Leeds United Primary Choices
This half term, Year 6 had a workshop from the Leeds United Foundation about Choices. The workshop covered a range of subjects: antisocial behaviour, being aware of apps, moving on to high school, making friends and legal ages.
Two children were also lucky enough to win two tickets each to watch Leeds vs Leicester. What a fantastic prize!
Safer Internet Day
This week at school has been our online safety week and lots of our learning has linked to being safe online.
Internet safety day
Yesterday was Safer Internet Day.
We spent most of the day off timetable in order to look closely at how to stay safe online and how to be responsible users.
I know that some things online may not be true.
We discussed ‘fake news’ and what this means. We decided that if something is ‘fake’, it is not real and ‘news’ is information that is important. Fake news can be misleading and can give people the wrong impression or information.
We also talked about the importance of not sharing our personal information online, especially to strangers. We know we can’t trust what people say online and we should never plan to meet up with people we don’t know.
Personal information can include our name, age, address, contact details, school or clubs we go to. If we ever see something we are unsure of, or are not sure a website is safe, we must ask a trusted adult.
We read ‘Chicken Clicking’ by Jeanna Willis (one of our favourite authors). The story can be found online and has some brilliant talking points about internet safety.
Running, jumping and climbing!
Children were really excited to be able to use our outside area again, as you’ll no doubt see from their faces! They loved running, jumping and climbing up the wall to the slide.
In group time, we read ‘Dinosaur Roar’ and looked carefully at the patterns on the dinosaur illustrations. We created our own dinosaurs, adding horns, sharp teeth and some spikes. This helped us to practise our pencil control by drawing lines, circles and zig-zag patterns.
We also explored what happened when we put different objects on the balance scales. We talked about going to the park to play on a see-saw and what happens when someone sits at each end. Children are becoming much more confident using the words ‘heavy’ and ‘light’.
Next week’s learning:
We will learn about the Lunar New Year and will find out about how some people celebrate this festival.
Nursery rhyme of the week –Jack and Jill went up the Hill
Sound of the week – ‘c’ for cat and ‘k’ for kite
Supertato continued…
Spring 1 week 4 saw another week of Supertato studies, as we tried to capture the Evil Pea!…
Literacy
We’ve been making Wanted posters to warn everyone who to look out for and describing his features. Lots of children used last week’s word of the week- mischievous, to describe The Evil Pea.
Our new word of the week is: villain. We know that a villain is the bad character, important to a story or plot.
In the reading area, we’ve been digraph/trigraph detectives.
Design and technology
We’ve been designing and then making our own traps to capture that pesky Evil Pea! Take a look…
Art; Observational drawing
We’ve been using charcoal to draw real fruit and vegetables, looking carefully at the details we need to add.
Later in the week, we did some observational drawings of our faces! It’s fantastic to see how our self-portrait art has developed since September.
Shop- using our imaginations and exploring money
Supertato takes place, ‘at night-time, in the supermarket’
We added our own supermarket to the role-play area and is has been a huge hit. Children have loved role playing their own experiences of visiting shops and having a go at paying for items with 1p/2p coins.
Maths; 5 ‘and a bit’
In Maths, we’ve been using the song ‘five little aliens’ to explore one less within 5. We’ve been using Hungarian 5 frames (or ‘die’ frames) to represent and subitise numbers.
Later in the week, we used the aliens and frames to explore ‘5 and a bit’ We started with 6, then 7 aliens and noticed what each are ‘made of’ by subitising what we could see across the frames, for example:
7 is made of 3 and 4
Did you know?…
We’ve recently had some new flooring added to our outdoor area, giving us even more space to use our gross motor skills and play safely together. Check out how much fun we’ve been having…
Phonics
Spring 1 week 2 has focused on our final sounds of phase 3: air, er
We’ve learnt the tricky words; are, sure, pure
Tricky words are words that should be read by sight.
In provision, we’ve been playing tricky word BOO- an updated version of a game we played earlier in the year, to include our newest words.
Each week, we’d like to give you an idea of a game you could play at home to make reading even more exciting.
This week’s games are from the website: Phonics Bloom
You can play many of the games for free. Try out Tricky Trucks to practise tricky words and Alien Escape to make words. Stick to your child’s current level. If they are confident with all of their sounds, you should use Phase 3.
Please note these are games to be played alongside an adult, who can support and correct any misconceptions where needed.
Poetry Picnic
Each week we will be learning a new poem. We will recite this poem each day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called A Little House
We talk about how a poem sometimes has rhyming words and sometimes doesn’t. We also talk about how a poem can have a fast rhythm or a slow rhythm.
Click below to watch Reception recite this week’s poem!
Diary Dates
Mon 5 Feb/Wed 7 Feb 2024- Parent Teacher Conferences (pre-booked appointments)
Tues 6 Feb 2024- Fine Motor Control, Stay and Learn Coffee Morning This session is all about Fine Motor Control and Writing. It’s followed by a chance to meet up with other parents/carers and your child’s class teacher.
Living and Learning – Being Safe
In Living and Learning this week, each class teacher has delivered the NSPCC Speak Out Stay Safe assembly which aims to help children understand their rights, what is okay and not okay and what they can do if they are ever worried or scared.
We have discussed that:
- every child has the right to speak out and stay safe
- making a child feel sad, scared or worried is never okay and is not the child’s fault
- if they are ever worried, they know who to talk to so they can get help
- whatever their worry, they can always call Childline on 0800 1111 or visit childline.org.uk/kids
3,4C Class News
Well done to 3,4C! Another fabulous week of learning. We all had great fun visiting Yorkshire Museum on Wednesday.
We explored the Roman exhibition and saw Roman artefacts, walked on a mosaic and some of us dressed up as a Roman. In the Jurassic exhibition, we were amazed to see the huge collection of fossils.
Before getting on the coach, we were lucky enough to see the flood gates in action along the River Ouse, protecting the local residents’ homes from flooding. This experience will help our understanding of flood defences in our geography topic after Easter.
Today, we got to try out the new adventure playground at break time! It was great fun.
Reading
Exploring vocabulary was the focus of our reading lessons this week. We read a text about the Islamic Golden Age and identified lots of facts that we previously didn’t know. We then went on to identify unknown words within the text. Using dictionaries and iPads, we identified the definitions of these words and also searched for antonyms and synonyms. We were able to use these words in our own sentences to show our understanding.
Multiplication in Maths
In 2C we are learning about multiplication. We have been looking at lots of different representations.
First we count the amount of equal groups and then we count how many objects are in each group. Then we multiply these numbers together to get our total amount.
Help at home: by practising times tables on Times Tables Rockstars (TTRS)
Dinosaurs
It’s been great to see our new children becoming more familiar with Nursery routines and lots of them have now stayed for lunch and their first full day. Well done, yellow group!
Children continue to explore nursery and are independently choosing resources to enhance their play; we’ve created wildlife parks, giant train tracks and we’ve even flown on a plane to the beach. Some children worked together to build, what might just be, the world’s tallest tower of pegs!
In the maths area, children have enjoyed sorting, matching and counting different dinosaur counters. We talked about how they were the same or different…This dinosaur is the same as yours. My dinosaur is the same, but a different colour. I have put all the blue dinosaurs in the blue dish.
We also read a counting book about ‘5 Little Dinosaurs’ and enjoyed carefully counting the dinosaurs on each page.
In group time, children in red, blue and green group helped Mrs Long with her shopping bags. One bag was very heavy and the other bag was quite light. We looked at the different items in each bag and compared them. Children had to find an item that was heavier or lighter than the tin of baked beans. Lots of children could identify and say when something was ‘heavy’ but some were less familiar with the word ‘light’.
Help at home: You could continue this learning at home by asking questions during everyday activities. Which bag from the supermarket is heaviest/ lightest? Which toy is lighter? Can you find something that is lighter than the bottle of milk? Can you find something that is heavier than a packet of crisps?
Next week’s learning:
We look forward to reading ‘Dinosaur Roar’ by Paul and Henrietta Stickland in our story times next week. If you don’t have a copy of the book at home, you might enjoy watching the first 3 minutes of this clip together.
Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog (it’s along the play bar) and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.
In maths, we’ll continue learning about weight so will be using words such as heavy, light, heavier and lighter to compare different objects.
Nursery rhyme of the week – Ring-a-ring-a-roses
Sound of the week – ‘O’ for octopus.
Reminders
- Please check that your child’s water bottle still has their name on – we’ve noticed that some have washed off. It makes it much quicker and easier to hand them out when they’re clearly named. Thank you.