New SEAL theme
At Moortown Primary, we’re dedicated to the value of SEAL in promoting a happy and healthy place to learn. However, we’re always thinking about other ways to meet our children’s needs and interests. That’s one of the reasons we choose to sometimes break away from the national SEAL themes to do something different.
This half term, we’ll think about our rights and responsibilities and, importantly, that if we have rights, we also have responsibilities. Children will consider their rights and responsibilities at home, at school and in other places. These may include:
Their right to eat food, their responsibility to eat healthily.
Their right to a good education, their responsibility to listen to the teacher.
Their right to use the internet, their responsibility to go on appropriate websites.
Each week this half-term, we’ll concentrate on a different area:
- Week beginning 18 April: learning
- Week beginning 25 April: playing
- Week beginning 02 May: expressing an opinion
- Week beginning 09 May: staying safe
- Week beginning 16 May: being healthy
- Week beginning 23 May: general
Perhaps you can support your child’s learning by discussing and promoting rights and responsibilities at home, too.
Matheletics has changed…
…to Spellodrome!
Two years ago, we entered into a three year contract for the whole school. We’ve incorporated Mathletics sessions into the weekly routine in school, and classes have sometimes been given Mathletics Practice Makes Perfect homework. Of course, we also hoped that you would encourage your child to log-in regularly at home, too.
As a school, we’ve been really happy with Matheletics. However, with one year left in our current contract, we thought it was time for a change. Spellodrome is created by the same people, so we’ve decided to swap to this for the final year.
Why?
Well, put simply, our children’s spellings need to be better. Despite being one of the top performing schools in the country in the phonics screening check which Year 1 children do (we received a letter from the Department of Education congratulating us for having 100% of children pass in 2015), our children’s spelling accuracy isn’t good enough.
We’re finding many children use their phonics knowledge to spell words which are phonetically readable, but not accurate. By this we mean, for example, Moortown might be Moretown, English might be Inglish, phonics might be fonicks. (I’ll include a couple of other examples below.) All these words can be read, but there are so many ways to make sounds in our language, and children are choosing the wrong ways (not weighs!).
Also, many children aren’t applying some common spelling rules which would really help – and which teachers practise a lot with their classes:
- double up for a short vowel sound (think of the difference between hoping and hopping; able and apple; diner and dinner)
- drop the ‘e’ for ‘ing’ (take becomes taking – no ‘e’; like becomes liking; accommodate becomes accommodating)
- drop the ‘y’ for an ‘i’ (so try becomes tries; party becomes parties; quality becomes qualities)
So, for the next year at least, the whole school is using Spellodrome. Please, please make sure (not shoor!) your child is regularly logging in.
Also, and probably more importantly, they should be reading. Reading will help to familiarise children with correct spellings in the correct contexts – and has so many other benefits, too (studies have found that children who read fiction for pleasure have increased empathy and better mental health in years to come).
Year 1 food technologists
Can your child recall some of the skills used in our savoury scone recipe today?
We’ve also learnt how to get ready to cook and about different ingredients and equipment used in a kitchen.
Hope they enjoyed their scone as an after-school snack.
Eatwell guide
Public Health England have launched a new Eatwell Guide. This relates to the Eatwell Plate, a key resource used in school, to show how much of what you eat overall should come from each food group.
Yoga
We enjoyed a yoga session today. It linked well to the Life Big Topic as the children used different animals to inspire their movements and poses.
Science
Here are some pictures of what we investigated today. Can your child give these pictures a caption to describe what they learnt?
How are you feeling?
Across school, we’ve been trialling the use of colours to represent children’s emotions. Children are then encouraged to think whether this is a blocker or driver for their learning.
- ‘I feel blue because I am calm.’
- ‘I feel red because I had a fall out at lunchtime.’
- ‘I feel orange because I am excited to celebrate my brother’s birthday.’
Here is a new website to support young people’s emotional wellbeing in Leeds.
‘If you’re a young person, MindMate can help you understand the way you’re feeling and find the right advice and support. If you’re a parent, carer or professional, MindMate can help you support a young person you know.’
Children are also encouraged to speak with an adult, friend or use our class SEAL boxes to share any worries.
Marvellous Mathematicians
We’ve been learning about multiplication this week. We began by looking at groups of objects. Here, one marvellous mathematician has shown us that 10 groups of 10 is 100! After drawing 10 groups and placing 10 items in each group, she counted in 10s to find the answer. Wow!
This marvellous mathematician really wanted to try out her new skills with some large numbers! 2 groups of 100 is 200!
5 groups of 6 is 30. What a great way to show that calculation using a picture! Notice the repeated addition: 6+6+6+6+6+6=30. In lessons, we are mainly working with groups of 2, 5 and 10 as we can count in multiples of these numbers. This marvellous mathematician did this work independently and chose to do groups of 6 and 7, however, Year 1 are only expected to count in 2s 5s and 10s. Keep practising this at home!
Leeds Let’s Get Sugar Swapping!
Following the introduction of the Change4life Sugar Smart App, the Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge has been launched to ask families, schools and other organisations to share the amount of sugar they have saved by making sugar smart swaps. The Change4Life website has lots of information to help you to look for sugar on food labels if you are unable to access the app.
Leeds Sugar Smart Challenge features a city totalizer to record the number of sugar cubes saved, with prizes available at random to top swappers.
Children and Young People’s Plan
The ambition of Leeds City Council is for Leeds to be a child-friendly city. A child-friendly version of the city’s Children and Young People’s Plan has recently been launched; it was designed in consultation with pupils from primary and secondary schools across Leeds. As well as being a fun activity sheet, it is also a good way to share the city-wide vision directly with children and to raise their awareness of what Leeds City Council are doing to make Leeds the best city for children to live and grow up in.
The plan was recently reviewed by our School Council.
If you would like a printed copy of the plan, please ask at the office.
Children and young people are the future of our city, which is why we put them at the very heart of the growth strategy. We want Leeds to be a compassionate city with a strong economy, and it is really important that all our children and young people are supported to achieve their full potentials. The city-wide partnership approach in promoting and achieving the aims of the Leeds Children and Young People’s Plan is key to this.
