Help at home: reading
Reading is super important. In fact, we think it’s one of the most important things you can do to support your child at home.
Some studies have found that children who read regularly are more likely to be happy in adulthood, more likely to earn more money and more likely to do well in all school subjects.
Whilst we understand life is busy, we’d love it if you could read with your child every day (ideally for about 20 minutes but anything is better than not reading at all).
This article has a handy reading for parents guide if you’d like any more information or tips.
Our Reading Activities leaflet will provide lots of activities to make reading an even more enjoyable and active experience for all. Check out the ‘Help Your Child‘ section of our website for a range of guides and tips for helping your child across a range of subjects.
Some common questions about reading:
When should my child have their reading book and reading diary in school?
If your child is in 3,4O or 3,4N they should have their reading book and reading diary in school every Friday. If your child is in 3,4E they should have their reading book and reading diary in school every Monday.
Now my child is in Year 3 or 4, should I still sign their reading diary?
Yes. We’d love it if you could sign their reading diary and leave a comment at least once a week. We think it’s a really important link between school and home.
My child can read fluently. Should they still read aloud to me?
Ideally, yes. They can spend time reading on their own, too – we encourage this. However, it’s really important that children still practise the skill of reading aloud. It helps improve their confidence and improves their ability to read with expression. Being read to is really important, too – so don’t underestimate the power of a bedtime story!
The book my child has brought home is too easy / hard. What should I do?
This will rarely happen but if you do think your child’s book isn’t the right level please get in touch with their class teacher (our email addresses are at the bottom of this post).
If you have any other questions, comments or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with your child’s class teacher. While we don’t encourage you to do this on the playground (to reduce numbers and enhance social distancing), we encourage you to email us instead.
3,4O – olliecatherall@spherefederation.org
3,4E – emmamccormick@spherefederation.org
3,4N – nicolawadsworth@spherefederation.org
Design and Technology
As our Leeds West Indian Carnival topic continues, we are learning more about costume designs and the designers who made them .
Arthur France and Hughbon Condor have designed many winning carnival Queen costumes. Hughbon Condor is actually an engineer and has always enjoyed bringing his ideas to life.
So, we had a go at the design process by researching a theme, sketching ideas and asking our troupe about our ideas.
Here are some…
New History Topic – vocabulary
This week, we have started our new history topic – The Leeds West Indian Carnival. It’s a new topic for children and teachers, and we’re loving the learning so far.
As a class, we looked at programmes and videos from the carnival, dating back to 1977. We’ve learned alot about how life has changed over time and how these primary resources can help us learn about life in the past.
We’ve studied the location of the West Indies in the Caribbean sea and the human and physical geography of the islands.
Also, many questions were answered:
- What is a carnival?
- What is a procession?
- What is immigration?
Some of these words are in our vocabulary list. We found that drawing pictures on our whiteboards helped us to understand the meaning of the words. It was fascinating to see the different creations and how we all have our own way of ‘seeing’ words. It was good to share our drawings in the class and learn from one another.
Here are some photos…
3,4NV class news
3,4 NV
Well done for a fabulous first week back! It has been wonderful to have everyone back in school. You have settled in quickly and have worked really hard all week – you must feel very proud!
This week, we have enjoyed reading ‘The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse’. We have discussed some of the messages within the book and how these relate to everyday life.
Here is one of our sketches based on the ideas from the book:
Today, we have enjoyed reading and sharing books during Book Club.
Yesterday, Mrs Richardson gave our class some plants to look after. We can’t wait to water them regularly and watch them grow. We will keep posting pictures of them.
The certificate winners for this week are:
Living and Learning – Aurora
- For being confident at school and having a positive attitude. Well done.
For great learning – Darcey
- Well done for neat handwriting and taking pride and care with your work.
For Sports and physical activity – Olive and Bethenny
- Thanks for showing everyone the dance moves in WUSU!
Our TT Rockstar for the week is Harry Y4! Well done.
Finally, here are a couple of pieces of writing from Home Learning activities that I promised to post. Great writing!
Well done for a fantastic week everyone. Enjoy the weekend.
Mrs Wadsworth, Miss McAleer and Mrs Richardson
New topic and vocabulary
We’re back!
It’s hard to put into words how amazing it has been to have almost all of our school community back together this week. Everyone returned on Monday eager to learn and even more eager to catch up with everyone. If your child is anxious or worried, please let their class teacher now.
We got cracking straight away and have dived into our ‘new’ topic – we started this topic two weeks ago through our home learning but have recapped lots of learning today to make sure none of our learners miss out.
Our topic this half term is history driven – in particular, we’re focussing on local history. We’ll be learning about lots of interesting knowledge through our main focus: The Leeds West Indian Carnival.
Here’s some of the learning we’ll be completing…
We’ll also be reading Loidis Ledes Leeds by Tom Palmer – it’s set in Leeds and will give us lots of local history knowledge.
Help at home by asking your child questions from the ‘knowledge and other learning’ section in the document above – this document is taken from our curriculum statement.
World Book Day Thursday 04 March – Zoom sessions
It’s World Book Day on Thursday 04 March and we thought that children might like to join in with the celebrations on our Zoom calls by getting dressed up as one of their favourite story characters, or you might want to bring your favourite book instead. You might have a costume already at home, or a t-shirt with a picture of your favourite character on the front.
Please DO NOT purchase anything special for the Zoom call, we’re sure that everyone has something at home that you could use.
If you’re struggling to find something or your child doesn’t want to dress up, that’s fine as well. Again, please don’t worry or feel you need to buy something.
Year 3/4 are very much looking forward to sharing some stories, books and characters this week.
PE days reminder
On the days your child has PE, they should come to school in their PE kit as detailed in our uniform policy . (Track-suit bottoms instead of shorts would be good on colder days. Footwear : black/brown/grey/white flat shoes which are safe to run around in.)
Footwear on PE days could be children’s ‘school shoes’ which are often a ‘trainer’ style anyway, if you want to avoid having to buy 2 pairs of shoes.
Please find below the days each class has allocated PE times, which will be taught outdoors, except in extreme weather.
- F2 Sunshine and F2 Rainbow (Miss Parling & Mrs Allen-Kelly/Mrs Wilkins) – Wednesday & Friday
- 1KN (Miss Lowry/Mrs Lake) – Monday & Friday
- 1,2V (Mrs Latham) – Thursday & Friday
- 2C (Mr Gathercole) – Monday & Thursday
- 3,4N (Mrs Wadsworth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
- 3,4E (Mrs McCormick) – Tuesday & Thursday
- 3,4O (Mr Catherall) – Monday & Tuesday
- 5,6S (Mrs Hogarth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
- 5,6M (Mr Lindsay) – Wednesday & Friday
- 5,6B (Mr Freeman) – Monday & Friday
Year 3/4 Walking Champions
A few weeks ago, I posted a challenge for children in Year 3/4 to walk the equivalent of the National 3 Peaks – a distance of nearly 40km and a total of 50, 330 steps! This is not an easy challenge by any means. The goal was to walk the distance in 8 weeks.
Remarkably, some children have already walked the distance – twice! Well done, Sam!
I’ve been amazed with the effort from so many of our pupils. Thank you to everyone who has taken part so far. There is still time to complete the challenge so don’t worry if you haven’t started yet. Maybe the sunshine and Spring feel to the air will inspire you to get out and walk, run, scoot or climb.
There have been a few stand-out moments.
Here are some of William’s routes around the area.
Thank you to another pupil who produced a wonderful PPT of his efforts throughout half term. I love the pie chart!
There’s still time to complete the challenge at either Bronze, Silver or Gold level. Just keep a track of your steps and distances and show them to your teacher.
We’ll hand out the certificates to everyone at the end of March 2021.
Happy Half Term – stay active with our 3 Peaks Challenge!
Well done to William, Sam and Emma who have been actively counting their steps on our ‘3 peaks challenge’.
If you would like to keep up with the challenge over half term, then see details below.
The Sphere Year 3/4 Team would absolutely love you to be part of this awesome challenge this February and March. We want to get you walking or running (or scooting!) as much as you can over the next two months.
Every time you do a walk or run, add the distance completed (and your time taken to complete this) in your chart. We will be adding up everyone’s distances each week to see how many of us can ‘climb’ the National three peaks. In topic this week and next, we will be learning about some mountains in the UK, so what could be better than a virtual mountain climbing challenge!
The three mountains in the challenge are the highest in each country in the UK:
- Snowdon, in Wales (1085m) Distance: 7 miles / 11.75 km
- Scafell Pike, in England (978m) Distance: 5.5 miles / 9 km
- Ben Nevis, in Scotland (1345m) Distance: 10.75 miles / 17km
You can record your steps taken (paces). The whole route is 37.75 kilometres long, and the average human step (or pace) is 0.75 metres. So you have to take 50,333 steps in total to complete the Three Peaks. Recording steps (paces) taken is easy – you can use a Fitbit, pedometer or just count your steps. A phone can track how many steps you take and how far you walk all by itself, if you walk with an adult who has a phone.
The idea is to make this as much fun as possible, to motivate you to get outdoors and maybe encourage as many of your family and your friends to do the same thing.
You don’t have to do the whole route. Maybe you can choose to ‘walk’ just one mountain, or two – it’s up to you and what you can achieve.
Throughout the month, we will share photos and graphics of the distances you’ve travelled. From this, we can show who has travelled up the peaks and what location we can reach together. Hopefully, we can find ways to help you during this challenge and through this you can share stories, pictures and videos with those joining in this challenge. All ‘Three peaks in eight weeks’ challenge walkers will receive certificates for effort and participation:-
Mountain 1 = Bronze; Mountain 2 = Silver; Mountain 3 = Gold.
Class News 3,4 NV
Hi everyone,
Well done for another week of fabulous home learning! It has been great to know how well you have been doing through the emails, zoom calls and phone calls home!
What a great way to end this half term – fossil making, creating a rock friend, reading about volcanoes and lots more!
Well done to those of you who have continued with TTRockstars and/or Numbots. I can see that so many of you are practising.
Have a happy, healthy and safe half term break. We have some exciting learning planned for you next half term!
Mrs Wadsworth
