Author: Mr Roundtree

The underwear rule

The NSPCC has launched the second phase of the Underwear Rule campaign, designed to encourage and empower parents of 5-11 year olds to talk to their children about keeping safe from sexual abuse.

The NSPCC has launched the second phase of the Underwear Rule campaign, designed to encourage and empower parents of 5-11 year olds to talk to their children about keeping safe from sexual abuse.  The Underwear Rule is an easy way to teach children that their body belongs to them and to talk to a trusted adult if they ever feel scared or upset.

The aim of the campaign is to reach even more parents to increase their confidence and knowledge in how to broach this tricky subject in an age appropriate way using the Underwear Rule.

NSPCC research shows that the proportion of parents who had spoken to their children about keeping safe from sexual abuse rose significantly from 46%, before the first phase of the campaign last summer, to 64% afterwards. They now want to build on that progress and reach even more parents, giving them the tools to have simple conversations with their children about keeping safe from abuse.

Ensuring that parents and carers teach their children the Underwear Rule, and that keeping safe from abuse – like the Green Cross Code – becomes an integral part of parents’ conversations about safety with their children, is vital in the fight against child abuse.

14 October 2016

This week’s homework is Talk Time and will be discussed on Thursday 21 October.

You’re completing an independent project at the moment. Discuss what you’re doing at home and think about how it’s going, whether you’re enjoying it and how you could work more effectively.

We’ll then use this discussion to reflect on our independent learning in class.

14 October 2016

This week, we’re going to recap some old spelling rules which we learnt many years ago as people are making silly errors in their writing. Here are some key spelling rules. In your book, practise adding suffixes to words (and not just simple ones) and there will be a test next week. The example words below are not a spelling list; the words tested will require these rules to be applied. Remember, you need to think about how to spell the root word (eg hurry) before you then think about how to change it for adding the suffix (change the y to an i).

drop the y for an i

  • countries
  • diaries
  • hurried

double up for a short vowel sound

  • accommodate
  • immediately
  • embarrass

drop the e

  • advising
  • evaporating
  • practising

i before e, except after c

  • ceiling
  • receive
  • believe

Results from the 2016 annual survey

The results are overwhelmingly positive – perhaps more so than ever before.

Thank you to all the parents / carers who responded to this year’s annual survey.

This year, we used an online survey which is used in our other Sphere Federation schools. This has meant looking at the results and communicating them to you is much easier (although it might have contributed to the slight drop in respondents to). We’ve removed some statistical information about the mean, the variance etc, and we’ve removed children’s names, but nothing else. Read all the results and comments here. This contains our responses, too; we’ve not responded to every single comment – just a selection.

The results are overwhelmingly positive – perhaps more so than ever before. 100 % of respondents agreed with the following statements:

  • My child is happy at Moortown Primary School.
  • My child feels safe at Moortown Primary School.
  • My child is taught well at Moortown Primary School.
  • Moortown Primary makes sure its pupils are well behaved.
  • Moortown Primary is well led and managed.
  • I would recommend Moortown Primary School to another parent.

All but one respondent agreed with the following three statements. This might be the same person, or different people. Either way, we encourage you to get in touch if unsure.

  • My child makes good progress at Moortown Primary School.
  • My child is well looked after at Moortown Primary School.
  • Moortown Primary responds well to any concerns I raise.

It was around homework, bullying and learning updates that we got more varied responses.

  • For homework, some people want more and some want less – we’re pleased that 87% agreed that homework was pitched about right.
  • Regarding bullying, responses often indicate people are unsure of how we tackle it – the comments this year (as in previous years) explain that this is because their child hasn’t encountered it.
  • Finally, around receiving updates about their child’s learning, 11% (just four respondents) were unsure whether this was valuable or not. This might have something to do with the move away from levels that were so familiar to both parents and teachers, and it might have something to do with a move towards teaching for greater depth. Whatever the reason, we remind the four respondents, and all parents / carers. that teachers will be happy to see you pop in for some informal, quick chats, and for you to arrange a longer meeting if you’d like one.

Moortown Primary continues to be a happy and healthy place to learn. Parents and carers are an important part of our close and supportive community. Thank you, again, if you responded to the survey.

07 October 2016

This week’s spellings lead on from our spelling activity from last week. We’re adding suffixes to words ending in …fer.

On Friday, your child will be tested on ten of these spellings but needs to know when to double the ‘r’ and when to just have one when a suffix is added.

All children should be practising their spellings in their homework book using the techniques we’ve discussed in class.

prefer transfer refer
preferring

preferred

preference

 transferring

transferred

transference

transferal

 referring

referred

reference

referral

referee

On Thursday 13 October, children should have spelling practice in their homework book for us to look at; they will then be tested on Friday 14 October.

07 October 2016

Although this week’s homework is Creative, we’re doing it slightly differently. Last year, the class really enjoyed the independent learning they did for our World History topic. The class would like to try something like this again so next week will be a week of independent project work linked to our topic.

Next week, you’ll be creating something independently about one aspect of living on the home front: evacuation, the blitz, air raids, women at war, rationing or anything else that piques your interest. Year 6 always create amazing Creative homework so what you actually choose to create is up to you. Here are a few ideas from me:

  • A magazine for a child living during the war
  • A project board (like we produced last year)
  • An information leaflet.
  • A game we can play

So, decide what you want to create and what it will be about. (You’ll have four hours throughout the week to complete it – think about that when making your choice.) Your actual homework will be to gather the information you need in order to complete the work in class.

So that we can complete this project work during class time, this homework will be due on Tuesday 11 October.

Looking at our homework

Written by Natalia, Y6:

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This week’s homework was to write ten sentences about our trip to Eden Camp. We all looked at each others’ and marked them. I swapped with Mia, Ava and Sarah. When we were marking them, we chose our three favourite sentences – they were amazing. We always write a star and a step which helps tell us what we are doing well and what we are doing not so well.

This is my favourite one that Mia wrote: “Quickly, scared but exited, we rushed through the Blitz a number of times.”

Who knew we were all potters at heart?

At the beginning of our Class Novel topic, we discussed what learning we’d like to do across the eight weeks. Design and Technology was a clear favourite so this week we’re designing, making and evaluating our own toy planes.

We started our project by exploring images of WWII planes and from this designed our own models, thinking about how we could make it work if modelling it with clay.

Tuesday afternoon saw us donning aprons and testing our pottery skills. It was a fab afternoon with a lovely atmosphere, focused minds and smiling faces.

Jorja really focused on the detail. Here’s her plane. Look at the cockpit and the propellors.

And now we wait… Once they’re dry, we’ll looking again at our designs and think about how we want to finish the overall design.

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Eden Camp

What a great day we had at Eden Camp. Here are a few photos for you to enjoy of our day. I’m not going to tell you too much though because the children are going to be writing a recount of their day on Friday this week so we’ll publish a couple of those to give you a better idea of what we got up to.

Stay tuned for our full recounts – coming soon!