Friday, 27 April 2012

Issue 28 2011-12


Newsletter Issue 28

Friday 27th April 2012



Dear Parents/ Carers,

It’s been another exciting week for us, with Year 3/4 enjoying some fantastic outings around Leeds, based on the children’s very own choices. Some children even went to visit the mayor, who was naturally charmed by the children and impressed with their fantastic behaviour. My thanks to our teachers, who really do go that extra mile to organise engaging and powerful starting points for the children’s learning.

Pom-Pom Day
Monday is Pom-Pom Day. We will be hosting the community event after school for which the School Hall will be open to all children, parents/carers and grandparents, uncles and aunties to help make as many pom-poms as we can!  The event will be led by Sarah Barton, Educational Officer for the Leeds Industrial Museum, who will be helping us create enough pom-poms to make our very own life-sized sheep!  The Robin Hood Primary School sheep will be part of an exhibition celebrating British wool and will feature in the Museum over the coming year.  Sarah will be holding an Assembly first thing in the morning for children.  We will be making our first pom-pom during the day.  Please help us to make the most pom-poms… and to make the biggest pom-pom sheep we can.  The school doors will open to this event at 3 p.m so do try and come along with your child after you have collected them at their normal finishing time. Refreshments will be available, as we are aware that Pom-Pom making can be very thirsty work!

Guitar and Keyboard tuition
We currently run after school clubs in Keyboard (Mondays) and Guitars (Tuesdays and Thursdays) using the expertise of peripatetic tutors from ArtForms, Leeds. We need to establish how much interest there would be for classes next academic year. The children attending these classes have gained an awful lot this year and many of those children have attended for more than one year. The classes are relatively cheap and instrument hire is included in the price. If your child is interested or you would like to know a little bit more about the clubs, can you please let Mrs Holland know in the office and she will pass the names onto Mrs Dale, who co-ordinates the organisation of these clubs.

Diamond Jubilee Reading Challenge
To mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, we are participating in the Diamond Jubilee Reading Challenge. The children need to read around the Commonwealth countries. If the children read for a total of 11 hours, over the next half term, then they will complete the challenge. Every 10 minutes reading equals 500 miles. Please mark in your child’s reading record the amount of time your child has read and this will be stamped by the class teacher, in your child’s reading passport. We will be celebrating the successful readers with special certificates in the final Celebration Assembly.

Car Safety
Can we please ask that anybody dropping off or collecting their children by car, do so safely and do not park on the zig-zags, next to the solid white lines, or use the school entrance as a turning circle as this compromises the safety of our children.

Well, the rain continues so let’s hope for some sunshine over the weekend.
Have a lovely weekend,

Mr. Wilson


Nursery Newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP
It’s been a rather wet week in Nursery this week, so we’ve had to be careful our Pirate ship didn’t really set sail! The children however have made the most of their time in Nursery and very much enjoyed using the additional props to aid their Pirate role play, which came in as home learning. Yet again the standards were very high and your creativity never fails to amaze us!

THIS WEEK
The children have been busy creating their very own treasure maps and within literacy they wrote the instructions for their fellow pirates to follow to find the treasure.
We have also carried out an investigation to find out which materials are best to make a pirate ship. The children spent time testing and sorting those materials that would float and not sink, and also discovered that some materials really were no good for sailing on water as they just went soggy!

NEXT WEEK
We will continue with our Pirate Topic and will be listening to the stories of Pirate Pete. From these stories the children will be learning about Diaries, and having a go at writing their very own!
Within Numeracy the children will be using positional language. We will be using puppets to learn vocabulary such as next to, above, on top of, behind etc. They will also be using this language to navigate the ICT beebots around a map.


How you can help us
·         Continue sharing stories at home, allowing your child to listen for the phonemes in simple words that you segment and ask them what word they can hear. E.g. p-i-g
·         Build on your child’s awareness of the letters in the alphabet saying both their name and sound, and practice the formation of letters by spelling simple words like cat, mop, jam etc.
·         Develop turn taking and sharing skills by playing games such as dominoes, snakes and ladders etc.

Many thanks for your continued support

Have a super weekend.

Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team

RECEPTION NEWS ROUND UP
We have had another fabulous week in Reception. We have continued with our pirates and the children have amazed us with their energy and creativity!

THIS WEEK
We have made our own treasure maps by staining them with tea and then adding detail such as volcanoes, trees and swamps, not forgetting X to mark the spot!
The children have been finding out about positional language and have been using clues to direct their friends to the treasure for example 'look behind the swamp or under the palm tree'. In topic we have designed our own pirate ships and then tested them to see if they float or sink.

NEXT WEEK
We will be finding out about Pirate Pete and his adventures, using the story of his escapades to write our own diary entries. We have also been finding out about famous historical pirate characters and looking closely at what is takes to be a successful pirate! In our topic sessions we will be making telescopes and treasure chests, describing the treasure that we have in our chests using describing words such shiny and sparkly. The children will also be using the metal detectors to find treasure in our outdoor area!

HOW YOU CAN HELP US
  • By completing the home learning task and encouraging your child to bring their home learning journal in on Monday morning
  • By reading with your child for at least five minutes every day and writing a comment in their reading record
  • By continuing to practice counting in 2's, 5's and 10's (there are some video clips on our blog which the children really enjoy)
  • To write their FULL name with correct letter formation
  • To write a number line to 20 with correct number formation 
Thank you for your continued support.

KS1 Newsletter

Well it's been another busy week in Key Stage One! The children have thoroughly enjoyed making their own Disney Character and are becoming professionals at using mod rock!

Numeracy
This week in Numeracy the children have been continuing to build on their learning about money. They have also been understanding how to interpret different types of data. This has included money pictograms and bar graphs, tables and tally charts. The children have been finding out who has the most, who has the least, what is the difference and adding amounts together. The children have been using all four operations; addition, subtraction. multiplication and division. Any problem solving at home using any of these operations is important. This useful link includes games the children have been playing this week. Why not have a try at home! <http://www.topmarks.co.uk/EducationalGames.aspx?cat=10>

Literacy
The children have been enjoying their new unit of learning all about story writing. This week has seen them complete their own story following the structure of a story mountain. Every good story has super front cover, an opening, a problem, a build up, a climax and finally a resolution and ending. The children have shown fantastic ideas and super imagination! We have continued to work on class targets which include the correct use of punctuation, spelling, developing ideas and using paragraphs.

Topic
This week in Topic the children have been making the structure to their Disney Character with newspaper and masking tape. Characters have ranged from Princesses to Aliens, to Animals and Cars! The children have been using mod rock to cover them to make a solid 3D base to a character. They have really enjoyed this activity and we look forward to seeing what the finished products will look like!

Next Week

Numeracy
The children will begin a new unit of learning of measure. They will be spending the week understanding length. This will include learning about the different types of length (mms, cms, m and km) lots of measuring lines, parts of the body, ordering heights and finding the difference between heights. Again, all of the four operations will be used so please support your child in using these at home.

Literacy
Over the next two weeks the children will be using a different adventure story to help them with their writing.
Year 1 - Cars
Year 1/2 Alice in Wonderland
Year 2 - UP
Why not watch the film or see what you can find out about these stories.

Topic
Next week in Topic the children will be lending their attention to science and the use of electricity. The home learning is all about researching about electricity and this will be important for them to progress in their understanding of a very interesting subject! The children will be making circuits, understanding different symbols, investigating different types of circuits and the safety implications and dangers of electricity.

Home Learning and Reading Records
We would like to thank all the parents and carers who encourage and support their children in completing their home learning. We also appreciate your continued involvement in updating the reading records. The home learning set and your child's reading record are an extremely important part to your child's learning. Please ensure that the home learning takes place and on the hand in date, all home learning is handed in with their home learning book. We love reading all the beautiful comments about your child's reading at home or any other learning they are doing and it is important that these are handed in every Monday Morning.

PE Kit
Recently many children across the Key Stage have been coming in to school with either the wrong PE Kit or no PE kit. PE takes place on a Wednesday for all of the children and the uniform consists of; blue or black shorts and a white t-shirt. You are more than welcome to leave PE kits in the lockers during the half term. If your child does not bring this a letter will be sent home to inform you.

Thank you for your support.
The Key Stage One Team

LKS2 Newsletter

This week we have been very busy "Discovering Leeds". Miss Thackeray's group had a fantastic time in Leeds City Centre on Tuesday where all the children enjoyed exploring the Museum and were fortunate enough to meet the Lord Mayor, who was particularly impressed with the insightful questions that the children asked him! On Wednesday, Miss Nicholls' group had a very wet experience around Roundhay Park and Tropical World. Fortunately, the rain held off long enough for the children to explore the park, viewing the Upper lake and the play park. After meeting the Meerkats, Butterflies and many reptiles, we decided to escape the rain and enjoyed a delicious hot chocolate in the Roundhay Fox. On Thursday, Mrs Moore's group had a fabulous time finding out about
Elland Road
 and the Cricket Stadium in Headingley. We were all very impressed with the children's beautiful manners when out in the general public, they were definitely an asset to the school!

Numeracy
This week in Numeracy, the children have been identifying equivalent fractions and comparing fractions to decimals and percentages.  The children have been linking their multiplication and division skills to help them find fractions of amounts.

Our weekly home learning is to continue to practice our times tables.
Here are some websites to encourage your children to learn their times tables at home:

http://www.fieryideas.com/tnt-tables-46-c.asp (TNT Tables - an addictive activity to practise times tables)

http://www.mad4maths.com/multiplication_table_math_games/ (Mad 4 Maths - times table games for x3, x4, x5, x6, x7 and x8)

 Literacy
This week we have been looking at the traditional version of The Three Little Pigs and comparing it to the Roald Dahl alternative version and finding out the true version of events from the wolf's point of view. The children have created some beautiful story boards and Kar2ouche animations of their stories. The children have also written their alternative stories from the wolf's perspective and have used a range of powerful verbs and adverbs to make their description of action and dialogue more interesting for the reader.

PE
This half term our PE unit is dance. The whole school are learning different sections of a choreographed dance routine. We will then perform each section all together in the hope to break a world record for the most schools performing a routine all together. This week, as we were working in our trip groups we used our team work skills to play bench ball. The children enjoyed this competitive game and used their overarm throwing skills.

Reminders
·         Please ensure your child brings their indoor PE kits every week.
·         Year 4s will need to bring their swimming kits every Friday and remember to take it home to have it washed.
·         Please could you check that all of your child’s belongings are clearly labelled?
·         It is very important that all children have a water bottle in school to ensure they remain hydrated throughout the day.

Spellings

Group 1
Group 2
  1. their
  1. circuit 
  2. there
  2. certain
  3. people
  3. century
  4. can't
  4. ocean
  5. don't
  5. city
  6. didn't 
  6. circle
  7. couldn't 
  7. receive
  8. wouldn't
  8. special
  9. hasn't 
  9. except
10. hadn't
10. ancient




Thank you,
Team 3/4

UKS2 News Roundup:
  • Congratulations to Jade Nicholson who is our achiever of the week. This week, Jade has shown her creative flair creating a design based on the Union Jack with an imaginative use of British images to add detail.
  • Please collect examples of magazine and newspaper adverts ahead of our Topic session later in the half term. These adverts will be analysed in class in preparation for the creation of our own adverts.
  • This half term, PE is indoors. Please ensure that you have a white t-shirt and black or blue shorts. Trainers or pumps are needed as our focus is dance.
Numeracy:
 Literacy:
  • This week, we've been designing our own products for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee or the London Olympics. The focus has been ensuring that related ideas are grouped together and the sentences that these ideas are written in are accurate in structure, word choice and tone. Next week in Literacy, the children will be writing a review for a product.
  • In reading, the children have been finding out about the entrepreneur Peter Jones of Dragons' Den fame and answering comprehension questions about his life. We've also been comparing texts on a similar theme and answering questions about them.
  • Home Learning: For this week's spellings, we would like you to check which of the high frequency words you can read and spell. These spelling lists were given out before the Easter holidays and we're aware that some children have identified spellings that they need to learn. On Friday, we will be carrying out an assessment which will include words that use rules and patterns from the spelling lists. e.g. -tion; i before e except after c; adding -ed etc
Other areas of the curriculum:


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