Author: Mr Roundtree

Week beginning 02 November 2020

Maths

This week’s maths learning is linked to place value.

Year 3 children use these resources:

Year 4 children use these resources:

You don’t have to print the worksheet. Your child can write or draw their answers on paper. Your child’s learning will be most effective if you sit with them to pause the clip and check / praise / support your child as the clip moves on.

Practise times tables on Times Table Rockstars, too. If your child is in Y3, we’re concentrating on the 3 times table. If your child is in Y4, we’re concentrating on the 4 times table. Email the class teacher if you need your child’s login and password details.

(Suggested time: 30 minutes of Maths and 15 minutes of Rockstars daily)

 

Spelling

Look on the homework page to find this week’s spellings. They should choose some past spellings that they feel less confident with. Your child should complete one task each day.

  • Day 1: Generate more words linked to the spelling pattern or ‘rule’. You could look out for the words in the book you’re reading at home, or any other text, like a website linked to our science topic of Living Things and their Habitat.
  • Day 2: Practise the spellings using two of the ideas in our Super Spelling Strategies guide. (Set yourself and others at home a challenge of using some of the words when you’re speaking, too!)
  • Day 3: Write separate sentences, each containing one of the spellings. (Don’t forget to show off really neat handwriting and make sure you sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, exclamation mark (!) or question mark (?).
  • Day 4: Repeat Task 2 or 3.
  • Day 5: Get an adult at home to test you on your spellings. Practise any you spell incorrectly – you could write them out carefully until you’re sure.

(Suggested time: 15-20 minutes daily)

 

Reading fluency

This is the text we’re using in class this week to build up fluency skills.

In school, we generally follow this sequence:

  • Day 1: Read the text aloud with your child listening. Read it clearly and slowly, pointing to each word as you read. Have a chat about any unfamiliar words.
  • Day 2: Read aloud each sentence (a full short sentence or part of a longer sentence), and have your child read it back to you. Do this ‘echo reading’ for the whole text.
  • Day 3: Read the text and talk about the effect of the punctuation on how you read it – pauses for full stops and expression for exclamations (!) or questions (?). Your child reads the text aloud.
  • Day 4: Read together with expression (just like you practised on Day 3).
  • Day 5: Your child reads independently and fluently.

(Suggested time: 15 minutes daily)

 

Reading comprehension

Day 1: We’ll be using this ‘RIC’ text in class to practise comprehension skills. RIC stands for:

  • Retrieve: finding information in a text
  • Interpret: using clues in the text to unlock information
  • Choice: thinking about the author’s choice of words, techniques or organisation that make the text interesting and enjoyable to read

Day 2: Agree with your child three words from any text they’ve read which they’re less familiar with. Your child should find out what they mean (eg by checking an online dictionary or simply discuss with you) and how to use them in sentences (both when speaking and when writing). Challenge your child to write a sentence with each word in, or to drop the words into conversations at home.

Day 3: Read this article from First News, a newspaper for children, and complete the activity.

Day 4: Read your fluency or RIC text again. Next, do one of the following:

  • Your child could list at least ten facts they’ve read in the text. (If it’s a fiction text (a story), then the facts would be based on the story, like ‘Harry Potter picked up his broomstick’, rather than actual facts from the real world.)
  • Your child could create questions and answers for what they’ve read. (For example, it could be a TV or radio interview based on what they’ve read.)
  • Your child could create their own ‘RIC’ questions.
  • Your child could draw and label a character or setting that they’ve read about.

Day 5: Book Club. Once a week, we have a relaxing lesson where we sit and read quietly, often with an adult. At home, we’d like you to read your favourite book or text, too. If possible, discuss the book with an adult, talking about some or all of the sections of this sheet.

(Suggested time: 30 minutes daily)

 

Writing

Activity 1: This video lesson about expanded noun phrases from Oak National Academy links to some of the learning that we’ve been doing in class recently.

Activity 2:

Children should write six sentences about a picture or photograph you choose. Your child should remember capital letters, finger spaces, joined up letters (use our handwriting guide to help, paying particular attention to tall letters and letters that go beneath the line), and a full stop, exclamation mark (!) or question mark (?) to end the sentence. Encourage interesting words to make their writing more interesting.

 (Suggested time: 30 minutes daily)

 

Topic

This week’s topic learning is all about our new history topic: Ancient Greece. This video lesson from Oak National Academy links to some of the learning we’ve been doing in class recently.

(Suggested time: 30-45 minutes)

 Science   

We’re continuing our learning about sound (physics). This week, we’re learning all about what sound is.

Have a go at this Oak National Academy video.

(Suggested time: 30-45 minutes)

02 November 2020

Before half term, we were been recapping one of our key spelling rules: adding –ed or –ing to change the tense of a verb.

Here’s an example…

infinitive verb present tense past tense
to walk walking walked

First, we’d like you to complete this table. Be careful, there may be some irregular ones to catch you out!

infinitive verb present tense past tense
to jump
talking
to climb
to pour poured
running
to achieve
explained

Then, practise these spellings in different ways, check out the ‘super spelling strategies’ on this week’s spelling post.

Fancy a challenge? Use these words in sentences. Or, create silly sentences using as many of them as you can – can you use them all?

Christian Value: Friendship

This half term, our Christian Value has been friendship.

We have thought about how we can be a good friend and what we can learn from the Bible about friendship. We learned that Jesus teaches us to be a good friend to all – he told a story about how the good samaritan was a friend to someone who was supposed to be his enemy.

In our reflection areas, we had two challenges: a friendship flower and how to be a good friend.

For our friendship flower, we thought about who was a good friend or someone we were thankful for and wrote or drew a short thank you thought or prayer for them.

We took the friendship finger challenge and thought about all the things that make a good friend. We thought about how we could be a better friend.

Foundation stage have also been learning all about our Christian value of friendship. They’ve created a friendship tree and friendship stones whilst thinking about the qualities they would like in a friend.

Look out for next half term’s Christian value: perseverance.

 

Relationships and Sex Education – consultation

Thank you to those of you who submitted your thoughts about our recent online consultation.

From September 2020, Relationships Education and Health Education are now statutory and form part of the National Curriculum. As a result of the changes, we’ve updated our Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) policy. We were keen to hear your views as parents / carers alongside the views of teachers and governors.

We asked three main questions, below. We can’t promise to take on board every view in our final policy, but we will definitely consider each one.

Are there any changes or additions that you think should be made to the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) policy?

Two themes came across strongly in the responses to this question: mental wellbeing (comments included ‘I would love to see emphasis on the child’s relationship with themself eg how they should learn to be kind to themselves as well as kind to others’ ) and consent (‘Talking to even young children about their rights over their body and their right to say they don’t like something, obviously in an age appropriate way – you can say you don’t like being tickled etc ‘).

We already do a lot to promote positive mental health, and we’ll continue to explore ways we can build on this – it’s obviously important. We’ve also started to introduce the notion of consent – asking if a pupil gives consent to have their photo taken, even. We’ll definitely ensure consent in the context of relationships and sex will be stressed.

What do you believe is the most important subject area of RSE that should be taught for different year groups and why?

Consent strongly featured in this section, too. This might be specifically mentioned (‘For very young children I think the focus should be on privates being private and the pants rule. For older children the focus should be around age of consent and how important it to adhere to that and what is meant by consent’) or in more general terms (‘Mutual respect across the board’).

Various other things were mentioned here, including accessing safe health information online, LGBTQ and diversity, and online grooming.

Is there an area of RSE that you think should not be taught for different year groups and why?

The vast majority of respondents replied ‘no’ to this question: ‘No. I think it is very important that these things are taught in school’. Two respondents who had concerns left their contact details so we’ll be able to speak with them and hopefully reassure them. Every year before children in Year 5 and 6 have lessons around physical changes and reproduction, parents will be invited to a session to discuss the content and the delivery, so each year there will be a similar chance to reassure people.

If you’ve any questions, comments or concerns about Relationships and Sex Education, please do contact us. In the meantime, thanks again to those who responded to our consultation.

Thank you…

Friday’s weekly message began with a thank you from us to you:

Most importantly this week, we want to say a big thank you for working with us to keep our schools safe places. We’ve had to make lots of changes to routines, and we keep having to review and tweak what we do. Throughout the half-term, we’ve appreciated your support. It seems to have paid off in that – despite some near misses – all three schools have yet to close a bubble. That may only be a matter of time; we’ll continue to be as rigorous and relentless about staying safe as we have been.

We’ve really appreciated your support and words of encouragement this term so far.

It’s also nice to have received this letter of thanks from Leeds City Council’s Director of Children and Families which recognises the efforts of all school staff, whether classroom-based or support staff.

Have a happy, healthy and safe half-term holiday.

Living and Learning: I recognise mental health is important

This week, our Living and Learning statement was “I recognise mental health is important”. At school, we understand how important our mental health is which is why the first question we asked at parents evening was about how each child has coped since coming back to school and the changes due to covid.

 

To support this learning, we have been looking at the different emotions that the children could have been/ have been experiencing and how this can impact their mental health and what mental health is.

We looked at different emotions, when we might feel them and how we could react to those emotions and feelings.

 

Together, we created a feelings wall – it showed us that all feelings are acceptable and we talked about the different strategies that we could use to overcome/deal with any negative feelings.

 

Our Living and Learning lesson involved using some resources from the Anna Freud website and it has lots of advice and links for children and families if they need support around mental health.

Our weekly message (23 October 2020)

Our teachers are all in school (or Zooming in) for the final day of the half-term. We wish you all a happy and healthy half-term.

Thank you

Most importantly this week, we want to say a big thank you for working with us to keep our schools safe places. We’ve had to make lots of changes to routines, and we keep having to review and tweak what we do. Throughout the half-term, we’ve appreciated your support. It seems to have paid off in that – despite some near misses – all three schools have yet to close a bubble. That may only be a matter of time; we’ll continue to be as rigorous and relentless about staying safe as we have been.

Testing times

Children in Key Stage 2 have had some tests in Reading and Maths recently. Having left it a few weeks for children to settle down and feel comfortable at school again, we decided to carry out these assessments in order to further explore the impact of lockdown on children’s attainment. It’s early days and we’ve not analysed the results in a lot of detail, but we’ve been pleased with the results so far. This is a credit to your child, and also to you as you supported your child’s learning during lockdown.

Happy and healthy

A recent Talk Time homework for children in Key Stage 1 and 2 was to complete an online survey about health. Thanks to all the children for completing and returning the survey, and to you for supporting your child to do this. The results are really useful for us to think about priorities for the future, and they’re also encouraging in how positive they are.

Probably the most important question we asked was ‘Do you feel safe at school?’ and we’re pleased that across Sphere Federation schools, over 97% of pupils indicated a very positive response. 97% is good, but we want all children to feel safe all the time. In parent-teacher meetings this week, we followed up the very few responses that indicated only ‘some of the time’ with parents or carers. Quite often, the cause of concern lay with coronavirus (for example, one teacher reports ‘this was due to coronavirus in general. Nothing about school or being here makes [the pupil] feel unsafe… Dad has reassured me that [the pupil] is happy and comfortable in school’). Other reasons for the few who said they only sometimes feel safe included choosing the wrong response by accident, falling over and seeing a wasp!

Has your child got a mobile phone?

There are lots of benefits to having a phone, but drawbacks, too. We strongly encourage you to make sure your child has the BBC Own It app installed. It can help to guide your child if they’re exposed to things that upset them, and it can even question the user if it seems like they’re about to send unkind or hurtful messages.

And some Covid catch-ups…

Check out his website for a useful summary of where you can go for a Covid-19 test in Leeds.

In last week’s message, we set out a definition of ‘close contact‘. We were a bit ahead of the game on that one – just a couple of hours later, we were asked to communicate the definition by Leeds Schools Health, Safety & Wellbeing Team. The definition is pretty much what we said last week:

A person who has been close to someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 any time from two days before the person was symptomatic (or two days before a test if no symptoms) up to ten days from the onset of symptoms (this is when they are infectious to others). For schools’ purposes, a close contact can be:

A person who has had face-to-face contact (within one metre), with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19, including being coughed on; having a face-to-face conversation within one metre; having skin-to-skin physical contact; or contact within one metre for one minute or longer without face-to-face contact.

A person who has been within two metres of someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 for more than 15 minutes.

A person who has travelled in a small vehicle with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19 or in a large vehicle or plane near someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.

It’s important we’re clear about what a close contact is to avoid Test and Trace telling people to self-isolate when they don’t actually need to.

Once again, have a happy and healthy half-term holiday. Stay safe (and sane).

Week beginning 19 October 2020

Maths

This week’s maths learning is linked to place value.

Year 3 children use these resources:

Year 4 children use these resources:

You don’t have to print the worksheet. Your child can write or draw their answers on paper. Your child’s learning will be most effective if you sit with them to pause the clip and check / praise / support your child as the clip moves on.

Practise times tables on Times Table Rockstars, too. If your child is in Y3, we’re concentrating on the 5 times table. If your child is in Y4, we’re concentrating on the 3 times table. Email the class teacher if you need your child’s login and password details.

(Suggested time: 30 minutes of Maths and 15 minutes of Rockstars daily)

 

Spelling

Look on the homework page to find this week’s spellings. Your child should complete one task each day.

  • Day 1: Generate more words linked to the spelling pattern or ‘rule’. You could look out for the words in the book you’re reading at home, or any other text, like a website linked to our science topic of Living Things and their Habitat.
  • Day 2: Practise the spellings using two of the ideas in our Super Spelling Strategies guide. (Set yourself and others at home a challenge of using some of the words when you’re speaking, too!)
  • Day 3: Write separate sentences, each containing one of the spellings. (Don’t forget to show off really neat handwriting and make sure you sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, exclamation mark (!) or question mark (?).
  • Day 4: Repeat Task 2 or 3.
  • Day 5: Get an adult at home to test you on your spellings. Practise any you spell incorrectly – you could write them out carefully until you’re sure.

(Suggested time: 15-20 minutes daily)

 

Reading fluency

This is the text we’re using in class this week to build up fluency skills.

In school, we generally follow this sequence:

  • Day 1: Read the text aloud with your child listening. Read it clearly and slowly, pointing to each word as you read. Have a chat about any unfamiliar words.
  • Day 2: Read aloud each sentence (a full short sentence or part of a longer sentence), and have your child read it back to you. Do this ‘echo reading’ for the whole text.
  • Day 3: Read the text and talk about the effect of the punctuation on how you read it – pauses for full stops and expression for exclamations (!) or questions (?). Your child reads the text aloud.
  • Day 4: Read together with expression (just like you practised on Day 3).
  • Day 5: Your child reads independently and fluently.

(Suggested time: 15 minutes daily)

 

Reading comprehension

Day 1: We’ll be using this ‘RIC’ text in class to practise comprehension skills. RIC stands for:

  • Retrieve: finding information in a text
  • Interpret: using clues in the text to unlock information
  • Choice: thinking about the author’s choice of words, techniques or organisation that make the text interesting and enjoyable to read

Day 2: Agree with your child three words from any text they’ve read which they’re less familiar with. Your child should find out what they mean (eg by checking an online dictionary or simply discuss with you) and how to use them in sentences (both when speaking and when writing). Challenge your child to write a sentence with each word in, or to drop the words into conversations at home.

Day 3: Read this article from First News, a newspaper for children, and complete the activity.

Day 4: Read your fluency or RIC text again. Next, do one of the following:

  • Your child could list at least ten facts they’ve read in the text. (If it’s a fiction text (a story), then the facts would be based on the story, like ‘Harry Potter picked up his broomstick’, rather than actual facts from the real world.)
  • Your child could create questions and answers for what they’ve read. (For example, it could be a TV or radio interview based on what they’ve read.)
  • Your child could create their own ‘RIC’ questions.
  • Your child could draw and label a character or setting that they’ve read about.

Day 5: Book Club. Once a week, we have a relaxing lesson where we sit and read quietly, often with an adult. At home, we’d like you to read your favourite book or text, too. If possible, discuss the book with an adult, talking about some or all of the sections of this sheet.

(Suggested time: 30 minutes daily)

 

Writing

Activity 1: This video lesson about subordinate clauses from Oak National Academy links to some of the learning that we’ve been doing in class recently.

Activity 2:

Children should write six sentences about a picture or photograph you choose. Your child should remember capital letters, finger spaces, joined up letters (use our handwriting guide to help, paying particular attention to tall letters and letters that go beneath the line), and a full stop, exclamation mark (!) or question mark (?) to end the sentence. Encourage interesting words to make their writing more interesting.

 (Suggested time: 30 minutes daily)

 

Topic

This week’s topic learning is all about looking ahead to our next history topic. Follow the slides to find out what the history topic is and little bit of information about this famous civilisation.

(Suggested time: 30-45 minutes)

 

Science   

We’re continuing our learning about living things and their habitats. This week, we’re again focussing on the impact humans have on the planet: in particular, climate change.

Have a go at this Oak National Academy video.

(Suggested time: 30-45 minutes)

 

Our weekly message (16 October 2020)

This week’s message includes reference to the Health and Safety Executive and to coronavirus contacts. (There’s no connection whatsoever between these articles and the last feature, which is about ghastly ghouls and beastly bugs!) Most  importantly, though, we start the message with a reminder about an important Sphere Federation survey…

Relationships and Sex Education

A chance to tell us your views about an important policy update…

From September 2020, Relationships Education and Health Education are now statutory and form part of the National Curriculum. As a result of the changes, we’ve updated our Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) policy and we’re now consulting with parents, staff and governors. Your views are important to us. We welcome your feedback on the policy via this short survey. The survey will be open until Friday 23 October.

To help you understand the requirements further, we’ve emailed you with additional information, including the draft policy itself. Contact us if you haven’t received this. In addition, you might like to look at the following websites:

  • DfE statutory guidance on Relationships Education, RSE and Health Education
  • Guide for parents on Relationships Education, RSE and Health Education
  • List of FAQs for parents on the new RSE/Relationships Education requirements

Looking after our children, looking after our staff

We’re confident in our Sphere schools that we’ve done everything we reasonably can to make sure they’re happy, healthy and safe places to learn…

Since schools opened in September for the new school year, representatives from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have been contacting schools to check on procedures in place to make sure schools have taken enough precautions to safeguard children and staff in the context of coronavirus. None of the Sphere Federation schools were contacted. However, from a wider perspective, it’s reassuring to note that it’s been reported that the HSE has been highly impressed with the work schools have done.

People have told us that Track and Trace staff have sometimes been sending out mixed messages, and sometimes the messages don’t match the advice schools have been given. When in doubt, we’ve been able to contact a Department for Education helpline. The advice we’ve been given on the helpline has been helpful. They advise we follow closely our own risk assessments.

Employers must protect people from harm. This includes taking reasonable steps to protect staff, pupils and others from coronavirus (COVID-19) within the education setting.

Department for Education, 01.10.20

We want our schools to be happy, healthy and safe places to work, too…

We’re doing our best to look after our staff, too. All staff had the opportunity to have flu jab recently, and they’ve all got access to the Employee Assistance Programme, a service that provides a variety of support for education staff. These aren’t new things we’re doing because of the pandemic – we’ve provided them for a few years now.

What’s counts as a contact?

Someone from Public Health England has communicated with us recently, and we thought some of the information about contacts which they sent to us might be useful for you to know about…

A ‘contact’ is a person who has been close to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 any time from two days before the person was symptomatic up to ten days from the onset of symptoms. This period is when they are infectious to others. For example, a contact can be:

  • people who spend significant time in the same household as a person who has tested positive for COVID-19
  • sexual partners
  • a person who has had face-to-face contact (within one metre), with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, including being coughed on; having a face-to-face conversation within one metre; having skin-to-skin physical contact; or contact within one metre for one minute or longer without face-to-face contact
  • a person who has been within 2 metres of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 for more than 15 minutes
  • a person who has travelled in a small vehicle with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or in a large vehicle or plane near someone who has tested positive for COVID-19

Beastly bugs and ghastly ghouls

Any plans for half-term? Perhaps a trip to Temple Newsam House is in order…

  cid:image001.jpg@01D6A212.16359650

Beastly bugs have discovered 5 star accommodation at Temple Newsam House. They’ve booked their staycation for Halloween week when the ghastly ghouls from years gone by pay their annual visit. Meet past residents and hear ghostly tales as you explore this 500 year old building. Follow the bug trail around the house, spot the miniature bug rooms and pick up your own Beastly Bug Craft pack to take home.

Visit between 11am to 4pm from Saturday 24 October to Friday 30 October (and be aware the house is closed on Monday 26 October). Pre-book your tickets to avoid disappointment. 

Following lockdown, Temple Newsam House has been open to the public for a few weeks now. They’ve had great feedback on the Covid precautions that they’ve put in place.

16 October 2020

This week, please learn the following spellings ready to be tested on Thursday 22 October. There are many ways to practise these, for example:

  • Rainbow write (write them in many different colours)
  • Speed write (how many times can you write a word in a minute)
  • Pyramid write (write one letter, then two, then three etc till you’ve written the whole word
  • Look, cover, write

This week, all of your spellings have a suffix (ed or ing). Remember the three rules:

  • Just add the suffix
  • Drop the e and add the suffix
  • Double the last consonant and add the suffix

See if you can explain to your adult which rule each of these words has followed.

loving waved jumping shopping digging
sliding sliced poured dropped chopped