Living and Learning: School Charity
Thank you to our Cancer research representative who came to accept our cheque for a staggering £1986.24 this week.
A huge “Well done!” to everybody who helped fund raise the money last year, whether it was buying an ice-pop, baking buns or donating to sponsored events.
We are very proud of our achievements! We look forward to finding out who will be our new school charity for this year.
Living and Learning- Community Week
This week we have been learning all about our community. The children have produced identity circles in which they identified things that are important to them, such as family and friends. They drew maps of important places, and places they regularly visit. We had visits from local police officers and Stella Walsh from the Parish Council, who explained their work in the local community.
Living and Learning: Community Week
| Living and Learning statement – I respect my community and other communities. |
| Whole school events
Out about in the community photo competition Get out in the community in an active way on the way to and from school. Email (scholesoffice@spherefederation.org) a picture of their active travel, maybe by a landmark on their route to school, for the chance to win a voucher (2 x KS1 and 2 x KS2). Entries to be submitted by 29.11.19. New charity Whole school homework 22.11.19 Talk Time: Which charity should our school support? Review on Thursday 28 November and vote in class for one charity per class. School Council will discuss chosen charities from each class and vote on final choice (meeting 29 Nov AM) The winners will be announced in assembly Fri 29 Nov PM. Identity day – Friday 29 November Children are invited to dress in clothing that represents part of their identity, for example uniform from a club they attend, a team they are part of or support or something that represents them. |
Living and Learning: Identity
Our Living and Learning theme this half-term is Identity. Pupils will learn about what makes themselves and others special, valuing the similarities and differences between themselves and others and what is meant by community. This will be taught through our Living and Learning sessions and two focused weeks.
Anti-bullying week (11 November) ‘Change starts with us’
My Community themed week (25 November)
Our new school charity will be chosen as part of the My Community themed week. Every year, we nominate a new charity to support. This year, we have been supporting Cancer Research. We decide this on the basis of a Talk Time homework, and then school councillors make the final decision.
Our Living and Learning long term plan details the learning for each year group across the year and you can keep up to date with our weekly Living and Learning statements on the parent noticeboard in the playground and also on the school calendar. We will begin and end this half term with a focus on manners.
I apologise when I need to.
I say please and thank you.
Fabulous Flex dancers
We had a treat in assembly yesterday. The KS2 dance group, which is run by Flex dance on Thursdays after school, performed a dance compilation. They used many of their 8Rs for learning: remembering, risk-taking, resilience and resourcefulness. Well done!
Please contact the office if you would like to join – KS2 girls and boys all welcome! (KS1 dance club is on Fridays after school.)
Living and Learning: I know how to stop bullying.
Scholes is proud to be a happy and healthy place to learn. This week has been Anti-bullying week. We have used the ‘STOP’ acronym to make sure we are clear on what bullying is and how we can solve issues if they arise.
We discussed the meaning of the acronym:
- Several
- Times
- On
- Purpose
If bullying ever did happen, we agreed that we would:
- Start
- Telling
- Other
- People
Some children designed posters with this key information on to be displayed around school.
Fire Talk
Year 5 had a visit from West Yorkshire Fire Service. They talked about how to stay safe at home in the event of a fire. They explained the importance of smoke alarms and having a fire plan to get you and your family out of the house if a fire occurred. Do you have a fire plan for your house? This could be a good activity to do at home as a family.
Watch Us While We Work
Thank you to the parents who came to visit our classes on Tuesday – we fully appreciate that many parents would have been unable to attend due to work, etc. It was great to see so many faces and hopefully you found the session useful.
For those that couldn’t make it, here’s a few tips for helping your child at home.
Maths
Make sure you child is confident with their x tables up to 12 x 12. Rapid recall means being able to reply to a question accurately in just a few seconds. Once we’re confident with our tables, we can start to use this information to help us tackle trickier questions. At home, practise like this…
If we know that 3 x 4 = 12
we also know that…
30 x 4 = 120 0.3 x 4 = 1.2
30 x 40 = 1,200 0.3 x 0.4 = 0.12
300 x 40 = 1,200 0.03 x 0.4 = 0.012
300 x 40 = 12, 000
Here we are using the fact but making it 10, 100, 1000 times bigger or smaller.
Make it even harder by asking your child questions that involve using this skill:
7 x 90 =
600 x 3 =
12, 000 x 2 =
Reading
Here’s a few top tips for reading at home:
- give opportunities for your child to read in their head
- give opportunities for your child to read aloud
- model reading aloud with expression to your child
- ask your child to tell you things they know (facts), think (inferences) and wonder (inferences)
- challenge your child to come up with their own fact finding questions
- pretend to be two characters from the book they are reading and have a conversation (use things you’ve learnt about the character to get across their personality
It would be great if children were reading daily. If they’re a reluctant reader, let them read whatever they enjoy – reading is reading after all. If they love reading, try and encourage them to read a broader range of things.
Finally, it really helps our discussions as a class if your child has read to their target page – this is set every Friday.
If you have any questions or concerns about helping your child at home, please do not hesitate to come and speak to your child’s class teacher.
Light investigation
Year 5/6 S have been investigating the idea that light travels in straight lines and thinking about how shadows are made. They predicted what would happen to the size of a shadow if the light source was brought closer or further away from an object. The children measured changes in shadow size and recorded the data in a table and in graph form. At home, ask your child what they found out.
I can use OS maps
Today, year 5/6 studied OS maps. We learned about how the scale of the map can help us to find out the distances between places. The scale on OS explorer maps is 1:25000. This means every 4cm on the map is worth 1km on the ground. At home you could explore scales on different maps: Google maps or Earth, OS maps or even What3words from last week’s Learning.
