Class News

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

To celebrate National Poetry Day, all of Year 5,6 channelled their inner William Wordsworth as they performed Daffodils. This time, the audience was made up of teachers and classmates, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking!

Each class took turns to recite different parts of the poem, creating one big collaborative performance that even Mr Wordsworth himself would have been proud of. With confident voices, expressive gestures, and just the right amount of dramatic flair, the children brought the famous poem to life (without a single daffodil in sight).

In the words of Wordsworth himself: “And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.”

It was a wonderful way to celebrate poetry, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed taking part.

Help at home: Read or listen to a poem together and talk about what it really means. Or, if you’re feeling brave, have your own mini poetry performance – bonus points for dramatic pauses!

Autumn treasures

Thank you for returning your autumn treasure bags to nursery. This week, we began to look at their contents. The children enjoyed talking about what they had found and where they found their autumn treasure.  Don’t worry if you haven’t had a chance to go for a walk yet, there’s still time. Please return your bag to Nursery over the next week.

We’ve been learning all about autumn this week; we talked about the changes that we could see around us in our Nursery garden. We saw that the leaves were changing colour and falling from the branches. We listened to a song about autumn leaves falling down and named lots of different coloured leaves that we could see outside.

In our story corner, children have enjoyed listening to the story of ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. They’re getting really good at re-telling the story and joining in with the repeated refrains.

Next week, we’ll continue to learn about autumn and will look at some artwork by Andy Goldsworthy, so don’t forget to bring your autumn treasure bag back to nursery.

Help at home

Next week our Nursery Rhyme of the week is  Humpty Dumpty Can you join in with this nursery rhyme?

We are continuing to explore “We’re going on a bear hunt” We will be joining in with the rhyme and adding our own sound effects.

Reminders

• Our individual photographs will take place on Tuesday 07 October. If your child does not attend nursery on a Tuesday but you would like them to have their photograph taken please contact school.
• Don’t forget to send in your family photos to add to our display. The children are really enjoying talking about them. Send them to our email address scholesnursery@spherefederation.org

We’re going on a Bear Hunt

We’re going on a Bear hunt

The well loved story We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen was the focus story for our learning this week. Both classes enjoyed joining in with the story and retelling it in our reading areas.

We used the story as a prompt to go on our own hunt in the school grounds. With an areal map of school in hand, we went on a sound hunt. We searched for some of the graphemes we have learnt so far.

The map’s telling us to go to the gazebo!

Understanding the World

Thank you to everyone who sent in photographs of their front doors. We used them to draw our houses and other types of homes too.

This one’s my house. It has two handles and white all around.

Mine has windows.

My house has a blue door.

Phonics

Autumn 1, week 4 has focused on the new phonemes: /ck/, /e/, /u/ and /r/.

/ck/ is our first diagraph and the children have been great at remembering that two letters can work together to make one sound. We also learnt the new tricky word: the.

The children are doing ever such a good job at blending orally using all their known sounds (phonemes) and they have begun to blend to read independently in our phonics sessions too. Keep it up Reception!

Poem Of The Week

This week’s poem of the week is Falling Apples.

Help at home: you could set up a stage at home (a sofa or chair would be fine) and let your child perform the poem to you using the actions we learnt in class.

Maths

This week we have learnt that numbers can be composed of ones. We joined in with the STEM sentence “one and one and one make three” and made collections of three things for Baby Bear.

Help at home: You could make different collections of three things at home. You could look at how three can be made of one and one and one or from two and one.

Stay and Learn

Our first stay and learn session will be on Monday 6th October. 
This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about phonics and watch your child learning in school. There will also be a coffee morning and a Phonics information presentation before the session. We look forward to welcoming you then 🙂

Writing: non-chronological reports

Year 5/6 have been using our geography knowledge to write a report about a fictitious city. They have included knowledge about the importance of urban green spaces and city expansion.

Help at home: discuss the benefits of urban green spaces. Why might they be important for both our physical and mental wellbeing?

Living and Learning: I respect others.

This week in our Living and Learning session, Year 5/6 explored an important and powerful topic – discrimination. We began by unpicking what the word really means and discovered that discrimination is when someone is treated unfairly because of who they are or because of a particular characteristic they have. Through thoughtful discussion, we looked at real-life examples and reflected on the impact discrimination can have on people’s lives.

We also learned about the Equality Act 2010, which helps protect everyone from discrimination and ensures that certain characteristics are recognised and respected. To help us remember these, we used the brilliant mnemonic DR S GRAMPS:

• Disability

• Race

• Sex

• Gender reassignment

• Religion or beliefs

• Age

• Marriage or civil partnership

• Pregnancy and maternity

• Sexual orientation

The children listened, reflected and spoke maturely about a sensitive topic _ and we were really proud of the respect they showed throughout the lesson.

Help at Home: Can your child list the protected characteristics without peeking? Who do they think is responsible for making sure these are upheld and respected?

Phase 3/4 Poetry

The children across the phase have been working hard to learn the poem ‘Let No One Steal Your Dreams’ by Paul Cookson.

On Thursday, they will perform this poem together in a special assembly to celebrate National Poetry Day.

We have focused on voice projection and adding expression as we read.

In reading lessons, the children have explored the meaning of the poem and words they’re curious about.

Help at home by encouraging your child to recite the poem, adding expression and projecting their voice.

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills continue to be really important in Year 1 and 2. We are trying to refine and improve our handwriting and presentation in our books. Using playdough, colouring carefully and cutting out are so useful to help us do this!

Help at home by doing jigsaws, colouring in and letting your child cut out.

Topic – urban green spaces

This week, we’ve been thinking about how Leeds has developed and expanded over time. We considered the importance of green spaces in cities and how these are decreasing due to city expansion. The children were able to identify the benefits of green spaces, such as carbon stores, reducing pollution and lowering global temperatures. They also looked at the impact green spaces have on humans such as improved physical health and improved mental health. The children created posters to show all the benefits.

Living and Learning: Protected Characteristics

Over the next couple of weeks, we’re learning all about respect.

We’ll be revisiting what the protected characteristics are. These are characteristics that are protected by law to stop discrimination.

disability, race, gender reassignment, religion or belief, age, marital status, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation

We can use this useful mnemonic to help us remember: DRGRAMPSS.

As well as reminding ourselves what the protected characteristics are, we’ll be exploring themes around them such as…

• Why are they protected?
• What would society be like if they weren’t protected?
• How do they link to the British Values?

We’ll also look at different scenarios where the characteristics aren’t being protected and see if we can identify the problem and the characteristic.

Help at home: Have a chat with your child about why we have protected characteristics and the importance of them.

Goodbye conkers!

In 1,2B we’ve loved using the conkers we collected to count, organise and play with. We collected 1281 in total. Today, as part of our science learning, we returned them to nature. We threw them into the bushes and trees for the animals or to grow into trees one day. There was even a squirrel busy on the field when we were there.