Newsletter Issue 17 |
Friday 20th January 2012
|
Dear Parent/Carer,
Home Learning
I would like once again to say an enormous thank you and well done to all of our children, parents and families throughout school who regularly engage with our Home Learning. We display Home Learning in classrooms and around school and it is absolutely stunning. There is some great creativity going on at home and it is clear that our children are having a fabulous time learning at home with parents and family on the various projects. Nursery, Reception, Key Stage One and all the way throughout school… Wow! It’s great stuff! We very much appreciate and value the great community support that we receive as a school. We are, of course, committed to helping your child to achieve and feel that if we are able to suggest ideas, projects and/or how to support, it is then up to parents to decide how little or how much of the Home Learning opportunities that they want to engage in with their child. Do have a look at our Home Learning displays on our blogs and when you’re next in school… perhaps at a Celebration Friday event. I am very proud of the deep connection that exists between parents and the school and the partnership in supporting your children that we share.
Celebration Friday dates
30th March
25th May
13th July
Nursery hold separate Half Termly Celebration Events due to the ‘split week’.
Entrance Area Display
On subject of celebration, do pop in to have a read of our latest Entrance Area display, opposite Mrs Smith & Mrs Holland. Mrs Wathen and our team have dressed the display board with many of the newspaper and magazine articles that have appeared about the school over the last few years. There is an impressive range of articles… showing that Robin Hood enjoys excellence and success on many fronts.
Art
You can look out for further press coverage in the Rothwell Record about our fabulous Artwork and Community Enhancement Programme. Last week Lofthouse Children’s Centre held an Art Exhibition launch featuring our children’s creative works. My congratulations and thanks to Mrs Chin and Mrs Mistry for their fabulous work at Art Club. I think our Art has reached yet another new level, as has our community art programme, which is seeing an increased number of ‘satellite galleries’ around the city. I am sure that soon wherever you go you will be seeing Art by pupils at Robin Hood. This may be the start of some long and brilliant careers…
Animals in Foundation Stage
Our Foundation Stage pupils enjoyed some fantastic experiential learning this week when they came face-to-face with a range of creatures brought into school by ZooLab. Our Nursery and Reception children were far braver than me… many of them having a go a touching the rat, the snake, the cockroach and much more. Our Nursery looked like a scene from a Bush Tucker Trial for the morning… but the children had a fabulous time learning about the creatures and have become something of experts.
Parent Mail
While we remain in the grip of cold weather there is always the danger of snow and consequent disruption to roads, schools, etc. We have a very good opening record during adverse weather conditions, however, each circumstance is different and it is important that our lines of communication are well established and robust. Everyone who has completed a Parent Mail form would receive an instant text alert in the event of a closure or, indeed, in the event of any other circumstance. We would notify of closure via our facebook page, our blog and our noticeboard. Local radio also carries closure information. The most highly recommended system is Parent Mail. If you have not yet completed your details for Parent Mail text alerts and email, please do so. We can then guarantee getting timely information to you.
Guitar Club
We have spaces available at the Beginners Guitar Club on Thursday evenings 3.15pm - 4.15pm after the February Half Term. Anyone interested please contact Mrs Dale.
Mad Science
We still have places available for a Mad Science After School Club. Anyone interested please contact Mrs Smith at the school office.
Have a fabulous weekend,
Mr Wilson
Nursery Newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
The week the children had a very exciting start to the week as we had a visit from some very interesting animals! The children proved to be very brave as they met and handled animals such as a snake, a cockroach and a millipede! They even got the chance to come face to face with a very adorable rat! (That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say!) Well done boys and girls!
THIS WEEK
We have taken full advantage of the fascinating facts we found out about looking after different animals and used them to support our role play in the Vets. We have also moved on to learning about animals that live on a farm. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs Friar for the absolutely gorgeous Old Macdonald Farm display that she has created with the children over the course of the week. Please do take a look!
The children have also been practising their counting and addition skills as they learn to add 2 small numbers together to find the total.
NEXT WEEK
The children will be learning about the traditions of Chinese New Year. We will be watching video clips to help us see the family preparations and as a stimulus for creating our very own dragon dance! The children will be involved in making our very own Chinese dragon and composing our own musical beats to dance to.
We will also continue to develop our name writing as we make and send cards and build on our number skills, counting out, counting on and adding together.
How you can help us
Please return your child’s reading record and name writing book on a Wednesday (Group1) or Friday (Group 2).
Encourage your child to develop their drawing and colouring skills.
Play games that involve turn taking, number recognition and counting.
Listen to songs and rhymes, pointing out the words that rhyme and make your own to add on.
The children have also been working hard on listening for initial sounds in words. Please do encourage your child to think of what letter sound words start with and think of other words that start with the same sound.
Please could I make a request for old newspapers to be brought into Nursery for the children to use on the painting table.
Many thanks for your continued support
Have a great weekend.
Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team
RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
We have had another amazing week in Reception. We started the week with an exciting visit from Zoolab where the children and staff got to hold a variety of interesting pets including Mr Marmalade the snake, Matilda and Thumbelina the pet rats and Ursula the tarantula. Miss Lambert reported that every single person behaved beautifully so well done to you all!
THIS WEEK
This week we have been continuing to learn about Animals in their habitats - focussing on Farm animals. We have shared the song Old Macdonald and have used Farmer Pete and his sheep to help us work out our number bonds to ten.
In our literacy and topic sessions we have been creating a range of different habitats for Old MacDonald's farm and then been amazingly creative and made the animals from paper mache!
Why not drop in next week to have a look at our fabulous display?
NEXT WEEK
Is Chinese New Year and we will be finding out about the history behind it: looking at China
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
- by listening to your child read for five minutes everyday and checking their understanding by asking questions and discussing what has happened in the story
- by bringing in your home learning on Monday morning
- by practising our ;words of the week' which are - you, they, all, are, my, her
Key Stage 1 Newsletter
The preparations for our fundraising open afternoon are well underway this week with the children developing a range of outstanding outcomes to spread the message of the rainforests! You are invited to join us on Thursday 2nd February at 2:15pm to celebrate this learning with us and we are sure you will be blown away!
This half term our PE theme is gymnastics which we have based around the use of climbing equipment and various pieces of apparatus within the hall. It is important that your child brings their PE kit to school every Wednesday. This should be a white t-shirt and blue or black shorts. Wearing incorrect clothing poses a serious health and safety risk and children with unsuitable attire will be unable to take part.
Home reading records are to be handed into school every Monday morning. We would like to say a huge thank you to all the parents of KS1 as the reading records have proven to be a great way of keeping us all informed of the amazing progress the children are making. Please feel free to add comments to the reading record about how you feel your child has done when reading at home, so we can ensure we praise and celebrate these achievements and also offer help and advice where needed.
This Weeks Learning
NumeracyThis week in Numeracy the children have been trying to improve the speed of their mental calculations. The children have been practicing each time to improve upon their time and results from the day before with great success. Why not try this out at home with a timer and a list of calculations. We have set the bar in year 1 at 10 questions in 2 minutes!
We have also continued to look at shapes with the children engaging in a range of investigations that required them to think carefully about the properties of shapes in order to draw, build and recreate them. The children have also explored symmetry with the children first of all designing symmetrical butterflies of the Rainforest before looking more closely at lines of symmetry in shape.
LiteracyIn literacy the children have begun generating ideas and vocabulary to use in an invitation to tempt you to our open afternoon. The children have been thinking about how best to persuade people to come along through the use of adjectives and text effects, as well as ensuring the use of connectives (and, but, so, because) to provide the reader with as much information as possible!
TopicIn Topic this week the children have begun the design and make aspect of our fundraising planning. The children have been designing a range of stuffed animals to promote endangered species. We have also been utilising our amazing art skills to create a piece of small scale art work which will be enhanced and developed into next week so watch this space!
LKS2 Newsletter
The children have impressed us yet again with their fantastic learning and attitude this week. They have been showing great perseverance with their numeracy and literacy and are really enjoying learning all about World War Two and what life was like as an evacuee.
To celebrate the end of the war we will be holding our very own VE day party in the hall to share our fantastic outcomes from the unit with parents and carers. This will be held on Tuesday 7th of February at 2:30pm, in the school hall. We will be asking the children to be dressed in traditional 1940's outfits.
Literacy
The children have been imagining they are their evacuee's mother, who is still living in London
Numeracy
This week, we have been learning about the different units we measure weight in. The children have been great at converting between kg and g and have even been using decimal and fraction notation! Next week, the children will be applying their learning to weigh out recipes that were used during the war time. We are continuing with our push on times tables. Please continue to support your child with their quick recall of times tables up to 12x12. TNT tables is a great, fun game to help them practice and see if they can beat their best time: http://www.fieryideas.co.uk/tnt.html
In ICT the children have been continuing with their fabulous PowerPoint presentations with hyperlinks all about World War II. Miss Nicholls has been impressed with the children’s efforts and achievements in art and everyone is showing a great attitude towards football in PE; they are really developing their dribbling and passing skills.
Please ensure your child has a warm, outdoor PE kit in school. 3/4T and 3/4N on Tuesdays, 3/4M on Thursdays.
Have a great weekend,
Year 3/4 team
UKS2 News Roundup:
- Congratulations to Somtochi Hani Okoroafor who is our achiever of the week this week. He has truly wowed us with his use of figurative language in literacy and has thought very carefully about his choice of words and phrases when thinking about describing the scene and characters. Well done Som.
- Thank you to Year 6 parents and carers who attended the parent meetings this week. We were pleased to share progress, next steps and how we can support each other in enabling the children to be the very best they can be.
- We're delighted with the fabulous effort by many with reading at home. We're enjoying reading the comments made and the discussions we're having with the children about the books they're reading. Roald Dahl is a popular author choice as is the Anthony Horowitz series, which is based around the character of Alex Rider who we read about during the autumn term. Keep up the super effort! Well done.
Numeracy:
- In Numeracy this week, we have been finding lowest common multiples, highest common factors and prime numbers; we have noticed such a huge improvement with knowledge of multiplication facts...it is evident that all the practice on times tables is really paying off! Next week we will be learning about number sequences and patterns, involving decimals, positive and negative numbers and even algebra!
- Home Learning:
Why not try the 'Multiple Wipeout' or 'Ghost Blasters' ipad/ipod app to help improve the speed of times table facts even more!
The Year 6's also have their SAT revision packs as their ongoing home learning.
Literacy:
- This week, we have been focusing on incorporating strategies to develop tension and anticipation in a story which includes either Cerberus, Medusa or the Minotaur. We've developed the setting using suggestion and have continued to focus on figurative language to add description.
- Next week, we will be writing our own Greek myth with a particular focus on showing shifts in time. We'll continue to focus on developing character and setting description.
- Home Learning: This week's spellings are linked to our writing focus next week. goddess, creature, maiden, daughter, underworld, heroic, citizen, consequence, fateful, ancient
Other areas of the curriculum:
- In Topic, we've been making decisions in teams about how to present the historical research we've been learning. This will include a written, ICT and Art outcome. The Design Team from each class have been creating masks for the drama performance and the Theatre Direction Teams have been refining the script. 5/6D will be presenting the myth of Demeter and Persephone, 5/6G Perseus and the Hunt for Medusa's head and 5/6B Theseus and the Minotaur. We're updating our Greek blogs regularly with our progress and photos.
