions on the number of children in a family or group that can take advantage of this offer. The offer runs until 31 December (except when stores are closed).

TikTok

TikTok’s terms and conditions state that the app should only be used by people 13years old and over. Despite this, it’s sometimes used by children younger than 13. There’s a new feature that you should know about. Family Pairing allows parents and carers to guide their child’s TikTok experience in a safer way. Features include:

  • Search – decide what can be searched for; this includes content, users, hashtags and sounds
  • Screen time management – set out how long can be spent on TikTok each day
  • Discoverability – decide on the account being private (you decide the content) or public (anyone can search and view content)

Grief and loss

Staffed by experienced counsellors, the West Yorkshire and Harrogate Grief and Loss Support Service is for anyone who is experiencing loss of any kind and the grief and emotional distress that loss may cause. Available to everyone living in West Yorkshire, the service is a free telephone counselling support service that operates 8am-8pm, 7 days a week. It includes text and live online chat facilities as well as translation options. Call the service on 0808 196 3833, or use text or online live chat at griefandlosswyh.co.uk.

Introducing Ollee – a virtual friend

Ollee is a digital friend for children aged 8-11, created by Parent Zone and funded by BBC Children in Need’s A Million & Me initiative, which aims to make a difference to children’s emotional wellbeing. Ollee is designed to help children reflect on how they feel and to process their experiences with the support and help of their parents and carers – and it does this by offering them advice about a range of subjects: school, family, friends, their body, the internet and the world.

For each of these subjects, children can choose an emotion that matches how they feel about it: happy, angry, sad, confused, frustrated, stressed or worried. Next, they can choose from a list of topics – for instance, a child who was worried about school might be able to select ‘I haven’t done my homework’ as the cause of their worry. Finally, they’ll see a page of advice about the topic, presented in child-friendly, bite-sized chunks they can read then or save for later.

Have a happy and healthy and safe weekend, whatever you get up to.

Our weekly message (the first of two this week – 10 December 2020)

This is the first of two whole-school messages this week. This one confirms that we will close at the end of the school day on Friday 18 December, as planned…

On Tuesday, with eight days of term remaining, the government sent schools an email with two main sections:

  • ‘End of term planning’ – this sets out the request that schools ‘remain contactable so they can assist with contact tracing where necessary’. This basically means that Heads of School will need to be available throughout the first week of the holiday to support the government’s track and tracing, up to and including Christmas Eve.
  • ‘End of term – advice for schools’ – this advises that schools can close on Thursday next week, changing the last day of term into a training day. This basically means that schools have the option to close one day earlier for pupil (not staff) so that school leaders are available up to Wednesday 23 December, rather than Christmas Eve.

Scholes (Elmet) Primary will stick to our original plan of being open on Friday 18 December. We’ve based this decision on two main reasons:

  1. It’s too short-notice. Sometimes we have to change dates and timings, but we always aim to give you plenty of notice if we have to do this. In the run up to Christmas, we don’t think it’s fair to disrupt any plans you might have. Similarly, we’ve already let you know of the various plans for Christmas that we have in school – it would be quite tricky to shuffle things around at this late stage.
  2. It’s not a free day. We’d have to assign this as a training day and cancel one later in the school year. These additional days are valuable: we plan the days, with detailed content, well before the year begins – we can’t assign Friday next week as a training day and deliver worthwhile training with limited preparation time. This means, we’d also have to cancel one later in the year (and this might impact on plans that you might’ve made).

In its email to schools on Tuesday, the Department for Education state ‘We recognise this communication has arrived with schools late in the term…’. An email today from the NAHT (National Association of Head Teachers) states ‘NAHT has been raising our serious concerns about this issue with the DfE for a number of months’.

The government’s decision that schools may close a day early next week follows a number of schools who have tried to exercise some flexibility to alleviate some of the pressure at the end of term, the most publicised being the from Focus Trust.

So… for the first week of the holiday, up to and including Thursday 24 December, our Heads of School are available. This is in case you need to tell school about a positive case and/or they need to advise close contacts to self-isolate. This will be done by text or email, not a phone call.

After Thursday, where pupils are required to self-isolate due to contact with a positive case, you don’t need to inform us about absences until the first day of the new term (Tuesday 05 January).

Thank you to Miss Hague for committing to this additional responsibility, and to admin staff for agreeing to be available to support.

Christmas at Scholes (Elmet) Primary

As we approach the final week of term, it’s time to get Christmassy, but as you know, it’s going to be very different.

We can’t invite you in to share any Christmas celebrations so instead we’re going to share Christmas with you in a different way. From Tuesday 15 December, there will be a video posted on Class News of your child’s class taking part in some Christmas celebrations. We know that this doesn’t compare to what we normally do but we hope that it helps in some way.

During the final week of term, there will be a virtual pantomime performance that children will be able to watch at school. Thanks to Friends of Scholes Primary who have paid for this.

Christmas parties will be class-based this year. Your child’s teacher will let you know when these are.

Christmas lunch will be on Thursday 17 December and all children will get a Christmas cracker!

On Friday 18 December, we’ll have a non-uniform day. There will be some goodies coming home which have kindly been bought by the company who provide and maintain our photocopiers and printers.

It’s a very different Christmas this year but we’ve worked so hard to stay safe that we don’t want to spoil it now.

We hope that you have a happy and healthy, enjoyable and restful time with your families over the Christmas holidays.

Living and Learning: Relationships

Here is the picture of our Relationships – Living and Learning from today.

The children were demonstrating how threads of friendship get stronger the more they do things that support the friendship.

We discussed aspects of friendship:

  • not laughing if they didn’t get a goal or basket
  • checking they were ok if they fell over and
  • being good learning friends meant working as a group
  • not bossing everyone in the group
  • making sure people were listened to, respected and heard

Living and Learning: Friends

Over the next few weeks, our Living and Learning topic is RSE (Relationships and Sex Education).

In class, we read some scenarios about friendships and discussed the good bits about each one. We asked –  What makes a good friend?

Here are some of our thoughts ….

Cameron

Sam

Lily

Arthur

Harrison

And Georgia

Certificates 3,4E

This week’s certificates go to these wonderful children:

For Great Learning: Dolly – for trying so very hard with column subtraction all week with super progress.

Sport and physical activity: Bobby D – Good attacking and defending skills in hockey – a great effort!

For Great living and learning skills: Georgia  – for always taking a safe risk in class by putting her hand up and asking and answering questions.

TTRS – Aaron Ranasinghe for effort and dedication to times tables practice this week.