This week’s homework is a Practice makes Perfect and is due on Thursday 22 March.
This practice makes perfect is maths-based and practises all of our skills we have learned so far this year.
Have a look at Hit the Button to practise maths fluency skills.
This term during RE lessons, Year 1 and 2 have been looking at what it means to belong to a church or a mosque. They’ve looked at the similarities and differences between themselves and others, and among families, communities and traditions.
To support their learning, Year 1 and 2 had a visit from Nabilah from Leeds Grand Mosque. The children learned what it meant to Nabilah to belong to a mosque and she shared some of the traditions she follows as a Muslim.
You might have heard about this news story this: UK parents help less with homework.
Parents in the UK are much less likely to spend more than an hour per day helping with their children’s homework compared with parents in other countries, a survey suggests.
A survey of 27,830 parents in 29 countries found only 11% of UK parents spent an hour per day helping their children, far behind 62% in India.
In our school, our Homework Policy is designed to best meet the needs of our pupils and their parents / carers. To help, we refer to research on how effective homework is.
Our Talk Time homework is intended to promote good speaking and listening skills, and quite often to raise awareness of moral issues such as whether or not animals should be kept in captivity. To get the most from Talk Time homework, turn the telly off and have a conversation around the table whilst eating your evening meal – you don’t need to spend extra, separate time to support your child! Encourage your child to use ambitious words, useful phrases and full sentences. Some sentence structures that can work well are:
Creative homework is an opportunity for your child to choose whatever they want to demonstrate some learning. For example, I can show what I know about food chains. Your child could present all their learning in so many different ways, from a diagram with notes to a story or comic strip. Parents’ and carers’ role is to support, encourage, help… but never to take over and do the homework! So, there’s no need to sit down and do the homework with your child – you could be getting on with some other household task. The fact that your child and you and both actively doing something can be a really good way to promote positive attitudes.
The other type of homework is Practice makes perfect. The work should be fairly straightforward for the child as there should be no need for new learning, so just some encouragement from you is needed. However, it would be a great time to get your child to teach you – they should be able to explain the key points or processes! Also, you might want to check what your child has done – not a big job.
Don’t forget that the most important things you can do at home to support learning are to be positive and encourage your child, and to make sure they read regularly, practise their spellings and practise some simple Maths – counting, number bonds (to start with, two numbers that make 10, like 3+7) and their times tables.
This past fortnight, Years 1 and 2 have been learning about fractions. Year 1 have learned about 1/2 (one half) and 1/4 (one quarter). Year 2 have learned about 1/2, 1/4, 1/3 (one third) and 3/4 (three quarters). Ask your child to find half of the pile of socks, a quarter of the veg you’re cutting or half of the pizza, for example.
Year 1s have enjoyed using the Cuisenaire rods. Cuisenaire rods are a mathematical tool for pupils that provide an active, hands-on way to explore mathematics and learn mathematical concepts. The children have enjoyed using these to discover different ways to represent halves and quarters.
This week’s spelling homework is a task to complete and is due on Thursday 15 March. It is based upon all of their learning so far this half term and this year.
Encourage your child to use their phonics when writing their sentences and matching their words.
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
This week’s homework is a practice makes perfect and is due on Thursday 15 March.
For the past two weeks, Year 1 and 2 have been learning about fractions:
These are the definitions we have used for our fractions to help the children understand them. This works for both numbers and shapes.
Have a look in the homework books for your child’s practice makes perfect homework based on our fractions learning this past fortnight.
From Leeds City Council, Planning and Bids Manager, Sufficiency and Participation Team:
Leeds City Council is seeking the views of local communities on secondary school provision in the Outer North East area, which will then be shared with the Department for Education before a decision is made on the academy application by Boston Spa School. As this may lead to significant long term changes to secondary education provision in the area, it is clearly important that families have the chance to express their views.
An online public engagement exercise has commenced and runs until midnight on Sunday 25th March. The Engagement Survey document, containing background information, data on finance and pupil numbers, can be found on the Leeds City Council website here. An associated online survey, which provides interested parties with the opportunity to share their views on how secondary school places in the area should be organised, can also be found on the same webpage.
This week’s spelling homework is a list of spellings to be tested on Thursday 08 March.
In English, we have been looking at making singular words (only one) into plural words (more than one) by add s, es (when the word ends in sh, ch, s, ss, z, zz) or changing the y to ies (when the y is on its own – not when it is part of a digraph e.g oy, ey, ay).
Group 1
foxes, toys, churches, balls, buses
Group 2
foxes, toys, churches, balls, buses, chairs, wishes, boxes
Group 3
foxes, toys, churches, balls, buses, parties, fairies, monkeys, donkeys
Driving conditions are bad and forecast for the entire day is for snow. Staff are struggling to access school.
It’s been many years since St James’ CE Primary needed to close due to extreme snow – and we don’t intend to close this week, either, despite the weather warnings for parts of the UK which you’ll have heard.
If snow is bad, we have to make decisions based on various factors, including how safe it is for our staff to travel to school. (Whilst most of our pupils walk to school, most of our teachers live quite a distance away and need to drive to school.)
We will communicate if school is closed by text, email, Twitter and a news post on the website (which then uploads to Facebook, too).
We won’t take this decision lightly. However, if we do, we’ll aim to make the decision by 08.15 am at the latest. Until that point, please assume school will be open.