Skipping school
Yesterday, Year 2 welcomed Katie from skipping school to Moortown to show us lots of new skills.
The children were fantastic. Every child was resilient and determined. They gave the skipping 100% effort and some made amazing progress in one afternoon.
We are practising in school regularly ready for our competition in June.
Help at home by practising at home. You can purchase skipping ropes from school.
Reception parent/carer survey
At Moortown Primary School, we’re always keen to hear your views. We hope that you let us know any questions, comments and concerns (as well as causes for celebration!) whenever these crop up, but we like to gather the views more generally so we can keep reviewing and improving what we do.
This short survey is just for you to think about your child’s experiences in our Reception class. (There’s another annual survey at the end of the year for all parents/carers.) It’ll only take a few minutes or so. You’ve plenty of time to do this – the deadline is Friday 28 February 2025.
We can’t guarantee to meet the needs and wants of every parent / carer, but we do assure you that we consider all the points raised and aim to act on specific points that are raised by many, or a useful idea raised by just a few.
Previously, based on your feedback, for example, we alternated the days Stay and Learns were held – to give all parents an opportunity to attend.
Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey. We’re looking forward to reading your views.
PE: gymnastics at Leeds Gymnastics
Today, as part of our involvement with the Leeds Well Schools Partnership, we all had the opportunity to visit John Smeaton Leisure Centre to take part in a gymnastics session led by Leeds Gymnastics.
We explored the different equipment trying some new skills and also skills we had learnt in our recent PE gymnastics learning.
A highlight was having a go on the air track, practising some of the jumps covered in the warm up.
What a great active morning. The children behaved excellently, listening well to the coaches and trying their best with all activities.
We’ve done really good gymnastics.
I loved all the equipment.
It was scary because I had to do handstands.
My favourite part was the bars.
I enjoyed everything especially the air track.
I became better at the rolls.
If you want to find out more about local gymnastics opportunities, have a look at our physical activity guide.
Living and learning: online safety assembly
This week, Louise from West Yorkshire Police came to deliver a whole school assembly all about staying safe online.
There were lots of clear online safety messages around content, contact and conduct.
At the end of the assembly, the children reflected on what they were going to do after hearing Louise’s messages.
I am going to ask my adult to take off the chat on my Roblox settings.
I am not going to accept friend requests from people I don’t know.
I am not going to play games that have a age rating older than me as they won’t be appropriate for me.
Help at home: ask your child how content, conduct and contact are linked to online safety.
Living and learning: internet safety
Today, we welcomed back fan favourite Dave from d:side who spoke to us about being safe online.
We discussed the importance of having a secure, private account on any social media profiles. Snapchat is especially dangerous because of its Snap Map feature which needs to be turned off as it’s automatically on when you sign up.
We looked at lots of scenarios where someone had made a mistake with sharing information online and we corrected their actions.
This scenario brought up the topic of consent because nobody should ever post picture of you without asking for your permission. Likewise, you should never do the same to other people.
Lastly, we had a good discussion about age restrictions for games. They are a guideline, not the law, but they’re in place for a reason. Whatever you do, ask your adult if you’re unsure.
Help at home by making sure any apps are private and secure, and any games are age-appropriate.
PE: dance
Over the last two weeks, our focus in PE has been dance.
We’ve learnt about two elements of dance so far: space and tempo.
For space, imagine the stage is full of a fresh covering of snow and every time you move across it, your footprints show where you’ve been. The idea is to cover a range of the space so that the audience is more entertained.
For tempo, it’s the speed in which you perform each dance move. Imagine the beat of different songs – some are fast and lend themselves to more energetic, exciting moves and some are slow, where more careful and dramatic movements would be more appropriate.
We’ve all had chance to perform for the rest of the class and hear some positive feedback.
Help at home by just putting on some music and having a dance!
Author Zoom with Tola Okogwu!
This week is National Storytelling Week. Year 5 had a zoom with the author Tola Okogwu, who has written written Onyeka, among 15 other books!
Tola talked through her step-by-step guide on how to create ideas for stories. In today’s webinar, we built an origin story for a person with super powers. The three main ingredients we needed for this was the person, the place and the problem.
Here are some of the creative ideas Year 5 came up with:
- a boy with the power of moon and sun (night vision and fire)
- people with telekinesis
- a girl with super speed
- a boy who could shrink into different sizes
- a girl with extremely long hair
- a boy who can control time
- a boy with a super jump
- a girl who can camouflage
- a boy who is super strong
Help at home: Encourage your child to write their story using their ideas from today.
Living and Learning: Internet safety
Today, Year 5 were joined by D:side Dave! He was here to talk to us about online safety. To start off our session, he asked the children to guess how old each social media site would be. To start off, we had lots of guesses around 40 years old but quickly realised social media was not that old at all!
We looked at a case study: ‘Alfie is 10 years old. He has just got a phone for his birthday and has opened an Instagram account. He has 450 followers.’
Year 5 discussed how 450 was too many followers as he does not know that many people. Grace said, ‘You should NOT accept people you don’t know!’
‘Alfie has now changed his profile to a private profile.’
The children spoke about how a private profile is a good idea! This means only people you accept can see your profile.
‘Alfie has told his parents his password.’
A sensible choice is to set a password and tell parents just in case they need to use it but not everyone does this. Some Year 5 children have said they will now tell their parents their passwords for their safety!
We ended off our session trying to see how good we were at deciding if an online account was real or fake. Parents, can you tell which account is the real one and which three are fake?
Help at home: Have a discussion with your child about three ways we can be safe with an online social media account.
National Storytelling Week
It’s national storytelling week! Y6 were pleased to join a webinar hosted by author Tola Okogwu. She’s written Onyeka, among lots of others, and took us through how she comes up with her amazing story ideas.
We could interact with Tola and she even picked Luca’s idea of the character having super stretchy legs as her super power! Check it out below.
We loved thinking creatively to start off this magical tale so help at home by finishing it off or starting a new one with your own ideas!
Living & Learning: online safety
Today, Year 4 were lucky to have a workshop from D:Side all about staying safe online – particularly when playing online games.
Not everything we see online is trustworthy and your children were great at identifying that! We discussed how not everyone online is who they say they are so we must always speak to a trusted adult if we are unsure or feel unsafe online.
Although the internet is great for many things, we must make sure we are using it safely. For example, your children love playing lots of online games (which can be great fun) but sometimes they also introduce some risks. That is why they have age restrictions based on what content is included in the games.
In Year 4, we should only be playing games that are rated ages 3 or 7. This is because they have content that is appropriate for our age.
We were all really impressed with your children’s knowledge of how to stay safe online. It was great to hear all their contributions for how we can also make sure we’re being safe and responsible online.
Help at home: check the age ratings of your child’s favourite games to play online. Are they appropriate for them to play?