Author: Mr Roundtree

This week’s message (Friday 10 December 2021)

This week’s message has a couple of reminders, but we start with a ‘Plan B’ update on Covid precautions…

Since the early days of the pandemic, the Department for Education has been sending regular emails to schools. Yesterday’s came with an introductory sentence: ‘Today’s email includes an urgent update for all education and childcare settings on implementing Plan B of the COVID-19 Response: Autumn and Winter Plan’. Here are some extracts:

school attendance remains mandatory and all the usual rules continue to apply

settings are strongly encouraged to ask parents, guardians and other visitors to take a lateral flow device (LFD) test before entering the setting

all staff and students should test over the holidays in line with national guidance. This means that they should test if they will be in a high-risk situation that day and before visiting people who are at higher risk of severe illness if they get COVID-19

We were also asked to ‘revisit…existing outbreak plans to ensure [we] are well prepared for any future changes’ – let’s hope we don’t get to the same situation as we were in last January.

Next, a couple of reminders…

Next Tuesday, learning updates will be sent home. These are short reports that we send home at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms; they complement the parent-teacher meetings which take place earlier in the same terms. We started doing these a few years ago following your feedback in our annual surveys.

Also coming up next week is a non-uniform day on your child’s party day. Our Uniform Policy contains the following:

Pupils should dress appropriately and respectfully for school, even on non-uniform days. Clothes are inappropriate if they, for example, glorify violence, feature bad language, are very short (eg crop tops), or relate to age-inappropriate topics (eg computer games)… Make-up (other than face paints as part of a specific costume) is not allowed. Flip-flops or high-heeled shoes are not allowed, even on non-uniform days, because they’re dangerous when running.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

10 December 2021

Next week, we’ll continue  to focus on common homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings – this is one of the reasons why English spelling is super tricky!

To help consolidate this learning, we’d like you to practise spelling these words at home. Because they’re homophones, it’s most useful to practise these in sentences. You could do this in the car, on a walk or around the table.

hear, here,         which, witch,     to, two, too, 

I can hear a tune. Come and sit here.

Which shoes shall I wear? I saw a witch with a broomstick.

I am going to the shop to buy two lollies. Do you want to come too?

We’ll test ourselves on Friday 17 December to see how we’ve got on.

For some tips and tricks on how best to practise your spellings at home, visit the Y3,4 spelling page on our website and click here.

This week’s bible story

The persistent widow: Luke 18:1-8

Have you ever used pester power to get what you want? When you keep on asking and asking and asking until the person relents and gives in? Jesus once told a story about pester power, but it didn’t feature a parent and a child. The two people in Jesus’ story were a judge and a widow. Read the story to find out what happened.

Reflection:
Have you ever pestered God? reflect on your own experiences of prayer. Were their prayers denied because of any of the reasons like in the story?

Even though some prayers appear not to work, Christians believe that God is always at work in their lives, although this may be hard to see.

Prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you for being a God who listens to our prayers.
Help us to keep praying to you even when it seems that our prayers are not being answered.
May we never forget that, like a loving parent, you only want what is best for us.
Amen

 

This week’s message (Friday 03 December 2021)

This week’s message is a short one. The main part is an important reminder about Covid, and we end – less seriously – with a link in case you’d like some stocking filler ideas…

Two weeks ago, we told you about a website with up-to-date Covid information for Leeds. The heatmap (the second graphic) shows that there’s still a high number of positive cases of Covid for children of primary school age – in fact, if you scroll across the second row up (children aged 5-9), you can see numbers are rising. We’re noticing this, too – in fact, we’ve had to return to remote learning for one class in Sphere Federation.

Please be alert to the signs and symptoms of COVID-19 infection:

  • a high temperature
  • a new continuous cough
  • a loss of change to your sense of taste or smell

If your child has any of these main symptoms, even if they’re mild:

  1. Get a PCR test (test that is sent to a lab) as soon as possible.
  2. Keep your child at home and not have visitors until you get the test result – they can only leave home to have the test.

We’re seeing children showing various other symptoms such as sickness, colds and headaches, too. Please keep you child at home if they’re not feeling right for whatever reason.

Thank you for continuing to support us to keep our school as safe from Covid as we can.

On a lighter note, if we’re all being as cautious as we can right now, Christmas should be a better one for many this year. If you’re on the look out for some ideas for pressies, check out this Christmas book guide. Giving a book at Christmas is a great way to keep children reading!

03 December 2021

Next week, we’ll be recapping common homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings – this is one of the reasons why English spelling is super tricky!

To help consolidate this learning, we’d like you to practise spelling these words at home. Because they’re homophones, it’s most useful to practise these in sentences. You could do this in the car, on a walk or around the table.

where, wear, were,     there, they’re, their

Where are you going? Wear your warm coat. We were cold yesterday.

They’re going to visit their granny. She lives over there.

We’ll test ourselves on Friday 10 December to see how we’ve got on.

For some tips and tricks on how best to practise your spellings at home, visit the Y3,4 spelling page on our website and click here.

This week’s bible story

Hanukah  

Today, we are thinking about Hanukah which is a Jewish festival. Have you ever been made to do something you didn’t want to do? In fact, you hated doing it?

How do you think David Beckham would feel if he had to do ballet? Or your headteacher if he or she had to dress up as a banana?

How do you think a Christian would feel if someone said to them at a Christmas nativity service, ‘You can’t worship Jesus, you’ve got to pray to the donkey?’
This is a story about when a whole country had to do things they didn’t want to, and how they reacted to it.

Reflection:
Quiet thought: How can you bring light to people today?

Prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you that your light burns even longer than we hope for.
Help us to be light to others.
Amen.

This week’s message (Friday 26 November 2021)

This week’s message comes from Paula Allaway, who’s the Maths Leader across Sphere Federation…

Is your child engaging with the number fact fluency homework?

Number fact fluency – the quick recall of addition and subtraction facts, and multiplication and division facts (times tables), is really important for all children. The ability to recall these facts quickly (rather than taking too long working them out) helps children to answer questions in lots of areas of Maths much more easily.

If these facts are learnt and stored, rather than being calculated or counted, they require less activity from the brain. Essentially, memorisation frees up working memory space to allow children to focus on learning new mathematical ideas and applying mathematics to solve problems, and not the facts themselves.

Addition and subtraction facts

For younger children, the crucial numbers facts are simple addition and subtraction facts. We want children to know facts like bonds of ten (eg 3+7 and 4+6) without having to count on or back using their fingers. How fluent are your child’s number facts? Regularly accessing NumBots will help with this.

Multiplication and division facts

For older children, number facts also includes times tables up to 12 x 12. By the end of Year 4, children should know their times tables without having to count through to reach the answer. Times Tables Rock Stars will help with this. In June 2022, Y4 children will take part in a statutory national assessment – the Multiplication Tables Check. They’ll be tested on 25 randomly selected facts.

Without secure knowledge of times tables facts, many future Maths topics are more difficult to learn. In Y5,6, for example, progress in column methods, fractions, area, ratio and proportion can all be hampered because they involve recall of facts.

Children who do well in our assessments are the children who are spending more time practising on NumBots and Rock Stars. Likewise, the children who need to learn these facts more aren’t using this resource at home.

We know that being fluent with number facts leads to high confidence in maths generally. To support this, we’ve slimmed back what we ask for homework to help make sure our children’s Maths (and also Reading) skills are strong. Your child should spend about 10 minutes practising number facts each day. Look out for the focus on the homework sheet we send home.

If you need help accessing these, please contact your child’s class teacher.

26 November 2021

Next week, we’ll be learning about making words plural.

Plural is where there is more than one of something.

To help consolidate this learning, please practise spelling these words at home. We’ll test ourselves on Friday 03 December to see how we’ve got on.

Y3                                                                              Y4

boy             –   boys                             group         –   groups

group         –   groups                          wolf          –   wolves

box             –   boxes                           address      –   addresses

bus             –   buses                          bicycle       –   bicycles

church        –   churches                     church        –   churches

fox             –   foxes                             potato         –   potatoes

jelly             –   jellies                            jelly             –   jellies

lorry             –   lorries                          lorry            –   lorries

For some tips and tricks on how best to practise your spellings at home, click here.

This week’s bible story

Keep Going! Nehemiah 1: 1-7

Perseverance means keeping on trying and not giving up even when it is difficult.

If you’ve got some blocks, have a go at building a tower of twelve blocks. Was it easy? Now blindfold yourself and try again. Was it easier to do it when you were blindfolded or did it take more perseverance? Although the game was only a bit of fun, in life, it can sometimes be hard to keep going when things seem difficult or we feel discouraged. Our story today comes from the Old Testament part of the Bible. The Jewish people had not been listening to God, and they had been living in exile, away from their own homes. As the story starts, this situation is about to change. Read it carefully and see if you can work out why the people needed to have lots of perseverance and what helped them to keep going.

Reflection:
– In the story, what three things needed rebuilding?
– What kind of things discouraged the people from getting the building work done?
– What helped them to keep going?
None of us have to rebuild the walls around our towns and cities this week, but there might be some things that we are finding difficult or occasions when we feel like we want to give up.
Have a moment of silence as we think about the things that we are finding difficult or that we are worried about.

Prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you that you always listen when we pray to you.
Thank you that you are always there.
Please help us to keep going when we find things hard.
Please help us to encourage others.
Amen.

Living and Learning: One Kind Word

During Anti-bullying Week, we have been thinking about what we say to each other and how it makes us feel. Saying kind and thoughtful things can have a huge impact – on both the person saying them and the person hearing them.

Y3s came up with lots of positive, kind things that we can say to each other.

Are you alright?

You’re good at lots of things.

Could I help you?

You make me smile.

Do you want to play with me?

Kind words make a difference. What kind words are YOU going to say today?