Friday, 15 June 2012

Issue 34 2011-12


Newsletter Issue 34

Friday 15th June 2012


Dear Parent/Carer,

Well done Year 6
A huge ‘well done and congratulations’ to all of our Year 6 children this week.  Many, of course, attended the Robinwood residential.  The staff at Robinwood commented on how exceptional every child’s behaviour was and how enthusiastic and courageous they were. All the children really faced their fears and challenged their Comfort Zones.  Alice, Mason, Josh and Shannon really stood out both for their teamwork and for overcoming their fears.  Meanwhile, other Year 6 children have had a fabulous week on ‘work experience’ in our Early Years.  The staff have really benefitted from having additional support to work with our younger children, our little ones have had a brilliant time learning from our Year 6’s and Connor in particular has been inspired to become a teacher when he grows up.  My thanks to all our children and our staff for their brilliant week.  Without a dedicated staff who are willing to give up their own time we would not be able to offer such fabulous opportunities as residentials.

James Wish To Walk
We can take great pride in the efforts of the Robin Hood community to support James’s Wish to Walk Appeal.  Our Non-uniform Day raised a fantastic £647.03.  In a brilliant gesture, Mr Fieldhouse has matched that figure and James presented a cheque for the same amount to the appeal today.  Thanks also to Amelia Clark and Mollie Dobson who have raised a further £13.00 with a door-to-door bun sale.  Many of our children have either done some fundraising or are planning to do so.  It is a measure of how special James is to us all that the community is mobilising its support in this way.  Over one hundred prizes have been donated to a Raffle Event.  As the school community continues to support James, he also continues his hard work.  Along with his Mum and sister, Georgia, he will be bag packing at the White Rose Sainsbury’s this weekend Also taking place this weekend is a charity swimathon at Pugneys and the Hatters Tea Party at Holy Name Church Hall, Otley Rd, Leeds, 1-3pm. Please see www.jameswishtowalk.org for more details.  On 25th June we will be holding a Walk A Mile Event in the afternoon at school in aid of James Appeal.  Our children have sponsor forms for that event.

Third Millenium Award
I am delighted to share with you that we are now officially proud holders of the Third Millennium Teaching Award.  Thank you and well done to Mrs Moore, who has led our application for the award. The award has a very high, very demanding, awarding threshold.  It recognises innovative and creative practice in education and is a ‘kitemark’ for our curriculum and the way we teach.  Award holder videos are displayed on the Third

Millennium Teaching Award website as exemplars of practice for other schools and educators.  I genuinely hope that the videos do act as a stimulus to other schools and provide an inspiring vision for what can be achieved with the effort, dedication and commitment that the staff at Robin Hood have.

Key Dates
These are the key dates for the rest of the school term:

25 June – Walk A Mile Event (pm) in aid of the jameswishtowalk appeal
27 June – Inter-School Sports Day (pm)
29 June – ‘New Class’ letters to go home
3 July – Meet Your New Teacher Day (all day.  Children should be dropped off and collected from their new class), Meet Your New Teacher Parents Meeting (after school – in your child’s new class – your opportunity to meet your child’s new class teacher), Nursery is closed 3 July.
5 July – Arts Review Evening, 6.00pm in the Hall
6 July – Training Day – pupils are not in school on that day
9 July – Sports Day
12 July – Key Stage One trip to Scarborough
16 July – Year 6 Production (Afternoon Performance, 2.00pm)
17 July – Year 6 Production (Evening Performance, 6.00pm)
20 July – Golden Day
23 July – final day of the school year and Leavers Assembly

Have a great weekend.  Let’s hope the sun shines,
Mr Wilson

Nursery Newsletter

NEWS ROUND UP
We have had a wonderful week in Nursery this week as the children returned fully energised after their break! It has been fabulous to see the children return full of high spirits ready to engage with their new learning. Yet again the home learning efforts that came to Nursery have once again brightened up the setting, so thank you for your support.

THIS WEEK
We shared the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar as we began our new learning around Growing. We used the story to help the children learn the life cycle of the butterfly. The children did a fabulous job of sequencing the process and they also produced some amazing writing outcomes as they explained the process, and, added some beautiful drawings.
We have also been busy creating a new display around our learning so please take a look in the classroom to see the wonderful outcome!

NEXT HALF TERM
We will continue learning about life cycles, and will be learning about the life cycle of a frog. The children will share the story of the Teeny Weeny Tadpole, to help our understanding of the different stages, and we will be using the illustrations from the book to create our very own large scale paintings.
In numeracy the children will be revisiting their counting out skills, taking turns playing number games and building on their recognition of numbers.

How you can help us
·         Continue developing your child’s recognition and awareness of the alphabet – sounding out and naming the letters.
·         Practise writing simple words like cat, dad, mum etc by listening for the sounds and writing them down.
·         Enjoy sharing stories together talking about the pictures, following the words with your fingers and sounding out simple words for your child to say.

Many thanks for your continued support

Have a super weekend!

Miss Bradshaw and the Nursery team

Reception newsletter
NEWS ROUND UP
Welcome back to our final half term of the year! We hope that you all had a lovely week off, it is such a shame that the weather here was so disappointing – let’s hope for an improvement soon. Thank you all for your fabulous home learning too, we were really delighted by your creativity and Miss Abbey has photographed your fabulous outcomes and uploaded them onto our blog.
THIS WEEK
We have been sharing the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and using it to learn all about the life cycle of a butterfly. The children have really enjoyed talking about and sequencing the stages and have produced a fabulous collaborative display. In numeracy we have been counting in 2’s and 5’s together and writing the numbers down; the children have found this very tricky so please can you practice counting (and writing the correct numbers) in 2’s and 5’s. They have also been working on more complex repeating patterns and have amazed us with their skills.
NEXT WEEK
We will be continuing to look at life cycles, but this time we will be finding out about the life cycle of a frog. The home learning task this week will really help the children with their learning next week so your support would be very much appreciated. We will be drawing and writing about the life cycle and also working together to make another amazing display. In numeracy we will be revisiting our calculation skills – looking at one more/one less as well as addition and subtraction. They will also be completing a piece of independent writing along with the rest of the children in the school and this will give them the opportunity to show us just what fabulous writers they really are!
HOW YOU CAN HELP US
·         By ensuring you listen to your child’s fabulous reading every day and writing a comment in their book. There is some amazing reading happening in Reception and we really want the children to maintain their enthusiasm for and enjoyment of reading. Thank you for your super support since September.
·         By ensuring your child completes their home learning and brings in their learning journal on MONDAY morning.
·         By checking that all items of clothing are clearly named/labelled
·         By practising counting and writing the numbers that are in the counting by 2 and counting by 5 sequences. Here are the links to the clips we use in school which the children enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2F0uCEWy7k
                     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwydguSKOU
Have a great weekend.

KS1 Newsletter

What a great first week back we have had here is KS1! The children have certainly come back bright eyed and bushy tailed, and ready to learn! Thank you to all those children who have already brought in their sponsor forms for James wish to walk charity; they are greatly appreciated by many.

During this half term in P.E we will be learning our sports day games, therefore please remember to send your child to school with outdoor kit (black shorts, white t-shirt and trainers). P.E kit is compulsory.

Literacy

During this week in literacy we have taken the children for a walk down memory lane, reminiscing on all of the fabulous events that have taken place across the year. We have enjoyed looking back at the many things we have learned so far, and thinking about the things we can’t wait to learn next year! Your child has been writing their report front cover, and used the computers to present their gorgeous sentences on. Everyone has tried hard to write sentences that include capital letters, full stops, connectives, adjectives and a range of text effects. Next week, your child will have a chance to show off their super writing in the form of a story, where we will be looking for the above features, as well as speech and speech marks, developed paragraphs and a gripping story line!

Numeracy

In Numeracy this week, your child has been learning to tell the time to the hour, half hour and quarter past/to the hour. We have looked at both analogue and digital clocks, and spotted these around the classroom. Time can be a tricky concept, so please continue to support your child at home with this, by getting them to:

·         Tell you the time at different points in the day, like 5 o’clock, half past 5, quarter past 5, etc.

·         Count up in 5’s around the face of an analogue clock.

·         Read the times on the TV when they are watching their favourite programmes

Next week in numeracy you child will have the chance to show off their learning in all areas of numeracy. This is nothing for the children to worry about, as long as they try their best that’s all we can ask!

Topic

During topic this week, your child has been developing their geographical skills, by using an atlas to locate various sea side towns. We have also been making comparisons between the popular sea side town of Scarborough, and the busy city of Leeds. All children were very observant, and showed a great preference for the sea side!! Next week, we will be looking at how the most popular sea side towns have changed over the years, and researching into the famous Punch and Judy puppet shows. Your child will learn in teams to create their very own puppet show for sea side tourists!

LKS2 Newsletter

We have had an extremely fun and energised week back in year 3/4 and would like to congratulate all the children for their sensible, mature and positive attitudes towards their learning. It was fantastic to see so many of the children had dressed in their favourite sports kits on Monday in order to kick off our new topic 'Spectacular Sports'. We were extremely pleased to see such an array of sports enjoyed across the year group. We had golfers, ballerinas, ice skaters, footballers, cricketers, gymnasts, horse riders and many more! We would also like to thank everyone for all of the amazing home learning we have received. We have once again been blown away by all of the fantastic posters, fact files, booklets and presentations of different sporting personalities. We are very proud of the children's confidence in presenting their home learning to the class, it's been a great opportunity for the children to learn from one another and a fantastic introduction to our topic. 
We would also like to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone for visiting our 3/4 blog. We feel it is very important that the children can showcase their wonderful learning to the world and access the learning they need at home in an easy and convenient way.

Numeracy
Ahead of next week’s assessments, the children have been developing their written and mental strategies to solve problems involving all the four operations addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Please ask your child to show you how they can solve a word problem involving one of the operations!

Literacy
This week in Literacy, the children have been given the opportunity to write their own story about the Olympics where they have carefully planned the opening, build up, climax, resolution and ending. The children have worked super hard to incorporate adverbs and powerful verbs in their writing, as well as continuing with VCOP and including a balance of action, description and dialogue. We are extremely proud of the children’s determination in hitting their targets to further improve their writing.

Reading
This week we have collected the children's reading miles for the Jubilee Reading Challenge and are extremely pleased with all of the fantastic reading the children have been doing at home. Lots of the children have completed a full journey around the Commonwealth and some are even on their second and third. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all of your support and encouragement with this.

Art
This week the children have been investigating how the human body moves when in action. The children have used the IPads to create freeze frames of themselves in different sporting moves such as boxing, tennis, football, running and many more. The children then began sketching these sequences.

ICT
This half term the children are creating interactive fact file presentations using Smart Notebook software about a different sporting personality. Lots of the children discovered fantastic effects and animations to enhance their presentations and we were really impressed by their strong start to their presentations.

PE
During PE this half term we will be developing our athletic skills in preparation for sports day. We will be practicing and improving our running, throwing and jumping techniques. Please can you ensure your child has their outdoor PE kit with them every Monday and leave it in school all week.

Reminders
  • Year 4s will need to bring their swimming kits every Friday and remember to take it home to have it washed. There will be no swimming on Friday 6th July due to training day!
  • Please make sure 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. which
  1. healthy
  2. with
  2. squash
  3. where
  3. minute
  4. white
  4. imagine
  5. when
  5. opposite
  6. was
  6. damage
  7. whenever
  7. purpose
  8. whereas
  8. police
  9. will
  9. promise 
10. would



We hope you have a lovely weekend,
The 3/4 Team

UKS2 News Roundup:

  • This week's achiever is Corey for his handwriting. It's absolutely transformed due to his super focus and effort. Well done!
  • Well done to all the Year 6 children who have taken part in this week's residential to Robinwood. Over the three days, the children faced personal challenges and conquered fears. The staff at the centre commented on how well behaved and polite our children were. Well done also to the Year 6s who have been excellent role models in Nursery and Reception this week.
  • Sponsorship forms have been given out for World Sports Day which is on Monday 25th June. The children have been invited to raise money through this event for James' Wish to Walk Appeal.
Numeracy:
  • This week, Year 5s have been counting on and back to complete and continue number sequences. They have also been practising their 2x, 5x and 10x tables daily. Next week, we will be recognising and extending number sequences as well as looking at square numbers and the Fibonacci sequence.
Literacy:
  • This week, Year 5 children have been planning a recount of their school year. We have been reminiscing about trips and events to help us write developed paragraphs. We've also been focusing on ensuring that capital letters and full stops are completely accurate in writing. We have been using some resources from http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/punctuation in our lessons.
  • Home Learning: Year 5s have been revisiting key words this week. The children have written any words they need to practise in their planners. There are videos and games to practise spelling rules and patterns at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/spelling
Other areas of the curriculum:
  • In RE, the children have been applying teachings from the Bible to moral dilemmas. 
  • In ICT, we've been developing our photography techniques by evaluating photos which we've taken around school. We've also been practising downloading photos onto the computer from a memory card.

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