Write away!
Did you know we have two published authors in our school community?
Year 3 parent, Emma Barnes, has a new book out for children called How (Not) to Make Bad Children Good. Aimed at 7-10s, it’s the story of naughty child, Martha, who is so bad that an Interstellar Agent, Fred, is sent to Earth to try and sort her out. Emma will be appearing at Waterstones on Saturday 24 September.
We’re all very proud that Carolyn Hazell, our Year 6 teacher, is also a published author. Her book, Pav the Plumber Saves the Day, is popular amongst our children, and a great resource in school to promote reading and writing. Our current Year 6 pupils are being inspired to write great character descriptions, and a former pupil described Miss Hazell as ‘inspiring’ as a teacher and writer.
Find and compare schools’ performance
The following information is an extract from a recent email from the Department of Education to schools. Parents / carers who need to consider what school their child should move on to after Moortown Primary might find it helpful. Please note that the most up-to-date 2011 exam or test results may not yet be available.
The Department for Education has launched a new web tool helping parents / carers find and compare local schools’ performance. It significantly improves parents’ ability to choose the right school for their child.
The ‘compare schools’ tool brings together a wide range of performance data in a single place.
Parents can find schools by name, keyword or location or browse via an interactive map. Each school has its own mini-site with a range of useful information such as spend per pupil and test and exam results. Parents can also compare their school with others nearby – or with any other school in England.
For the first time on the Department’s website, parents can:
- select the schools that interest them and compare performance side by side
- view a full list of schools in England and filter to find schools with similar characteristics
- use an interactive map to view local, regional and national averages for school performance.
For more information, visit http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/search
New SEAL statement and theme
As we start the new school year, our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme focuses on New Beginnings and ‘I can make someone feel welcome‘ is the statement for this week.
New Beginnings
New beginnings allows children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on how they or others may feel in a new situation or setting. This SEAL theme offers children the opportunity to see themselves as valued individuals within a community, and to contribute to shaping a welcoming, safe and fair learning community for all.
The key areas of learning throughout this theme are empathy, self-awareness, social skills and motivation.
Through discrete SEAL lessons, circle times and across the curriculum, children will explore feelings of happiness and excitement, sadness, anxiety and fearfulness, while learning (and putting into practice) shared models for calming down and problem-solving.
New beginnings supports the development of a learning community in each classroom where all members feel that they belong. Class contracts, produced at the start of the year, allow children to contribute to how they feel they can achieve a safe and fair learning community.
Goodbye, Year 6
What a lovely message from Miss Hazell! I totally agree – this class have been an asset to Moortown Primary! As a whole, they gel together brilliantly. Each child brings something different to the team and they are an absolute delight to teach. The production was amazing and the Leavers’ Assembly was hilarious. An excellent combination of good directing and naturally witty children. I wish all of the Year Six children a successful time in secondary school!
Miss Hewson
Wow! What a Year!
Wow! What a year!
This year has been memorable from beginning to end with loads of learning, so many highlights, successes and fun times.
All the children should be very proud of their achievements and progress this year in all their learning. Huge congratulations to Amana, Yutaro, Rosie, Arjun, Farhan, Max, Sean, Ben and Nahid for achieving straight Level 5s in Maths, Reading and Writing SATs. As you know every single child in the year group achieved Level 4 or 5 in the English and Maths tests. This is down to the positive attitude to learning that the children exhibit and how they, as a group of children, push themselves to be the best they can. They have been a pleasure to teach as they have been so keen, enthusiastic and committed to their learning. I would like to say a huge well done also to Jahmar, Simran, Sanna, Angel and Abdul who have made vast amounts of progress this year.
All the children who went on the residential to Dobroyd Castle have been given a DVD of photographs taken during the visit. If you came to the Leavers’ Assembly, you will have seen some of the photographs. Mr Roundtree and I had positive comment after positive comment from all the Robinwood group leaders about the children’s behaviour, attitude, enthusiasm and teamwork during our stay. I can honestly say the children were a credit to themselves and a credit to school. Millie, Bethany, Sally, Theo and Ellie were ‘stars’ with their unfailing effort and wholehearted endeavours to give everything a go, despite some of the activities being challenging and a little scary.
Another highlight of the year was the Year 5 and 6 production of Bugsy Malone. Ethan did a cracking job as Bugsy; Daniel and Shoaib were outstanding as the inept police officers; Karina was a heroic Baby Face; Hafsa danced beautifully; Isa was a fantastic Cagey Joe. The whole year group again gave everything 100% and learnt songs, scripts and dance routines with gusto. I think they should consider entering Britain’s got Talent next year!
The Leavers’ Assembly was another exemplary performance with bags of laughter and not a tear in sight. Chanda was very impressive with her confident and expressive public speaking, Raheem did an excellent Mr Roundtree impression and Jonathan was an inspiration with his wild and wacky dancing during our singing.
I’ve been a teacher for over twenty years and teaching this group of Year Sixers has been a joy and a pleasure. They are responsive, mature, hardworking and good fun. I wish them great success at secondary school.
They will be missed!
Bike Week
Last week, during Bike Week, over 120 journeys were made to and from school by bike.
All the names of children who cycled to school have now been entered in the Leeds City Council prize draw to be held on Monday 04 July with tickets drawn by the Lord Mayor.
Good luck to all those children.
It’s great to see children continuing to use their bike after bike week has finished as a healthy way to travel to school.
Bike Week 20 – 24 June
Next week is Bike Week. Why not use our cycle rack and bike to school during this week?
Throughout the week each time you cycle to school you will be entered into a prize draw from Leeds City Council to win lots of cycling related prizes. Let your class teacher know each time you come to school on your bike.
Year 5 and Year 6 have both recently had their cycling training and what a better way to put these new cycling skills into practice than to bike to school during Bike Week.
For more information about Bike Week visit www.bikeweek.org or www.leeds.gov.uk/bikeweek
For more information about cycling in Leeds visit www.leeds.gov.uk/cyclemaps
Moortown In Bloom
A piece of land between Stonegate Road and Scothall Road has been prepared to be part of Moortown In Bloom. We were asked to go and help with some of the planting in partnership with the Moortown Group. Off we went on Monday morning; we were given high visual vests (very fetching!), gardening gloves and a spade. Several holes were dug and plants were planted and the results will be evident in a few months when the flowers are blooming. Nine pupils from Year 6 represented Moortown Primary School very well; they worked well as a team and dug holes very well! Abdul and Sanna were demon diggers!! Look out this week in the Yorkshire Evening Post as we may appear along with our plants!
Celebrating our goals!
Well done to all our children for taking part in the sponsored Hot Shots event, raising money to help victims of the earthquake in Japan as part of My Community themed week.
Please return money raised as soon as you can – at the latest the first Friday after half-term.
Thanks.
Easy Peasy Publishers
Year 2 were treated to a literary delight this week. Year 6 have designed, constructed and written some fabulous books, taking their inspiration from Roger Hargreaves’ Easy Peasy books. Year 6 then shared these with Year 2 and they thoroughly enjoyed it!
Some of our Year 2 children even read the Easy Peasy books to the Year 6s!
