Author: Mr Catherall

06 March 2020

This week, our homework is a Practice Makes Perfect and is helping us to improve our use of speech punctuation.  

Task: Fill in the missing punctuation in the sentences below. Can you use a better synonym than ‘said’?

I love this book said Lucy. 

This new game is fantastic Brian said. I can’t wait to play it with my friends 

Billy said it’s only three hours until lunchtime 

Can you come up with three sentences of your own, with the said clause in a different place? (beginning, middle, end) 

This homework will be celebrated in our weekly homework review on Thursday 12 March 2020.

28 February 2020

This week, our homework is Creative and is helping us to celebrate World Book Day next week.

I can show what I love about reading.  

 

Children could come up with their own ideas for how to show this, or ideas might include:

  • create a labelled diagram of the perfect place to read in
  • write a book review
  • draw and label/describe a character from your favourite book
  • write a letter to an author telling them how much you loved reading their book
  • write a one minute speech on your favourite book, persuading others to read it – consider what the most exciting parts are, which characters you love or you love to hate, who might enjoy reading it next and why

Be as creative as you like.

This homework will be celebrated in our weekly homework review on World Book Day itself, 5 March 2020.

Safer Internet Day

Today is National Safer Internet Day. To celebrate this, and as part of our current topic (computing), Year 5 and 6 have spent some time thinking about how we can stay safe online.

We focused specifically on online persuasion: the idea that much of what we see online is designed to persuade us to act in a certain way.

We started off by searching ‘Plumber Leeds’ on Bing. You can Help at home by searching this with your child and seeing if they can explain to you what we noticed about the top results (hint: sponsorship).

Then, we learnt about cookies and how they store information about our digital footprint. As part of our learning about cookies, we learnt about what pop ups are, why they can be a bad thing and, most importantly, what we should do if we come across one online.

We learnt about how online games persuade us to stay on them for longer and spend money – and what’s in it for the games companies (who, despite the fact that one game earnt a whopping £1.38bn last year in revenue, advertise as being free for all).

Finally, we reflected on our learning and made pledges for how we can stay safe, happy and healthy online.

Help at home by asking your child what they pledged. Or, you could also help at home by asking your child the questions below.

PE – gymnastics

This week, in our PE session, 56OB finished off a unit of gymnastics learning by getting out the equipment in the hall. We had a great time using our balance, coordination and strength to tackle a range of tricky equipment – lots of us were super resilient, too!

Here’s a few action shots…

Ask your child what they’ve been learning about in PE recently. Challenge them to explain what impact this has had on their physical and mental health.

Computer Coding!

As part of our computing topic, we’ve been programming our own games on Scratch. We used to decomposition to break down making a game into smaller, more manageable chunks.

We’ve written algorithms using sequence and selection to tell the computer what to do and when. It’s been very tricky though. We’ve constantly had to debug our code for errors – it’s really hard so we’ve made plenty of mistakes. But we’ve all enjoyed the process and the children this week commented that they felt proud of their learning.

Here’s a few pictures of our games. They’re not finished yet but you should be able to see that they’re super impressive.

Challenge your child by asking them to explain the algorithms to you. For a further challenge, can they talk about their own games using some of our topic vocabulary: sequence & selection, decomposition, algorithm, variable.

07 February 2020

As this is the last week of our half-term, we will be revising all the spellings we have learnt this half-term (since January). To prepare, you should look back through your homework book and practise any words you feel you need to – maybe because you feel less confident with these.

On Friday 14 February 2020, you will be tested on a range of words.

07 February 2020

This week, the whole school has the same creative homework, which is due in on Thursday 13 February 2020.

I can show different ways to stay safe, including online.

This week, linked to our Living & Learning, we have been thinking about how to make safe choices, including online. There are many ways, and many different situations, in which we need to keep safe: at home, at school, in our environment and online.

Children should think about the situations where they need to keep safe and who might help them to stay safe. This could be done in any creative way:

  • A story
  • A poem
  • Instructions
  • A comic strip
  • An advert
  • An interview
  • A game
  • Scenarios

…or any other creative ideas!

The homework will be reviewed as part of our weekly homework review.

31 January 2020

This week, children should learn the following words in preparation for a test on Friday 07 February. All of these words contain a prefix at the beginning of the word, which alters the meaning of the root word. For example, information can become misinformation.

irresponsible unattached inconvenient
irregular illegible unavailable
unnecessary infrequent  

 

31 January 2020

This week, our homework is Practice Makes Perfect: I can try out Times Tables Rockstars.

Recently, we have purchased a subscription to an online platform that enables children to learn, or practise, times tables in a fun, engaging way. On Times Tables Rockstars (TTR), children can challenge their friends or earn coins to work their way up the school leader board. Many children have already been on TTR outside of school time, but this homework is a way of encouraging everyone to have a go. This week, we’d like all children to spend some time (how much is up to them) playing on the game – therefore, practising their times tables. Each child has been given their log in details. If you have any problems logging in, please let us know. Similarly, if for whatever reason accessing TTR is not possible, please do not hesitate to come into school and we will arrange an alternative.

24 January 2020

This week, the whole school has the same Talk Time homework: What is a drug?

This homework, which links to our Living and Learning statement, is a first step in children becoming aware of drugs. There are a few key points you may wish to talk about at home. Children need to be aware that some drugs are helpful, some are harmful, some are legal, some are illegal. Don’t forget to consider that even the legal or helpful ones can be harmful.

Below are some question prompts that could help shape your discussion…

  • What is a good definition for a drug?
  • What is a drug? What is not a drug?
  • Are all drugs bad?
  • Why might some people need to take medicines?
  • Who can prescribe medicine?
  • Who should administer medicine?
  • What should you do if you find some medicine?
  • Should you take medicine that isn’t yours?

Children should be prepared to discuss what they’ve talked about at home during our homework review next week. This homework should be completed by Thursday 30 January.