Friday, 3 February 2012

Issue 19 2011-12


Newsletter Issue 19

Friday 3rd February 2012


Dear Parent/Carer,

We were visited on Monday this week by Headteacher colleagues from Scotland, Spain and the Netherlands.  They spent time in our classrooms in both the morning and the afternoon.  All were amazed at the fabulous learning going on in our classrooms and all expressed very sincere praise for our school.  Earlier today, we welcomed Mrs Bailey back to Robin Hood.  It was lovely for everyone to see her and for her to say hello to staff and pupils alike.  Mrs Bailey visited with members of the teaching staff from her school.  I am pleased to report that she has made a successful start to her Headship in some difficult circumstances.  I am certain that with Mrs Bailey at the helm the school can look forward to an outstanding future.

Key Stage One Fund Raising
‪Key Stage One held a Fund Raising event on Thursday this week.  Our thanks to parents, family and supporters for the brilliant turn out in support of our children and their charity initiative.  Throughout the Half Term the children have been producing posters, fact files, pictures and teddies, all of which were all up for sale.  Our curriculum is about connecting our children with real life situations and real world contexts for their learning.  My thanks to the children, families, supporters and staff for making this a special topic and a special event.  Special thanks go to Mrs Comstive, Mrs Mistry, Miss Boyes, Mrs Beckwith and Miss Abbey who spent additional hours preparing for the event and adding the finishing touches to the items for sale.  The event raised a total of £287.55 towards the children’s nominated charity.

Year 34 Event
Parents of our Year 34 pupils can look forward to their Open Event next week where they will be celebrating their learning about the Second World War with you.

Your views
I was very proud and pleased to read the wonderful positive comments left by our parents after the Key Stage One event yesterday.  We plan to make this a feature of our open events and invite you to share your views with us.  We will be adding a new board in our Entrance area, next to our Press Board, where we will post your views.  If you haven’t been into school to have a look at our Press Board yet, please do stop by.  It is lovely to reflect back on the many and diverse reasons that the school has received positive publicity in recent years and to see some of our children from years past.

Brilliant Teams
An outstanding school, as the above story so clearly demonstrates, is founded upon brilliant teams working together effectively for the benefit of all.  I would also like to shine the spotlight this week on the work of our fantastic Cleaning Team.  I am filled with pride every day about how clean and how bright an environment our school is.  Our Cleaning Team, led by Mr Reynolds, takes pride in achieving a bright, welcoming and clean environment every day for our children, staff and community.

Cleaner Required
Our school is as beautiful as it is in part because we invest heavily in cleaning materials and equipment.  We seek to add another cleaner to our Cleaning Team in order to further enhance an already fabulous environment.  If you are interested, or know someone who might be, please contact Mrs Smith in the School Office.

Apprentice
Thanks to everyone who has thus far shown interest in our apprenticeship vacancy.  Further details about the vacancy are available from myself or Mrs Smith.  We are delighted that we are able to further support young people in our community by offering pathways into careers.

Dinner Money
Could parents of children on School Dinners please note that Dinner Money should be paid on a Monday for the week the meals are to be taken.  We are spending more and more precious administration time each week on issuing reminder letters.  More time on matters like this means less time on child-focused tasks.  Please support us.

Nursery times
Nursery parents please note that opening times for our Nursery are 8.45am-9.00am on a morning.  This is the precious settling time that you can spend in the Nursery with your child.  The external and internal doors will be locked at 9.00am.  The teaching morning begins at 9.00am, as in the rest of the school.  Late arrivals must report to the Main Office.  Late arrivals will only be admitted to Nursery after a phone call from the office.  Given that we have a 15 minute entry period, please ensure that your child is in Nursery on time.

Have a lovely weekend,
Mr Wilson

Nursery Newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP
The children have been full of enthusiasm as we continued our topic on
animals and learnt all about jungle animals. The quality of the home learning that arrived in Nursery has been inspirational. The ideas the children bring
into Nursery with them is fantastic, we have been using the home learning
as a tool to encourage the children to teach each other how they have made things, and used their ideas to further enhance our setting.

THIS WEEK
We have been writing about our favourite animals and drawing pictures of
them too! We have been focusing on the animal’s colours and patterns and concentrating on colour choice and detail. We have also been busy counting animals and adding them together to see how many are hiding in the jungle.
It has been a delight to observe the children engaging in imaginative play and developing their social interaction skills as they make the most of our new
jungle explorers’ safari hut.

NEXT WEEK
The children will be continuing with the topic “Animals in their Habitats” and learning about woodland animals. We will be sharing stories based around Percy the Park Keeper and learning to classify the different animals according
to their features. We will also be discussing animals which are nocturnal and animals that hibernate.
In number the children will be looking at shapes as well as continuing to count
in order and count out smaller amounts from a larger group.

How you can help us
• Please return your child’s reading record and name writing book on a      Wednesday (Group1) or Friday (Group 2).
• Play games (i.e. board games) that involve turn taking.      
• Encourage your child to put on their own coats, socks and shoes.

Many thanks for your continued support

Have a great weekend.

Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team


RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
Well done to everybody on another amazing week in Reception. Even though the weather has been a bit on the chilly side we have still managed to enjoy our fabulous indoor and outdoor provision! Our classroom has been transformed into a jungle with your fabulous home learning and Miss Fox's super small world area; we are surrounded by crocodiles, monkeys, snakes and parrots!

THIS WEEK
We have continued with our Animals in their Habitats topic and have been focussing on Jungle animals. The children's home learning has proved a great inspiration for our independent making table and in our topic sessions we have been making large scale animals to display in our classroom. We have been sharing lots of jungle stories and the children have been describing and recreating their very own animal patterns. We have been impressed with their adjectives (smooth, shiny, slippery, and bright) and their grasp of alliteration (cranky crocodile, loud lion and tall tiger). Well done!

NEXT WEEK
Is our final week in our Animals topic and we will be looking at British wildlife animals. For home learning we are asking the children to have a look when they are out and about and see which animals they can spot in their garden or at the park. We will be finding out more about the wildlife animals and creating fact files which will explain where they live and what they like to eat. Part of our learning will be around nocturnal animals, so expect to be amazed by some super information by the end of the week! In our topic sessions we will be making both blow painted hedgehogs and salt dough birds - with the children adding their own detail. In the outdoor area we will be making some bird feeders to hang in the trees and help the birds to survive the winter. It looks like it will be another fabulous week.

HOW YOU CAN HELP US
  • By keeping up your fabulous support around reading and writing. Visitors to our classroom continue to be amazed by the children's achievements
  • By helping your child to complete their home learning and bringing into school on Monday morning
  • By practising the words for next week which are: said, have, like, so, do, some
Thank you for your continued support.

KS1 Newsletter

What an amazing week this has been!  The children were very excited about the Fund Raising Event which took place on Thursday.  This was a fantastic community event and showed us yet again how supportive the Parents/Carers are at Robin Hood!!  The event was to raise money to help save an endangered Rainforest animal which each class will decide upon next week in Topic.  The Key Stage 1 staff would like to say a huge Thank You for your wonderful comments and for making the event a brilliant success!!

Reading around the World
Miss Nicholls last week introduced the theme for World Book day, 'Reading around the World'.  Please continue to read lots at home, when you add a comment in your child's reading record please write the time you and your child read.  This will be recorded in school so we can see where in the world your child is......

Literacy
We hope you all received your invitation to the Fund Raising Event on Thursday, thank you for the replies to your child.  Every child who received a letter from their Parents/Carers was so excited and proud to read it to the rest of the class.  There were some incredible replies, from bird shaped paper, to 'official' typed letters!  This was a fantastic link between home and school. 

Next week the children will be writing a Thank You letter, explaining how much money we raised (a whopping £287.55) and sharing their thoughts and feelings.  The children will also bring these home to share.  They will continue to develop their ideas using so, if, but, because, when, CAPITAL LETTERS, full stops, text effects (bold text, CAPITALIZATION, ........, !!).

Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have being looking at fractions of shapes, cutting shapes in half, quarters and even thirds!  They have also being writing these as numbers 1/2, 1/4, 1/3, discussing what each number means within the fraction (the top number is the parts which are coloured in and the bottom number is the number of sections).  They have investigated equivalent fractions, 2/4 is the same as a half.   Why not draw some shapes and ask your child to write the fraction.

Next week the children will be using this knowledge of fractions and sharing sections out equally and using it with numbers.  The children will be halving numbers, investigating that only even numbers can be halved.  They will continue to look at sharing numbers into quarters and even thirds.

Please support your child by counting lots at home.  counting in 2's, 3's, 4's and 10's.

LKS2 Newsletter

We have had yet another fantastic week in 3/4. As always we have been blown away by the children's positive attitudes towards their learning and the mature decisions they are making in the playground. We have had an action packed week, writing letters as evacuees to our fathers who are away fighting. We have been testing our measuring skills through creating rainbow cocktails in numeracy and designing mini allotments to accompany our Anderson shelters during topic.

To celebrate the end of the war and share all our outstanding learning from across the unit, we will be holding our very own VE day party 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 for the whole day so no uniform will be needed.

Literacy
The children have been busy using all of the knowledge they have gained around WW2 to write a letter as an evacuee to their fathers. They have told him all about being evacuated to the countryside, their journey on the train, the activities they have learnt whilst being in the country and what life was like in London during the Blitz. We are so proud that the children are applying all of their personal targets to their writing and further enhancing their compound and complex sentences by grouping these into super rainbow paragraphs, using wow words, powerful verbs, sentence starters and perfect punctuation. All of our diary entries and letters have gone into creating our very own WW2 evacuee journals and we are very excited to be sharing all these with you at our VE day celebration on the 7th February, in the school hall. We are also looking forward to using this opportunity to show off the beautiful handwriting that goes on in 3/4!

Numeracy
This week, the children have been using their understanding of measurement to convert different capacities in order to solve some practical problems. We have been carefully measuring out different capacities to make different Moshi Monster drinks, used ICT to record different capacities on various scales and have followed a series of instructions to create rainbow drinks that layered different liquids on top of one another. We have had lots of fun throughout our measuring unit and the children's enjoyment for learning has been overwhelming. We are still 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

Topic
The children have had lots of fun completing their Anderson shelters by creating their very own mini allotments packed with a variety of vegetables. The children have also continued to create their own propaganda posters, everyone has worked super hard through detailed illustration to portray a government message from WW2. Once again, we're all looking forward to sharing all of our fantastic outcomes from this half term with you at our VE day celebration on the 7th February.

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:
  • Our achiever this week is Ben Parker for his amazing efforts across the curriculum! Well done Ben, keep up the fabulous effort!
  • Last week in Celebration Assembly, the children were introduced to the Global Reading Challenge. They will be rewarded with 500 reading miles for every 10 minutes spent reading. Everybody who completes the challenge will be entered into a draw with the chance to win prizes for both themselves and school! Please make a note of the number of minutes read in your planner. These minutes will then be converted into reading miles and recorded in a special reading passport which will help us to keep track of our journeys around the world. The journeys are in six stages-
    Journey one: 3000 miles (1 hour) London - New York
    Journey two: 4500 miles (1 and a half hours) New York - Rio De Janiero
    Journey three: 6000 miles (2 hours) Rio De Janiero - Nairobi
    Journey four: 7500 miles (2 and a half hours) Nairobi - Sydney
    Journey five: 6000 miles (2 hours) Sydney - Beijing
    Journey six: 4500 miles ( 1 and a half hours) Beijing - Athens
    Journey seven : 1500 miles (30 minutes) Athens - London
  • Next Friday (10th February), each Year 5/6 class will be showing their Greek Myth drama performance in the afternoon assembly (2:30pm start). Everybody has contributed towards the performance either by writing the script, making the masks, creating the backdrops, composing the music or acting out the script. Parents and carers are most welcome to come and watch!
  • Next half term, our Topic will be on Japan, which we're very excited about! For one of the activities, each child will need a plain white pillow case. Please can these be brought into school for the start of the new half term. Thank you.    
Numeracy:
Literacy:
  • This week we have been continuing to develop our own Greek myths with a particular focus on incorporating appropriate dialogue into paragraphs. We've focused really closely on ensuring that any dialogue is accurately punctuated with speech marks as well as capital letters, full stops, commas, exclamation and question marks. 
  • Next week the children will be carrying out an assessed write to show us what fantastic writing skills they have retained this half term. The assessment will be around a Narrative stimulus in order for the children to apply their skills and give them the opportunity to shine.
  • Home Learning: Please continue to read regularly and record the number of minutes you are reading for the Global Reading Challenge!
  • SPELLINGS: The children will be tested next week on 20 random spellings from the spelling lists learnt this half term.
      Other areas of the curriculum:
  • In Topic, we've been refining our fantastic outcomes which will form a part of the historical research presentations. These include written, ICT and Art outcomes. The masks are made, the scripts are written, the actors are learning their lines, the music has been composed and the backdrops have been created for the Greek Myth drama. Next week, we'll be busy practising our presentations and rehearsing the performance. Visit our Greek blogs to find out what we've been up to!
http://56bgreeks.blogspot.com/
http://56dgreeks.blogspot.com/
http://56gancientgreece.blogspot.com/


 
Posted by at