Author: Mr Roundtree

Time Travel

In our topic, ‘Time Travel’ the children have been learning about objects from the past and how they have changed over time. The children were given a picture of a vacuum cleaner and asked to guess what it was. After that, they were given other vacuum cleaners and asked to work together to put them in chronological order.

In this lesson, the children demonstrated that they could use the historical skill of recognising that changes happen over time.

12 October 2018

The homework this week is Creative.

I know facts about The Great Fire of London.

To tie in with our big topic and the learning that we are doing in class, this homework asks children to find out facts about The Great Fire of London. It is up you how you present your facts.

The homework should be returned by Thursday 18 October.

Homework Review

We really enjoyed reading all of our stories in this week’s homework review. There were some fantastic tales that really showed off the writing we’ve worked on so far this year.

First, we summarised our story for the people on our table using only ten words. Then, we swapped with someone else on our table and told them what we liked about it.

We then had the chance to wander around the class to get a snippet from lots of people’s before settling down to read another one and tell them what we thought.

We nominated stories to be shared on the website, giving reasons why we felt that story should be shared.

Farai’s was nominated because Thomas felt like he’d written like a Tom Gates story and he loved the cliff hanger.

Kai’s was nominated by Martha because he’d put lots of effort in and used great adjectives.

Lory’s was chosen by Rohan because it was action-packed.

Josh’s was chosen by Farai because he used some great verbs and sentence openers.

12 October 2018

All of the spellings this week have ‘fer endings and we’re learning how to add a suffix to these words. There will be a test on Friday 19 October.

preferred referred transferred offered
preferring referring transferring offering
preference reference transference  
  referral transferal  
preferable referable transferable

This week’s time tables test will be on the 4 x table but we’ll be challenging ourselves with the more difficult questions we’ve been practising recently. We’re improving every day with these.

12 October 2018

This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due on Thursday 18 October.

I can solve division problems.

The children have a selection of questions we’ve worked on in class to have a go at on their own at home. The first row test whether they can divide by a single digit and understand the context of the problem. They might need to give their answer as a remainder, a decimal or a fraction.

The second row is an opportunity for them to practise diving by 2 digits using the factor pair method and the third requires them to use the chunking method. The children should be able to explain these methods to you but you can see the chunking method for yourself by watching our Calculations Video on division.

A factory packs their biros into boxes of 8. They’re packing 1550 biros.

a)      How many full boxes will there be?

 

b)      How many boxes would they need to pack all of the biros?

 

c)      How many biros will be left?

 

 Miss Cake has 1500g of sugar in school. She wants the children to work in 8 groups to make buns. What amount of sugar would each group be able to have? Cadburys make a giant chocolate bar that has 1000 pieces.

They separate it into smaller bars of 6 pieces each.

a)      How many bars are they able to make?

 

b)      How many pieces will be left?

 

 The Dominos factory sends its stores 585 pizza bases a day.

If there are 9 stores to send them to, how many pizza bases will each receive?
1080 ÷ 24

 

 

 1170 ÷ 18 1566 ÷ 27 4968 ÷ 72
912 ÷ 19 1173 ÷ 17 1196 ÷ 23 1305 ÷ 29

 

 
 

Choose two of the calculations from the last two rows and write a story to go with them.

 

Living and Learning

Although this week’s Living and Learning statement is about summarising the work on the 8Rs we’ve been focusing on so far this half term, this week we had a visit from Dove to talk about body image.

We explored where pressure comes from for us to consider our appearance too much. Some really interesting videos showed us just how much an image we might see in professional media can be manipulated. Then, we discussed different points of the video in groups.

When we were sharing our thoughts, we had some really thoughtful and mature points to make:

You don’t need a lot of make up to be beautiful. 
You should just be yourself and not try to be someone else. 
Everybody likes different things and you can’t please everybody so please yourself. 
Finally, we made a pledge given what we’d considered today:
I pledge to take fewer selfies.
I pledge not to want to be like other people.
I pledge to be happy with who I am.
At home, discuss what a positive body image is; what affects us having a positive body image; and how we can ensure we’re positive about ourselves.

A happy and healthy and safe place to learn

At Moortown Primary, we place keeping our children safe – both physically and emotionally – as our top priority. We recently invited someone from Leeds LA to come in to school to audit all our safeguarding procedures. The purpose of the audit was to ‘assist schools in evaluating their procedures for Safeguarding and Child Protection’ – it’s something that many schools request in order to make sure their procedures are as robust as they can be.

We’re happy to tell you the audit went really well – some aspects of our procedures were even identified as exemplary!

Final comments in the report are:

I was shown around the school where I observed that the Living and Learning theme is embedded and visible to all pupils and staff and that notice boards and displays were of a high standard.

I spoke to 4 pupils who were confident in telling me about who they could go to in school for support and how they are taught to keep themselves safe on line.  They all stated clearly that they felt safe in school because of the teachers they have around them.

It is clear to see that the safety and welfare of the children at Moortown Primary School is of high importance and the staff and SLT [Senior Leadership Team] have worked hard to meet the needs of its children and families.

The evidence presented for the audit was good and very thorough and the preventative approach through the curriculum was shown to be excellent and is embedded throughout the school.

Well done, Mrs Weekes, who’s the lead person in school for safeguarding.

Moortown Primary is a happy and healthy and safe place to learn.

Parents’ evening coming up

The first of two parent-teacher meetings are coming up soon: 22 October and 23 October. At these meetings, you’ll notice two changes.

In the annual survey of parents and carers, a small number mentioned that they would prefer more frequent updates about their child’s progress. We’ve acted on this by changing when we provide you with the Learning Updates. These were previously given to you at parents’ evening. However, this year, we’ll send these home at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms. This means you’ll have an update at the end of Autumn 1 (the parents’ evening), Autumn 2 (the Learning Update), Spring 1 (the second parents’ evening), Spring 2 (the second Learning Update), and then the end of year report in the Summer.

The second change is that under new data protection legislation, pupils’ books will be given to you during the parent-teacher meeting – meaning you can only see your own child’s books – and you’ll return those on the way out of school. (We’re sure parents didn’t peek into other books, but we’re doing this as a precaution.) To make things easier, the meetings will take place in the front building – some in classrooms and some in the hall.

As always, Mrs Weekes will be around to hear your questions, compliments and concerns with these arrangements.