Rhymes, rhymes and more rhymes!
Has your child been singing more nursery rhymes at home this week? We’ve certainly heard lots of singing in Nursery and we really enjoyed all singing together outside, too!
- Twinkle Twinkle – We continued our learning from group time in the maths area where we had lots of different stars to count and sort. There were different colours, textures and sizes to sort.
- Five Currant Buns – This is always a popular activity! Children used the coins to pay for currant buns that they were selling in our playdough bakery.
- I can sing a rainbow – In our Fiddly Fingers area, we developed our pincer grips by using our fingers and thumbs to pick up the tiny rainbow buttons and beads to put on the rainbows.
- Five Little Speckled Frogs – Children loved feeding the frogs delicious bugs and making them jump into the pond.
- We also enjoyed printing Baa Baa Black Sheep, drawing Incy Wincy, mixing Little Miss Muffet’s curds and whey and trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again!
Finally, outside we’ve enjoyed flying kites in the wind, marching to ‘The Grand Old Duke of York‘ and riding the tricycles.
Welcome!
Some of you will have already noticed that we have a new member of our Nursery team. We’d like to officially welcome Mrs Gosper to Nursery; she works every afternoon and will be Yellow group’s Key Person, along with Miss Morris.
5/6B Certificate Celebration
Here are our certificate winners for last week…
For great living and learning…
Daisy B – You are someone that everyone in school can look up to. You carry the 8 R’s with you everywhere you go and you at the first to help others if necessary. As it’s anti-bullying week this week, you deserve this award as you are kind, thoughtful and a genuine pleasure to have in the classroom. Well done, Daisy!
For sport and physical activity…
Hannah – You show you are adaptable by choosing to work in different peer groups during PE lessons. You get on well with everyone and you are a great basketball team player! Keep it up, Hannah!
For great learning…
George – All adults in the classroom have seen a huge improvement in your confidence and willingness in class. You are taking safe risks by putting your hand up. Well done, George!
Celebration certificates
Our certificates this week go to…
For great learning…
Joseph – for challenging yourself in all lessons this week.
For sport and physical activity…
William – for great enthusiasm and determination in PE.
For living and learning…
Gabriel – you know how to be a great friend and respect similarities and differences.
Numbotters of the week– Ava A and Edward for earning loads of stars!
Our new class reward system is still going down well too. For making good choices throughout the day, children can write their name on a raffle ticket (some children have got 9 or 10 tickets in this week). On a Friday, 5 winners will be drawn out and can choose a prize from the Raffle Reward box.
5/6 S Certificate Celebration
This weeks certificate winners are…
For great learning…
Connor- you are a great active learner in all lessons. I love that you have a passion for your learning. Well done – keep it up!
For sport and physical activity…
Alex- for demonstrating enthusiasm during lessons and you always work well as part of a team. Thank you.
For living and learning…
Charlie H- you contributed so well during the anti-bullying lesson. You demonstrated a very mature attitude. Well done.
Well done everyone!
History: democracy
This week, we’ve learnt about democracy. We knew a lot about it already – mainly because of our School Council elections (Did you know that we’ve recently rebranded our School Council? They’re now the Junior Leadership Team).
Democracy is a legacy of the Ancient Greeks. In particular, the Athenian people.
We discussed what we already knew, and came up with our own definition (ask your child what democracy is).
First, we found out about Athenian democracy. We were really frustrated to find out that you had to be a citizen of Athens to have a vote; on the face of it, this seems OK. But then we found out that to be a citizen you had to be a male who was born in Athens and had completed one full year in the Athenian army.
In our next lesson, we compared Athenian democracy to British democracy now – ask your child what’s the same? What’s different?
We all agreed that we’re very lucky to live in a country that is so fair – even though we know it could be even better!
Anti-bullying week 19-20 November 2020
This week, it’s Anti-Bullying Week and the theme for this year is ‘United against bullying’.
We took part in Odd Socks Day this Monday to celebrate our differences.
STOP is a key message linked to bullying. In our school, STOP stands for two things:
- the definition: Several Times On Purpose
- the solution: Start Telling Other People
Recently, our school council (now called the Junior Leadership team) met to review our school definition of bullying and our child friendly anti-bullying policy. Thank you to the JLT for their valued contributions. As a result, our definition and policy have now been updated.
Child friendly anti-bullying policy
What is bullying?
In our school, this is what bullying means:
Bullying is where you hurt someone, physically or emotionally (including online), several times on purpose.
What might bullying look like?
If any of these things happen several (lots of) times, it is bullying.
- Hurting peoples’ feelings, for example, name calling, teasing, threatening, ignoring, leaving people out or spreading rumours
- Hurting peoples’ bodies, for example, hitting, punching or kicking
This could be in person or online (cyber bullying) and could be because of someone’s race, disability, gender, appearance, age or any other protected characteristic.
What could you do if you are being bullied?
Start
Telling
Other
People
Who could you tell?
- Miss Hague, Miss Pallister, Mrs Goodwin, Mrs Beesley or Mr Roundtree (they are child protection staff)
- Any other members of staff
- Friends
- Someone in your family
- A trusted adult
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your classroom Voice Box or the whole school worry box
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Our views on bullying
STOP bullying – bullying is wrong! We’re a happy and healthy school.
Parent Partnership
Please find our Parent Partnership presentation link below. It is a PowerPoint presentation. If you are unable to access the file, please let us know.
After you have viewed the presentation, please let us know if you have any questions.
The Reception Team.
Adjective day 2020
We had a fabulous Adjective Day today. It was a bit different having to stay in our bubbles and not being about to parade in and out of every classroom but we still had a great time. We have lots of examples of adjectives on our word walls now. We even managed a distanced rendition of our adjective song.
Adjectives can tell you more,
About a noun and that’s for sure,
Ad-jec-tives!
Healthy eating assemblies
The whole federation joined together to take part in an assembly about healthy eating last week. It was very exciting to see the other classes in the other schools! We had these booked in for Health Week last summer, which had to be cancelled.
The Leeds Health and Wellbeing Team delivered the assembly where we learnt all sorts of interesting things about keeping healthy and finished off with an interactive quiz. 
Parachute fun!
Following on from last weeks Science lesson, the children have been investigating air resistance further. They came to the conclusion that the amount of air resistance on an object is affected by the surface area. This week the children were investigating whether different materials used for the parachute canopies, changed the amount of air resistance acting upon it. They made different parachutes using a range of materials, making sure they kept the canopy the same size, the weight the same and the string length the same. We then tested them out by dropping them from the same height. Can your child remember which parachute landed first? Why was this?
