Author: Mr Catherall

Introducing…our new school journalists!

Recently, children in Y5,6 were invited to apply for a number of new jobs within school. They had to complete an application form and were even interviewed for their posts. Congratulations to all the children who took the safe risk of applying. Whether you were successful or not, we’re proud of you all for giving it a go. 

The journalists will create weekly content for the school website. You get lots of updates from us, but we thought it was important to keep you updated about all the great things happening at school from the most important perspective of all: the children’s. 

Hi, this is Louie, Jimmy and Zara here with the first news report of the new year at Scholes (Elmet) Primary School. We have lots of exciting topics to share with you in the next few weeks, but today we are looking through the new activities that have recently started up. In January, new clubs at the school were inserted into the timetable of after-school clubs, including jobs for the children like this one which is taking place at lunchtimes. There are jobs like play leaders and librarians and there are new activities like the girls football team, jewellery club and tag rugby.

We wanted to find out more about what people thought about the clubs and what they were enjoying. We interviewed Rocco in Y5 to find out more about the school football team…

What is after-school football training like? We are very competitive – there is always a big urge to win!

What is your favourite part of playing football? Teamwork as I love seeing and being part of a team and working together.

When you think of football, what comes to mind? The need to win – I am a very competitive person.

Apart from football, what other activity would you do? tag rugby

What is your favourite position on the football pitch? I love the feeling of scoring goals so probably striker.

It’s been a great start to 2024 and we are hoping to carry on like this as a school.

Thank you for reading!

Please note: the journalists received no adult support on creating this news content – it’s all their ideas and their writing!

Year 4 Football Team

We’re so proud of the Y4 footballers who represented our school for the first time recently. As well as coming away with a very impressive 3-3 draw against a local school playing their 5th game together, they represented our school with pride, humility, confidence and resilience. Most of all, they were genuinely happy to be playing alongside each other.

For some of our children, it was their first ever game of competitive football – although you’d never have known! For others, who might play a lot outside of school, it was their first taste of representing our school. For all of our children who played, we’re incredibly proud of how you represented our school; you were respectful, supportive, humble and giving it your all!

Here’s what a few of the team had to say afterwards:

‘Playing in the game was the best thing I’ve ever done. We had a lot of fun. It wasn’t about winning it was about having fun and doing your best!’ Korewa, Y4

‘The game was really fun and really positive. Even though we didn’t win, it was still great to play and compete against another school!’ Grayson, Y4

‘It was fun. Everyone on the team was helping each other and motivating each other to do their best and enjoy it!’ Rudi, Y4

Bring on the next game!

We’d also like to give a massive thanks to Mr O’Loughlin who has been instrumental in making this happen. We’re all super grateful for the time and effort you’ve put in to this so far!

05 June 2023

This half-term, instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.

possession

attention

confusion

fraction

mission

explosion

because

decide

describe

exercise

 surprise

increase

height

beautiful

medal

meddle

mist

missed

who’s

whose

 accident

bicycle

decide

sentence

experience

centre

friend

guard

guide

guest

 natural

material

actual

arrival

personal

mammal

guess

people

really

every

 

21 April 2023

This half-term, instead of learning eight different words each week, we’d like you to learn these 40 words over the whole half-term. Lots of research suggests that learning more spellings over a longer time leads to better remembering how to spell them in the long term.

How you decide to do this is up to you. You might decide to focus on the trickiest words first. Or, you might decide to learn 8 words a week and really focus on these whilst still practising the others, too. For some of you, you might already feel confident with some of the words so might choose to not practise these at all.

However you decide to do it, is up to you. The important thing is that you’re learning them and learning how you like to learn them best.

Each week, we’ll choose eight random words to test you on. These tests aren’t pressured. They might just help you figure out which words you need to practise more.

Learning spellings in this way might feel quite different – or even scary – but it shouldn’t. In fact, you’ve actually got less words to learn this half-term than you normally would.

We’ll keep thinking about this in school and we’ll regularly talk about how we can best practise these words at home.

If you need some ideas for practical things to do, check out the Super Spelling Strategies Guide on the school website.

adventure

anticlockwise

ball

bawl

capture

caught

delicious

feature

forward

history

 immaterial

impatient

impolite

important

impossible

independent

inexperienced

infamous

international

machine

 mail

male

measure

mention

naughty

ordinary

pleasure

position

possession

pressure

 quarter

scene

seen

should

special

sugar

supernatural

therefore

thought

treasure

 

3,4B: we’re geographers (and presenters)

We’ve been loving our current geography topic all about volcanoes.

You might remember we learnt about the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (Iceland) in 2010. Recently, we’ve carried out another case study. This time on Mount Vesuvius (Italy).

We thought about the negative aspects of living near a volcano and found out there’re lots of positives, too: the soil is good for farming, volcanoes bring a lot of tourism and diamonds are often found in volcanic rock which can be mined then sold.

Then, to demonstrate our knowledge we wrote, practised and performed a short news report about our learning. One of us was the presenter and one of us played the part of a local resident who had to justify why they live so close to Vesuvius (an active, deadly volcano!).

Help at home by asking your child why volcanoes are both good and bad.

3,4B: we are geographers!

This half-term, we’ve been geographers. Specifically, we’ve been learning about volcanoes. We’ve studied plate tectonics and learnt how volcanoes are formed. We’ve investigated where they are and thought about whether volcanoes are a good or bad thing – the answer isn’t as obvious as it seems.

In particular, we’ve studied two volcanic eruptions in detail: Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 (which you might remember) and Mt Vesuvius in 79AD (which you probably don’t remember – although I’m regularly told how old parents are).

We learnt about the negative aspects of volcanic eruptions: the disruption to travel, the destroying of infrastructure and the loss of life. And, we learnt about the positive aspects of volcanoes: geothermal energy, rich soil for farming and tourism.

Help at home by…

  • asking your child about their learning
  • researching volcanoes at home
  • looking for articles or books about volcanoes
  • using Google Earth to look at some volcanoes

A little challenge, can your child…

  • tell you some information about the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010
  • tell you some information about the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD
  • explain some of the positive and negative aspects of volcanoes
  • tell you where some volcanoes are

A little extra challenge..

  • Can your child tell you more about the word volcano and what it means (a clue: it’s Latin!)

3,4B: Our New Class Novel!

Happy New Year everyone and welcome back.

We’ve had a super first week so far in 3,4B and we can’t wait for the rest of the year.

Our new class novel is ‘The Firework Maker’s Daughter‘. We’ll be reading this every day in class and enjoying hearing about Lila’s awesome adventure as she attempts to find the final secret in her quest to become a real firework maker.

Help at home by…

  • asking your child what’s happened in the novel recently
  • asking your child what they are enjoying about the book (note that this is a subtly different question to ‘Are you enjoying the book?’ where ‘No’ would be a perfectly suitable, but not that useful, answer).
  • asking you child to summarise what’s happened in the book so far

Enjoying a class novel is one aspect of our reading diet in school. We know how important reading is for academic and life success so we place a huge emphasis on it. That’s why we expect you to be reading regularly at home with your child: it’s crucial! 

If you’re having problems getting your child to read at home, please let us know and we’ll do our best to help.

Here’s to a great (reading-full) 2023!

3,4B: Book Club

Every week, we enjoy our ‘Book Club’ session. This is an opportunity for us to share what we’ve been reading at home, celebrate this and explore different books / authors.

This half-term, we’re reading books as part of a group. This means we can all discuss the same book. We enjoy this and get a lot from having a shared experience of reading.

In our ‘Book Club’ session, we discuss what we’ve been reading…

And celebrate the great work we’ve done in our reading journals…

Help at home by…

  • asking your child about what they’re reading
  • reading every day with your child
  • being a reading role model yourself
  • encouraging your child to engage with their reading record

We know it’s busy at home. But, equally, we know how important reading at home is!

18 November 2022

This week, we’ve been learning about homophones.

Homophones are words that sound the same but have different meanings and different spellings. This makes them hard to spell correctly when we’re writing.

This week, practise spelling these homophones. The best way to do this is to practise using them in sentences – think about your handwriting, too!

which

witch

wear

where

we’re

3,4B: writing

We’ve been enjoying our writing in 3,4B recently. During our history topic, we wrote some recounts. We imagined we were an Ancient Greek warrior returning to our homeland (Athens) after a long battle.

Check out these examples…

Throughout all our writing, we’ve been learning lots of grammar. In particular, we’ve been focussing on securing our knowledge of word classes.

We’ve learnt about lots of word classes:

nouns – a person, place or thing

proper nouns – the specific name of a person, place or thing

verbs – a doing or being word

adjectives – a word that describes a noun

It’s important to remember that the word class of a word can change. A word isn’t just a noun all of the time. It depends what it’s job is in that particular sentence.

In this sentence, walked (from the verb ‘to walk’) is a verb because it’s the action that’s been done by the dog.

The dog walked to the park.

In this sentence, walk is a noun because it’s the thing that’s being done. The verb would be ‘went’ coming from the verb ‘to be’.

The dog went for a walk.

Help at home by…

  • asking your child about their writing learning
  • asking them to spot nouns around the house
  • practising their spellings
  • reading with, and to, them (ideally, every day)