Our weekly message: Friday 04 October

Watch us while we work

Thank you to everyone who came along to our Watch Us While we Work session – it was great to see so many of you. And thanks if you found the time to fill in our online feedback form – here’s one of the comments:

Great tips for how to help my child at home. Great to see the learning environment, too.

We take your feedback really seriously. One thing we’re often asked is whether we can organise this differently to help children who are in different year groups. We’ll keep exploring whether this would work, but in the meantime, do remember to next Watch Us While We Work session on Thursday 23 January.

Class trips

Previously, you’ve told us you’re keen for class trips to happen. We value trips as a way to enrich learning and broaden children’s learning experiences. Our list of the main trips we’ve got planned are on page 4 of our Topic Curriculum Guide (but please remember we sometimes have to re-arrange or even cancel based on availability, or reluctantly if we don’t receive enough in voluntary donations).

The rest of this week’s message comes from our Writing Curriculum Leader…

Spellings

By now, you’ll be familiar with the homework arrangements. Every week in Key Stage 1, or every half-term in Key Stage 2, your child is given a set of spellings to learn as part of their homework.

But why? They’ll probably just use autocorrect on their computer or tablet when they’re older, won’t they? You, like many others, might have found yourself asking these same questions. And, to an extent, there’s some truth in this.

However, we believe spelling is a really important life-skill that is crucial to your child’s success in education. We find that children who can spell more accurately feel more confident about their writing – and we want all our children to feel proud and confident of their learning.

Also, research shows us that thinking about spellings takes up a large part of your working memory when writing (or typing). This means that if you’re able to have to think less about spelling, you’ve more brain power to think about other things: word choice, thinking creatively or pitching your written communication at the right level for your reader.

Help at home by helping your child learn their spellings. This doesn’t need to be for long and it doesn’t need to be boring. Here are some practical tips for effectively learning spellings at home…

• Ask your child to spell their words on the way to school, driving to the shops or walking the dog
• Use some ideas from our Super Spelling Strategies to make learning spellings more creative
• Place the words on Post-It notes around the house so your child is reading them regularly
• Practise them whilst doing something active (throwing a ball, kicking a football, playing tennis etc)
• Most importantly of all, remember that little and often is much more effective than one big session: five minutes every day will lead to much better outcomes than one 30 minute session each week

If you’d like any help about how to support your child with their writing, please speak to their class teacher.

Next week, we’ve the school photographer in to take individual pics (the class pic is taken later in the year. There’s also a Reception Stay and Learn session. And finally, don’t forget our Harvest Collection. Have a good weekend.

Amazing Autumn

Thank you for returning your autumn bags! This week, we began to look at their contents. 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.  Children noticed 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’s nursery rhyme is Baa Baa Black Sheep Can you join in with this nursery rhyme?

We are continuing to explore “We’re going on a bear hunt” Here is the author telling the story. Have a listen at home and join in together with the sound effects!  

Reminders

• Our individual photographs will take place on Tuesday 08 October. If your child does not attend nursery on a Tuesday but you would like them to have their photograph taken please contact school.
• Please ensure that your child has a waterproof coat at nursery every day. We go outside to learn, whatever the weather!

Our new school journalist: Thea!

Our new school journalist is Thea. She’ll be keeping you updated on lots of events happening around school. Her weekly article will provide some insight into school life: it could be interviews with adults, interviews with children, updates about events, or even, ‘a day in the life of…’.

Either way, we’re sure you’ll love her updates and we’re incredibly pleased to bring you her first article…

An Interview With Miss Gilliland

Miss Gilliland is a new teacher at Scholes and has been teaching for a month. I’ve been catching up with her to learn a little bit about her and to see how she is finding her new role.

Something you might not know is that Miss Gilliland was born and raised in Northern Ireland which is part of the UK.  Miss Gilliland also has a dog called ‘Schnauzer’ – I wonder what breed this pooch might be!

Miss Gilliland was originally a trainee teacher and worked at Moortown Primary School which is a part of Sphere Federation.  Since being at Scholes, Miss Gilliland says she loves learning new names and Wake Up Shake Up dances (or WUSU). She personally thinks Scholes (Elmet) Primary school is a happy and healthy place to study for children and adults. She cares for children every day by showing us all care and respect.

I am sure my friends across the school community will join me in saying a massive ‘Welcome to Scholes’ and that we wish her all the best with her new class this year!

Down on the farm

We’ve had another busy week in nursery, continuing to explore the provision and making friends. Our new small world area, the farm, has sparked a lot of interest. We talked about the different animals that we see on a farm and the sounds that they make. The children enjoyed adding the animal sound effects whilst playing.

As part of our early phonics learning, we encourage children to listen to the sounds that they can hear around them, such as an aeroplane flying above or birds singing in the trees. We also explore the different noises that animals make.

Help at home:  If you visit a farm or see some animals in a field, remember to use the animal names and talk about the noises that they make.  You might like to play a game where you use some farm animal toys and choose an animal to describe. For example: It has 4 legs, a curly tail and a snout. Can they guess which animal you are describing and make the animal noise? Can they give you some clues?  This is a great way to add new words to your child’s vocabulary and to develop their listening skills.

The children have enjoyed retelling this weeks focus story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ joining in with the repeated refrains “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down”.

As the children continue to explore the provision lots of different interests have been emerging, rolling cars down ramps being a big favourite. We experimented with other things that roll in the paint this week and tried our hand at painting with rollers. This up and down motion will help us later when it comes to developing our skills as a writer.

Here are some of the other activities from this week

• bug hunting
• friendship making
• brick house building
• sorting and matching in the maths area.
• imaginative play

Next week, we’ll talk about the changes that we are noticing outside.  Look out for a brown bag in your child’s folder – we’d like you to fill it with autumn treasure that you find and return it to Nursery.

Our focus story  is the popular story “We’re Going on a bear Hunt” We will be exploring this story using our own puppets and props.

Our Nursery rhyme of the week will be   Row, row, row your boat  Can you sing along with the rhyme at home?

Reminders:

• Please don’t forget to send a family photograph for our home corner display Please send it to scholesnursery@spherefederation.org 
• We play outside in all weather – please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat everyday.
• Please remember to check the school menu each day. School Lunch Menu

Family Photographs

As we’re getting to know everyone, we like to talk about our families and home life. To encourage children to tell us more about their family life, please e-mail or bring a photograph of your child with their family to Nursery. These will be displayed in our home corner for children to look at and talk about with staff and their friends.  scholesnursery@spherefederation.org 

KS1 Dictation for writing

All the children have made a great start to their writing journeys this year. We have been really pleased with their enthusiasm.

In Key Stage One, we use dictation as a tool to help children with their writing. During dictation, the teachers will either have sentences already in mind or they will discuss and decide on a sentence with the children. Dictation allows children to watch as an adult models using different writing skills effectively. Together we practise letter formation, spacing between words, spelling, where and when to use punctuation such as capital letters and full stops. Teachers also model how to listen to sounds in words and write the corresponding letters.

Here are some examples of our dictated sentences:

Help at home: You could think of some simple sentences to write with your child at home. These could be about anything at all from writing about what you did at the weekend or a sentence about a film or a program you have watched on the telly.

Ask them about the process and how they do it school. I’m sure they’d be happy to share with you how skilful they are at counting the words in the sentence and using their Phoneme Fingers to listen for sounds in words.  You could also include some tricky words or some of your child’s spelling words. 

Science: classification

In Science this half-term, we have been biologists and have been learning about the different types of organisms including: mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians and invertebrates.

This week, we worked together to create our own classification keys. They allowed us to sort, classify and identify different animals. We created the questions for our classification key based on the physical characteristics of different animals.

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Help at home: Test your child’s knowledge of the different types of animals and the scientific vocabulary.

Summer Competition Winners

 

Settling

All of the children are now in full-time and are continuing to settle in, get to know each other and learn our daily routines. We’ve had lots of fun exploring our learning this week. Take a look at what we’ve been up to:

PE; Foot-Tech

The children really enjoyed their first Foot-Tech  and teacher-led PE sessions.

Each Wednesday and Friday, Reception will take part in a range of fun activities and games. In Early Years, our PE lessons have a key focus on developing the fundamentals of movement and ensuring that children are continuously engaged and active throughout.

Help at home; Family photos 

Next week, we will be continue to think about our families. To help support our discussions, please send in one picture of your family together. We will keep the photograph on display, so please send photos you are happy for us to keep. You can also email photos to the email address below.

Thank you to parents and carers who have already provided these.

PE Days

Please send your child to school in their PE kit on Wednesday and Friday.

Swimming kits are not yet needed, we will send a message out when you need to start sending the kit and a list of dates that your child will be swimming.

Here is a link to our uniform policy.

Wellies and spare clothes

Don’t forget to bring your school wellies and a bag of spare uniform/PE kit, including underwear and socks to keep in school. Thank you to parents and carers who have already provided these.

Dates for your diary

This year we will be offering various opportunities for you to find out more about Early Years at school.

There will be after school meetings with your child’s teacher.

There’ll be stay and learn sessions where you can come into school and be part of a lesson and then find out how you can help at home.

Then, opportunities to pop into school to share your child’s learning journey book with them.

We hope that you can join us for as many of these sessions as possible.

 –Welcome to Reception

An invitation to this event was emailed to you back in July but here is a reminder.

Come into school to find out some basic “need to knows” about life in Reception.

19.09.24 – 6pm – 6.30pm

– Stay and learn sessions

This is an opportunity for you to come into school to find out about the Early Years Curriculum and watch your child learning in school.

Phonics Phase 2 and coffee morning – 10.10.24  9am-10am

Number 1- 13.11.24  9am-10am

Phonics Phase 3-  14.01.25 9am-10am

Fine Motor and coffee morning-  03.02.25 9am-10am

World Book Day- 06.03.24 9am-10am

Number 2 – 18.03.25 9am-10am

– Learning Journey Drop In’s

An opportunity to “drop into” school and share your child’s learning journal with them.

Learning Journey Drop in 1 – 03.12.24 and 05.12.24 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am   and   3.15pm-3.45pm

Learning Journey drop in 2 – 28.03.25 and 01.04.25 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am   and   3.15pm-3.45pm

Learning Journey drop in 3– 08.07.25 and 10.07.25 Times – 8.45 am-9.15am   and   3.15pm-3.45pm

The Snail and the Whale

The Snail and The Whale

We’ve been reading The Snail and The Whale, another book by one of our favourite authors, Julia Donaldson

We’ve been retelling the story in our own words and writing special blackboard messages, just like the snail trail messages in the story!

The book had some fantastic adventurous words to describe landscapes and actions. Our word of the week was humongous. We discussed the meaning of lots of other words too.

Can your child tell you what each of these words mean? They could use the images to remind them.

Maths

This week, we’ve re-visited the composition of 5 in various ways.

Transition

On Wednesday, the Reception children had a wonderful visit to their new Year 1 classroom. It was a delightful experience for the children as they met their new teacher and explored their future learning environment.

The children were excited and engaged, participating in fun activities to make them feel welcome and at ease. This visit was a positive step in helping the children transition smoothly into Year 1. They left with big smiles and lots of enthusiasm!

The dancing raisin experiment

Phonics

Summer 2 week 5 has focused on:

root word ending in: –er, –est

longer words

In provision, we’ve been reading words ending in –ed and sorting them by the sounds that –ed makes:

‘t’ final sound: jumped, helped, screeched etc.

‘id’ final sound: boasted, painted, printed etc.

Help at home; Sentence Substitution Throughout the school year, we’ve suggested lots of practical ways to explore phonics at home with easily made resources and games. There are also some great quality online phonics games. Sentence substitution is a great way to practise both reading and comprehension. The goal is to replace one word in the sentence, whilst ensuring that the sentence still makes sense. This is a free to access game on ‘Phonics Bloom’ Click here to play at home!

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 Sliced Bread

The children enjoyed exploring synonyms for the word nice and came up with many alternatives, such as delightful and delicious. This sparked a lot of interest in changing and adapting various parts of the poem. Check out some of their new poems!

Nell Bank

On Friday, we set of on our trip to Nell Bank. We began by listening to a story about Pete who liked to be TIDY but maybe a little bit too much.

We worked together safely to clear up a big mess! During this activity, we explored ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and discussed what would happen to litter if it was left.

Afterwards, the children had the opportunity to go on a mini-beast hunt to help Pete find lots of worms. Following this, it was time to help Pete make a new home in the woods. One of their favourite parts of the day (outside of  lunch, of course) was the water play area.