A belated happy and healthy new year to you all.

What a tricky start to the new term! Despite this, children came back to school on Tuesday cool, calm and collected, all ready for lots more learning! Thank you again for your understanding and support when we had to make the difficult decision to close on Monday.

New year, new contact details?

Let’s start with a short request: If you’ve got any new contact details for you or other contacts, please remember to let us know. We need up-to-date details for the people on our lists in case of emergencies. (The people on our lists are the ones you gave us when your child started school – in most cases, we should have details for three different people.)

Attendance matters

Our school attendance in the Autumn term was 95.9%.

This is a bit lower than for the same term last year (96.9%). However, it still means…

• we rank 70th out of 223 Leeds schools
• we’re in third highest band of schools nationally (decile 3: the top 20-30% of schools)

Thank you for continuing to make sure your child gets to school as much as possible. (And well done to Year 5 – their attendance is a whopping 97.5%!)

As always, if you’re unsure, please check the NHS app: Is my child too ill for school?

Money matters

This time of year can be difficult for many families dealing with additional costs and pressure on their household budgets. The Money Information Centre offers access to free, confidential, and impartial help and advice on a range of money-related matters, with a range of useful information about employment support, energy, fuel and food support and the healthy holidays programme.

​Watch Us While We Work: you said, we listened

​Our Watch Us While We Work and Topic Review sessions are really popular – lots of you attend these. However, some parents have told us being able to visit just one class is frustrating. We’ve listened.

The next Watch Us While We Work session is coming up – it’s first thing on Thursday 23 January.

This time, we’ve asked teachers to plan for two parts within the half hour session. This means after the first 10-15 minutes or so, you’ll get a chance to switch classrooms without disrupting the learning going on.

We realise this doesn’t help if you’d prefer to visit three classes or more because you’ve more children, but we think these 10-15 minutes parts are as short as they can be while making sure you still get the most out of them.

Enjoy your weekend – stay warm!

Just like today, we aim to open as normal tomorrow.

Registers will be open for longer. Your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

This is to make sure you can get to school safely despite the freezing weather.

We’re open today (Tuesday 07 January).

Registers are open for longer so your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

Please travel safely.

We’re happy to confirm school will be open tomorrow as normal (assuming there’s not a drastic change in the weather conditions!).

When we’re faced with the question of whether to open or close, we have to factor in travel conditions for families and for staff (some of whom live quite far away); the availability of site staff to clear paths and make them safe; the condition of the rooms (and whether there have been leaks caused by snow)…

Thank you for your understanding today.

School is closed today.

The weather situation hasn’t improved enough overnight so we’ve taken the decision to close school today.

The weather conditions at the moment mean that any sort of travel is tricky. However, the forecast is an improving one. As it stands right now, please expect that that school will be open tomorrow. We’ll keep the registers open for longer so you can travel safely.

We’ll keep you updated online if there’s any further updates.

Finally… Happy new year! We hope you enjoyed a lovely break.

If you came to one of our Christmas performances, or Thursday’s carol singing, we hope you enjoyed it and thank you for your donation. We raised £233.08 for our school charity: Yorkshire Air Ambulance.

Highlights

It’s our last message of 2024! We thought it would be nice to share some of our highlights…

• Miss Birch: ‘Nearly every single child in Year 3 has made progress with their times tables check scores since the beginning of the year!’
• Mr Wilks: ‘A highlight this term has been visiting different classes to watch pupils’ Science learning. It was brilliant to see children really engaged in their learning, using technical vocabulary and working together collaboratively.’
• Miss Newman: ‘As it’s been my first term at Moortown, I’ve a long list of highlights! However, if I had to choose one, it would be our first class trip to Lotherton Hall. It was great fun seeing all the wildlife and it was amazing to watch the children showcase their Science knowledge in the workshop!’ 
• Mrs Weekes: ‘I’ve got two highlights. A recent one was when a child approached me in the playground to ask for help – it summed up our job as teachers. Another was getting to know our new Reception friends as they come to school with a smile and a lovely greeting each day.’
• Mrs Taylor and Mrs Lake: ‘Year 2 have impressed us with their learning at home. For example, 97 Numbots certificates have been achieved this term!’
• Miss Lowry: ‘Our highlight of the year in reception so far has been watching the children beginning their reading journey. It is truly magical to watch this journey and see them develop into confident readers.’

…and my highlight is simply standing at the school gate at the start of the school day and being greeted by happy and healthy children as they arrive at school – it’s such a positive way to start the day!

Leeds at Christmas

The ultimate guide to Christmas in Leeds includes a whole host of information about what’s happening over the Christmas and New Year period, such as visiting the Christmas markets across the city centre, family attractions including Northern lights at Temple Newsham and where to see Santa.

Finally, all that needs to be said is have a happy Christmas or holiday period. We’ll see you all again on Monday 06 January.