Mr Roundtree, Author at Moortown Primary School, Leeds

Childline – on the web

Children don’t have to be be in distress to find Childline information helpful.

This year is the 30th anniversary of Childline. It’s often thought that Childline is just a phone number, but their website is full of useful information in different formats. If you haven’t looked at the site, check it out, and encourage your child to visit, too. Remind children that they don’t have to be be in distress to find the Childline information helpful.

Why do children contact Childline?

The two most common reasons children contact Childline are low mood/unhappiness and family relationships. Childline made 4,005 referrals in 2015/16 on behalf of 3,609 children to external agencies, a 7% increase in referrals since 2014/15. There was a 49% increase in referrals about mental health since 2014/15. (Source: How safe are our children 2016, NSPCC, 2016)

Safeguarding in sport

Following last week’s disclosures, the importance of effective policies and procedures has been brought into sharp focus.

Sport is a terrific way for young people to develop their physical skills, team work and confidence. Thousands of people give up their time to coach and encourage youngsters, but occasionally incidents of grooming and abuse occur. Ensuring that children in sport are as safe as possible is much more rigorous than ever before.

Following last week’s disclosures by Andy Woodward, Steve Walters and Paul Stewart about the abuse they suffered as young footballers, the importance of effective policies and procedures has been brought into sharp focus. We have to remember that the abuse of children by adults they trust can occur in any context.

The NSPCC have dedicated resources for safeguarding children in sport.

Below is a Moortown Primary news story from 01 October on this subject:

It’s important that you check that any sports club or activity that your child attends has your child’s safety as its priority. Even if the club seems professional, there are four key questions that you should ask to make sure that they have all the necessary safeguarding measures in place:

1. Can I see your safeguarding policy?
A good organisation or club should have up-to-date safeguarding procedures in place and be happy to show you copies.

2. Who is your Welfare Officer?
The club should have a designated Welfare Officer who is responsible for dealing with any safeguarding concerns that may arise.

3. Do you follow safer recruitment procedures?
Every organisation providing sporting activities to young people must ensure they have the correct recruitment processes in place which includes interviews, references and have undertaken the appropriate police checks for their volunteers and staff.

4. How do you promote the welfare of children and young people?
The club should be able to demonstrate how they actively promote safeguarding. This includes listening and responding to the views of children and young people.

Don’t be afraid to question. A good and professional organisation will already have procedures in place and will welcome the chance to demonstrate that they are providing a safe environment for your child. Download this leaflet for further guidance on safeguarding in sports.

From Leeds Safeguarding Children’s Board website.

25 November 2016

Next we’ll, we’ll be focussing on word endings in …tious and …cious. Here are some words which end in these sounds. Work out the root word for each of them and think about how this can help you to decide whether the spelling is with a ‘t’ or a ‘c’.

vicious, precious, conscious, delicious, malicious, suspicious, ambitious, cautious, fictitious, infectious, nutritious

25 November 2016

You have been assigned three Mathletics tasks.

FRACTIONS CALCULATING: Add unlike fractions, add unlike mixed numbers, subtract unlike fractions.

These activities should be completed by Wednesday 30 November but, if you require support, come and see me before this date. Don’t forget that you can use the ? button for extra support.

STEM week – Thursday

It’s been a busy day! We started the day by battling with our bookmarks again and attempting to have thirty which had flashing lights. We perhaps achieved half of this target but demonstrated immense patience and resilience in the process. Once again, Mrs Raseta and I were far too busy for pictures but (hopefully) we’ll have some finished products to show you tomorrow.

Following this, we had a fab visit from M&S who talked to us about the history of the company, moving on to focus on their most popular product: the Melt in the Middle Pudding. We learnt the science behind how the pudding is preserved using emulsifiers and explored the ingredients involved in this perfect pudding.

Finally, the moment we’d all be waiting for, we did a (very scientific) taste testing – all in the name of Science of course.

STEM week – Wednesday

Wednesday of STEM week has been much anticipated as it brought with it our Science carousel. We often work with different teachers during a themed week and for this one, Y6 enjoyed Science from Miss Rushbrooke, Mr Wilks and Mr Owen for the whole morning. They really enjoyed helping the person trapped in ice escape in Y2 (particularly as they were deemed old and responsible enough to work with fire) and created some complicated circuits in Y4. In Y6, we explored sinking and floating and the Science behind it.

First, we predicted and tested a number of objects to find out which would sink and float before discussing any surprises and using these to determine what made an object sink or float.

We then went on to look at the same object (an egg) behaving differently in different liquids. In water, an egg sinks but if it’s salt or sugar water, it floats. Y6 now understand that this is due to the different densities of the solutions it is floating (or sinking) in.

Our afternoon required perseverance, dedication and patience while we tackled needle and thread to create an electronic circuit using conductive thread. Some of us were successful and others need to continue the hard work tomorrow. I saw some admirable resilience throughout the afternoon (from both the children and the adults in the room) and hope to see this again when our work continues tomorrow.

STEM week – Tuesday

Today, we began by practising essential skills we’d need in order to complete our electronic bookmarks: sewing. We practised a number of stitches and, not only did we thoroughly enjoy it in a calm and relaxed environment, but the children were rather good too.

We’ve also been working on our problem solving with fractions by drawing bar models but I’ve no pictures of that as I was far too busy teaching! Ask us what bar models are and whether we can show you how they work.

STEM week – Monday

STEM week has got going from the off with projects begun and visitors galore! We started the day with an introduction to our project for the week which will see us go home with light up bookmarks! We had to create a design first and make sure our circuit would work using electronic thread.

Then, we worked with Mrs Garside to learn all about hacking on the internet and discuss what this means for how we should use it safely. We followed this learning up by creating a movie trailer giving people tips on how to stay safe on line when there are hackers about.

In the afternoon, our computing heads were on again as we had to create some complicated code which would control a robot. We worked in groups and then thought about how controlling robots fits into everyday life and a number of careers around today and many more in the future.

We can’t wait for the rest of the week now!

What children say about bullying

A report by the NSPCC describes the nature of bullying experienced by young people contacting Childline.

We’re reaching the end of anti-bullying week (although, of course, every week should be an anti-bullying week!).

At Moortown, there is very limited bullying – in fact, children frequently tell us there is none at all, which is great. Even so, it’s still important to prepare your child if they encounter bullying. Please discuss at home how harmful bullying can be, and encourage them to start telling other people.

A report by the NSPCC describes the nature of bullying experienced by young people contacting Childline. Its key findings are:

Bullying is the second most common reason for boys and the third most common reason for girls to contact Childline. It makes up 9% of all counselling sessions (25,740 sessions in 2015/16).
In a quarter of counselling sessions about bullying, children also talked about mental health and wellbeing issues.
Last year, Childline provided more counselling sessions about physical bullying (4,723 sessions) than online bullying (4,541 sessions).
However, there has been an 88% increase in counselling about online bullying over the past five years.
In 2015/16, there were 1,420 counselling sessions with young people talking about bullying on social networking and gaming sites, up 34% on the previous year.
Of the children who contacted Childline about bullying, 12% said they had not told anyone else about it.
The young people who had told someone else were most likely to have told a parent (31%), a teacher (30%) or a friend (16%).
Childline delivered over 300,000 in-depth counselling sessions to children and young people in 2015/16.
Overall, Childline provides more counselling sessions to girls than to boys.
Although Childline provide more counselling sessions about bullying to girls, it is a more common concern among the boys who do contact them.
Due to the confidential nature of the Childline service, young people do not always disclose personal information, such as their age and gender.

18 November 2016

This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework links to the English learning we’ve done this week and what we’ll go on to learn for the next few weeks.

To be able to add detail to my writing.

Having learnt all about adding detail to writing in order to keep it interesting and make it descriptive, write the opening to a story using these techniques:

expanded noun phrases,
prepositional phrases, and
adverbs.

Don’t forget, you only use one page for a piece of homework and I only want the opening. We’ll then look at these together in our homework review. While your writing, think about what you’d like to write a full story on as this will be our English learning in the run up to Christmas.