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/
