Author: Mr Roundtree

This week, our teachers have enjoyed meeting you in the parent-teacher meetings – we hope you found them helpful. If you need a longer meeting, or if you missed the appointment, do contact us.

This week’s message comes a day early. Tomorrow is a training day – teachers will be having training on the art curriculum and an update on safeguarding. talking of safeguarding, our message this week has a safeguarding theme…

Be wise

The children’s mental health charity, Place2Be, has launched a new website aimed at helping parents with typical situations they can find themselves in with their children. Advice can be found on over forty topics including:

• Understanding sibling rivalry
• My child is lying: What does it mean? What should I do?
• My child has trouble going to sleep
• My child says ‘I hate you!’
• Cultural identity: ‘Who am I?’

Be careful

Have you heard about Squid Game? Over the past week or so, there’s been  loads of news stories about it – a recent news article reported that one council has even written to parents and guardians of school children warning of the dangers of ‘replicating games from the Squid Game programme’.

The programme has a PEGI rating of 15 and over – that means across Europe, the recommendation is that it’s only suitable for people aged 15+ years. Check out this advice for parents and carers.

Be seen

On Saturday 30 / Sunday 31 October (the last week of the half-term holiday), we’ll all be setting the clocks back an hour. Read this guide for keeping children safe in the dark. You can read another one here, too.

This road safety guide for parents is worth a look, too, as is this one for children and families. If you or your child’s a cyclist, check this out.

So, with clocks going back an hour just before we return to school, we’ll see you all refreshed after an extra hour’s rest on Monday 01 November. Have a happy and healthy half-term holiday!

Our message this week comes from Mr Catherall, who used to teach at Moortown Primary and now at Scholes (Elmet) Primary. Mr Catherall is our Sphere Federation Writing Leader, and he’s chosen to write about spelling…

Is spelling important?

By now, you’ll be familiar with the new homework arrangements. Every week, as part of their homework, your child is given a set of spellings to learn. But why? They’ll probably just use auto-correct on their computer or tablet when they’re older, won’t they? You, like some others, might have found yourself asking these same questions. However…

Children who can spell more accurately feel more confident about their writing – we want all our children to feel proud and confident of their learning.

Also, research shows us that thinking about spellings takes up a large part of your working memory when writing (or typing). This means, if you’re able to have to think less about spelling, you’ve more brain power to think about other things: word choice, thinking creatively or pitching your written communication at the right level for your reader.

Help at home by helping your child learn their spellings. This doesn’t need to be for long and it doesn’t need to be boring. Here are some practical tips for effectively learning spellings at home:

• ask your child to spell their words on the way to school, driving to the shops or walking the dog
• use some ideas from our Super Spelling Strategies to make learning spellings more creative
• place the words on Post-it notes around the house so your child is reading them regularly
• practise them whilst doing something active (throwing a ball, kicking a football, playing tennis etc)

Most importantly of all, remember that little and often is much more effective than one big session. Practising for five minutes every day will lead to much better outcomes than one 30 minute session a week.

If you’d like any help or advice about how to support your child with their writing, please speak to their class teacher.