First of all this week, congratulations to all of Year 4 who won their Skipping School heat against four other Leeds schools and have now qualified for the Leeds final in June. 

Also, well done to our Year 3 and 4 cross country runners who represented Leeds in the West Yorkshire final yesterday. We had a Year 3 top 10 finisher out of 146 runners and the Year 3 girls team achieved 6th place out of 21 teams.

The rest of this week’s message is about Computing, our current topic…

This half-term, we’re developing our knowledge of computers and computer programming.

Computer programming is super. Creating games, animations and solving real world problems is fun and encourages creativity – it’s challenging, too!

Importantly, the skills your child will use and develop are transferable to other subjects and areas of life. For example, the concept of decomposition in programming is concerned with breaking down a large task into smaller chunks. This concept could be used when writing a story, solving a maths problem or tidying a particularly messy bedroom! The process of debugging is about identifying and fixing an error in a program. It requires systematic, objective thinking and plenty of resilience.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skill sand vocabulary. See pages 12 and 13 of our Topic Curriculum Guide.

Years 1 and 2

Children will learn about how technology is used beyond school in our homes and all around us. They’ll begin to consider what a computer is and isn’t.

In programming lessons, they’ll create animations in Scratch Jr by creating and debugging algorithms. They’ll then continue to use Scratch Jr to create an interactive quiz.

Years 3 and 4

Children will reason about what exactly makes a computer a computer. Is a games console a computer? Is a TV a computer? Is a bedside lamp a computer? Next, they will learn about inputs and outputs and identify different examples of them in everyday technology.

They’ll then be introduced to Scratch. They will learn how they can add or change sprites and backdrops and then begin to experiment with making their sprites move. They’ll look at programs created on Scratch and use logical reasoning to explain what will happen when these programs are run. They’ll learn about the importance of sequencing in programming when they recreate a well-known melody. Finally, they’ll create their own ‘band’ on Scratch by programming different instrument sprites to play sounds.

Years 5 and 6

Children will learn about what a computer network is and that the Internet is an enormous computer network. They’ll also learn about the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web.

In programming lessons, they’ll be introduced to BBC Microbits – pocket sized computers – which they’ll program to do lots of different things. This will allow children to gain a deeper understanding of concepts like sequence, selection and variables.

Some of this vocabulary may sound alien to you but, as the topic goes on, your child will be able to tell you what they mean and give examples of how they’ve used them in their projects. Some of the projects your children will be making are a magic 8-ball style program which will give you an answer to all your questions and a pedometer to count the number of steps they’re making.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. Class News is a good place to go to find out more about what your child’s up to in school.

The school library and local libraries have lots of books about coding and computer games which your child will be able to borrow and develop both their reading skills and computing knowledge.

Finally, try programming with your child. There are loads of programming apps and software available to download, often for free.

Here’s a list for Key Stage 1:

• Daisy the Dinosaur (Apple only)
• Beebot
• Tynker Junior
• Scratch Jr
• Code Karts

…And one for Key Stage 2:

• Lightbot
• Tynker
• Scratch Jr
• Scratch

We’re now well and truly into the second half of the school year and we hope it’s a happy and healthy one for your child at Moortown Primary. Positive relationships between home and school have a key role to play in ensuring this. We welcome your questions, comments and concerns. Do catch us at the start or end of the school day for any quick conversation, and for anything longer or more sensitive, please call us or arrange a meeting.

School dinners

Our school dinner menus have been updated. Check out the updated menus.

On the same website page, please check out the information about free school meals, too. Free school meals are available to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. They’re also available to some older children according to family income. It’s important to register for entitlement to free school meals, even if your child has a packed lunch or is in a younger class – this is so we can receive additional funding (called the pupil premium) which we can use to help your child.

For the first half of the year, from September right up to the Spring half-term, our whole school attendance figure was 96.2%.

• that’s higher than the national figure for primary schools (94.8%)
• it means we’re in the top 10%-20% of schools nationally
• after a bout of infections in Key Stage 1 in the Autumn term, we’re now catching up with the full 2023-24 attendance figure (96.7%)

Here’s the attendance figures for each class:

• Reception: 95.5%
• Year 1: 94.0%
• Year 2: 93.6%
• Year 3: 97.4%
• Year 4: 97.4%
• Year 5: 97.8%
• Year 6: 97.8%

Thank you for making sure your child attends school as much as they can.

This week, our Living and Learning theme has been I know that people should treat others respectfully when online. It tied in with Safer Internet Day. Check out the tips, advice, guides and resources for parents and carers.

We’ll start off this week’s message sticking to this theme… 

Online safety quiz

Does your child know how to stay safe online? Test their knowledge with this online quiz.

Maude and Scram – Fraud Advice for Infant Children

The West Yorkshire Police Fraud Team have devised a series of video stories to share with your child: check out Maude and Scram’s YouTube page. Have a read of the Maude and Scram Fact Sheet about online safety, too.

How Safe is WhatsApp for children?

WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging apps, used by over 2 billion people in 180 countries. To set up an account, all you need is a phone number. Check out this blog from the NSPCC about the dangers of the app, and don’t miss their top tips.

Want to read more? This article from ParentZone is also worth a read.

Manipulative marketing in mobile games

Children are increasingly major components in the online games industry.

Free in the context of apps is a highly flexible term.Whilst they claim to be free, many games are deceptively pay to play: the download is free but most of the gameplay is locked. Online gaming firms use the ‘free’ label to draw in players. Money making tactics such as this can be hard to detect, even for adults.

Read more about manipulative marketing on the Better Internet for Kids site. You’ll learn why companies use these tactics and how they can impact your child and their rights. You’ll also learn how you can support your child to spot and avoid these issues, as well as where you can seek help and support.

 

Moving from staying safe online, we’ve two more articles this week…

Our annual Number Challenge

Each year, we raise money with an annual sponsored Number event:

• children in Years 1, 2 and 3 do an addition/subtraction challenge
• children in Years 4, 5 and 6 do a multiplication/division challenge

On Wednesday 26 February, we’ll repeat the challenge, hopefully seeing some huge improvements and raising lots of money along the way.

Children have their facts to work on over the holiday and hopefully get some family and friends to sponsor them on their journey to improvement. Can you help your child get sponsors for each correct answer they get?

Children in Reception join in, too – they’ll do a tens frame challenge on the same day.

Money that we raise will be shared between our chosen charity, Yorkshire Air Ambulance, and the PTA.

Our annual Reception parents/carers survey

Have you completed our Reception survey yet?

Each year, we ask parents/carers of children in Reception to complete a short survey. It should only take 5-10 minutes or so. Your feedback helps us to explore ways we might be able to improve the Reception year. It’s also an opportunity to let us know any specific questions or concerns you might have – we’ll try to respond to all of these (leaving your name will help, but that’s optional).

Have a happy and healthy weekend.