This week’s spellings have been chosen by the children and me because they’re words we’ve noticed lots of us make mistakes on. These spellings will be tested on Friday 17 June.
This week’s Talk Time homework is due on Monday 13 June to be used during an Relationships and Sex Education lesson.
Identify somebody who you would consider to be a role model. Bring in a picture and be prepared to discuss who they are and why they’re your role model.
We’ll be talking about ourselves and how our emotions change during puberty. Identifying a role model is part of making sure we maintain a positive image of ourselves, thinking about how we can use our role model to do this.
Our rocket seed experiment came to an end on the last Friday before half-term when we completed our final measurement. We’ve now submitted the results to the Principia mission and they’ll add what we found to the results of all the other schools taking place.
Having looked at the information we’ve gathered, which do you think are the seeds from space?
When all of the data has been collated, the agency will be in touch with us to let us know what they found out and finally tell us which seeds are which!
Year 5 have had a fantastic start to their final term before moving into Year 6. They’ve been focused, followed instructions straight away and have shown a wonderful level of maturity.
Our RSE (relationships and sex education) has been met with a sensible attitude and a curious nature making the lessons informative, comfortable and a safe place to ask questions. Keep this up, not only through RSE, but for the rest of the year.
We all really enjoyed money week and got up to all sorts throughout the week which Mrs Taylor has already updated you on. Here are some pictures for you to see us in action…
We played games which required our money skills and then designed our own money games.
We smashed records with HOTSHOTS, raising lots of money along with having great fun.
We put our creative heads together to use recycling and modroc to make our own money boxes and start saving.
We had a second go at making animations, but this time we had a budget to spend and we took up some bartering to get our costs down.
What a great week!
I’d like to flash back to before half term to show you some of our fantastic homework completed to demonstrate what the children learnt through our rights and responsibilities SEAL theme.
As always, there were some brilliantly creative examples of work and we thoroughly enjoyed looking at, reading, playing and admiring each others’ efforts.
The Governing Bodies of the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary Schools, and Moortown Primary School, present this document for consultation.
Consultation on proposal for Moortown Primary School to join the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) Primary School and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary School
The Governing Bodies of the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary Schools, and Moortown Primary School, present this document for consultation.
We invite responses by Monday 18 July 2016 to the contact details at the end of the document in Section 6.
Introduction
At the existing Federation Governing Body meeting on 3rd May 2016, the meeting of Moortown Primary Governing Body on 10th February and 17th March 2016, and the joint Federation and Moortown Primary meeting of 23rd May 2016, the Governing Bodies of both the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary Schools, and Moortown Primary School, decided to launch a consultation with parents/carers, staff and other stakeholders to consider the recommendation that Moortown Primary School join the existing Federation for their mutual support and advantage.
This document sets out the reasons why we are recommending this course of action and seeks your views. It also sets out the proposed timetable for implementation.
There will be discussion meetings for parents/carers and stakeholders of all schools. These will be held at:
You are free to attend any meeting regardless of which school you are connected with. We welcome your views on this proposal and therefore we urge you to attend.
What is a federation?
A federation is formed when two or more schools agree to work together on a formal basis through a single Governing Body.
Federated schools remain separate schools with separate budgets and separate Ofsted inspections. They also continue to report their results separately.
The federation we are recommending would have an Executive Head Teacher who is responsible for the performance of all schools in the Federation. The Executive Head Teacher would be supported by a Senior Leadership Team in all schools.
The decision to federate or not is determined by the individual Governing Bodies under a process set out in the School Governance (Federations) (England) Regulations 2012 as amended by the School Governance (Constitution and Federations) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
A federation is not the same as collaboration, and it is not the same as academies or multi-academy trusts that you may have heard discussed recently in the media.
Why are we recommending this?
There is reasonable evidence to show that working in a federation has advantages for all parties, and most importantly, for the pupils. For governors, the key wish is to implement something that will enhance the learning experience for our pupils, and the following benefits have been identified for all three schools:
The Governing Bodies of the existing federation and Moortown Primary have concluded, after very careful consideration, that the current and future interests of the three schools would be served best by Moortown Primary joining the Federation. This is not an amalgamation of the schools, and all three schools retain their own unique identities.
What would change and when?
Governors
The new federation would have one Governing Body to oversee the three schools, and this Governing Body would act in the best interest of the federation as a whole. The Governing Body, as now, would consist of elected parents and staff, representatives of the Local Authority, the Diocese, and across the community. The composition of the proposed Governing Body is shown in Section 4.
The new Federation Governing Body would commence on Thursday 1st September 2016, at which point the existing Governing Bodies of the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary Schools, and Moortown Primary School, would be dissolved.
The new Federation Governing Body would have exactly the same duties and responsibilities as any other school as laid down by the Department for Education. Its role would be to make sure that the best possible standards of education and attainment are being provided for its current and future pupils. It would encourage, support and challenge the leadership team to achieve this. Proper regard would be given to curriculum co-ordination where appropriate and beneficial staff development and deployment, cost effectiveness and economies of scale and to meeting all statutory obligations.
Leadership
The Federation would have a single Executive Head Teacher (Head of Federation) leading all three schools. The Executive Head Teacher would take the lead in the strategic direction in all schools, supported in the day to day management of all schools by the Senior Leadership Team in each school.
Other staff will continue to be employed as per their existing contracts.
Curriculum
Joint planning and co-ordination across the three schools would offer a continuous learning journey for pupils while offering opportunities to staff for developing specialised areas as well as encouraging and utilising specialised skills.
Admissions
The Admissions Authority for all schools will continue to be dealt with by Leeds City Council.
Budgets
The budget of each school would remain separate but would be managed by the Executive Head Teacher. The Executive Head Teacher would report the budget status through the Finance Committee to the Governing Body. This process is the same as the one currently employed by the existing Federation and Moortown Primary School.
Federated schools are able to spend some money jointly across the schools in the Federation for the mutual benefit of pupils.
Proposed composition of Federation Governing Body
The composition of the Federation Governing Body is determined by Part 3 of the School Governance (Federations) (England) Regulations 2012 as amended by the School Governance (Constitution and Federations) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2014 and School Governance (Constitution and Federations) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2016. This stipulates that the governing body must not be smaller than seven members, and must include:
The governing body may appoint as many additional co-opted governors as they consider necessary. However, the number of co-opted governors who are eligible to be elected or appointed as staff governors under Schedule 2 must not, when counted with the one staff governor and the headteacher, exceed one-third of the total membership of the governing body.
In addition, there would be two Foundation Governors appointed by the Diocese.
Proposed timetable for implementation
Step 1 – Information gathering
February 2016 – May 2016
Step 2 – The separate Governing Bodies resolve to pursue the process towards creating a Federation Governing Body, and to consult on Federation
16 March 2016 and 21 March 2016
Step 3 – Consultation period (minimum 6 weeks required)
Monday 06 June 2016 to Monday 18 July 2016
Step 4 – Existing Federation Governing Body meets to consider responses to the proposals, and votes on whether to proceed with the proposals, with or without modifications.
Wednesday 20 July 2016
Step 5 – If agreed, then both the existing Governing Bodies would be dissolved and the new Federation Governing Body would be constituted.
Thursday 1st September 2016
How do I respond?
The Governing Bodies of the Federation of Scholes (Elmet) and Wetherby St James’ Church of England Primary Schools, and Moortown Primary School, would really like to hear your views. It would be most helpful to have these in writing, so that we can review all of the responses together. You can voice your opinion by:
1. Completing the attached questionnaire or writing a letter, sending it to:
2. Emailing your views to:
There will be discussion meetings for parents/carers and stakeholders of all schools. These will be held at:
You are free to attend any meeting regardless of which school you are connected with.
We’ve been having a great time during money week with our usual timetable thrown out of the window and money taken over. Year 5 have come into class with a money themed song playing each morning and after lunch to get us in the mood. They’ve also been answering the register with some money-related vocab.
HOTSHOTS was a big favourite on Monday with Kieron being crowned champion, smashing the ball at a whopping 80mph!
This week’s spellings link to our themed ‘Money Week’ and will be tested on Friday 27 May.
As we’re going to be developing our understanding of money next week – what it’s worth, where it comes from, where it goes – it is just as important that the children explore what these words mean as well as how they are spelled.
This week’s Practice Makes Perfect homework is due on Wednesday 25 May.
To be able to use semi-colons in a list.
For many of Year 5, this is a new skill that we’re trying to become more confident with. The children have been given a sentence with a three part list in it. They should expand each part of the list adding description which may need extra commas (particularly if they’re using two adjectives). When re-writing their list with this extra detail, they’ll then need to use semi-colons to separate the parts in the list instead of commas and commas would just make the list confusing.
When I went out for tea, I had starters, mains and desserts.
When I went out for tea, I had delicious, puffy dough balls smothered in garlic butter; sumptuous steak which had been fabulously cooked and had crispy chips on the side; and a mouth-watering, rich chocolate pudding that oozed gooey caramel as you stuck your fork in it – yum!
I want the children to have a go at changing their lists so that they need semi-colons. Think about adding adjectives and using relative pronouns (which, that, when, who), ‘ing words and ‘ed words to add detail after the noun as well as before.