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:
- Get a PCR test (test that is sent to a lab) as soon as possible.
- 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
For practising the list of spellings, we’d like you to use rainbow words. You might do each letter in a different colour or just each word in a different colour. If you’re feeling extravagant, have a go at this:
Year 1
• is
• love
• me
• my
• no
Year 2
• school
• she
• so
• some
• their
• there
• they
• to
• today
• the
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.
03 December 2021
This week we have been learning about apostrophes for possession. Please learn the following words for a test on Thursday 09 December
- cemetery’s
- community’s
- dictionary’s
- environment’s
- individual’s
- neighbour’s
- parliament’s
- soldier’s
- vehicle’s
03 December 2021
This week’s Talk Time poses a moral dilemma that links to our current Art topic.
Is it right that a painting can cost a million pounds?
In fact, only weeks ago, Banksy’s ‘Love is in the Bin’ sold at auction for a record £16 million.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58908768
The question does not have a right or wrong answer. You may already have a strong view on this but a key part of your discussions at home will be taking others’ views into consideration. Following this week’s Remember 2s (R2s) will help with that:
- Why would someone pay a million pounds for a painting? Think about what the painting represents and how it could make a person feel.
- Why might it be considered wrong for a painting to cost a million pounds? How else could that money be spent?
- What is an acceptable amount of money to spend on a single painting?
Your discussions will build on the skills gained through this half term’s oracy focus: building on the views of others and reasoning. If you agree with someone else’s comments, you could respond with one of these sentence starters:
- Picking up on what’s been said, I’d add…’
- ‘As well as that…’
- ‘In addition to that…’
- ‘Furthermore…’
- ‘Moreover…’
It might be that you disagree with the views of people in your household – that’s okay but it’s important to remember to respect their views, too. Whatever your opinion, using ‘because’ in your discussions will help you to put forward a strong argument.
Living and Learning: physical health and fitness
During our Living and Learning lessons we have been describing some ways we are physically active throughout the day. We thought about all the things we had done since waking up that morning and being in our lesson. The children came up with lots of ideas:
“I rode my scooter to school.”
“I walked up and down my stairs 3 times.”
“I walked to school.”
“We did Wake Up Shake Up.”
We have also been explaining why it is important to rest and get enough sleep, as well as being active.
“If we don’t sleep we will be tired at school and won’t be able to do our learning.”
“We might get poorly, like get a cold.”
“We need to sleep to grow.”
“If we don’t exercise our body won’t be strong.”
We have also discussed how an hour of physical activity is important for good health. We thought about who can help us to keep healthy and how?
“Your friends, family and teachers can help you.”
“Drink lots of water.”
“Eat healthy food and eat breakfast.”
“Keep your body and teeth clean.”
“Exercise like swimming and dancing.”
Ice, maths and chilli challenges
It was a chilly one Monday morning!
The children were amazed at how thick the ice was on our tuff trays. After lunch, we brought the ice inside and decided to do some ice painting.
Chilli challenge number 3
The Christmas cards are ready!
These will be coming home with the calendars.
Chilli challenge number 4
The children explored navigating Bee-Bots around the mat to get to one of the Christmas pictures. They had lots of fun watching the Bee-Bots move in different directions.
The Naughty Elf has been very cheeky!
On Wednesday, we found him doing snow angels in the flour.
On Thursday, he was swinging off the Christmas covered in toilet paper!
I wonder what he’ll be doing tomorrow…
Fantastic maths!
Number 6 is our new focus number. We watched the Numberblock 6 video and talked about what 6 makes us think of.
“6 spots on a dice.”
“6 is the biggest number on the dice”
“6 spots on the wooden ladybird”
“2 and 2 and 2”
“5 and 1”
After the maths input, the children explored making an insect with 6 legs and 6 eyes. 
“2 legs on this side and 4 legs on this side.”
“3 legs here and 3 legs here”
“My insect has got 6 eyes. 2 and 2 and 2.”
“My insect has got 6 eyes and 6 legs.”
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5… I need one more leg.”
Some of the children played a track game using 10 hoops and a die. Before starting the game, they were asked to work together to make a track of 10 hoops. We observed some amazing counting and teamwork! The children took turns to roll the dice, subitise and move along their tracks.
“I need 2 more.”
“I need 3 more.”
“I need 3…I can still move because I got 2… Now I only need one to win.”
“I’m one more than you.”
“I think … could win because he only needs one more.”
Library Books
Your child will have a library book in their book bag. Please look after this book at return it next Thursday so your child can choose a new library book.
Finally, this week we’ve been reading The Christmas Story. To help us remember the story, we used some actions. Click here to watch us retell the story.
Home-Link Challenge
Fantastic, descriptive writing
We have been learning how to write descriptively. After exploring lots of vocabulary, the children went on to write some fantastic setting descriptions. They were asked to include good adjectives, to describe the nouns, prepositions and (of course) punctuate it all correctly.
Using a thesaurus, the class up levelled some of their chosen adjectives.
Here is an example of a setting description by Evie.
This week’s bible story
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.
Week beginning 29 November 2021
Sorry that you can’t be in school this week. Below are lots of resources to keep your skills up. Don’t forget to e mail your class teacher if you have any problems.
Maths
Follow this sequence of maths learning which is linked to number and place value.
-
- Lesson 1: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 2: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 3: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 4: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 5: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 6: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 7: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 8: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 9: video, worksheet, answers
- Lesson 10: video, worksheet, answers
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. 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
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
This half term we are reading Holes by Louis Sacher. He also wrote There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom. Follow these lessons on There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom and Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. There’s a whole series of lessons, but start at Lesson 1 and work through, doing one (or maybe even two) each day. (If you’re self-isolating in your second week, stick with the series of lessons you’ve already started and aim to complete the full series.)
(Suggested time: 30 minutes daily)
Writing
Follow these lessons on Shaun Tan’s The Viewer There’s a whole series of lessons, but start at Lesson 1 and work through, doing one (or maybe even two) each day. (If you’re self-isolating in your second week, stick with the series of lessons you’ve already started and aim to complete the full series.)
(Suggested time: 30-40 minutes for each)
Topic
Our topic this half-term is art.
Choose an area of art which interests you from Oak Academy. Follow the lesson sequence. They each have 5 lessons so you could do two a week.
(Suggested time: 30-40 minutes)
Science
Our focus this half-term is light.
These six lessons from Oak National Academy link closely to what we’ve been doing in class. Start at Lesson 1 and work through, doing two or three in the week. If you’ve previously completed one of these lessons, have a go at the ones you haven’t completed yet.
If Science really motivates your child, you could also use look at these lessons all about practical Science.
(Suggested time: 30-45 minutes)
PE
Don’t forget to do some daily exercise!
Do two or three of these Five Minute Moves from Joe Wicks each day – spread them across the day as if they were playtimes, maybe!
Try working through this series of 25 lessons from the Association for Physical Education – do two or three in the week.
(Suggested time: 5 minutes daily, plus 30 minutes for the longer PE lessons)
Extra stuff…
As an extra (or as an alternative, if this helps to motivate your child)…
Geography isn’t a topic-driver this half-term, but you could brush up on your locational knowledge – something that was missed when schools closed earlier this year. You could explore some online maps and try to memorise some new countries, capitals, rivers and mountain ranges. These three lessons about Europe are worth checking out.
What about some Living and Learning? While you’re away from school, you could check out these lessons on money!