Author: Mr Roundtree

Yesterday, we listed four ideas for additional or alternative home learning, including providing design inspiration for the new Leeds Children’s Hospital and contributing to Leeds COVID Diaries. Our last daily message of the week features a couple more top tips to support home learning and an interesting article about the benefits of video games.

Before either of those things, though, a repeat of one part of yesterday’s message:

If you’re at home with your child and are really struggling in some way, please do get in touch. Call us on 01937 583 379 or send an email to Natalie Beatson, the Head of School (stjamesheadofschool@spherefederation.org). We’ll do our best to support in some way.

Daily wellbeing activities

Although Purple Patch Arts’ mission is to improve the lives and life chances of people with learning disabilities, complex needs and autism, their daily activities are really good for everyone. The activities all fit around a weekly theme (this week’s was ‘Unsolved Mysteries – Climate Change‘).

Each day, there’s a fact of the day (yesterday’s was ‘Trees act like the lungs of the earth. Trees help the planet breathe by turning carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into clean, pure oxygen.‘). It’s worth checking out the activity just for this. It could prompt your child to do some further independent research, or simply to build up a bank of fascinating facts to remember!

The fact of the day is then followed up with about five activities (yesterday’s included a science investigation, an arty activity and a film to watch to find out more about trees).

Creative connections

The aim of Fun Palaces is to ‘support local people to co-create their own cultural and community events, across the UK and worldwide, sharing and celebrating the genius in everyone‘.

Since the start of the lockdown, Fun Palaces has been asking people to share ways they’re connecting with neighbours, friends and family whilst safely social distancing. These Tiny Revolutions are easy steps anyone can take to connect a little more in their local community or pass time creatively in self-isolation. You can download a whole series of creative ideas – we like the Big Picture idea on page 4!

Video games in lockdown

Read this article about the hidden benefits of playing video games in lockdown. Benefits mentioned in the article include…

• a sense of connection: ‘Even the most competitive online game is an opportunity for children to be in touch with school friends or a wider group of online acquaintances.‘
• learning opportunities: ‘There’s a whole category of games that have been created solely to teach the player something. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course, but there’s also a lot of learning that happens in games not specifically designed for this purpose.‘
• a way to stay calm and feel more in control: ‘Video games can offer a healthy and helpful escape from the real world, particularly at stressful times. In the game, the child can find a sense of control over things or attempt projects that in the real world they might not have the confidence for.’

The article goes on to provide some short advice for you to help your child enjoy positive experiences when playing.

 

Whatever you do, have a happy and healthy weekend, and a safe one, too.

Our daily message to you today concentrates on home learning – we’ve still got lots of our pupils at home and we’re not going to neglect them.

If you’re at home with your child and are really struggling in some way, please do get in touch. Call us on 01937 583 379 or send an email to Natalie Beatson, the Head of School (stjamesheadofschool@spherefederation.org). We’ll do our best to support in some way.

In previous messages, we’ve encouraged setting up a routine to support home learning. In case you’ve missed this, we really like the Education Endowment Foundation’s resources to support parents and carers at home, especially this video and really simple tick list which promote routines.

Another piece of advice was to be flexible. This could be in two ways…

One is to be flexible in terms of occasionally breaking the routine so that it works for you and your child. Routines bring with them feelings of safety and security for your child, and breaking them can bring excitement and extra engagement (and ease some pressure for you), as long as it’s not too often.

The other way to be flexible is about the home learning tasks. The four activities here can be used as additional or alternative home learning tasks.

Design competition for the new Leeds Children’s Hospital

Calling all budding architects and designers! Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is going to build a brand new Leeds Children’s Hospital and they need children’s help to design it.

The judges are looking for design ideas that will make a difference to patients, their families, carers and people who work in the new Leeds Children’s Hospital. The ideas could be:

• an idea that is a practical help (for example, a new way of finding your way around)
• an idea for how the inside or outside of the hospital might look to make patients, families and staff feel like it’s great place to be
• an idea for something to keep patients in touch with their families and friends
• an idea for a space to play, or relax, or spend time with friends and family
• a new idea to inspire their design team in the future

Draw a picture, paint, make a model, write a poem, make it in Minecraft or Lego, make a short video… anything you like – it’s up to your child to decide! Find out more about the competition. Entries are open to anyone under 18 years old and the competition closes on Friday 12 June 2020.

Share your Covid experiences

Across the city, the lives of children and young people have been dramatically impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. They’re having to come to terms with a whole new normal way of living and finding different and innovative ways to cope. The Leeds COVID Diaries Project is a way to capture their experience and will provide a valuable historical snapshot of Leeds for future generations.

People of all ages across Leeds are being invited to share their stories, experiences and thoughts about the coronavirus pandemic, but they’re particularly keen to hear from children, young people and families.

It might be called COVID Diaries, but it doesn’t have to be a diary entry! Your child’s (or your own) entry can be absolutely anything you want and in any format. It can be hand-written, typed, drawn, painted, recorded etc and can be a blog, video diary, song, piece of music, social media post, a photo, a poem, a piece of artwork…  Find out more.

Storytelling and drama from Polka Theatre

For younger children, there are four stories to watch a story and then have a go at some of the related activities from Polka Theatre. You could perhaps spread this across four weeks of home learning, choosing one of the following for each week:

• The Paper Dolls
• Gorilla
• The Everywhere Bear
• How to Hide a Lion

Leeds Children’s Mayor 2020

Despite the coronavirus outbreak, Leeds will still hold elections for the next Leeds Children’s Mayor (LCM) this year. Find out more.

Children in  Year 5 need to write a manifesto and then send it to us: stjamesheadofschool@spherefederation.org

It’s down to schools to submit the entrants, so send these to us by Friday 12 June. We’ll then make sure we submit entrants to the Leeds Children’s Mayor Team by Wednesday 17 June, the closing date.

Here’s a short video from Wania, the current Children’s Mayor, who explains what she likes about the programme.

You might have seen or heard news stories presenting general overview of what it was like yesterday as schools opened up to more children. In today’s message, we’re presenting an overview specifically of our three Sphere Federation schools…

Two specific things have come up:

• one about social distancing – please read our policy on this because we’re following it really strictly
• one about what to bring to school (the answer to this is very little!) – please read this information, especially pages 4 and 5

From St James’ CE Primary…

We’ve had nine children in today. We were expecting 13 but two parents decided last minute (one this morning) that they didn’t want to send their child to school yet. One child is ill but not with COVID-19 symptoms.

The process of coming into school this morning went well. It’s good that we’ve started with small numbers so staff and parents can get use to this routine.

We hope to invite more pupils next week into a new Foundation/KS1 bubble. We’ll leave some space for additional key workers who may need a place in the following weeks, although this is becoming a challenge with the KS2 bubble which is quite full.

From Moortown Primary…

We were expecting 34 children in school but only have 32. The mood in school is positive. Staff are being vigilant but are taking things in their stride well. When I’ve visited classes, children have seemed less confident than usual, but that’s natural and staff say they’re easing into it.

The only big issue was responding to concerns about whether children have been socially distancing at home. We’ve a policy on this and we’re strictly following the policy – this has meant one parent has been asked to collect their child.

Other than that, there haven’t been any other glitches or issues, just a couple of minor teething problems like some parents not understanding the exit route (quickly rectified) – so far so good.

From Scholes (Elmet) Primary…

We’ve 31 children in school. We were expecting a few more but over the last couple of days some parents’ remained concerned while others had their work shifts confirmed/changed.

It was good having low numbers of children because it’s meant that our staff can also get used to working around lots of other adults – it’s important that they social distance, too, so they protect themselves as much as possible and therefore stay healthy to come to school.

Most parents had read the communications that are being sent out. However, we did have some bags brought to school – they got sent home.

Moving forward, we’d like to know if there are any more key workers who are going to need us. These people will continue to be our priority. After that, we’ll look at other children who we deem as being vulnerable.