English: Michael Rosen Day
Today, we celebrated Michael Rosen Day with a live webinar, where we had the pleasure of hearing him read some of his incredible poetry. He also shared inspiring insights and useful tips on writing poetry.
We especially enjoyed his reading of Hot Food. It was fascinating to learn how this poem brings back memories of his family, almost like a photo album playing in his mind as he reads it.
Help at home: Read the poem aloud together and make it interactive by encouraging your child to act out parts of the poem or create movements for certain words.
Me and My Community Theme Week
Me and My Community Week
Wetherby Brass Band
On Tuesday, we were lucky to have a visit from Steven from Wetherby Brass Band. He spoke to the whole school about the benefits of playing in a band and being part of a community within the Wetherby community.
Steven, brought in some instruments and some of us were lucky enough to play some of them – some made hilarious noises.
The band play during many events in the Wetherby community, including the Remembrance Parade. They also play every Sunday at 2.30-4.30pm from the end of April to the end of September.
Bonfire Night Safety
We hope you have a lovely time if you are going out tonight to celebrate Bonfire Night and watch some fireworks.
Please remember the top tips we talked about in class today to help keep you safe:
Living and Learning: Me and My Community Themed Week – St James
Yesterday, as part of our Me and My Community themed week we learnt about St James. We learnt that he grew up as a fisherman with his brother. Jesus went to meet James and he became one of the three disciples who were very close to Jesus, along with Peter and John.
James became the first travelling apostle (an important early Christian Teacher) and the Apostle’s symbol is a scallop shell (the badge of pilgrims everywhere) which is like our school logo. We thought about why there are three shells on our school logo and why they are in 3 different colours and 3 sizes.
We also thought about our school vision ‘We are a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe’ and what the words happy, healthy, achieve and believe mean to us.
Help at home: Can your child tell you something they have learnt about St James? Can they tell you why we have shells as our school logo? Do they remember what our school vision is?
Junior Leadership Team Election
It’s nearly time to elect our new junior leaders
We have recently launched this year’s Junior Leadership Team election process. Our Junior Leadership Team is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.
The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with two representatives from each class, chosen democratically by their peers.
Here are some of the qualities our junior leaders think are needed to be an effective JLT member.
- use the 8Rs for learning
- be respectful and polite
- help others
- be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
- share and be confident with your ideas
- let others speak
- accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
- be friendly and approachable
- follow our school rules and make good choices in class and around school
Last weeks’ whole school homework is all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections on Thursday 24 October. For children who want to stand in the election, they will have the chance to share their speeches in class on Wednesday or Thursday this week.
Well done to all our current junior leaders who have represented their class so well this year. Remember, you can stand again in the election.
DT: Food Technology
Today, we made a fruit smoothie. First, we read the recipe together, looking at the ingredients and the instructions on what to do.
Before we began we made sure we had clean hands. We used a knife to carefully slice the banana. Next, we weighed the berries and added them to the jug. After, we measured out the milk and poured in the milk. Mrs Cairnes used the blender to blend the ingredients together. We all drank the smoothie and gave a thumbs up or thumbs down to show if we enjoyed it or not.
Help at home: Would you do anything differently if you were to make the smoothie again? e.g. change the fruits, add yoghurt (we didn’t use yoghurt at school), add some honey?
Can you make the smoothie at home?
Our new spellings focus on the days of the week, each containing one of our Phase 5 sounds: “ay”. The children will have their test on Friday 8th November.
- Monday
- Tuesday
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
- Saturday
- Sunday
Help at home
- Practise writing each day of the week, reminding them that days are proper nouns and need a capital letter.
- Say the days aloud together, emphasizing the “ay” sound.
- Use flashcards.
- Look, say, cover and check!
Regular spelling practise at home can make a real difference!
Writing: dictation
We’ve made a great start to our week with some fantastic writing in Year 1. Each day we practise our handwriting and write some words, captions/sentences about a picture.
Help at home:
Using the pictures below can your child write some words, captions or sentences.
Ask them about the process and how they do it school. I’m sure they’d be happy to share with you how skilful they are at counting the words in the sentence and using their Phoneme Fingers to listen for sounds in words. You could also include some tricky words or some of your child’s spelling words.