Newsletter Issue 14 Friday 16th December 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
Christmas is upon us! I must say I have never known a term go by quite as quickly as this one.
It has been my delight and privilege to enjoy brilliant Christmas Performances by our children, Nursery to Year 4 this week. I am certain that our staff and talented performers have between them produced the best ever Nativities at Robin Hood. Highlights have included Lily in Nursery who fully explored the emotional depths of her part as Mary and a costume mix up in Reception where one Wise Man arrived on the day in a donkey costume… meaning that our performance uniquely featured two Wise Men and a very full stable. Like our Nursery and Reception, Key Stage One were magnificent – and had the most beautiful costumes I’ve ever seen – and Year 34 once again maintained their exceptionally high performance standards. Mrs Comstive’s Drama Club gave performances of equal professionalism and quality. The performances have been yet another demonstration of the quality, depth and range of exceptional Arts provision at Robin Hood.
The events this week have been fabulously supported by our community. It has been great to see so many parents and grandparents supporting both their children and our school. Our afternoon performances were undoubtedly the best attended ever. These have been great community events and my thanks to everyone who has attended. It is your participation that makes these magical moments for our children.
Our Nursery and Reception classes video conferenced with Santa in Lapland this week and I was amazed to see a Christmas Advent Calendar, created in Powerpoint as his Home Learning, by Elliot in our Reception class. Truly amazing!
Look back on the year
This year in brief included our Ofsted inspection in April, saying goodbye to longstanding colleagues Mrs Bailey and Mr Simpson, the creation of a new Leadership team at the school, the welcoming of Mrs Moore and Miss Snowden to our teaching staff, Miss Johal, Miss Beckwith and Miss Boyes to our Support Staff, welcoming Sara Jackson, Lofthouse Children’s Centre Manager, to our Governing Body, and the remodelling of our Hall. We can look back on 2011 with a great deal of pride and satisfaction and look forward to 2012… which is already shaping up to be a very busy and a very interesting year for us.
Parent Governor
We are also delighted to be welcoming Julie Newell to our Governing Body in her capacity as the newest of our Parent Governors. Julie’s candidacy did not need to go to vote and thus she joins our Body in the New Year. I would like to welcome Julie aboard and look forward to her input as a Governor.
Training Day
The first official day back at school is Tuesday 3rd January, which is a Training Day at Robin Hood. Children return to school after the Christmas break on Wednesday 4th January.
Friendly Faces
A reminder to everyone that Friendly Faces will operate as a term time only provision from Christmas onwards.
Clubs
As usual, there will be no Clubs in the first week after the holiday.
Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year and we look forward to seeing you on 4th January,
Mr Wilson
Friday, 16 December 2011
Friday, 9 December 2011
Issue 13 2011-12
Newsletter Issue 13 Friday 9th December 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
Only one school week left before Christmas! Over two hundred children joined us for the cooked Christmas Dinner this year… served by Mrs Dale and I, alongside our lunchtime staff. With the tree in the Hall, turkey and stuffing and Jingle Bells playing over the speaker system, it certainly felt very Christmassy. My thanks to Mrs Dale, Mrs Smith, Mrs Holland, Mrs Hick, our lunchtime staff and everyone who made our Christmas Dinner enjoyable for the children.
I must say I have never known a term go by quite as quickly as this one. Proof, surely, of the old adage ‘time flies when your having fun!’
The Robins
Just a reminder to everyone that we will be hosting The Robins Awards Ceremony this year on Thursday evening, 22nd March. The Robins will be a celebration of films that have been made this year and of some of our spectacular curriculum creations. We will also be sharing our submissions to the Golden Owls Film Competition. The Golden Owls are a new film competition for children launched by Leeds City Council celebrating the best of young people’s film making across the city. Deadline for entries is 10th February. Robin Hood, of course, intends to submit a number of entries. Children can make films at home and submit their entries via the school.
Christmas Week
I look forward to seeing many parents, families and members of our community at our Christmas events next week. Full details appear on our newsletter blog and Facebook page.
Training Day
In the New Year we have a Training Day on the first day back, Tuesday 3rd January. Children return to school on Wednesday 4th January.
Christmas Disco
Many thanks to everyone who got involved for the PTA Christmas Disco last week. The Hall was certainly rocking and rolling and we had a great many of our children involved. Our newly re-formed PTA needs your help and support. It has real potential to become a very vibrant social and community group that adds real value to our school. The more supporters, helpers, advocates and interest it has… the more effective it can be, the more value it can add to the life of our school and the more important it can become in supporting additional things for our children to enjoy in school than would otherwise be the case. Please get involved in the conversation. Please support our PTA.
Graduate Teacher Trainees
The applications round for the Graduate Teacher Trainee Programme 2012-13 is now open. Robin Hood works in partnership with Teach Leeds – a consortium of nine Primary Schools in Leeds - to provide high quality teacher training. If you know of anyone interested in Teacher Training, please refer them to our website where they should click on the Apply for GTP 2012 button.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days.
Have a fantastic Christmas Shopping weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have had a very busy and exciting week in Nursery that began with the snow storm on Monday morning!! After the excitement of the winter weather the children were set well on their way to embark on their Christmas preparations! We also had our second celebration afternoon of the school year and would like to say a huge thank you to those parents who came along to share in the children’s successes so far!!
THIS WEEK
The children have been retelling the Nativity story as well as preparing for our very own Nativity performance. We have been busy making gifts, and using our cutting skills to make our very own wish lists for Christmas! The children have also been showcasing their fabulous writing skills as we replied to our very own letter from Santa!!
NEXT WEEK
Will be our last week together before Christmas is here! The children will be involved in a whole heap of festive cheer including our Nativity Performances and our Christmas Parties!
DATES FOR THE DIARY
The TipToe Nativity (Mon, Tues, Wed chn): Tuesday 13th December 10am school hall
Group 1 Christmas Party: Tuesday 13th December 1.45 -2.45
The TipToe Nativity (Wed, Thurs, Fri chn): Thursday 15th December 10am school hall
Group 2 Christmas Party: Thursday 15th December 1.45 -2.45
Please make sure your child’s costume for the Nativity is given to the Nursery staff the day before the performance.
On the day of the Christmas party please provide just a small packed lunch for your child as there will be food including sandwiches available.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Sharing stories and reading regularly
•Playing games (board games, dominoes, I spy etc) to support turn taking, counting etc.
•Spotting numbers, letters and words in the environment
•Practising writing our own names
•Practising putting on our own coats, shoes and socks.
Thank you for your continued support, have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team.
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you all for the amazing home learning we received on Monday. Miss Abbey has put them on the blog and our ladies have displayed them in the classroom. Thank you too for all the fabulous costumes you have supplied for our Nativity performance.
THIS WEEK
We have had another super week in Reception with high levels of excitement on Monday morning when the snow arrived! We have had to stay inside during the early part of the week as it was very icy, but there have been lots of fabulous activities going on and the children have kept themselves very busy! The children have been working very hard on their performances and we hope you have lots of wonderful memories of your child's part in the nativity.
NEXT WEEK
Will be another really busy one! On Monday we will be watching the dress rehearsal of the Nursery Christmas production and on Tuesday we will be having a sneaky peak at Santa at his home, getting ready for Christmas! We will be having our Christmas party on Thursday afternoon and have asked for your help in providing food (see this week's home learning). The children will be having lunch as normal that day. If you want to send in party clothes for your child, please can you send them in a named carrier bag and we will help them get changed after lunch. Thank you.
Dates for your diary
Thursday 15th December - Reception Party (pm)
Friday 16th December - Carols round the tree 2.30 pm
Friday 16th December - break up day
Tuesday 4th January - staff training day
Wednesday 5th January - children return to school
How you can help us
Please continue to listen to your child's reading for a few minutes every day over the next few weeks to ensure they retain their confidence and enthusiasm.
Please also spend some time reading and writing the tricky words and keywords that were sent home for last week's home learning - we will be moving on to our new words in January.
Thank you for your continued support.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
How quickly the week has gone! The children all thoroughly enjoyed the Beauty and the Beast Performance. It was a fantastic show for them to watch and we would like to say a massive thank you to all of the children for their outstanding representation of Robin Hood School!
Christmas Production
The time is nearly upon us!
We ask all costumes to be in no later than Monday 12th December.
In case you weren't sure on the times:
Wednesday 14th December 2pm -3pm
Thursday 15th December 6pm - 7pm.
Home Learning
We would also like to say thank you to all of the parents and carers in their support with the children's home learning. We have seen a vast range of super castles, interesting stories about castles, trips out to castles, using ICT to show off learning about castles and even our very own Castle cake which Year 1/2 had the pleasure of eating! It is absolutely fantastic how much support goes in to the home learning and we appreciate your feedback on how you have found the tasks that have been set.
Reading Records
It is really important to continue to log in your child's reading record any reading or other learning your children do at home. Over the Christmas period the children will take home books to read but also any other learning you feel you would like to share with us, please let us know! Your communication is extremely important to us and we want to know about any fantastic learning!
Next week
The final week of term is here and how quickly time flys when you’re having fun! The week will have a Religious Education focus where the children will learn about Christmas around the world. The children will be using a range of skills to make Christmas cards and calendars. We are sure you will like them!
Key Stage One Party
The Key Stage One Party will take place on Thursday 15th December during the afternoon in the hall. MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL. Please supply your children with party clothes and where possible some food or drink for the party. This could be anything from sausage rolls, crisps and dip, cakes and squash. No fizzy drinks or nuts. Thank you!
We hope you have a lovely weekend!
The Key Stage One Team
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a fantastic week in 3/4 full of lots of exciting fun filled learning! During ICT the children have been continuing with their amazing trainer video adverts and we can't wait to see the finished outcomes next week. During RE we have finished publishing the Christmas nativity story in the style of a comic strip!
Literacy
This week the children have been writing a persuasive letter to Santa outlining all the reasons as to why he should not strike this Christmas. The children have used lots of persuasive features such as rhetorical questions, quotations and statistics to support their writing. They have also grouped their fantastic ideas and summarised these in a concluding paragraph.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been practising their mental strategies for subtraction by taking away multiples of ten and adjusting. We then used all of our mental and written strategies for addition and subtraction to plan a party for the 'I'm A Celebrity' contestants as they left the jungle.
Reminders
Christmas Party
Our Christmas party is on Thursday 15th December so please can all children bring some party clothes to get changed in to. As our party is after dinner (MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL), please could all children bring a small food or drink contribution such as crisps, buns, biscuits etc.
Production
Our dress rehearsal for our Christmas Production ‘Santa’s on Strike’ is on Monday 12th December at 1:30 pm. Please can everyone bring their costumes in to school on Monday ready to get changed into after lunch. If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singers’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarf’s and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults.
To remind you our production dates are: Tuesday 13th December 2:00pm and Wednesday 14th December - 6:00pm. Both productions will be taking place in the school hall. No tickets are required.
Look forward to seeing you there,
3/4 Team
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup:
•Congratulations to Phoebe Millard, Megan Spafford, Millie Reynolds and Chloe Jackson who are our Achievers of the Week. They have worked collaboratively this week to design, plan and build a prototype for a new seat in the school playground. Their design was well thought out, cleverly designed and beautifully presented -a very purposeful design. Well done girls.
•The Year 5/6 Christmas Party will be held on Thursday 15th December.MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL. The children should come to school that day in uniform but bring party clothes to change into in the afternoon. For the party, we would appreciate contributions on the day of crisps, biscuits and buns as well as sugar free drinks.
•Year 5/6 will be leading the Christmas service at church on Friday 16th December at 10am. We hope to see you there!
•Reminder: Payment is due by Friday 16th December for the Year 5/6 trip to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which will take place during the first week back after Christmas. Thank you.
Numeracy:
•The focus this week has been interpreting the data collected from Mario Kart on the Wii and DS. We collated Yoshi, Mario, Donkey Kong's and Toad's trial times to establish the overall winner and have then calculated average lap times as well as modal positions.
•Home Learning: The Times Tables Challenge will take place on Thursday 15th December. Ahead of this, please practise ALL times tables! Useful websites include http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html as well as http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/timestable/interactive.htm
Literacy:
•'Christmas in Leeds MUST be cancelled' was the message we received from the Lord Mayor this week! We've considered the points he made but have gathered reasons to persuade him to change his mind. In our letters, our focus has been on developing links between paragraphs.
Other areas of the curriculum:
•In DT, we've been designing and making kites, including diamond kites, box kites and sail kites. We've been learning about the different parts of a kite and are using this technical vocabulary with super accuracy.
•In Music, Mrs Brook’s class have continued to practise Silent Night on the recorders ahead of the service at church next week. Miss Darroch's class have been continuing to learn the words to Little Donkey in sign language. Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband.
•In ICT, we've been navigating robots around our Mario Kart themed tracks, with a particular focus on including a sensor in procedures.
Visit our blogs!
•5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
•5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
•5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
Dear Parent/Carer,
Only one school week left before Christmas! Over two hundred children joined us for the cooked Christmas Dinner this year… served by Mrs Dale and I, alongside our lunchtime staff. With the tree in the Hall, turkey and stuffing and Jingle Bells playing over the speaker system, it certainly felt very Christmassy. My thanks to Mrs Dale, Mrs Smith, Mrs Holland, Mrs Hick, our lunchtime staff and everyone who made our Christmas Dinner enjoyable for the children.
I must say I have never known a term go by quite as quickly as this one. Proof, surely, of the old adage ‘time flies when your having fun!’
The Robins
Just a reminder to everyone that we will be hosting The Robins Awards Ceremony this year on Thursday evening, 22nd March. The Robins will be a celebration of films that have been made this year and of some of our spectacular curriculum creations. We will also be sharing our submissions to the Golden Owls Film Competition. The Golden Owls are a new film competition for children launched by Leeds City Council celebrating the best of young people’s film making across the city. Deadline for entries is 10th February. Robin Hood, of course, intends to submit a number of entries. Children can make films at home and submit their entries via the school.
Christmas Week
I look forward to seeing many parents, families and members of our community at our Christmas events next week. Full details appear on our newsletter blog and Facebook page.
Training Day
In the New Year we have a Training Day on the first day back, Tuesday 3rd January. Children return to school on Wednesday 4th January.
Christmas Disco
Many thanks to everyone who got involved for the PTA Christmas Disco last week. The Hall was certainly rocking and rolling and we had a great many of our children involved. Our newly re-formed PTA needs your help and support. It has real potential to become a very vibrant social and community group that adds real value to our school. The more supporters, helpers, advocates and interest it has… the more effective it can be, the more value it can add to the life of our school and the more important it can become in supporting additional things for our children to enjoy in school than would otherwise be the case. Please get involved in the conversation. Please support our PTA.
Graduate Teacher Trainees
The applications round for the Graduate Teacher Trainee Programme 2012-13 is now open. Robin Hood works in partnership with Teach Leeds – a consortium of nine Primary Schools in Leeds - to provide high quality teacher training. If you know of anyone interested in Teacher Training, please refer them to our website where they should click on the Apply for GTP 2012 button.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days.
Have a fantastic Christmas Shopping weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
We have had a very busy and exciting week in Nursery that began with the snow storm on Monday morning!! After the excitement of the winter weather the children were set well on their way to embark on their Christmas preparations! We also had our second celebration afternoon of the school year and would like to say a huge thank you to those parents who came along to share in the children’s successes so far!!
THIS WEEK
The children have been retelling the Nativity story as well as preparing for our very own Nativity performance. We have been busy making gifts, and using our cutting skills to make our very own wish lists for Christmas! The children have also been showcasing their fabulous writing skills as we replied to our very own letter from Santa!!
NEXT WEEK
Will be our last week together before Christmas is here! The children will be involved in a whole heap of festive cheer including our Nativity Performances and our Christmas Parties!
DATES FOR THE DIARY
The TipToe Nativity (Mon, Tues, Wed chn): Tuesday 13th December 10am school hall
Group 1 Christmas Party: Tuesday 13th December 1.45 -2.45
The TipToe Nativity (Wed, Thurs, Fri chn): Thursday 15th December 10am school hall
Group 2 Christmas Party: Thursday 15th December 1.45 -2.45
Please make sure your child’s costume for the Nativity is given to the Nursery staff the day before the performance.
On the day of the Christmas party please provide just a small packed lunch for your child as there will be food including sandwiches available.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Sharing stories and reading regularly
•Playing games (board games, dominoes, I spy etc) to support turn taking, counting etc.
•Spotting numbers, letters and words in the environment
•Practising writing our own names
•Practising putting on our own coats, shoes and socks.
Thank you for your continued support, have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team.
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you all for the amazing home learning we received on Monday. Miss Abbey has put them on the blog and our ladies have displayed them in the classroom. Thank you too for all the fabulous costumes you have supplied for our Nativity performance.
THIS WEEK
We have had another super week in Reception with high levels of excitement on Monday morning when the snow arrived! We have had to stay inside during the early part of the week as it was very icy, but there have been lots of fabulous activities going on and the children have kept themselves very busy! The children have been working very hard on their performances and we hope you have lots of wonderful memories of your child's part in the nativity.
NEXT WEEK
Will be another really busy one! On Monday we will be watching the dress rehearsal of the Nursery Christmas production and on Tuesday we will be having a sneaky peak at Santa at his home, getting ready for Christmas! We will be having our Christmas party on Thursday afternoon and have asked for your help in providing food (see this week's home learning). The children will be having lunch as normal that day. If you want to send in party clothes for your child, please can you send them in a named carrier bag and we will help them get changed after lunch. Thank you.
Dates for your diary
Thursday 15th December - Reception Party (pm)
Friday 16th December - Carols round the tree 2.30 pm
Friday 16th December - break up day
Tuesday 4th January - staff training day
Wednesday 5th January - children return to school
How you can help us
Please continue to listen to your child's reading for a few minutes every day over the next few weeks to ensure they retain their confidence and enthusiasm.
Please also spend some time reading and writing the tricky words and keywords that were sent home for last week's home learning - we will be moving on to our new words in January.
Thank you for your continued support.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
How quickly the week has gone! The children all thoroughly enjoyed the Beauty and the Beast Performance. It was a fantastic show for them to watch and we would like to say a massive thank you to all of the children for their outstanding representation of Robin Hood School!
Christmas Production
The time is nearly upon us!
We ask all costumes to be in no later than Monday 12th December.
In case you weren't sure on the times:
Wednesday 14th December 2pm -3pm
Thursday 15th December 6pm - 7pm.
Home Learning
We would also like to say thank you to all of the parents and carers in their support with the children's home learning. We have seen a vast range of super castles, interesting stories about castles, trips out to castles, using ICT to show off learning about castles and even our very own Castle cake which Year 1/2 had the pleasure of eating! It is absolutely fantastic how much support goes in to the home learning and we appreciate your feedback on how you have found the tasks that have been set.
Reading Records
It is really important to continue to log in your child's reading record any reading or other learning your children do at home. Over the Christmas period the children will take home books to read but also any other learning you feel you would like to share with us, please let us know! Your communication is extremely important to us and we want to know about any fantastic learning!
Next week
The final week of term is here and how quickly time flys when you’re having fun! The week will have a Religious Education focus where the children will learn about Christmas around the world. The children will be using a range of skills to make Christmas cards and calendars. We are sure you will like them!
Key Stage One Party
The Key Stage One Party will take place on Thursday 15th December during the afternoon in the hall. MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL. Please supply your children with party clothes and where possible some food or drink for the party. This could be anything from sausage rolls, crisps and dip, cakes and squash. No fizzy drinks or nuts. Thank you!
We hope you have a lovely weekend!
The Key Stage One Team
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a fantastic week in 3/4 full of lots of exciting fun filled learning! During ICT the children have been continuing with their amazing trainer video adverts and we can't wait to see the finished outcomes next week. During RE we have finished publishing the Christmas nativity story in the style of a comic strip!
Literacy
This week the children have been writing a persuasive letter to Santa outlining all the reasons as to why he should not strike this Christmas. The children have used lots of persuasive features such as rhetorical questions, quotations and statistics to support their writing. They have also grouped their fantastic ideas and summarised these in a concluding paragraph.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been practising their mental strategies for subtraction by taking away multiples of ten and adjusting. We then used all of our mental and written strategies for addition and subtraction to plan a party for the 'I'm A Celebrity' contestants as they left the jungle.
Reminders
Christmas Party
Our Christmas party is on Thursday 15th December so please can all children bring some party clothes to get changed in to. As our party is after dinner (MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL), please could all children bring a small food or drink contribution such as crisps, buns, biscuits etc.
Production
Our dress rehearsal for our Christmas Production ‘Santa’s on Strike’ is on Monday 12th December at 1:30 pm. Please can everyone bring their costumes in to school on Monday ready to get changed into after lunch. If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singers’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarf’s and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults.
To remind you our production dates are: Tuesday 13th December 2:00pm and Wednesday 14th December - 6:00pm. Both productions will be taking place in the school hall. No tickets are required.
Look forward to seeing you there,
3/4 Team
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup:
•Congratulations to Phoebe Millard, Megan Spafford, Millie Reynolds and Chloe Jackson who are our Achievers of the Week. They have worked collaboratively this week to design, plan and build a prototype for a new seat in the school playground. Their design was well thought out, cleverly designed and beautifully presented -a very purposeful design. Well done girls.
•The Year 5/6 Christmas Party will be held on Thursday 15th December.MEAL ARRANGEMENTS ARE AS NORMAL. The children should come to school that day in uniform but bring party clothes to change into in the afternoon. For the party, we would appreciate contributions on the day of crisps, biscuits and buns as well as sugar free drinks.
•Year 5/6 will be leading the Christmas service at church on Friday 16th December at 10am. We hope to see you there!
•Reminder: Payment is due by Friday 16th December for the Year 5/6 trip to the West Yorkshire Playhouse, which will take place during the first week back after Christmas. Thank you.
Numeracy:
•The focus this week has been interpreting the data collected from Mario Kart on the Wii and DS. We collated Yoshi, Mario, Donkey Kong's and Toad's trial times to establish the overall winner and have then calculated average lap times as well as modal positions.
•Home Learning: The Times Tables Challenge will take place on Thursday 15th December. Ahead of this, please practise ALL times tables! Useful websites include http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html as well as http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/timestable/interactive.htm
Literacy:
•'Christmas in Leeds MUST be cancelled' was the message we received from the Lord Mayor this week! We've considered the points he made but have gathered reasons to persuade him to change his mind. In our letters, our focus has been on developing links between paragraphs.
Other areas of the curriculum:
•In DT, we've been designing and making kites, including diamond kites, box kites and sail kites. We've been learning about the different parts of a kite and are using this technical vocabulary with super accuracy.
•In Music, Mrs Brook’s class have continued to practise Silent Night on the recorders ahead of the service at church next week. Miss Darroch's class have been continuing to learn the words to Little Donkey in sign language. Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband.
•In ICT, we've been navigating robots around our Mario Kart themed tracks, with a particular focus on including a sensor in procedures.
Visit our blogs!
•5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
•5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
•5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
Friday, 2 December 2011
Issue 12 2011-12
Dear Parent/Carer,
It’s December already! Only two school weeks left this year…
Positive Feedback
I have had the pleasure of showing a number of prospective parents for our Reception class 2012 around our school during the past few weeks. It has been lovely to hear lots of positive feedback – even from those families who know they have little chance of securing a place with us for their child. It remains a source of frustration for us that we are unable to satisfy more of our average of 75 First Choice Preferences for our 45 Reception spaces.
Christmas Dates
Parents, families and community are welcomed to join us for our Christmas Productions. Here is the full schedule of events this Christmas:
Friday 9th December 10:00am Reception Production
Tuesday 13th December 10:00am Nursery Production
1:00pm Nursery party
2:00pm LKS2 Production
3:30pm Drama Group Production
Wednesday 14th December 2:00pm KS1 Production
6:00pm LKS2 Production
Thursday 15th December 10:00am Nursery Production
11:00am LKS2 Christmas party
1:00pm Nursery & Reception parties
1:45pm KS1 & UKS2 parties
6:00pm KS1 Production
Friday 16th December 10:00am Christmas Service at Lofthouse Church
2:30pm Carols Around the Tree
Christmas Lunch is next Wednesday, 7th December. Unfortunately, we’re up to capacity, so no more orders can be taken.
In the New Year we have a Training Day on the first day back, Tuesday 3rd January. Children return to school on Wednesday 4th January.
Christmas Disco
Our PTA will be hosting Christmas Discos for all children tonight. I’m sure that everyone will have a wonderful time. This is the time for you to bring your input as our PTA re-formulates and grows. Our PTA raises much needed funds that enhance the quality of our children’s experience at Robin Hood. Your support, help and donations are vitally important to helping the experience at Robin Hood be the best it can possibly be.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days.
Bags 2 School
There will be a Bags 2 School collection on 5th December.
Photographs
Also a note to say: Don't forget to get your photograph orders in by Tuesday 6th December for Christmas delivery.
Have a fantastic weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Christmas has finally arrived in Nursery - the children returned to school on Thursday to our super new areas. (Thank you to the support staff for their hard work in getting everything ready!) Once we receive your home learning decorations next week we really will have created a magical place.
THIS WEEK
As well as sharing the Nativity story with the children, we have been rehearsing our own Nativity production. It has been great to see the children retelling the story and making the links between their own performances and the original Nativity story. Well done to everybody who has been practising the songs and rehearsing their lines. Please keep up the hard work as we are nearly ready to impress you with our star quality!
NEXT WEEK
In Literacy we will be creating and writing some secret things which we will be sending home before Christmas (but ask no questions!) as well as printing our own gift wrap! We will also be practising our Nativity production and we will be performing a dress rehearsal. Please make sure costumes are in Nursery for Monday 12th Dec for the first group of children and again Wednesday 14th for the second group of children. Thank you.
The performances will be on Tuesday 13th December at 10am and 15th December in the school hall at 10am. We look forward to seeing you there.... don’t forget your tissues!!
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
The children are making fabulous progress as the year moves along, and we are very proud of all the children. Please continue to support your child at home, sharing stories regularly, playing number games, singing songs and rhymes and also practising to write their own names.
Thank you for your continued support
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
Christmas has finally arrived in Reception - the children returned to school on Thursday to our super new areas. (Thank you to the support staff for their hard work in getting everything ready!) Once we receive your home learning decorations next week we really will have created a magical place.
THIS WEEK
As well as sharing the Nativity story with the children, we have been rehearsing our own Nativity production. It has been great to see the children retelling the story and making the links between their own performances and the original Nativity story. Well done to everybody who has been practising the songs and rehearsing their lines. Please keep up the hard work as we are nearly ready to impress you with our star quality!
In numeracy we have been writing the numbers for our own advent calendar and creating our own baubles to put on our tree.
NEXT WEEK
In Literacy we will be creating and writing some secret things which we will be sending home before Christmas (but ask no questions!) as well as printing our own gift wrap and tags. We will also be practising our Nativity production and we will be performing a dress rehearsal on Thursday to Key Stage one.
Please can you make sure that all named costumes are in school for Monday 5th December. Thank you.
The performance will be next Friday(December 9th) in the school hall at 10am. We will positively be encouraging you to sing along with the songs!
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
Miss Lambert and I have done one to one reading assessments with the children and are thrilled at the progress that the children are making. Please keep reading for at least five minutes every day to ensure we maintain their confidence and the momentum. We are also sending home a list of tricky words and keywords to practice reading and writing before we move onto our new words in January.
If you haven't yet completed and returned the ICT questionnaire, please can you spend a couple of minutes doing that for us too?
Thank you for your continued support
KS1 Newsletter
Key Stage 1 have had a fantastic week of treats and fun! The children have been showing off all their learning so far and taken part in key assessments in Reading, Writing, Numeracy and Phonics. The staff are VERY proud of every member of KS1 for the amazing effort and dedication they show towards their learning.
Beauty and the Beast
The children are all very excited about the upcoming trip to The Carriageworks to see Beauty and the Beast. The children will need to wear their school uniform as normal on Tuesday 6th December. We aim to be back at school for 4:45pm. If there are any delays, school will be informed and a message will be passed on to parents.
Numeracy
This week the child have completed assessments in addition and subtraction, showing the strategies they use when adding/subtracting:
• a single digit number to a single digit number(7 + 9 = ) (8 - 3= )
• a two digit number to a single digit number (27 + 6 = ) (37 - 9 = )
• a two digit number to a two digit number ( 34 + 46 = ) ( 73 - 12 = )
The children have continued to show their skills when adding three numbers together
( 5 + 6 + 5 = ) (31 + 12 + 4 = ). Progressing onto adding and subtracting within the same sum (13 + 6 - 3 = ) (45 - 14 + 5 = ).
Please continue to support your child at home, developing their addition and subtraction skills by giving them sums to complete. Your child can bring these into school so we can celebrate the learning too!
Next week the children will be applying their knowledge of addition and subtraction to word problems such as:
• 12 children are on a bus.
8 children get off.
Then 4 more get off the bus.
How many children are left on the bus?
There are 29 children. 5 children are painting. How many children are NOT painting?
• There are 1000 pieces in a puzzle. 12 of then go missing. How many pieces are left?
Why not provide your child with some word problems ahead of next week....
Literacy
This week concluded the block on Narrative writing with the children writing their final Julia Donaldson style story. The children have particularly enjoyed reading the amazing stories written by Julia Donaldson and they have also had the opportunity to watch the Gruffalo DVD, which has helped to further develop their understanding of the book. The KS1 team are very proud of the stories which include, CAPITAL LETTERS, full stops, text effects (bold text, CAPITALIZATION, .........., !!!!!!!) developed ideas using (so, if, but, because, and, when), adjectives (describing words), verbs (doing words) and even adverbs (describes what the verb is doing, walking quietly, running quickly).
Next week the children will be looking at reading and writing instructions to make Christmas decorations, Christmas Cards and Calendars. The children will look at the structure, organisation and language used within instructions in order to support people following them correctly.
Topic
This week the children have been busy investigating different materials and discussing their properties. They have looked at wood, plastic, glass, brick, cotton, silk and discussed which materials would be good for different aspects of a castle building and why that material would be good to use. The children have also looked at investigating how to test which material would keep Belle warm and dry during a snowy/rainy Christmas at the castle.
Why not ask your child what their predictions were and what they found out from the investigation.......
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a very busy week in Year 3/4! The children have been applying all their new learning this week and blowing us away with the progress that has already been made this year!
We have also begun practising this year's production "Santa's on Strike!". Please ensure that if your child has been given a speaking part that they are practising at home as much as possible. We are aiming to practise our performance (without scripts) next week as the production will be taking place on Tuesday 13th December 2:00 - 3:00pm and Wednesday 14th December 6:00 - 7:00pm. Both productions will be taking place in the school hall. No tickets are required.
Literacy
The children have been writing an engaging magazine article, targeting families and their need for a fun, stress-free day out. We have been impressed with how the children have been using all the persuasive features we have been learning this half term. Next week, the children will be using their persuasive skills to write to Santa and hopefully persuade him to return from his strike in time for Christmas.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been applying their written and mental strategies for addition and subtraction. Next week, the children will be continuing to apply these strategies within multi-step problems, including money.
Reminders
Last week we started to learn the songs for this years Christmas production ‘Santa’s on Strike’. All the children have been given the song words so please continue rehearsing at home!
If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singings’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarves and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Santa = Santa should be portrayed in his traditional red suit and beard.
Mrs Santa = wearing red too, or perhaps a ‘homely’ costume including an apron, big slippers and a headscarf.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
•This week’s Achiever of the Week goes to Rosie Soroka, for her excellent letter of invitation to her favourite band, in an attempt to persuade them to attend our school disco! Well done, Rosie!
• The children have brought home details about the Year 5/6 trip to the theatre during the first week back after Christmas. We will be spending the whole day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse taking part in drama based activities in the morning and then watching a performance of Annie in the afternoon. Payment for the trip must be returned to school by Friday December 16th. Thank you.
Numeracy:
This week, we have been collecting data using Mario Kart on the Wii and DS. From this, we're calculating the time it's taken to complete each lap as well as calculating our speed for each lap. Next week, we'll be continuing our analysis of the data as well as finding the average, mode and range for data collected from Wii Mario Kart.
Home learning:
The Times Tables Challenge will be taking place on Wednesday 14th December. Please practise ALL times tables ahead of this!
Try the following website to get you up to speed with your times tables... for a real challenge, why not try this at zero seconds!!!!:
http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html
Literacy
This week, we have been writing to a Mario Kart driver of our choice to persuade them to drive for our team. There were lots of very tempting offers made such as heated seats, a car which had low air resistance etc. We focused on including lots of 'stars' in our writing including superlatives and literary features.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy next week which is based around the statement Christmas should be abolished: abolished, merrily, festivities, celebration, nativity, traditional, cancelling, Santa Claus, Bethlehem, ceremonies
This weekend, gather some reasons for and against Christmas being abolished
Other areas of the curriculum:
In DT, we've been exploring flight and have been making prototypes of kites. We're evaluating the kites to help inform the design. Next week, we'll make the kite.
In Music Mrs Brook’s class have been perfecting their performance of Silent Night on the recorders.
Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband.
Miss Darroch’s class have been learning sign language to the first verse of Little Donkey.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
It’s December already! Only two school weeks left this year…
Positive Feedback
I have had the pleasure of showing a number of prospective parents for our Reception class 2012 around our school during the past few weeks. It has been lovely to hear lots of positive feedback – even from those families who know they have little chance of securing a place with us for their child. It remains a source of frustration for us that we are unable to satisfy more of our average of 75 First Choice Preferences for our 45 Reception spaces.
Christmas Dates
Parents, families and community are welcomed to join us for our Christmas Productions. Here is the full schedule of events this Christmas:
Friday 9th December 10:00am Reception Production
Tuesday 13th December 10:00am Nursery Production
1:00pm Nursery party
2:00pm LKS2 Production
3:30pm Drama Group Production
Wednesday 14th December 2:00pm KS1 Production
6:00pm LKS2 Production
Thursday 15th December 10:00am Nursery Production
11:00am LKS2 Christmas party
1:00pm Nursery & Reception parties
1:45pm KS1 & UKS2 parties
6:00pm KS1 Production
Friday 16th December 10:00am Christmas Service at Lofthouse Church
2:30pm Carols Around the Tree
Christmas Lunch is next Wednesday, 7th December. Unfortunately, we’re up to capacity, so no more orders can be taken.
In the New Year we have a Training Day on the first day back, Tuesday 3rd January. Children return to school on Wednesday 4th January.
Christmas Disco
Our PTA will be hosting Christmas Discos for all children tonight. I’m sure that everyone will have a wonderful time. This is the time for you to bring your input as our PTA re-formulates and grows. Our PTA raises much needed funds that enhance the quality of our children’s experience at Robin Hood. Your support, help and donations are vitally important to helping the experience at Robin Hood be the best it can possibly be.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days.
Bags 2 School
There will be a Bags 2 School collection on 5th December.
Photographs
Also a note to say: Don't forget to get your photograph orders in by Tuesday 6th December for Christmas delivery.
Have a fantastic weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Christmas has finally arrived in Nursery - the children returned to school on Thursday to our super new areas. (Thank you to the support staff for their hard work in getting everything ready!) Once we receive your home learning decorations next week we really will have created a magical place.
THIS WEEK
As well as sharing the Nativity story with the children, we have been rehearsing our own Nativity production. It has been great to see the children retelling the story and making the links between their own performances and the original Nativity story. Well done to everybody who has been practising the songs and rehearsing their lines. Please keep up the hard work as we are nearly ready to impress you with our star quality!
NEXT WEEK
In Literacy we will be creating and writing some secret things which we will be sending home before Christmas (but ask no questions!) as well as printing our own gift wrap! We will also be practising our Nativity production and we will be performing a dress rehearsal. Please make sure costumes are in Nursery for Monday 12th Dec for the first group of children and again Wednesday 14th for the second group of children. Thank you.
The performances will be on Tuesday 13th December at 10am and 15th December in the school hall at 10am. We look forward to seeing you there.... don’t forget your tissues!!
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
The children are making fabulous progress as the year moves along, and we are very proud of all the children. Please continue to support your child at home, sharing stories regularly, playing number games, singing songs and rhymes and also practising to write their own names.
Thank you for your continued support
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
Christmas has finally arrived in Reception - the children returned to school on Thursday to our super new areas. (Thank you to the support staff for their hard work in getting everything ready!) Once we receive your home learning decorations next week we really will have created a magical place.
THIS WEEK
As well as sharing the Nativity story with the children, we have been rehearsing our own Nativity production. It has been great to see the children retelling the story and making the links between their own performances and the original Nativity story. Well done to everybody who has been practising the songs and rehearsing their lines. Please keep up the hard work as we are nearly ready to impress you with our star quality!
In numeracy we have been writing the numbers for our own advent calendar and creating our own baubles to put on our tree.
NEXT WEEK
In Literacy we will be creating and writing some secret things which we will be sending home before Christmas (but ask no questions!) as well as printing our own gift wrap and tags. We will also be practising our Nativity production and we will be performing a dress rehearsal on Thursday to Key Stage one.
Please can you make sure that all named costumes are in school for Monday 5th December. Thank you.
The performance will be next Friday(December 9th) in the school hall at 10am. We will positively be encouraging you to sing along with the songs!
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
Miss Lambert and I have done one to one reading assessments with the children and are thrilled at the progress that the children are making. Please keep reading for at least five minutes every day to ensure we maintain their confidence and the momentum. We are also sending home a list of tricky words and keywords to practice reading and writing before we move onto our new words in January.
If you haven't yet completed and returned the ICT questionnaire, please can you spend a couple of minutes doing that for us too?
Thank you for your continued support
KS1 Newsletter
Key Stage 1 have had a fantastic week of treats and fun! The children have been showing off all their learning so far and taken part in key assessments in Reading, Writing, Numeracy and Phonics. The staff are VERY proud of every member of KS1 for the amazing effort and dedication they show towards their learning.
Beauty and the Beast
The children are all very excited about the upcoming trip to The Carriageworks to see Beauty and the Beast. The children will need to wear their school uniform as normal on Tuesday 6th December. We aim to be back at school for 4:45pm. If there are any delays, school will be informed and a message will be passed on to parents.
Numeracy
This week the child have completed assessments in addition and subtraction, showing the strategies they use when adding/subtracting:
• a single digit number to a single digit number(7 + 9 = ) (8 - 3= )
• a two digit number to a single digit number (27 + 6 = ) (37 - 9 = )
• a two digit number to a two digit number ( 34 + 46 = ) ( 73 - 12 = )
The children have continued to show their skills when adding three numbers together
( 5 + 6 + 5 = ) (31 + 12 + 4 = ). Progressing onto adding and subtracting within the same sum (13 + 6 - 3 = ) (45 - 14 + 5 = ).
Please continue to support your child at home, developing their addition and subtraction skills by giving them sums to complete. Your child can bring these into school so we can celebrate the learning too!
Next week the children will be applying their knowledge of addition and subtraction to word problems such as:
• 12 children are on a bus.
8 children get off.
Then 4 more get off the bus.
How many children are left on the bus?
There are 29 children. 5 children are painting. How many children are NOT painting?
• There are 1000 pieces in a puzzle. 12 of then go missing. How many pieces are left?
Why not provide your child with some word problems ahead of next week....
Literacy
This week concluded the block on Narrative writing with the children writing their final Julia Donaldson style story. The children have particularly enjoyed reading the amazing stories written by Julia Donaldson and they have also had the opportunity to watch the Gruffalo DVD, which has helped to further develop their understanding of the book. The KS1 team are very proud of the stories which include, CAPITAL LETTERS, full stops, text effects (bold text, CAPITALIZATION, .........., !!!!!!!) developed ideas using (so, if, but, because, and, when), adjectives (describing words), verbs (doing words) and even adverbs (describes what the verb is doing, walking quietly, running quickly).
Next week the children will be looking at reading and writing instructions to make Christmas decorations, Christmas Cards and Calendars. The children will look at the structure, organisation and language used within instructions in order to support people following them correctly.
Topic
This week the children have been busy investigating different materials and discussing their properties. They have looked at wood, plastic, glass, brick, cotton, silk and discussed which materials would be good for different aspects of a castle building and why that material would be good to use. The children have also looked at investigating how to test which material would keep Belle warm and dry during a snowy/rainy Christmas at the castle.
Why not ask your child what their predictions were and what they found out from the investigation.......
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a very busy week in Year 3/4! The children have been applying all their new learning this week and blowing us away with the progress that has already been made this year!
We have also begun practising this year's production "Santa's on Strike!". Please ensure that if your child has been given a speaking part that they are practising at home as much as possible. We are aiming to practise our performance (without scripts) next week as the production will be taking place on Tuesday 13th December 2:00 - 3:00pm and Wednesday 14th December 6:00 - 7:00pm. Both productions will be taking place in the school hall. No tickets are required.
Literacy
The children have been writing an engaging magazine article, targeting families and their need for a fun, stress-free day out. We have been impressed with how the children have been using all the persuasive features we have been learning this half term. Next week, the children will be using their persuasive skills to write to Santa and hopefully persuade him to return from his strike in time for Christmas.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been applying their written and mental strategies for addition and subtraction. Next week, the children will be continuing to apply these strategies within multi-step problems, including money.
Reminders
Last week we started to learn the songs for this years Christmas production ‘Santa’s on Strike’. All the children have been given the song words so please continue rehearsing at home!
If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singings’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarves and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Santa = Santa should be portrayed in his traditional red suit and beard.
Mrs Santa = wearing red too, or perhaps a ‘homely’ costume including an apron, big slippers and a headscarf.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-aliceband’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
•This week’s Achiever of the Week goes to Rosie Soroka, for her excellent letter of invitation to her favourite band, in an attempt to persuade them to attend our school disco! Well done, Rosie!
• The children have brought home details about the Year 5/6 trip to the theatre during the first week back after Christmas. We will be spending the whole day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse taking part in drama based activities in the morning and then watching a performance of Annie in the afternoon. Payment for the trip must be returned to school by Friday December 16th. Thank you.
Numeracy:
This week, we have been collecting data using Mario Kart on the Wii and DS. From this, we're calculating the time it's taken to complete each lap as well as calculating our speed for each lap. Next week, we'll be continuing our analysis of the data as well as finding the average, mode and range for data collected from Wii Mario Kart.
Home learning:
The Times Tables Challenge will be taking place on Wednesday 14th December. Please practise ALL times tables ahead of this!
Try the following website to get you up to speed with your times tables... for a real challenge, why not try this at zero seconds!!!!:
http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html
Literacy
This week, we have been writing to a Mario Kart driver of our choice to persuade them to drive for our team. There were lots of very tempting offers made such as heated seats, a car which had low air resistance etc. We focused on including lots of 'stars' in our writing including superlatives and literary features.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy next week which is based around the statement Christmas should be abolished: abolished, merrily, festivities, celebration, nativity, traditional, cancelling, Santa Claus, Bethlehem, ceremonies
This weekend, gather some reasons for and against Christmas being abolished
Other areas of the curriculum:
In DT, we've been exploring flight and have been making prototypes of kites. We're evaluating the kites to help inform the design. Next week, we'll make the kite.
In Music Mrs Brook’s class have been perfecting their performance of Silent Night on the recorders.
Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband.
Miss Darroch’s class have been learning sign language to the first verse of Little Donkey.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Friday, 25 November 2011
School Christmas Disco, organised by our PTA
Friday 2nd December
Foundation / KS1 disco will be held 4.00pm - 5.30pm and
KS2 will be held 6.00pm - 7.30pm
Foundation / KS1 disco will be held 4.00pm - 5.30pm and
KS2 will be held 6.00pm - 7.30pm
Issue 11 2011-12
Newsletter Issue 11 Friday 25th November 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
I read in an ofsted press release this week that only 4% of schools in the country are rated outstanding for teaching. I am firmly of the view that the true measure of a school is the quality of teaching in classrooms, day after day. We can all be very proud that Robin Hood is among that 4%... and very determined that it will remain so.
Year 4 residential
Our Year 4 residential visit to East Barnby last week was a fabulous success. Our children were fantastic… their brilliant behaviour and attitudes were frequently commented upon by Centre staff. My thanks to those staff members who made it possible; Miss Thackeray, Miss Nicholls, Mrs Cookson and Mrs Beckwith. Without the enthusiasm and energy of dedicated staff we would be unable to offer these great learning opportunities for our children.
Strike
A letter was issued to all parents/carers on Wednesday this week notifying that school would be closed to pupils on the National Day of Action, Wednesday 30th November.
Meningitis
We have had one confirmed case of meningitis in the school. A letter was issued to all parents on Thursday. Linked cases are very unusual. However, it is important for all parents to know the early signs of Meningococcal infection which include fever, headache, stiff neck, a dislike of noise, a dislike of bright light and possibly a rash.
www.meningitis-trust.org
www.meningitis.org
Charitable Donations
Pupils at Robin Hood raised a total of £398.90 for Children In Need last week… an increase on the figure announced at our Assembly, as some additional money came in after it. Sixty six shoeboxes were collected by the Operation Christmas Child charity on Tuesday this week. Thanks to everyone who made a donation, including online donations.
Holidays during term time
236 school days have been lost at Robin Hood in the two months since we returned in September to holidays taken during term. Last year 850 school days in total were lost to holidays. These are huge and very worrying numbers.
While I understand the pressures that families face in relation to holidays, I am duty bound to remind parents that: There is a very clear statistical link between poor attendance and low levels of achievement at school. The Department for Education has raised the threshold at which pupils are defined as persistently absent to 85% attendance. Parents do not have an automatic right to take their children out of school for holidays during term time and parents are required to seek the permission of the Headteacher before booking a holiday.
Our Attendance Policy is available to view on our website. Our Holiday Absence Policy is fair and is consistent with all other schools in Rothwell. We ask parents to respect and abide by school policies.
E-Robin Hood
Our newsletter has a facebook page, many of our blogs have a subscribe option, our PTA has its own facebook page. There are many ways of staying in touch with what’s going on at Robin Hood and we are constantly trying to develop innovative and convenient ways of keeping parents/carers informed about what’s going on at school.
Christmas Disco
As there will be no Christmas Fair this year, our newly developing PTA is keen to put on a Christmas celebration for children. Our PTA will be hosting Christmas Discos for all children on the evening of Friday 2nd December. Further information will be available from the PTA soon. Now is a great opportunity for you to make your contribution to the future direction of our PTA. The more voices that are involved in the conversation at this point, the more inclusive, representative and broad-based the PTA has the potential to become.
Bags 2 School
There will be a Bags 2 School collection on 5th December.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days. We have opened for seven consecutive School Holidays and Training Days. None of these clubs have come anywhere close to breaking even and we are unable to sustain a loss making part of the business. We apologise to those parents who have consistently used the Holiday Clubs.
Have a fantastic weekend,
Mr Wilson
Meningitis Letter to Parents, 24 Nov 11
Dear Parent
We have learnt today that one of our pupils has been admitted to hospital with
suspected meningitis which is likely to be caused by meningococcal infection.
I have spoken with the Public Health doctor who has advised me that meningitis/septicaemia due to meningococcal infection is a rare illness. Even where the diagnosis is confirmed, it is very unusual to see a second case. The immediate family has been given an antibiotic to help prevent further spread. There is no need for any other pupil in our school to have antibiotics.
It is extremely unusual to see linked cases of this illness. However, it is important for
all parents to know the early signs of Meningococcal infection which include fever, headache, stiff neck, a dislike of noise, a dislike of bright light and possibly a rash. If your son/daughter displays any of these signs, please have them seen by a doctor and show the doctor this letter.
Further general information about Meningitis may be obtained from:
The National Meningitis Trust Helpline Tel 0800 028 18 28
www.meningitis-trust.org
The Meningitis Research Foundation Tel 080 8800 3344
www.meningitis.org
I’m sure you will join me in wishing our sick pupil a smooth and very rapid recovery.
Yours sincerely
Mr M Wilson
Headteacher
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
The children’s response to the home learning activity set the stall for a fun packed learning week, as we continued to share our experiences of different celebrations!
Thank you for your continued support. Please also help your child at home to learn their lines from the Nativity. If you are having any problems sourcing costumes, please let me know.
THIS WEEK
Our focus this week has been Judaism and we have been looking at the traditions of the celebrations of Hanukkah. The children have created some beautiful artwork, including clay candle holders, stained glass Saint David stars and our very own drawings and collage pictures of Menorahs! The children are truly blossoming in their early learning journeys and we are proud of each and every one of them for their achievements!
NEXT WEEK
We will be preparing ourselves for Christmas as we learn about Advent. The children will be sharing the Nativity story and making links to our very own “Tip Toe Nativity” gaining a greater understanding of the characters and the meaning behind the performance. We very much look forward to seeing the outcomes of this week’s home learning as it will be a fabulous introduction to the meaning of the candles used on the Advent wreath.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Please continue to share stories at home with your children, taking turns to hold the book and turn the pages.
•Listen to the Nativity songs on our Nursery Blog.
•Please bring in any empty boxes and cartons (no egg boxes, or toilet roll tubes)for the children to use in our craft area.
Requests!
If you have any old pots and pans, spoons or Tupperware that you no longer require, please could you donate it Nursery for our musical junk yard!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
We've had another fabulous week in Reception and are very proud of the way that the children are progressing in their reading and writing. Thank you for all your support at home!
Our Reception production is getting nearer....if you haven't got it already, please can you get your child's costume ready for Monday 5th December. Thank you.
THIS WEEK
We have continued with our theme of celebrations and have been doing some speaking and listening activities following up the children's fabulous home learning. We then moved on to find out about Judaism and some traditional Jewish celebrations. The children have really enjoyed finding out more about different cultures and religions and have made us really proud with their independent writing.
NEXT WEEK
We will begin the week by finding out what Advent means and then linking this to the Nativity and our own production - to help the children understand the Nativity story and see the relevance of our own production and their individual roles.
We will be making our own Advent calendars and our numeracy learning will be linked to these - thinking about recognising, matching and writing numbers as well as counting backwards - our own countdown to Christmas!
We will be asking the children to write the tricky words that they have been reading for the last couple of weeks - you, they, all, are, my, her
We will also be checking how many children are confidently reading and writing simple CVC words such as cat, hop, bat, pin etc to form part of our ongoing assessments.
ICT
This week the children have been playing some fun games on the Ipad with Miss Lambert. The children have been learning their sounds with Mr. Thorne and practising their letter formation with the Hairy Letters game. Why not try downloading these at home if your child has access to an Ipad.
HOME LEARNING
Please listen to your child's fabulous reading for five minutes every day. Our home learning task for this week is to make an 'Advent Candle' (see home learning sheet).
Please can you bring in your fabulous home learning on Monday? Thank you.
Have a lovely weekend.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
This week has been yet another busy one here in key stage 1. The children have been continuing with their learning with eagerness as always.
Trip Money
Our annual trip to the Theatre is organised for Tuesday 6th December. Can you please ensure that a payment of £16.50 is received by the school office no later than Friday 2nd December. You can pay by cash or cheque. Please place your payment in an envelope with your child’s name and class clearly labelled on the front. This can be deposited at the school office or in the drop box by the main entrance.
Key Words
Please ensure that you are engaging weekly with the key word spellings that are stuck into your child’s reading record every Monday. Being able to spell these words is vital in order for your child’s writing to progress. Your class teacher is always available if you need any advice!
Home Learning
The home learning for the next couple of weeks is an on-going project all about castles. This is due to be handed in on Monday 5th December. We look forward to sharing all the amazing outcomes!
This Weeks Learning
Literacy
In Literacy this week the children have written and illustrated their second story based on the creations of Julia Donaldson. Across the last two weeks the children have been building up their story writing skills to include a greater level of detail as well as a growing range of skills such as text effects, adjectives, connectives, time connectives …. The list of what are children are capable of is endless! All the Key Stage 1 staff are looking forward to reading their latest accomplishment this weekend.
Next week the children will be writing a final story of their very own creation in order to showcase their many skills learned across the past 4 weeks. Year 1 will be looking at the story ‘Room on the Broom’, Year 1/2: ‘The Gruffalo’, Year 2: ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’.
Numeracy
Numeracy has really been testing the children’s brains this week with the children developing their subtraction skills even further. We have developed quick mental strategies for subtracting a multiple of 10 from a given 2 digit number (e.g. 45 – 20) alongside more complex paper methods when subtracting two 2 digit numbers (e.g. 57 – 32). Why not ask your child to explain to you the different methods and strategies we can use. I am sure you will be amazed!
Next week the children will be engaging with several Numeracy Assessments. This will be carried out in a very informal way with the children helping solve a few problems that Mr Wilson has been having with his Sweet Shop! (We will leave the children to fill you in on this one!). Assessment at this point in the year plays a vital part in supporting your child’s learning into the coming year.
Topic
We have continued our Castle theme into this week’s topic but with a closer focus on the location of the Royal Castles visited by our Royal Family. This has also provided the children with an opportunity to look at the United Kingdom and the Countries within it. We have also looked at the flags of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales with the children using these as a starting point for creating their own flag to represent the whole of the United Kingdom.
Next week the children will be scientists as they investigate materials and their uses in hope of solving some tricky problems that we have been having!
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had another amazing week in Year 3/4! The children in year four excelled at East Barnby last week and we were delighted with the fantastic manners, teamwork and collaboration that the children displayed. We also received fantastic feedback from the centre staff, who said the children were exceptional. Well done to everyone who came, we had a very memorable time!
We were also thrilled with the children's performances in this week's Celebration Assembly. The children's trainers look really professional and their confidence on the catwalk was brilliant! Well done EVERYONE!
Literacy
We have been continuing with our persuasive writing this week, which has involved the children creating their very own theme park, for all the family. The children have been highly motivated by this stimulus and have been very creative in their designs. The children have also written an engaging magazine article, targeting families and their need for a fun, stress-free day out. Next week, the children will be using their designs to create a persuasive leaflet for their theme park.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been embedding their use of column addition and have been using column subtraction confidently to solve real-life problems. The children have also been developing their mental calculation skills, through the use of doubling numbers. Through the use of partitioning, the children are gaining confidence within this area. E.g. Double 65 = 120 + 10 = 130.
The children have enjoyed playing this doubling game within class. Perhaps you could challenge their thinking at home?
http://ngfl.northumberland.gov.uk/maths/num%20machine/double.html
Reminders
This week we have started to learn the songs for this years Christmas production ‘Santa’s on Strike’. Can we ask all children with speaking parts to be practising their lines at home and make sure they are reading with lots of fantastic expression. All the children have been given the song words so please get rehearsing at home!
If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-alice band’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singings’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarves and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Santa = Santa should be portrayed in his traditional red suit and beard.
Mrs Santa = wearing red too, or perhaps a ‘homely’ costume including an apron, big slippers and a headscarf.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-alice band’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
•This week’s Achiever of the Week goes to.... everyone in 5/6D for their fabulous sign language skills to our Celebration Assembly song ‘Proud’... you should all be very PROUD!
•The children should have brought home details of a planned trip to the theatre during the first week back after Christmas. We will be spending the whole day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse taking part in drama based activities in the morning and then watching a performance of Annie in the afternoon. Payment for the trip must be returned to school by Friday December 16th.
Numeracy: This week the children have been investigating the area of compound shapes as well as circles. We have applied our knowledge of the Grid Method to multiply numbers, including decimals. Next week we will be consolidating our knowledge around this and other calculation methods and then applying all of the skills we have learnt so far this year.
Home learning: Times Table Challenge will be taking place in a few weeks’ time so please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Try the following website to get you up to speed with your times tables... for a real challenge, why not try this at zero seconds!!!!:
http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html
Literacy
This week we have been applying a personal touch to our persuasive writing by planning and drafting a letter to ask a celebrity to come and perform at our Christmas Party. We have also looked at using superlatives within our sentences to really make the celebrity feel like they are ‘the best!’
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our DT unit starting next week: construction, modification, improvement, prototype, structure, technicalities, dowelling, flexibility, life-sized, variety.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Topic we have been preparing a speech in order to pitch our invention idea to the Dragons from Dragon’s Den. We have also created a persuasive poster to advertise the same products. They looked A-MA-ZING!!!!
In Music Mrs Brook’s class have been perfecting their performance of Silent Night on the recorders. Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband. Miss Darroch’s class have been learning sign language to a popular Christmas carol. Look out for these performances in assembly over the next few weeks.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Dear Parent/Carer,
I read in an ofsted press release this week that only 4% of schools in the country are rated outstanding for teaching. I am firmly of the view that the true measure of a school is the quality of teaching in classrooms, day after day. We can all be very proud that Robin Hood is among that 4%... and very determined that it will remain so.
Year 4 residential
Our Year 4 residential visit to East Barnby last week was a fabulous success. Our children were fantastic… their brilliant behaviour and attitudes were frequently commented upon by Centre staff. My thanks to those staff members who made it possible; Miss Thackeray, Miss Nicholls, Mrs Cookson and Mrs Beckwith. Without the enthusiasm and energy of dedicated staff we would be unable to offer these great learning opportunities for our children.
Strike
A letter was issued to all parents/carers on Wednesday this week notifying that school would be closed to pupils on the National Day of Action, Wednesday 30th November.
Meningitis
We have had one confirmed case of meningitis in the school. A letter was issued to all parents on Thursday. Linked cases are very unusual. However, it is important for all parents to know the early signs of Meningococcal infection which include fever, headache, stiff neck, a dislike of noise, a dislike of bright light and possibly a rash.
www.meningitis-trust.org
www.meningitis.org
Charitable Donations
Pupils at Robin Hood raised a total of £398.90 for Children In Need last week… an increase on the figure announced at our Assembly, as some additional money came in after it. Sixty six shoeboxes were collected by the Operation Christmas Child charity on Tuesday this week. Thanks to everyone who made a donation, including online donations.
Holidays during term time
236 school days have been lost at Robin Hood in the two months since we returned in September to holidays taken during term. Last year 850 school days in total were lost to holidays. These are huge and very worrying numbers.
While I understand the pressures that families face in relation to holidays, I am duty bound to remind parents that: There is a very clear statistical link between poor attendance and low levels of achievement at school. The Department for Education has raised the threshold at which pupils are defined as persistently absent to 85% attendance. Parents do not have an automatic right to take their children out of school for holidays during term time and parents are required to seek the permission of the Headteacher before booking a holiday.
Our Attendance Policy is available to view on our website. Our Holiday Absence Policy is fair and is consistent with all other schools in Rothwell. We ask parents to respect and abide by school policies.
E-Robin Hood
Our newsletter has a facebook page, many of our blogs have a subscribe option, our PTA has its own facebook page. There are many ways of staying in touch with what’s going on at Robin Hood and we are constantly trying to develop innovative and convenient ways of keeping parents/carers informed about what’s going on at school.
Christmas Disco
As there will be no Christmas Fair this year, our newly developing PTA is keen to put on a Christmas celebration for children. Our PTA will be hosting Christmas Discos for all children on the evening of Friday 2nd December. Further information will be available from the PTA soon. Now is a great opportunity for you to make your contribution to the future direction of our PTA. The more voices that are involved in the conversation at this point, the more inclusive, representative and broad-based the PTA has the potential to become.
Bags 2 School
There will be a Bags 2 School collection on 5th December.
Friendly Faces
As of the New Year Friendly Faces will be operating as a Term Time Only Club. This means that we will no longer be offering Holiday Clubs or childcare on school Training Days. We have opened for seven consecutive School Holidays and Training Days. None of these clubs have come anywhere close to breaking even and we are unable to sustain a loss making part of the business. We apologise to those parents who have consistently used the Holiday Clubs.
Have a fantastic weekend,
Mr Wilson
Meningitis Letter to Parents, 24 Nov 11
Dear Parent
We have learnt today that one of our pupils has been admitted to hospital with
suspected meningitis which is likely to be caused by meningococcal infection.
I have spoken with the Public Health doctor who has advised me that meningitis/septicaemia due to meningococcal infection is a rare illness. Even where the diagnosis is confirmed, it is very unusual to see a second case. The immediate family has been given an antibiotic to help prevent further spread. There is no need for any other pupil in our school to have antibiotics.
It is extremely unusual to see linked cases of this illness. However, it is important for
all parents to know the early signs of Meningococcal infection which include fever, headache, stiff neck, a dislike of noise, a dislike of bright light and possibly a rash. If your son/daughter displays any of these signs, please have them seen by a doctor and show the doctor this letter.
Further general information about Meningitis may be obtained from:
The National Meningitis Trust Helpline Tel 0800 028 18 28
www.meningitis-trust.org
The Meningitis Research Foundation Tel 080 8800 3344
www.meningitis.org
I’m sure you will join me in wishing our sick pupil a smooth and very rapid recovery.
Yours sincerely
Mr M Wilson
Headteacher
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
The children’s response to the home learning activity set the stall for a fun packed learning week, as we continued to share our experiences of different celebrations!
Thank you for your continued support. Please also help your child at home to learn their lines from the Nativity. If you are having any problems sourcing costumes, please let me know.
THIS WEEK
Our focus this week has been Judaism and we have been looking at the traditions of the celebrations of Hanukkah. The children have created some beautiful artwork, including clay candle holders, stained glass Saint David stars and our very own drawings and collage pictures of Menorahs! The children are truly blossoming in their early learning journeys and we are proud of each and every one of them for their achievements!
NEXT WEEK
We will be preparing ourselves for Christmas as we learn about Advent. The children will be sharing the Nativity story and making links to our very own “Tip Toe Nativity” gaining a greater understanding of the characters and the meaning behind the performance. We very much look forward to seeing the outcomes of this week’s home learning as it will be a fabulous introduction to the meaning of the candles used on the Advent wreath.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Please continue to share stories at home with your children, taking turns to hold the book and turn the pages.
•Listen to the Nativity songs on our Nursery Blog.
•Please bring in any empty boxes and cartons (no egg boxes, or toilet roll tubes)for the children to use in our craft area.
Requests!
If you have any old pots and pans, spoons or Tupperware that you no longer require, please could you donate it Nursery for our musical junk yard!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
We've had another fabulous week in Reception and are very proud of the way that the children are progressing in their reading and writing. Thank you for all your support at home!
Our Reception production is getting nearer....if you haven't got it already, please can you get your child's costume ready for Monday 5th December. Thank you.
THIS WEEK
We have continued with our theme of celebrations and have been doing some speaking and listening activities following up the children's fabulous home learning. We then moved on to find out about Judaism and some traditional Jewish celebrations. The children have really enjoyed finding out more about different cultures and religions and have made us really proud with their independent writing.
NEXT WEEK
We will begin the week by finding out what Advent means and then linking this to the Nativity and our own production - to help the children understand the Nativity story and see the relevance of our own production and their individual roles.
We will be making our own Advent calendars and our numeracy learning will be linked to these - thinking about recognising, matching and writing numbers as well as counting backwards - our own countdown to Christmas!
We will be asking the children to write the tricky words that they have been reading for the last couple of weeks - you, they, all, are, my, her
We will also be checking how many children are confidently reading and writing simple CVC words such as cat, hop, bat, pin etc to form part of our ongoing assessments.
ICT
This week the children have been playing some fun games on the Ipad with Miss Lambert. The children have been learning their sounds with Mr. Thorne and practising their letter formation with the Hairy Letters game. Why not try downloading these at home if your child has access to an Ipad.
HOME LEARNING
Please listen to your child's fabulous reading for five minutes every day. Our home learning task for this week is to make an 'Advent Candle' (see home learning sheet).
Please can you bring in your fabulous home learning on Monday? Thank you.
Have a lovely weekend.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
This week has been yet another busy one here in key stage 1. The children have been continuing with their learning with eagerness as always.
Trip Money
Our annual trip to the Theatre is organised for Tuesday 6th December. Can you please ensure that a payment of £16.50 is received by the school office no later than Friday 2nd December. You can pay by cash or cheque. Please place your payment in an envelope with your child’s name and class clearly labelled on the front. This can be deposited at the school office or in the drop box by the main entrance.
Key Words
Please ensure that you are engaging weekly with the key word spellings that are stuck into your child’s reading record every Monday. Being able to spell these words is vital in order for your child’s writing to progress. Your class teacher is always available if you need any advice!
Home Learning
The home learning for the next couple of weeks is an on-going project all about castles. This is due to be handed in on Monday 5th December. We look forward to sharing all the amazing outcomes!
This Weeks Learning
Literacy
In Literacy this week the children have written and illustrated their second story based on the creations of Julia Donaldson. Across the last two weeks the children have been building up their story writing skills to include a greater level of detail as well as a growing range of skills such as text effects, adjectives, connectives, time connectives …. The list of what are children are capable of is endless! All the Key Stage 1 staff are looking forward to reading their latest accomplishment this weekend.
Next week the children will be writing a final story of their very own creation in order to showcase their many skills learned across the past 4 weeks. Year 1 will be looking at the story ‘Room on the Broom’, Year 1/2: ‘The Gruffalo’, Year 2: ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’.
Numeracy
Numeracy has really been testing the children’s brains this week with the children developing their subtraction skills even further. We have developed quick mental strategies for subtracting a multiple of 10 from a given 2 digit number (e.g. 45 – 20) alongside more complex paper methods when subtracting two 2 digit numbers (e.g. 57 – 32). Why not ask your child to explain to you the different methods and strategies we can use. I am sure you will be amazed!
Next week the children will be engaging with several Numeracy Assessments. This will be carried out in a very informal way with the children helping solve a few problems that Mr Wilson has been having with his Sweet Shop! (We will leave the children to fill you in on this one!). Assessment at this point in the year plays a vital part in supporting your child’s learning into the coming year.
Topic
We have continued our Castle theme into this week’s topic but with a closer focus on the location of the Royal Castles visited by our Royal Family. This has also provided the children with an opportunity to look at the United Kingdom and the Countries within it. We have also looked at the flags of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales with the children using these as a starting point for creating their own flag to represent the whole of the United Kingdom.
Next week the children will be scientists as they investigate materials and their uses in hope of solving some tricky problems that we have been having!
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had another amazing week in Year 3/4! The children in year four excelled at East Barnby last week and we were delighted with the fantastic manners, teamwork and collaboration that the children displayed. We also received fantastic feedback from the centre staff, who said the children were exceptional. Well done to everyone who came, we had a very memorable time!
We were also thrilled with the children's performances in this week's Celebration Assembly. The children's trainers look really professional and their confidence on the catwalk was brilliant! Well done EVERYONE!
Literacy
We have been continuing with our persuasive writing this week, which has involved the children creating their very own theme park, for all the family. The children have been highly motivated by this stimulus and have been very creative in their designs. The children have also written an engaging magazine article, targeting families and their need for a fun, stress-free day out. Next week, the children will be using their designs to create a persuasive leaflet for their theme park.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been embedding their use of column addition and have been using column subtraction confidently to solve real-life problems. The children have also been developing their mental calculation skills, through the use of doubling numbers. Through the use of partitioning, the children are gaining confidence within this area. E.g. Double 65 = 120 + 10 = 130.
The children have enjoyed playing this doubling game within class. Perhaps you could challenge their thinking at home?
http://ngfl.northumberland.gov.uk/maths/num%20machine/double.html
Reminders
This week we have started to learn the songs for this years Christmas production ‘Santa’s on Strike’. Can we ask all children with speaking parts to be practising their lines at home and make sure they are reading with lots of fantastic expression. All the children have been given the song words so please get rehearsing at home!
If your child has not been given a speaking part, they will all be participating in the production through singing and dancing. Each class will be performing their own dance.
Mrs Moore’s class = ‘Reindeers’. Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-alice band’ headpiece.
Miss Thackeray’s class =‘Carol singings’. Please wear Christmas clothes, hats, scarves and gloves. Lanterns are optional.
Miss Nicholls’ class = Domestic jobbers. Please wear Christmas clothes, an apron, rubber gloves, hairnets and have a duster or feather duster at hand.
Santa = Santa should be portrayed in his traditional red suit and beard.
Mrs Santa = wearing red too, or perhaps a ‘homely’ costume including an apron, big slippers and a headscarf.
Rudolph = Please can they wear brown tights / leggings or track suit bottoms and a brown T – shirt. Please can they have ‘antlers-on-an-alice band’ headpiece and a red nose.
The elves = Colourful tunics/tabards, tights, pointed cloth hats and shoes, aprons etc are a good start, but feel free to experiment.
People playing the part of family members = Pyjamas, dressing gowns, coats and normal casual garments are all that is required. A bit of tailoring or borrowing from parents may be required for those playing adults
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
•This week’s Achiever of the Week goes to.... everyone in 5/6D for their fabulous sign language skills to our Celebration Assembly song ‘Proud’... you should all be very PROUD!
•The children should have brought home details of a planned trip to the theatre during the first week back after Christmas. We will be spending the whole day at the West Yorkshire Playhouse taking part in drama based activities in the morning and then watching a performance of Annie in the afternoon. Payment for the trip must be returned to school by Friday December 16th.
Numeracy: This week the children have been investigating the area of compound shapes as well as circles. We have applied our knowledge of the Grid Method to multiply numbers, including decimals. Next week we will be consolidating our knowledge around this and other calculation methods and then applying all of the skills we have learnt so far this year.
Home learning: Times Table Challenge will be taking place in a few weeks’ time so please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Try the following website to get you up to speed with your times tables... for a real challenge, why not try this at zero seconds!!!!:
http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/bingo/caller/caller.html
Literacy
This week we have been applying a personal touch to our persuasive writing by planning and drafting a letter to ask a celebrity to come and perform at our Christmas Party. We have also looked at using superlatives within our sentences to really make the celebrity feel like they are ‘the best!’
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our DT unit starting next week: construction, modification, improvement, prototype, structure, technicalities, dowelling, flexibility, life-sized, variety.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Topic we have been preparing a speech in order to pitch our invention idea to the Dragons from Dragon’s Den. We have also created a persuasive poster to advertise the same products. They looked A-MA-ZING!!!!
In Music Mrs Brook’s class have been perfecting their performance of Silent Night on the recorders. Miss Gascoigne’s class have been continuing to create mash-ups of popular Christmas songs using Garageband. Miss Darroch’s class have been learning sign language to a popular Christmas carol. Look out for these performances in assembly over the next few weeks.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Next PTA meeting
Thursday 24th at 6.30pm at the Halfway House
Everyone is encouraged to go along to participate in the re-development of a new PTA.
Everyone is encouraged to go along to participate in the re-development of a new PTA.
Friday, 18 November 2011
Issue 10 2011-12
Newsletter Issue 10 Friday 18th November 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
As you are aware, our school is recognised nationally for it’s effective use of twenty first century technologies. We are using those technologies as powerfully as we can to keep you up to date with school news and information on your child’s learning.
Robin Hood Newsletters on Facebook
Our weekly newsletter is now available on Facebook. If you search for robinhoodpri@hotmail.co.uk in the Facebook Search and make a Friend Request you will be added to the friendship group. This means that you will be able to access the newsletter via all Facebook media… including Smartphone. The newsletters will be posted onto the Facebook page on a Saturday morning.
Blogs
The newsletter blog has been updated to include an email subscription option. Subscribing to the blog will mean that updates appear direct in your email Inbox. If you receive your emails on your phone… the updated blogs will be pushed direct to your phone. Some class blogs have also been updated to include this feature.
Parent Mail
We also, of course, send out text messages via Parent Mail, eg; this week’s text to Year 4 parents letting them know that the children had arrived safely at East Barnby. Please do not reply to text messages sent through Parentmail.
Strike
As I am sure you will know, a day of mass strike action is planned for 30th November. This situation is still unfolding as some unions are still to announce the results of their ballots and advice from some unions is still emerging. All Headteachers are required to complete a Risk Assessment on the likely impact of the strike action on their school and plan accordingly. It is likely that some action will affect the school. It is prudent at this time for families to make alternative childcare arrangements for the 30th in the event of the strike affecting classes. I am gathering all of the information that I can and will keep you informed as best I can, however, some information – and thus decisions on the opening of some classes – may only be available at short notice.
Christmas Fair
Due to the re-organisation of our PTA, the Christmas Fair on Saturday 3rd December has been postponed. As you will be aware, the PTA has been able to put on fewer and fewer activities in recent times due to a dwindling of donations, support and help. It is hoped that the newly developing PTA will be hosting a Christmas Disco for children, details out soon. Now is a great time to get involved with the future of our PTA, who also now have a facebook page at: www.facebook.com/robinhoodprimaryschoolpta
School Dinners
I enjoyed a lovely homemade Chicken Hot Pot in the Dining Hall with our children this week. My thanks to Mrs Nash and her team for their fantastic developing efforts to provide healthy, fresh meals for our children and my thanks also to Mrs Hick and the team, who are working very hard together to make our lunchtime experience as enjoyable and as exciting as possible.
A reminder to all parents of children taking a School Lunch; lunch money should be paid on a Monday, please.
Operation Christmas Child
Our Operation Christmas Child Appeal has brought in approximately fifty boxes so far. We have some way to go to improve upon last year’s fabulous effort that brought in over 120 donations of gift boxes for children who otherwise would not have been receiving a gift at Christmas. Our boxes are being taken on Tuesday for transportation to Somalia… So this is the last chance to make a donation this year.
Money
All monies for trips, etc should be posted in the silver post box outside the school office in an envelope with your name and the purpose of the payment written on, and not handed to members of staff or left with your child to be handed to a member of staff. Thank you.
Carlton Athletic Giants Under 8’s
Carlton Athletic Giants Under 8’s are looking for both girls and boys for their teams. Contact www.carltonathleticgiants.co.uk
Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal
Out of a total of £1147.88 collected by the Royal British Legion for this year’s Poppy Appeal, Robin Hood contributed £208.31. Thank you to everyone for their kind donations.
Copley Lane Orchard
Copley Lane Orchard is a local initiative to create a wildlife haven in the community. Leeds Wildlife Volunteers will be on site at an Open Day this Sunday to demonstrate orchard care and to Bug Hunt. Children are encouraged to bring their own Bug hunting kits.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
Many thanks for the wonderful home learning that came into Nursery this week. The children’s creative skills are continuing to amaze us! Please please do visit the Nursery blog to see the outcomes! The blog is a great way to keep up to date with our achievements and the key learning objectives we are covering so please do make yourself a follower!!
THIS WEEK
The children have been thinking about different celebrations. Our focus this week was the celebration of Eid. We used video clips to gain an insight into the preparations and family traditions of Muslim families. The children then made their own decorations and held their very own parties outside in our Nursery garden. The children also tasted some different Asian foods and recorded which they liked and disliked!
NEXT WEEK
We will be continuing our topic on festivals and celebrations and the children will be learning about Hanukkah. The children will be learning all about the festival of lights and the traditions of the celebrations.
In number the children will be continuing to develop their counting out skills and ability to recognise numbers. Please support your child to develop their knowledge and confidence with numbers, by playing number games at home. The children have really enjoyed playing games like dominoes and board games that involve rolling a dice, so please foster this at home too.
As ever we will continue to work with the children to develop their writing in lots of fun and creative ways. The children will build their gross motor skills using ribbons to make patterns in the air, and move to music making large scale movements with pom poms. We will also continue to develop their fine motor skills, using playdough to build muscle strength and practice a pincer grip with tweezers.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Please encourage your child to put on their own shoes and socks... in PE the children are asked to take them off and independently put them back on!
•Bring your child’s reading record into Nursery on a Wednesday.
Requests!
If you have any old pots and pans, spoons or Tupperware that you no longer require, please could you donate it to Nursery for our musical junk yard!
Have a fabulous weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
Well done for another great week in Reception. We are really proud of how hard the children are working and of the super progress they are making in their reading and writing. Have a look at our blog and see what has been happening this week http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/
THIS WEEK
We have been finding out about other celebrations and have focused on the Muslim celebration of Eid al- Fitr. The children wrote shopping lists and then decorated the classroom and prepared for their very own Eid party on Wednesday. We have also had a go at creating Mendhi patterns on drawings of our hands and have tasted some traditional foods that Muslims enjoy during their Eid celebrations. In numeracy we have been estimating and checking our guesses, working on improving our knowledge of numbers above ten.
NEXT WEEK
We will continue to find out about other celebrations and will start from the children's own experiences. Our home learning is to create a poster about a celebration that your child has enjoyed. We will collate these into a talking book and the children will be able to add their own narrative. We will be learning about weddings and christenings and discussing the important traditions that are involved. We will also be sharing some Diwali stories and creating some amazing artwork, displaying our learning journey.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
• Please continue to read every day for five minutes and write a comment in your child's reading record. All children should be reading PINK or RED books now. If they are still bringing home LILAC and you need advice and tips to support your child, please do make an appointment to see one of us.
• Please engage with our blog, try out our CVC and maths games and keep practising our Nativity songs
• Please practice writing the tricky words -he, she, we, me, be, was and reading the tricky words - you, they, all, are, my and her
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Our production will be on Friday 9th December at 10.00am (so please help us to get practising!!)
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
It is unbelievable how quick this half term is going! The children have been very busy this week and are becoming really excited about our trip to see Beauty and the Beast on Tuesday 6th December. Thank you to those parents who have already paid for the trip.
Home Learning and Reading Records
We would like to say Thank You to all parents who continue to share their child's addition learning they are doing at home. This is extremely important and is celebrated in school, please continue to share with us any extra learning your child does. The reading records are looked at each week where we continue to celebrate the successes your child has had at home! A busy reading record is something we absolutely LOVE seeing!
This Weeks Learning
Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have begun a unit of learning on subtraction.
The children have been using strategies such as; counting backwards on their fingers, using the hundred square or partitioning the numbers. The children have been taking units from units (8 - 6 = 2) progressing onto subtracting tens and units from a single digit number (14 - 3 = 11) and concluding the week taking away 2 two-digit numbers (42 - 11 = 31).
This will continue next week by looking at the hundreds, tens and units! The children will apply their knowledge of addition and subtraction into word problems. Any numeracy learning you do at home, please share in the reading record or feel free to put in to your child's home learning book.
Literacy
In Literacy the children have started to look at the next book in the story writing unit. The children have been enjoying reading with expression and sharing their own ideas on how they could change the story or make it better. The children have learnt how to change their voice when reading exclamation marks (!), question marks (?), bold text, CAPITALIZATION and discussing how ellipsis.................. can add suspense within the story. The children have begun the preparation of retelling their class story (Gruffalo Year 2, Room on the Broom Year 1/2 and Smartest Giant in Town Year 1). They have designed their own characters to feature in their class story.
We are looking forward to reading the stories that they produce next week!
Topic
In Topic this week the children have been learning all about castles. We would like to say Thank You to the parents who have provided their children with books about Castles. The children have been keen to share these with the class and have showed fantastic engagement in this area of their learning. The children have been learning about how castles have changed over time, the features of a castle and have looked at different people who live in castles. The children have been busy creating and designing their own coats of arms, Please come in and see these in the classroom at any point....they are up on the wall for all to see!!
LKS2 Newsletter
WOW! What another fantastic week we have had in Y3/4! The children in year four have had an AMAZING time on residential at East Barnby and we can't wait to hear more of their stories and see their photographs on Monday! Back in school, the rest of us have also had a superb time...
Literacy
We have been continuing with our persuasive writing this week, which has seen us tasting doughnuts and thinking of superlatives, comparatives similes and metaphors to describe them. Following on from this, the children read some character profiles and designed a doughnut for a specific person to encourage them to write for different audiences. Our Topic learning tied in with this theme and has resulted in some brilliant persuasive displays for their products! Next week, the children will be designing their own theme parks and producing persuasive literature about them.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been exploring column addition and realising they can add very big numbers once they have grasped the principle of place value and carrying tens over. The Moshi Monster theme for our addition proved very popular, with the children having to complete specific addition challenges at the end of the week! We have been blown away with their learning and perseverance! Next week, we will be continuing with column addition and moving on to subtraction.
Reminders
We would like to remind you about our very special fashion show during celebration assembly on Friday 25th November! The children have all worked incredibly hard on these and have produced some great designs which they can't wait to show off! Please ensure your child brings some shorts and bright coloured socks to wear for this, to make sure we can show their pumps off to their full potential.
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
• Thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions for the topic home learning; we have thoroughly enjoyed hearing all about these marvellous creations and have been stunned with the effort and creativity that has been put into this... definitely some ‘Dragon’s Den’ potential within Robin Hood!
Numeracy: This week we have been learning all about multiplication and division, using chunking, grid method and bus stop methods to support calculations, applying these skills to an Alton Towers theme. Next week we will continue to apply our high level strategies to calculate speed, distance and time taken for a rollercoaster to travel around its track... we will even be creating our very own rollercoaster, ensuring that we take the safety and thrill of the ride into consideration.
Visit the following websites for a step by step demonstration of some of the methods we will be using: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/maths/games?page=3
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/school_booster/busstopdivision.html
Home learning: Please continue to practise ALL of your times tables, 7’s, 8’s and 9’s in particular. These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy, especially during the current unit. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we have written a short letter to David Cameron in order to stress our views regarding SATs tests. The children have written some fantastic letters, containing many level 5 features, a formal tone and balanced arguments!
Next week, we will be writing a persuasive letter of invitation to a celebrity to invite them to our Christmas Fair; we will be using emotive language and superlatives in an attempt to persuade them to come to our fantastic annual event!
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy unit: extraordinary, fashionable, successful, essential, assure, appreciate, consideration, significantly, reputation, appearance.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Topic we have been looking at famous and convenient inventions; paying particular attention to communication... we are looking forward to learning more about the famous inventions and inventors next week!
In PE we have been using the apparatus to create sequences using and developing the core skills.
In our Reading sessions we have continued to read our class novel, Room13. We have reached the most dramatic part of the story...we even read in the dark by torchlight whilst listening to eerie music to really get into the spirit of the book.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Dear Parent/Carer,
As you are aware, our school is recognised nationally for it’s effective use of twenty first century technologies. We are using those technologies as powerfully as we can to keep you up to date with school news and information on your child’s learning.
Robin Hood Newsletters on Facebook
Our weekly newsletter is now available on Facebook. If you search for robinhoodpri@hotmail.co.uk in the Facebook Search and make a Friend Request you will be added to the friendship group. This means that you will be able to access the newsletter via all Facebook media… including Smartphone. The newsletters will be posted onto the Facebook page on a Saturday morning.
Blogs
The newsletter blog has been updated to include an email subscription option. Subscribing to the blog will mean that updates appear direct in your email Inbox. If you receive your emails on your phone… the updated blogs will be pushed direct to your phone. Some class blogs have also been updated to include this feature.
Parent Mail
We also, of course, send out text messages via Parent Mail, eg; this week’s text to Year 4 parents letting them know that the children had arrived safely at East Barnby. Please do not reply to text messages sent through Parentmail.
Strike
As I am sure you will know, a day of mass strike action is planned for 30th November. This situation is still unfolding as some unions are still to announce the results of their ballots and advice from some unions is still emerging. All Headteachers are required to complete a Risk Assessment on the likely impact of the strike action on their school and plan accordingly. It is likely that some action will affect the school. It is prudent at this time for families to make alternative childcare arrangements for the 30th in the event of the strike affecting classes. I am gathering all of the information that I can and will keep you informed as best I can, however, some information – and thus decisions on the opening of some classes – may only be available at short notice.
Christmas Fair
Due to the re-organisation of our PTA, the Christmas Fair on Saturday 3rd December has been postponed. As you will be aware, the PTA has been able to put on fewer and fewer activities in recent times due to a dwindling of donations, support and help. It is hoped that the newly developing PTA will be hosting a Christmas Disco for children, details out soon. Now is a great time to get involved with the future of our PTA, who also now have a facebook page at: www.facebook.com/robinhoodprimaryschoolpta
School Dinners
I enjoyed a lovely homemade Chicken Hot Pot in the Dining Hall with our children this week. My thanks to Mrs Nash and her team for their fantastic developing efforts to provide healthy, fresh meals for our children and my thanks also to Mrs Hick and the team, who are working very hard together to make our lunchtime experience as enjoyable and as exciting as possible.
A reminder to all parents of children taking a School Lunch; lunch money should be paid on a Monday, please.
Operation Christmas Child
Our Operation Christmas Child Appeal has brought in approximately fifty boxes so far. We have some way to go to improve upon last year’s fabulous effort that brought in over 120 donations of gift boxes for children who otherwise would not have been receiving a gift at Christmas. Our boxes are being taken on Tuesday for transportation to Somalia… So this is the last chance to make a donation this year.
Money
All monies for trips, etc should be posted in the silver post box outside the school office in an envelope with your name and the purpose of the payment written on, and not handed to members of staff or left with your child to be handed to a member of staff. Thank you.
Carlton Athletic Giants Under 8’s
Carlton Athletic Giants Under 8’s are looking for both girls and boys for their teams. Contact www.carltonathleticgiants.co.uk
Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal
Out of a total of £1147.88 collected by the Royal British Legion for this year’s Poppy Appeal, Robin Hood contributed £208.31. Thank you to everyone for their kind donations.
Copley Lane Orchard
Copley Lane Orchard is a local initiative to create a wildlife haven in the community. Leeds Wildlife Volunteers will be on site at an Open Day this Sunday to demonstrate orchard care and to Bug Hunt. Children are encouraged to bring their own Bug hunting kits.
Have a wonderful weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
Many thanks for the wonderful home learning that came into Nursery this week. The children’s creative skills are continuing to amaze us! Please please do visit the Nursery blog to see the outcomes! The blog is a great way to keep up to date with our achievements and the key learning objectives we are covering so please do make yourself a follower!!
THIS WEEK
The children have been thinking about different celebrations. Our focus this week was the celebration of Eid. We used video clips to gain an insight into the preparations and family traditions of Muslim families. The children then made their own decorations and held their very own parties outside in our Nursery garden. The children also tasted some different Asian foods and recorded which they liked and disliked!
NEXT WEEK
We will be continuing our topic on festivals and celebrations and the children will be learning about Hanukkah. The children will be learning all about the festival of lights and the traditions of the celebrations.
In number the children will be continuing to develop their counting out skills and ability to recognise numbers. Please support your child to develop their knowledge and confidence with numbers, by playing number games at home. The children have really enjoyed playing games like dominoes and board games that involve rolling a dice, so please foster this at home too.
As ever we will continue to work with the children to develop their writing in lots of fun and creative ways. The children will build their gross motor skills using ribbons to make patterns in the air, and move to music making large scale movements with pom poms. We will also continue to develop their fine motor skills, using playdough to build muscle strength and practice a pincer grip with tweezers.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
•Please encourage your child to put on their own shoes and socks... in PE the children are asked to take them off and independently put them back on!
•Bring your child’s reading record into Nursery on a Wednesday.
Requests!
If you have any old pots and pans, spoons or Tupperware that you no longer require, please could you donate it to Nursery for our musical junk yard!
Have a fabulous weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
Well done for another great week in Reception. We are really proud of how hard the children are working and of the super progress they are making in their reading and writing. Have a look at our blog and see what has been happening this week http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/
THIS WEEK
We have been finding out about other celebrations and have focused on the Muslim celebration of Eid al- Fitr. The children wrote shopping lists and then decorated the classroom and prepared for their very own Eid party on Wednesday. We have also had a go at creating Mendhi patterns on drawings of our hands and have tasted some traditional foods that Muslims enjoy during their Eid celebrations. In numeracy we have been estimating and checking our guesses, working on improving our knowledge of numbers above ten.
NEXT WEEK
We will continue to find out about other celebrations and will start from the children's own experiences. Our home learning is to create a poster about a celebration that your child has enjoyed. We will collate these into a talking book and the children will be able to add their own narrative. We will be learning about weddings and christenings and discussing the important traditions that are involved. We will also be sharing some Diwali stories and creating some amazing artwork, displaying our learning journey.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
• Please continue to read every day for five minutes and write a comment in your child's reading record. All children should be reading PINK or RED books now. If they are still bringing home LILAC and you need advice and tips to support your child, please do make an appointment to see one of us.
• Please engage with our blog, try out our CVC and maths games and keep practising our Nativity songs
• Please practice writing the tricky words -he, she, we, me, be, was and reading the tricky words - you, they, all, are, my and her
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Our production will be on Friday 9th December at 10.00am (so please help us to get practising!!)
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
It is unbelievable how quick this half term is going! The children have been very busy this week and are becoming really excited about our trip to see Beauty and the Beast on Tuesday 6th December. Thank you to those parents who have already paid for the trip.
Home Learning and Reading Records
We would like to say Thank You to all parents who continue to share their child's addition learning they are doing at home. This is extremely important and is celebrated in school, please continue to share with us any extra learning your child does. The reading records are looked at each week where we continue to celebrate the successes your child has had at home! A busy reading record is something we absolutely LOVE seeing!
This Weeks Learning
Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have begun a unit of learning on subtraction.
The children have been using strategies such as; counting backwards on their fingers, using the hundred square or partitioning the numbers. The children have been taking units from units (8 - 6 = 2) progressing onto subtracting tens and units from a single digit number (14 - 3 = 11) and concluding the week taking away 2 two-digit numbers (42 - 11 = 31).
This will continue next week by looking at the hundreds, tens and units! The children will apply their knowledge of addition and subtraction into word problems. Any numeracy learning you do at home, please share in the reading record or feel free to put in to your child's home learning book.
Literacy
In Literacy the children have started to look at the next book in the story writing unit. The children have been enjoying reading with expression and sharing their own ideas on how they could change the story or make it better. The children have learnt how to change their voice when reading exclamation marks (!), question marks (?), bold text, CAPITALIZATION and discussing how ellipsis.................. can add suspense within the story. The children have begun the preparation of retelling their class story (Gruffalo Year 2, Room on the Broom Year 1/2 and Smartest Giant in Town Year 1). They have designed their own characters to feature in their class story.
We are looking forward to reading the stories that they produce next week!
Topic
In Topic this week the children have been learning all about castles. We would like to say Thank You to the parents who have provided their children with books about Castles. The children have been keen to share these with the class and have showed fantastic engagement in this area of their learning. The children have been learning about how castles have changed over time, the features of a castle and have looked at different people who live in castles. The children have been busy creating and designing their own coats of arms, Please come in and see these in the classroom at any point....they are up on the wall for all to see!!
LKS2 Newsletter
WOW! What another fantastic week we have had in Y3/4! The children in year four have had an AMAZING time on residential at East Barnby and we can't wait to hear more of their stories and see their photographs on Monday! Back in school, the rest of us have also had a superb time...
Literacy
We have been continuing with our persuasive writing this week, which has seen us tasting doughnuts and thinking of superlatives, comparatives similes and metaphors to describe them. Following on from this, the children read some character profiles and designed a doughnut for a specific person to encourage them to write for different audiences. Our Topic learning tied in with this theme and has resulted in some brilliant persuasive displays for their products! Next week, the children will be designing their own theme parks and producing persuasive literature about them.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been exploring column addition and realising they can add very big numbers once they have grasped the principle of place value and carrying tens over. The Moshi Monster theme for our addition proved very popular, with the children having to complete specific addition challenges at the end of the week! We have been blown away with their learning and perseverance! Next week, we will be continuing with column addition and moving on to subtraction.
Reminders
We would like to remind you about our very special fashion show during celebration assembly on Friday 25th November! The children have all worked incredibly hard on these and have produced some great designs which they can't wait to show off! Please ensure your child brings some shorts and bright coloured socks to wear for this, to make sure we can show their pumps off to their full potential.
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
• Thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions for the topic home learning; we have thoroughly enjoyed hearing all about these marvellous creations and have been stunned with the effort and creativity that has been put into this... definitely some ‘Dragon’s Den’ potential within Robin Hood!
Numeracy: This week we have been learning all about multiplication and division, using chunking, grid method and bus stop methods to support calculations, applying these skills to an Alton Towers theme. Next week we will continue to apply our high level strategies to calculate speed, distance and time taken for a rollercoaster to travel around its track... we will even be creating our very own rollercoaster, ensuring that we take the safety and thrill of the ride into consideration.
Visit the following websites for a step by step demonstration of some of the methods we will be using: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/maths/games?page=3
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/school_booster/busstopdivision.html
Home learning: Please continue to practise ALL of your times tables, 7’s, 8’s and 9’s in particular. These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy, especially during the current unit. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we have written a short letter to David Cameron in order to stress our views regarding SATs tests. The children have written some fantastic letters, containing many level 5 features, a formal tone and balanced arguments!
Next week, we will be writing a persuasive letter of invitation to a celebrity to invite them to our Christmas Fair; we will be using emotive language and superlatives in an attempt to persuade them to come to our fantastic annual event!
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy unit: extraordinary, fashionable, successful, essential, assure, appreciate, consideration, significantly, reputation, appearance.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Topic we have been looking at famous and convenient inventions; paying particular attention to communication... we are looking forward to learning more about the famous inventions and inventors next week!
In PE we have been using the apparatus to create sequences using and developing the core skills.
In our Reading sessions we have continued to read our class novel, Room13. We have reached the most dramatic part of the story...we even read in the dark by torchlight whilst listening to eerie music to really get into the spirit of the book.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Friday, 11 November 2011
Issue 9 2011-12
Newsletter Issue 9 Friday 11th November 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
It is one of the many great privileges of my job that I have the opportunity to wander around the classrooms at Robin Hood and take in the wonderful learning that’s going on, all the time.
A visit to our Nursery this week allowed me to reflect on what a wonderful learning environment Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team have created, indoors and out. We have constant outdoor music, lots of great activities and learning resources and a truly fantastic environment for learning.
This is reflected equally in our Reception provision. It is a particular delight to me to see children thoroughly enjoying learning, and enjoying being challenged to take their learning even further. We have a wonderfully gifted team in our Reception, Nursery and Early Years that are ensuring a brilliant start to our youngest learner’s careers in education.
Key Stage One pupils have been busily engaged in lots of powerful learning. I’ve seen some incredible handwriting, amazing drawing and fabulous spellings in Key Stage One this week.
Our Year 34 pupils have been working incredibly hard on their trainer designs, art work, posters, movies and promotional literature. Again, the enthusiasm for learning and the sheer fun that children are having while learning is a delight to see.
Year 56 have been pushing the boundaries of their mathematical understanding, controlling their movements in PE, creative imaginative works of art and much, much, much more.
We began our week with a Key Stage Two Assembly on Mary Anning. Mary overcame many challenges in her life to become recognised as one of the most important female scientists. We held a Remembrance Day Assembly today to understand why poppies are an important symbol in our country and to reflect upon the fallen and the folly of war. We also marked the fact today that 11.11.11…. and at 11.11am was a very historical moment that we’d all remember together.
Robin Hood Newsletters on Facebook
Our newsletter is now available on Facebook. If you search for robinhoodpri@hotmail.co.uk in the Facebook Search and make a Friend Request you will be added to the friendship group. This means that you will be able to access the newsletter via all Facebook media… including Smartphone. The email address is not used for anything else, so please don’t try to contact us via it. Some staff may befriend our Facebook page. I have instructed staff not to accept friend requests that come via this connection. There is very strong advice from the Professional Associations that, for very sensible reasons, school staff maintain separate personal, professional, and public, lives. The newsletters will be posted onto the Facebook page on a Saturday morning.
Children In Need
We will again be supporting the Children In Need Appeal on Friday 18th November. This will be a Non-uniform Day. We ask that all children bring a Non-Uniform donation – all proceeds from the donations will be forwarded on to the Charity. The theme for Children In Need dressing up this year is spots. Pupils Jenny Hepworth and Shannon Keeble will be holding a Bake Sale on the day. Again, all proceeds will be going to Children In Need.
School Dinners
Since September, our kitchen has taken up the Food for Life initiative. The Food for Life initiative requires a daily fresh food menu. Meals are made from fresh, rather than being made centrally, distributed and then re-heated in kitchens for service at lunchtime. Produce is locally sourced, meat is local and outdoor reared. All meals are nutritionally balanced, children are encouraged to take a vegetable daily, and there is a self-service daily Salad Bar. Menus are on a three week rota, with a roast dinner option every Wednesday. Even the Fun Day menus… like pizza… are fully homemade. Children use plates and have metal cutlery… rather than the airliner trays and plastic cutlery that we had in the past.
Blogs
Our blogs are brilliant! I looked at the Reception blog again this week…. Which has changed out of all recognition even from how it was last week! The Reception blog is receiving an incredible amount of traffic. Yesterday there were 169 hits in just the one day. Today, there have been 17 hits by 8.00am. The blogs are just one of the many, many ways that we engage families in their children’s learning at Robin Hood. Our school website itself received a staggering 6794 hits in just one day last week.
Christmas Fair
The Christmas Fair on Saturday 3rd December will be taking place between 12.00pm to 3.00pm. In order to make the Fair a success, our PTA require your donations of chocolates, cakes, buns, bottles and tombola prize donations. Any donations, support and/or offers of help: please contact Jenny Curgenven, PTA Chair either direct or leave a note for Jenny with Mrs Smith or Mrs Holland at the School Office.
Cash Handling
For security reasons could all payments for dinner money, trips etc be placed in an envelope with your child’s name, class and what the payment is for, and then posted in the silver box outside the office.
Have a fabulous weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
The children have had lots of fun this week as we shared our experiences of Bonfire Night and learnt the history behind the tradition. Thank you so much for the home learning that was produced to support the children’s learning. Please do take a look at the display and the Nursery blog, to see the outcomes of this week’s activities!
THIS WEEK
The children sequenced the story of the gunpowder plot, used active drawing as a way to recount their very own experiences of Bonfire Night, and we also found time to carry out an investigation to see which of our very own fireworks travelled the furthest!! The children have also been continuing to develop their counting skills, as we counted how many fireworks were glistening in the sky!
Our focus in phonics has been rhyme and the children have been using ICT games to develop their awareness of rhyming words and phrases.
NEXT WEEK
We will be continuing our topic on festivals and celebrations and the children will be learning about Eid. We will be using video clips made by other children about the traditions and preparations their families take part in during the celebration.
In number the children will be concentrating on matching numbers to quantities. Please continue to support your child with this at home, playing number games, pointing out numbers on the phone, counting objects or items, getting 3 spoons etc, to help build your child’s confidence and knowledge of numbers. We will also be learning to count in 2’s!
In literacy we will be supporting your child to develop an awareness of the letters in the alphabet, as we write shopping lists in preparation for our food tasting activity. Please could we ask that you help your child develop their mark making skills at home too, by practising the letters in your child’s name as often as possible. Please also refer to the letter to parents sent last week, detailing the next steps in writing.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Please continue to read stories with your child every day, pointing out the key features of the story and modelling how to hold the book carefully, and allowing your child to turn the page. Encourage your child to follow the words with your finger.
· Please could you provide your child with a change of clothing and leave it in their bag and on their peg, so they are available should we need to change them.
Thank you for your support.
Have a great weekend!
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you for the amazing response to our Bonfire home learning..... WOW!! Miss Abbey has made a short video which you can see on our blog http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/ Please do have a look and see what has been going on this week!
THIS WEEK
We have continued with our Celebrations topic and have been finding out more about the history of Bonfire Night and just who Guy Fawkes was and his significance to our celebrations today. The children have worked collaboratively to make our very own Guy Fawkes and at the end of the week we will be remodelling him into a scarecrow for our Foundation stage garden! The children have made their own rockets and have estimated and then measured how far they can travel
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will be finding out about the important history behind Poppy Day and the children will be using their home learning to kick start our session on Monday. Later in the week we will be finding out more about the Muslim religion and the celebration of Eid. we will be finding out about their celebrations and will be preparing for and holding our own celebration in the setting. Children will be able to taste a variety of authentic traditional foods and then write descriptive words to tell their friends what they have found out. In our numeracy sessions we will continue with our estimating and will be using some simple Sudoko grids to count and order numbers correctly.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
By continuing to read every day with your child for five minutes. Hopefully your child will be bringing home Pink or Red books to read to you. If your child is bringing a Lilac and a Pink, please try to read both offering lots of praise and encouragement. Pink books are the target for all children at this stage.
By practising the sounds and keywords of the week every day. New words for next week are: he/she/we/me/be/was. Sounds are n k and e
By ensuring your child can write their first and second names independently
By recognising and practising writing the numbers to 20 with the correct formation.These should be written across the page and with a space between them. The children should also be using the correct sequence of movements .
If you have any concerns or need any support, please let one of us know. Thank you.
KS1 Newsletter
What another amazing week KS1 have had. Please check out our blog and take a look at the brilliant learning which is happening at Robin Hood....
Literacy
This week in Literacy the children have continued to read their class book (Room on the Broom -Year 2, Smartest Giant in Town - Year 1/2 and Gruffalo - Year 1). The children have been busy creating their own characters to feature in their version of the class story. Within the writing the children have ensured they used CAPITAL letters, full stops, clear finger spaces, developing their ideas using:- so, if, but, because, and, when, adjectives (describing words) and verbs (doing words).
The children have written fantastic stories and have continued to show off all their learning thus far.
Next week the children will continue with their Narrative unit and will focus on a different book written by Julia Donaldson (Gruffalo - Year 2, Room on the Broom - Year 1/2 and Room on the Broom - Year 1). The children will read the stories, developing their fluency and expression. They will answer questions about the book to develop their understanding, along with dramatising the books in the correct sequence.
Numeracy
What an amazing week in Numeracy, the children have been busy adding numbers together using the related vocabulary: addition, sum, total, altogether, more than.
The Year 1's have been adding a single digit number to a 2 digit number by putting the biggest number in their head and then counting on. They have used their fingers to count on the smaller number but then progressed onto using the hundred square, circling the biggest number then counting on the smallest number. Please use the 100 square in the front of your Home Learning books and provide your child with some addition sums to complete and show off their learning.
The Year 2's have continued to use the mantra that we put the biggest number in our head and then count on using mental strategies, by applying their knowledge of the Malteaser system from last half term.
e.g
58 + 25 =
68 79
78 80
81
82
83
The children then progressed onto using the 'Column addition' method to support their learning, by adding the unit and then adding the ten.
e.g.
58
+ 25
--
83
Carry the 1
Please support your child in using either method and provide them with two 2-digit numbers to add together so they can show off their learning from this week.
Next week the children will spend the first part of the week using their knowledge of addition and apply this learning to word problems and investigations. The children will conclude the week developing their understanding of subtraction and using the related vocabulary: take away, less than, subtract. The children will investigate what happens to the numbers within a take away (the total is smaller then the biggest number in the sum, a take way can not be done in any order unlike an addition).
Topic
This week in topic the children have been busy with their Art unit, drawing and colouring in characters from Beauty and the Beast. The children have developed the skill of 'tickLing' the paper to create the outline of the image before adding detail to add to the overall effect. The children have developed their colouring in skills, colouring in the same direction and using contrasting colour to develop the look of the image.
Please check out the KS1 blog for the pictures the children have created!
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a fantastic, creative, fun filled week in 3/4. The children have been busy carefully following their plimsoll designs to customise their own pumps. We were very pleased by the children's effort and attention to detail whilst carefully painting the different areas of the plimsoll. Next week we will be further enhancing these by adding the finer details. We can't wait to show these off during our fashion show in the celebration assembly on Friday 25th November.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been further developing their mental strategies for addition. They have been adding multiples of ten and adjusting, looking for number bonds and partitioning the numbers into tens and units to add. The children then applied all of these strategies when adding up different coin values to solve problems involving the Simpsons. Next week we are looking at written strategies to add using column addition.
Literacy
This week we have been writing a letter to Mr Lewis (The chief buyer for Nike) persuading him to make our own trainer designs. The children have described their own designs in detail and included lots of persuasive features in order to influence Mr Lewis. Next week we will be designing our own delicious doughnuts to persuade people to purchase them! The children will be carrying out their own market research by tasting all different types of doughnut and focusing on their target audience.
Home learning
We would like to say a HUGE well done to all the children for the amount of reading everyone is doing at home. We are so pleased to be handing out so many stickers for all the fabulous reading. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all parents / carers for all the fantastic support around reading at home and the informative comments in the children's reading records.
Reminders
We would like to congratulate all the children who auditioned for the Christmas production, we were blown away by the children's fantastic confidence and enthusiasm towards the production, we are sure it will be a memorable performance. All the children who auditioned have received a speaking part. The lines have been given out today so please get busy practising.
Please can we ask that all children bring an Art shirt into school and leave it in their lockers for whenever we are doing Art and DT.
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
• Congratulations to Jessica Siddons, who is our achiever of the week, as she WOWED us with her incredible writing skills this week!
• Once again, a BIG thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions for the topic home learning. We have been blown away with creativity and thought that has gone into these inventions and really wish some of them were real. Any children who have not yet brought in their work still have time as we expect all creations in by Monday.
Numeracy: This week we have been looking at finding the area of squares, rectangles and compound shapes. We have also created our own Mario Kart race tracks ensuring we stuck to a specific set of criteria. This required our use of multiplication skills using times tables and the grid method! Visit this website for a step by step demonstration: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/maths/games?page=3
Next week we will be focusing on division using the bus stop and chunking method with an Alton Towers theme to make links with our Science unit ‘Forces’ The children will be applying their multiplication and division skills to calculate the speed of particular rides... we will even be designing our very own roller coaster track, making sure we calculate the perimeter and area needed to build it safely.
Home learning: please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we have been developing our ideas in order to convince Mr Wilson not to change the school hall. We have included very specific persuasive language as well as literary features to help our points of view REALLY stand out. Next week we will be writing to David Cameron outlining our views about SATs. We will be putting our persuasive techniques into practise ensuring we consider both sides of the argument.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy unit: practise, practice, government, assessment, education, questions, campaign, eradicate, experience.
Please gather reasons at home ‘for’ and ‘against’ SATS. These will be shared on Monday during our Literacy lesson.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Science we have come to the end of our unit looking at forces in action. We have investigated the effects of air resistance and have made conclusions about how surface area affects this.
In PE we have continued to look at the core skills of gymnastics and have begun to put these into sequences.
In our Reading sessions we have continued to read out class novel, Room13. We have now got to the ‘climax’ of the story and are beginning to make predictions about what will happen next.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Dear Parent/Carer,
It is one of the many great privileges of my job that I have the opportunity to wander around the classrooms at Robin Hood and take in the wonderful learning that’s going on, all the time.
A visit to our Nursery this week allowed me to reflect on what a wonderful learning environment Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team have created, indoors and out. We have constant outdoor music, lots of great activities and learning resources and a truly fantastic environment for learning.
This is reflected equally in our Reception provision. It is a particular delight to me to see children thoroughly enjoying learning, and enjoying being challenged to take their learning even further. We have a wonderfully gifted team in our Reception, Nursery and Early Years that are ensuring a brilliant start to our youngest learner’s careers in education.
Key Stage One pupils have been busily engaged in lots of powerful learning. I’ve seen some incredible handwriting, amazing drawing and fabulous spellings in Key Stage One this week.
Our Year 34 pupils have been working incredibly hard on their trainer designs, art work, posters, movies and promotional literature. Again, the enthusiasm for learning and the sheer fun that children are having while learning is a delight to see.
Year 56 have been pushing the boundaries of their mathematical understanding, controlling their movements in PE, creative imaginative works of art and much, much, much more.
We began our week with a Key Stage Two Assembly on Mary Anning. Mary overcame many challenges in her life to become recognised as one of the most important female scientists. We held a Remembrance Day Assembly today to understand why poppies are an important symbol in our country and to reflect upon the fallen and the folly of war. We also marked the fact today that 11.11.11…. and at 11.11am was a very historical moment that we’d all remember together.
Robin Hood Newsletters on Facebook
Our newsletter is now available on Facebook. If you search for robinhoodpri@hotmail.co.uk in the Facebook Search and make a Friend Request you will be added to the friendship group. This means that you will be able to access the newsletter via all Facebook media… including Smartphone. The email address is not used for anything else, so please don’t try to contact us via it. Some staff may befriend our Facebook page. I have instructed staff not to accept friend requests that come via this connection. There is very strong advice from the Professional Associations that, for very sensible reasons, school staff maintain separate personal, professional, and public, lives. The newsletters will be posted onto the Facebook page on a Saturday morning.
Children In Need
We will again be supporting the Children In Need Appeal on Friday 18th November. This will be a Non-uniform Day. We ask that all children bring a Non-Uniform donation – all proceeds from the donations will be forwarded on to the Charity. The theme for Children In Need dressing up this year is spots. Pupils Jenny Hepworth and Shannon Keeble will be holding a Bake Sale on the day. Again, all proceeds will be going to Children In Need.
School Dinners
Since September, our kitchen has taken up the Food for Life initiative. The Food for Life initiative requires a daily fresh food menu. Meals are made from fresh, rather than being made centrally, distributed and then re-heated in kitchens for service at lunchtime. Produce is locally sourced, meat is local and outdoor reared. All meals are nutritionally balanced, children are encouraged to take a vegetable daily, and there is a self-service daily Salad Bar. Menus are on a three week rota, with a roast dinner option every Wednesday. Even the Fun Day menus… like pizza… are fully homemade. Children use plates and have metal cutlery… rather than the airliner trays and plastic cutlery that we had in the past.
Blogs
Our blogs are brilliant! I looked at the Reception blog again this week…. Which has changed out of all recognition even from how it was last week! The Reception blog is receiving an incredible amount of traffic. Yesterday there were 169 hits in just the one day. Today, there have been 17 hits by 8.00am. The blogs are just one of the many, many ways that we engage families in their children’s learning at Robin Hood. Our school website itself received a staggering 6794 hits in just one day last week.
Christmas Fair
The Christmas Fair on Saturday 3rd December will be taking place between 12.00pm to 3.00pm. In order to make the Fair a success, our PTA require your donations of chocolates, cakes, buns, bottles and tombola prize donations. Any donations, support and/or offers of help: please contact Jenny Curgenven, PTA Chair either direct or leave a note for Jenny with Mrs Smith or Mrs Holland at the School Office.
Cash Handling
For security reasons could all payments for dinner money, trips etc be placed in an envelope with your child’s name, class and what the payment is for, and then posted in the silver box outside the office.
Have a fabulous weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
The children have had lots of fun this week as we shared our experiences of Bonfire Night and learnt the history behind the tradition. Thank you so much for the home learning that was produced to support the children’s learning. Please do take a look at the display and the Nursery blog, to see the outcomes of this week’s activities!
THIS WEEK
The children sequenced the story of the gunpowder plot, used active drawing as a way to recount their very own experiences of Bonfire Night, and we also found time to carry out an investigation to see which of our very own fireworks travelled the furthest!! The children have also been continuing to develop their counting skills, as we counted how many fireworks were glistening in the sky!
Our focus in phonics has been rhyme and the children have been using ICT games to develop their awareness of rhyming words and phrases.
NEXT WEEK
We will be continuing our topic on festivals and celebrations and the children will be learning about Eid. We will be using video clips made by other children about the traditions and preparations their families take part in during the celebration.
In number the children will be concentrating on matching numbers to quantities. Please continue to support your child with this at home, playing number games, pointing out numbers on the phone, counting objects or items, getting 3 spoons etc, to help build your child’s confidence and knowledge of numbers. We will also be learning to count in 2’s!
In literacy we will be supporting your child to develop an awareness of the letters in the alphabet, as we write shopping lists in preparation for our food tasting activity. Please could we ask that you help your child develop their mark making skills at home too, by practising the letters in your child’s name as often as possible. Please also refer to the letter to parents sent last week, detailing the next steps in writing.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Please continue to read stories with your child every day, pointing out the key features of the story and modelling how to hold the book carefully, and allowing your child to turn the page. Encourage your child to follow the words with your finger.
· Please could you provide your child with a change of clothing and leave it in their bag and on their peg, so they are available should we need to change them.
Thank you for your support.
Have a great weekend!
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you for the amazing response to our Bonfire home learning..... WOW!! Miss Abbey has made a short video which you can see on our blog http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/ Please do have a look and see what has been going on this week!
THIS WEEK
We have continued with our Celebrations topic and have been finding out more about the history of Bonfire Night and just who Guy Fawkes was and his significance to our celebrations today. The children have worked collaboratively to make our very own Guy Fawkes and at the end of the week we will be remodelling him into a scarecrow for our Foundation stage garden! The children have made their own rockets and have estimated and then measured how far they can travel
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will be finding out about the important history behind Poppy Day and the children will be using their home learning to kick start our session on Monday. Later in the week we will be finding out more about the Muslim religion and the celebration of Eid. we will be finding out about their celebrations and will be preparing for and holding our own celebration in the setting. Children will be able to taste a variety of authentic traditional foods and then write descriptive words to tell their friends what they have found out. In our numeracy sessions we will continue with our estimating and will be using some simple Sudoko grids to count and order numbers correctly.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
By continuing to read every day with your child for five minutes. Hopefully your child will be bringing home Pink or Red books to read to you. If your child is bringing a Lilac and a Pink, please try to read both offering lots of praise and encouragement. Pink books are the target for all children at this stage.
By practising the sounds and keywords of the week every day. New words for next week are: he/she/we/me/be/was. Sounds are n k and e
By ensuring your child can write their first and second names independently
By recognising and practising writing the numbers to 20 with the correct formation.These should be written across the page and with a space between them. The children should also be using the correct sequence of movements .
If you have any concerns or need any support, please let one of us know. Thank you.
KS1 Newsletter
What another amazing week KS1 have had. Please check out our blog and take a look at the brilliant learning which is happening at Robin Hood....
Literacy
This week in Literacy the children have continued to read their class book (Room on the Broom -Year 2, Smartest Giant in Town - Year 1/2 and Gruffalo - Year 1). The children have been busy creating their own characters to feature in their version of the class story. Within the writing the children have ensured they used CAPITAL letters, full stops, clear finger spaces, developing their ideas using:- so, if, but, because, and, when, adjectives (describing words) and verbs (doing words).
The children have written fantastic stories and have continued to show off all their learning thus far.
Next week the children will continue with their Narrative unit and will focus on a different book written by Julia Donaldson (Gruffalo - Year 2, Room on the Broom - Year 1/2 and Room on the Broom - Year 1). The children will read the stories, developing their fluency and expression. They will answer questions about the book to develop their understanding, along with dramatising the books in the correct sequence.
Numeracy
What an amazing week in Numeracy, the children have been busy adding numbers together using the related vocabulary: addition, sum, total, altogether, more than.
The Year 1's have been adding a single digit number to a 2 digit number by putting the biggest number in their head and then counting on. They have used their fingers to count on the smaller number but then progressed onto using the hundred square, circling the biggest number then counting on the smallest number. Please use the 100 square in the front of your Home Learning books and provide your child with some addition sums to complete and show off their learning.
The Year 2's have continued to use the mantra that we put the biggest number in our head and then count on using mental strategies, by applying their knowledge of the Malteaser system from last half term.
e.g
58 + 25 =
68 79
78 80
81
82
83
The children then progressed onto using the 'Column addition' method to support their learning, by adding the unit and then adding the ten.
e.g.
58
+ 25
--
83
Carry the 1
Please support your child in using either method and provide them with two 2-digit numbers to add together so they can show off their learning from this week.
Next week the children will spend the first part of the week using their knowledge of addition and apply this learning to word problems and investigations. The children will conclude the week developing their understanding of subtraction and using the related vocabulary: take away, less than, subtract. The children will investigate what happens to the numbers within a take away (the total is smaller then the biggest number in the sum, a take way can not be done in any order unlike an addition).
Topic
This week in topic the children have been busy with their Art unit, drawing and colouring in characters from Beauty and the Beast. The children have developed the skill of 'tickLing' the paper to create the outline of the image before adding detail to add to the overall effect. The children have developed their colouring in skills, colouring in the same direction and using contrasting colour to develop the look of the image.
Please check out the KS1 blog for the pictures the children have created!
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a fantastic, creative, fun filled week in 3/4. The children have been busy carefully following their plimsoll designs to customise their own pumps. We were very pleased by the children's effort and attention to detail whilst carefully painting the different areas of the plimsoll. Next week we will be further enhancing these by adding the finer details. We can't wait to show these off during our fashion show in the celebration assembly on Friday 25th November.
Numeracy
In Numeracy, the children have been further developing their mental strategies for addition. They have been adding multiples of ten and adjusting, looking for number bonds and partitioning the numbers into tens and units to add. The children then applied all of these strategies when adding up different coin values to solve problems involving the Simpsons. Next week we are looking at written strategies to add using column addition.
Literacy
This week we have been writing a letter to Mr Lewis (The chief buyer for Nike) persuading him to make our own trainer designs. The children have described their own designs in detail and included lots of persuasive features in order to influence Mr Lewis. Next week we will be designing our own delicious doughnuts to persuade people to purchase them! The children will be carrying out their own market research by tasting all different types of doughnut and focusing on their target audience.
Home learning
We would like to say a HUGE well done to all the children for the amount of reading everyone is doing at home. We are so pleased to be handing out so many stickers for all the fabulous reading. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all parents / carers for all the fantastic support around reading at home and the informative comments in the children's reading records.
Reminders
We would like to congratulate all the children who auditioned for the Christmas production, we were blown away by the children's fantastic confidence and enthusiasm towards the production, we are sure it will be a memorable performance. All the children who auditioned have received a speaking part. The lines have been given out today so please get busy practising.
Please can we ask that all children bring an Art shirt into school and leave it in their lockers for whenever we are doing Art and DT.
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
• Congratulations to Jessica Siddons, who is our achiever of the week, as she WOWED us with her incredible writing skills this week!
• Once again, a BIG thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions for the topic home learning. We have been blown away with creativity and thought that has gone into these inventions and really wish some of them were real. Any children who have not yet brought in their work still have time as we expect all creations in by Monday.
Numeracy: This week we have been looking at finding the area of squares, rectangles and compound shapes. We have also created our own Mario Kart race tracks ensuring we stuck to a specific set of criteria. This required our use of multiplication skills using times tables and the grid method! Visit this website for a step by step demonstration: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/maths/games?page=3
Next week we will be focusing on division using the bus stop and chunking method with an Alton Towers theme to make links with our Science unit ‘Forces’ The children will be applying their multiplication and division skills to calculate the speed of particular rides... we will even be designing our very own roller coaster track, making sure we calculate the perimeter and area needed to build it safely.
Home learning: please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we have been developing our ideas in order to convince Mr Wilson not to change the school hall. We have included very specific persuasive language as well as literary features to help our points of view REALLY stand out. Next week we will be writing to David Cameron outlining our views about SATs. We will be putting our persuasive techniques into practise ensuring we consider both sides of the argument.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our Literacy unit: practise, practice, government, assessment, education, questions, campaign, eradicate, experience.
Please gather reasons at home ‘for’ and ‘against’ SATS. These will be shared on Monday during our Literacy lesson.
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Science we have come to the end of our unit looking at forces in action. We have investigated the effects of air resistance and have made conclusions about how surface area affects this.
In PE we have continued to look at the core skills of gymnastics and have begun to put these into sequences.
In our Reading sessions we have continued to read out class novel, Room13. We have now got to the ‘climax’ of the story and are beginning to make predictions about what will happen next.
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Friday, 4 November 2011
Issue 8 2011-12
Newsletter Issue 8 Friday 4th November 2011
Dear Parent/Carer,
Harvest Fun!
We had an interesting turn of events for our Harvest Celebration this year. On the final day of last Half Term, we were half way to the Church when we were informed that, due to a mix-up, it was no longer available for our Harvest. A school is defined by its response to challenging circumstances… We turned around, prepared the Hall and held a fabulous celebration, led by our Key Stage One pupils. My thanks to those parents and families who stuck with us through the confusion to attended the event. We do hope to return to Lofthouse Church for our Christmas, Easter and Harvest celebrations to come.
Home Learning
I would like to say an enormous thank you to our pupils, parents and families for their fantastic Home Learning projects. The Home Learning projects are truly incredible… we have received some really inspired and inspirational creations that have clearly been a delight for families to produce together. Learning together and having fun when learning really are the keys to successful learning.
Christmas Fair
I was delighted to hear from Jenny Curgenven, our PTA Chair and Governor, that we have a group of PTA volunteers who met at the Halfway House recently and that our Christmas Fair will be going ahead on Saturday 3rd December. More information will follow soon.
A school sits at the heart of its Community and can act as the focus for social and community events that add genuine value for that community. Being an active member of the PTA at Robin Hood benefits not only our children in school but the community as a whole. Your offers of help and support for the Christmas Fair will, I am certain, be greatly appreciated by Jenny and our PTA volunteers.
Trainer fashions at Celebration Assembly
Our Year 34 pupils will be up on the catwalk at the Celebration Assembly on 25th November to model the fantastic trainer creations that they have produced this Half Term. The pupils have used trainers as a stimulus for design research, making movies, writing persuasive adverts to sell their ground breaking designs and actually making the trainers themselves. Please join us for our fabulous fashion display.
School Photographs
Individual and family group school photographs will be taking place next week, Wed 9th November.
Children In Need
We will be supporting the Children In Need Appeal on Friday 18th November. This will be a Non-uniform Day. We ask that all children bring a Non-Uniform donation – all proceeds from the donations will be forwarded on to the Charity. The theme for Children In Need dressing up this year is spots. Pupils Jenny Hepworth and Shannon Keeble will be holding a Bake Sale on the day. Again, all proceeds will be going to Children In Need. My thanks and congratulations to the girls for their super charitable efforts.
Poppy Appeal
We are selling poppies in school on behalf of the Royal British Legion Appeal. Our School Captains will be visiting classes daily with poppies for sale.
Year 4 Residential
Our Year 4’s are preparing for their upcoming residential visit to East Barnby. My thanks to the staff who make ‘extras’ like this a possibility for our pupils. We are very fortunate to be able to offer two residential visit for our pupils during their careers at Robin Hood, made possible only through the dedication and commitment of our staff. Miss Thackeray, Miss Nicholls, Mrs Beckwith and Mrs Cookson will be accompanying the children on the trip this year. Year 4 swimming will be cancelled on 18th November for those children who are in school due to the residential.
Fantastic Staff
While on the subject of our fantastic staff, I would like this week to highlight Mrs Wathen’s contribution to our school. Mrs Wathen is a key member of the team that makes the school tick. She is a very talented organiser – having taken a leading role in the development of our International provision – and a very talented teacher of Spanish. Magic happens at Robin Hood due to the talents and the hard work of the staff here. My grateful thanks to Mrs Wathen and to all of our fabulous team for creating the magic at Robin Hood.
Blogs
I spent a lovely half hour one evening this week looking at the various blogs that we have running from around school. The blogs – accessed via the Homepage of the school website – are truly incredible and give a fantastic insight into the learning that is happening all around our school. If you haven’t viewed our blogs recently… I would heartily encourage you to do so. They are further evidence for you of the amazing things that are happening at Robin Hood.
Have a very safe Bonfire Night and a brilliant weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
We have had a wonderful first week back in Nursery and begun our new topic on Celebrations! The children did a fantastic job starting the festivities this week in Halloween attire! Many thanks to those children and parents who put so much time and effort into the Halloween decorations for the Nursery! They are amazing once again!
THIS WEEK
We have been learning the importance of staying safe on Bonfire Night! The children have watched news bites and video clips and shared safety stories with Welephant, the fire safety elephant, about the dangers of fire and fireworks! As a result of our learning and in preparation for the main event, the children have made some fantastic bonfire night safety posters. The children have also been enjoying singing songs and playing musical instruments around our very own camp fire, and what glorious singing voices they have too!!
NEXT WEEK
We will be looking at the history behind Bonfire Night and sharing our experiences of the event this year. The children will also be making their very own fireworks and be using them in an investigation to see which travels the furthest!
The children will also be developing their counting skills using the firework and bonfire theme to count out objects and recognise numerals. Please continue to support your child with their number skills at home too, counting objects, sharing items, spotting numbers around you etc, to help your child feel confident when they are involved in these activities in Nursery.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Return your child’s reading record on a Wednesday
· Practice recognising the letters in their name.
Requests!
If your child has any clothing that they have out grown, please could we kindly ask that you donate it to Nursery. (including girls knickers and boys pants).
Thank you for your support.
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you for the amazing response to our Halloween home learning. Miss Abbey has made a short video which you can see on our blog http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/ Please do have a look and see what we (and you) have been up to this week!
THIS WEEK
We have started on our new topic of 'Celebrations' and have been finding out more about Halloween and Bonfire Night. Mrs Holland came to talk to the children about fire safety and we have produced our own posters with facts and tips to help us stay safe, which we will display around school. We also had two lovely pumpkins that Mrs Friar and the Nursery children grew, which we made into Halloween lanterns (with very scary faces!)
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will be finding out all about the story of Guy Fawkes and where the Gunpowder Plot originated. The children will be retelling the story in their own words and we will be asking them to use time connectives, such as first, next, after that and finally to link the events chronologically. In our topic sessions, we will be creating some amazing firework pictures and in numeracy we will be doing some estimating and measuring using non standard units. We will even predict and check how far our rockets can fly! (Kitchen roll tubes gratefully received - thank you!)
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
By reading daily with your child for five minutes. All children should now be on PINK band books. We have heard some super reading this week from the children but please can we ask that you continue to put extra support around your child if they are still on Lilac books to help them progress on to Pink. Thank you.
By practising the sounds of the week every day. Sounds are z, j and h.
By ensuring your child can write their first and second names independently.
By recognising and practising writing the numbers to 20 with the correct formation.Well done to those superstars who have achieved this in the last week!
By writing the first set of tricky words (I, no, go, the, to, into). We will be asking the children to show us how fabulously they can write these words next week.
Have a lovely weekend.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
Well a big welcome back to all the children in KS1! The children have returned to school recharged and eager to learn, leading to a very productive first week back. Here are a few useful dates for your diaries of events across this half term:
9th Nov – School Photos
6th Dec – KS1 Theatre Trip
9th Dec – Celebration Friday
14th Dec – KS1 Christmas Performance (2pm-3pm)
15th Dec – KS1 Christmas Party
KS1 Christmas Performance (6pm-7pm)
16th Dec – Final day of term
3rd Jan 2012 - Training Day
4th Jan 2012 – First Day of term.
Home Learning and Reading Records
Please ensure that your child is handing in their Reading Record and home learning book every Monday morning. Even if your child has not completed their home learning in their book it must be handed in so that the next home learning task can be sent home. Also don’t forget that if your child hands their reading record in every Monday morning for the rest of the half term they will receive 100 merits! All these will add up for our class merit winner at Christmas and that all important Toys R Us winner at the end of the year.
Water Bottles
It is very important that your child brings their own water bottle in to school every day so that they are able to have a drink whenever they wish. Although they are able to have a drink at lunch time school cannot facilitate this within the classroom across the day.
This Weeks Learning
Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have been investigating number bonds. This is pairs of numbers that total 10, 20 and even 100! The children have explored this in a range of contexts including working out missing numbers within a number sentence (e.g. ? + 11 = 20). The children have also been finding 10 more/less than a given number. Why not try this at home?
Next week the children will be enhancing their addition strategies. In school we work out addition problems by placing the biggest number in our head and counting on. The children will begin adding single digit numbers but will soon be tackling the addition of larger 2 and even 3 digit numbers!
Literacy
We have begun a new unit on Story Writing this week with the children exploring some of our favourite Julia Donaldson stories (Y1: The Gruffalo, Y1/2: Smartest Giant, Y2: Room on the Broom). The children have been using Drama to explore the events and characters within the story. Next week the children will be writing their own stories based on their class text but they will be adding their own ideas by changing the characters, setting or structure of the story.
Topic
In Topic this week the children have been introduced to the story of Beauty and the Beast. We have been exploring the main characters within the story in order to create a fact file using smart notebook on the computers. The children have also been learning how to present their information by changing background colour, text settings and they have even begun finding their own images using the internet.
Next week the children will be developing their drawing and colouring skills as they complete detailed drawings of the characters within the story. We will also be looking at adding finer details and backgrounds to our images.
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a very fun and eventful week back in year 3/4 and would like to congratulate all the children for their sensible and mature attitudes towards their learning. Thank you to everyone for the amazing home learning we have received, it's really kicked off our exciting topic. We were blown away by the fantastic posters, radio broadcasts, TV adverts and models of different inventions!!!
Numeracy
In Numeracy the children have been developing their mental strategies for addition. We have been recognising number bonds from 10 to 100 and have been adding three or four different two digit numbers by finding pairs totalling 9,10,11. We have also been partitioning numbers by adding together the tens and then the units.
Literacy
This week we have been analysing a selection of radio and television adverts, identifying persuasive features. We have then written our own radio broadcasts for our trainer designs using persuasive features such as statistics, quotations, comparatives, superlatives and lots of fantastic adjectives.
RE
The children have watched an animated version of the Christmas nativity story which the children will be recreating in the style of a comic book.
ICT
The children have designed their own Nike trainer (using the Nike website) and then transformed these images into a video. They will then be using these to create their own persuasive trainer adverts.
Reminders
We would like to thank all the parent/carers for their contribution towards our white plimsolls. The children will be customising these over the next couple of weeks as part of our DT unit and these will then be the stimulus for lots of fantastic writing during literacy. We will be showcasing our final outcomes at a fashion show during celebration assembly on Friday 25th November.
Next Tuesday we will be holding auditions for our Christmas production 'The Xmas Factor'. Every child who would like to audition must prepare a short poem or joke to perform in front of the class. Every year priority of speaking parts goes to the year 4 children however there are some extra parts so we do encourage year 3's to audition as well. Good Luck!
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
·Congratulations to Faith and Jade who are our Achievers of the Week for their super moving collage which they created using a wide range of techniques in Smart Notebook.
·Thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions over the holiday. We are truly amazed with the standard of creativity, thought, attention and detail that has been put into these pieces. We really do appreciate the support you give with the home learning - Thank you. Any children who have not yet brought in their work still have another week…so get thinking.
·A big thank you to all year 6 children who have taken time out of their half term break to complete some of the SATs revision pack. We will be engaging with this information over the next few weeks so please make sure you have it in school with you at all times.
Numeracy: This week we have been focusing on finding the perimeter of different shapes and then applying our addition skills to solve problems. Next week we will be moving on to looking at finding the area of squares, rectangles and compound shapes. This will require our multiplication skills! We will be using the grid method to multiply 2, 3, 4 and even 5 digit numbers.
Home learning: Please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we began our unit on persuasion. After reading a very interesting letter from Mr Wilson about changes to the school hall, the children set about planning and drafting their own letter in response ensuring they included persuasive elements throughout. Next week we will be editing these letters and marking them against our star criteria in the hope that we will be able to convince Mr Wilson not to change the school hall.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our RE unit: Biblical, Religion, Tradition, Prayer, Worship, Symbol, Testament, Resurrection, Samaritan, Apostles
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Science we have begun our unit on forces and have looked at the effects of gravity. We have carried out investigations around water resistance (buoyancy) and air resistance in order to test out our theories.
In PE we have been looking at the core skills involved in gymnastics (balances, rolls, turns and jumps). We have practised some of these skills and will be trying to perfect them over the next few weeks.
In RE we have begun our unit studying the Bible. We have been navigating our way around the text and have familiarised ourselves with some of the content. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at the different ‘books’ of the bible including the Gospels.
In our Reading sessions we have begun looking at the classic horror novel ‘Room 13’ by Robert Swindells. The novel is set in Whitby and tells the story of a young girl called Fliss who encounters strange goings-on during a school trip…and they all seem to relate to a particular person and a particular room…
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
Dear Parent/Carer,
Harvest Fun!
We had an interesting turn of events for our Harvest Celebration this year. On the final day of last Half Term, we were half way to the Church when we were informed that, due to a mix-up, it was no longer available for our Harvest. A school is defined by its response to challenging circumstances… We turned around, prepared the Hall and held a fabulous celebration, led by our Key Stage One pupils. My thanks to those parents and families who stuck with us through the confusion to attended the event. We do hope to return to Lofthouse Church for our Christmas, Easter and Harvest celebrations to come.
Home Learning
I would like to say an enormous thank you to our pupils, parents and families for their fantastic Home Learning projects. The Home Learning projects are truly incredible… we have received some really inspired and inspirational creations that have clearly been a delight for families to produce together. Learning together and having fun when learning really are the keys to successful learning.
Christmas Fair
I was delighted to hear from Jenny Curgenven, our PTA Chair and Governor, that we have a group of PTA volunteers who met at the Halfway House recently and that our Christmas Fair will be going ahead on Saturday 3rd December. More information will follow soon.
A school sits at the heart of its Community and can act as the focus for social and community events that add genuine value for that community. Being an active member of the PTA at Robin Hood benefits not only our children in school but the community as a whole. Your offers of help and support for the Christmas Fair will, I am certain, be greatly appreciated by Jenny and our PTA volunteers.
Trainer fashions at Celebration Assembly
Our Year 34 pupils will be up on the catwalk at the Celebration Assembly on 25th November to model the fantastic trainer creations that they have produced this Half Term. The pupils have used trainers as a stimulus for design research, making movies, writing persuasive adverts to sell their ground breaking designs and actually making the trainers themselves. Please join us for our fabulous fashion display.
School Photographs
Individual and family group school photographs will be taking place next week, Wed 9th November.
Children In Need
We will be supporting the Children In Need Appeal on Friday 18th November. This will be a Non-uniform Day. We ask that all children bring a Non-Uniform donation – all proceeds from the donations will be forwarded on to the Charity. The theme for Children In Need dressing up this year is spots. Pupils Jenny Hepworth and Shannon Keeble will be holding a Bake Sale on the day. Again, all proceeds will be going to Children In Need. My thanks and congratulations to the girls for their super charitable efforts.
Poppy Appeal
We are selling poppies in school on behalf of the Royal British Legion Appeal. Our School Captains will be visiting classes daily with poppies for sale.
Year 4 Residential
Our Year 4’s are preparing for their upcoming residential visit to East Barnby. My thanks to the staff who make ‘extras’ like this a possibility for our pupils. We are very fortunate to be able to offer two residential visit for our pupils during their careers at Robin Hood, made possible only through the dedication and commitment of our staff. Miss Thackeray, Miss Nicholls, Mrs Beckwith and Mrs Cookson will be accompanying the children on the trip this year. Year 4 swimming will be cancelled on 18th November for those children who are in school due to the residential.
Fantastic Staff
While on the subject of our fantastic staff, I would like this week to highlight Mrs Wathen’s contribution to our school. Mrs Wathen is a key member of the team that makes the school tick. She is a very talented organiser – having taken a leading role in the development of our International provision – and a very talented teacher of Spanish. Magic happens at Robin Hood due to the talents and the hard work of the staff here. My grateful thanks to Mrs Wathen and to all of our fabulous team for creating the magic at Robin Hood.
Blogs
I spent a lovely half hour one evening this week looking at the various blogs that we have running from around school. The blogs – accessed via the Homepage of the school website – are truly incredible and give a fantastic insight into the learning that is happening all around our school. If you haven’t viewed our blogs recently… I would heartily encourage you to do so. They are further evidence for you of the amazing things that are happening at Robin Hood.
Have a very safe Bonfire Night and a brilliant weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
ROUND UP!
We have had a wonderful first week back in Nursery and begun our new topic on Celebrations! The children did a fantastic job starting the festivities this week in Halloween attire! Many thanks to those children and parents who put so much time and effort into the Halloween decorations for the Nursery! They are amazing once again!
THIS WEEK
We have been learning the importance of staying safe on Bonfire Night! The children have watched news bites and video clips and shared safety stories with Welephant, the fire safety elephant, about the dangers of fire and fireworks! As a result of our learning and in preparation for the main event, the children have made some fantastic bonfire night safety posters. The children have also been enjoying singing songs and playing musical instruments around our very own camp fire, and what glorious singing voices they have too!!
NEXT WEEK
We will be looking at the history behind Bonfire Night and sharing our experiences of the event this year. The children will also be making their very own fireworks and be using them in an investigation to see which travels the furthest!
The children will also be developing their counting skills using the firework and bonfire theme to count out objects and recognise numerals. Please continue to support your child with their number skills at home too, counting objects, sharing items, spotting numbers around you etc, to help your child feel confident when they are involved in these activities in Nursery.
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
· Return your child’s reading record on a Wednesday
· Practice recognising the letters in their name.
Requests!
If your child has any clothing that they have out grown, please could we kindly ask that you donate it to Nursery. (including girls knickers and boys pants).
Thank you for your support.
Reception Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Thank you for the amazing response to our Halloween home learning. Miss Abbey has made a short video which you can see on our blog http://mrssatrobinhood.blogspot.com/ Please do have a look and see what we (and you) have been up to this week!
THIS WEEK
We have started on our new topic of 'Celebrations' and have been finding out more about Halloween and Bonfire Night. Mrs Holland came to talk to the children about fire safety and we have produced our own posters with facts and tips to help us stay safe, which we will display around school. We also had two lovely pumpkins that Mrs Friar and the Nursery children grew, which we made into Halloween lanterns (with very scary faces!)
NEXT WEEK
Next week we will be finding out all about the story of Guy Fawkes and where the Gunpowder Plot originated. The children will be retelling the story in their own words and we will be asking them to use time connectives, such as first, next, after that and finally to link the events chronologically. In our topic sessions, we will be creating some amazing firework pictures and in numeracy we will be doing some estimating and measuring using non standard units. We will even predict and check how far our rockets can fly! (Kitchen roll tubes gratefully received - thank you!)
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
By reading daily with your child for five minutes. All children should now be on PINK band books. We have heard some super reading this week from the children but please can we ask that you continue to put extra support around your child if they are still on Lilac books to help them progress on to Pink. Thank you.
By practising the sounds of the week every day. Sounds are z, j and h.
By ensuring your child can write their first and second names independently.
By recognising and practising writing the numbers to 20 with the correct formation.Well done to those superstars who have achieved this in the last week!
By writing the first set of tricky words (I, no, go, the, to, into). We will be asking the children to show us how fabulously they can write these words next week.
Have a lovely weekend.
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
Well a big welcome back to all the children in KS1! The children have returned to school recharged and eager to learn, leading to a very productive first week back. Here are a few useful dates for your diaries of events across this half term:
9th Nov – School Photos
6th Dec – KS1 Theatre Trip
9th Dec – Celebration Friday
14th Dec – KS1 Christmas Performance (2pm-3pm)
15th Dec – KS1 Christmas Party
KS1 Christmas Performance (6pm-7pm)
16th Dec – Final day of term
3rd Jan 2012 - Training Day
4th Jan 2012 – First Day of term.
Home Learning and Reading Records
Please ensure that your child is handing in their Reading Record and home learning book every Monday morning. Even if your child has not completed their home learning in their book it must be handed in so that the next home learning task can be sent home. Also don’t forget that if your child hands their reading record in every Monday morning for the rest of the half term they will receive 100 merits! All these will add up for our class merit winner at Christmas and that all important Toys R Us winner at the end of the year.
Water Bottles
It is very important that your child brings their own water bottle in to school every day so that they are able to have a drink whenever they wish. Although they are able to have a drink at lunch time school cannot facilitate this within the classroom across the day.
This Weeks Learning
Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have been investigating number bonds. This is pairs of numbers that total 10, 20 and even 100! The children have explored this in a range of contexts including working out missing numbers within a number sentence (e.g. ? + 11 = 20). The children have also been finding 10 more/less than a given number. Why not try this at home?
Next week the children will be enhancing their addition strategies. In school we work out addition problems by placing the biggest number in our head and counting on. The children will begin adding single digit numbers but will soon be tackling the addition of larger 2 and even 3 digit numbers!
Literacy
We have begun a new unit on Story Writing this week with the children exploring some of our favourite Julia Donaldson stories (Y1: The Gruffalo, Y1/2: Smartest Giant, Y2: Room on the Broom). The children have been using Drama to explore the events and characters within the story. Next week the children will be writing their own stories based on their class text but they will be adding their own ideas by changing the characters, setting or structure of the story.
Topic
In Topic this week the children have been introduced to the story of Beauty and the Beast. We have been exploring the main characters within the story in order to create a fact file using smart notebook on the computers. The children have also been learning how to present their information by changing background colour, text settings and they have even begun finding their own images using the internet.
Next week the children will be developing their drawing and colouring skills as they complete detailed drawings of the characters within the story. We will also be looking at adding finer details and backgrounds to our images.
LKS2 Newsletter
We have had a very fun and eventful week back in year 3/4 and would like to congratulate all the children for their sensible and mature attitudes towards their learning. Thank you to everyone for the amazing home learning we have received, it's really kicked off our exciting topic. We were blown away by the fantastic posters, radio broadcasts, TV adverts and models of different inventions!!!
Numeracy
In Numeracy the children have been developing their mental strategies for addition. We have been recognising number bonds from 10 to 100 and have been adding three or four different two digit numbers by finding pairs totalling 9,10,11. We have also been partitioning numbers by adding together the tens and then the units.
Literacy
This week we have been analysing a selection of radio and television adverts, identifying persuasive features. We have then written our own radio broadcasts for our trainer designs using persuasive features such as statistics, quotations, comparatives, superlatives and lots of fantastic adjectives.
RE
The children have watched an animated version of the Christmas nativity story which the children will be recreating in the style of a comic book.
ICT
The children have designed their own Nike trainer (using the Nike website) and then transformed these images into a video. They will then be using these to create their own persuasive trainer adverts.
Reminders
We would like to thank all the parent/carers for their contribution towards our white plimsolls. The children will be customising these over the next couple of weeks as part of our DT unit and these will then be the stimulus for lots of fantastic writing during literacy. We will be showcasing our final outcomes at a fashion show during celebration assembly on Friday 25th November.
Next Tuesday we will be holding auditions for our Christmas production 'The Xmas Factor'. Every child who would like to audition must prepare a short poem or joke to perform in front of the class. Every year priority of speaking parts goes to the year 4 children however there are some extra parts so we do encourage year 3's to audition as well. Good Luck!
Thank you,
Team 3/4
UKS2 Newsletter
News Roundup
·Congratulations to Faith and Jade who are our Achievers of the Week for their super moving collage which they created using a wide range of techniques in Smart Notebook.
·Thank you to all parents and carers who have helped their children to create some wonderful inventions over the holiday. We are truly amazed with the standard of creativity, thought, attention and detail that has been put into these pieces. We really do appreciate the support you give with the home learning - Thank you. Any children who have not yet brought in their work still have another week…so get thinking.
·A big thank you to all year 6 children who have taken time out of their half term break to complete some of the SATs revision pack. We will be engaging with this information over the next few weeks so please make sure you have it in school with you at all times.
Numeracy: This week we have been focusing on finding the perimeter of different shapes and then applying our addition skills to solve problems. Next week we will be moving on to looking at finding the area of squares, rectangles and compound shapes. This will require our multiplication skills! We will be using the grid method to multiply 2, 3, 4 and even 5 digit numbers.
Home learning: Please continue to practise ALL of your times tables as well as other number facts (e.g. number bonds to 100, 1000, etc). These facts are fundamental to all areas of numeracy. Any additional resources related to specific strategies will be provided for those who wish to practise at home. These resources are NOT compulsory; however we hope that children will choose to use these to help them with their understanding of the units of work.
Literacy
This week we began our unit on persuasion. After reading a very interesting letter from Mr Wilson about changes to the school hall, the children set about planning and drafting their own letter in response ensuring they included persuasive elements throughout. Next week we will be editing these letters and marking them against our star criteria in the hope that we will be able to convince Mr Wilson not to change the school hall.
Home Learning: This week’s spellings are linked to our RE unit: Biblical, Religion, Tradition, Prayer, Worship, Symbol, Testament, Resurrection, Samaritan, Apostles
Other areas of the curriculum:
In Science we have begun our unit on forces and have looked at the effects of gravity. We have carried out investigations around water resistance (buoyancy) and air resistance in order to test out our theories.
In PE we have been looking at the core skills involved in gymnastics (balances, rolls, turns and jumps). We have practised some of these skills and will be trying to perfect them over the next few weeks.
In RE we have begun our unit studying the Bible. We have been navigating our way around the text and have familiarised ourselves with some of the content. Over the next few weeks we will be looking at the different ‘books’ of the bible including the Gospels.
In our Reading sessions we have begun looking at the classic horror novel ‘Room 13’ by Robert Swindells. The novel is set in Whitby and tells the story of a young girl called Fliss who encounters strange goings-on during a school trip…and they all seem to relate to a particular person and a particular room…
5/6D http://robinhood56d.blogspot.com/
Visit our Blogs! 5/6G http://robinhood56g.blogspot.com/
5/6B http://robinhood56b.blogspot.com/
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