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!
More success at Moortown!
The Quality Mark is a recognition that some schools choose to work towards to help them monitor what they do for their learners and to celebrate successes within school. Because Ofsted chose not to inspect our school this year due to our continued good provision, we welcome feedback from other external bodies. This year, therefore, we decided to be re-assessed for the Quality Mark.
The re-assessment visit happened on Monday 16 May 2011. I’m delighted to say we’ve yet again been recognised for the great teaching and learning at Moortown. Here are some extracts of the visiting assessor’s report:
“The assessor felt that this was one of the most impressive visits he has ever made in nine years of visiting Quality Mark schools. David, the head, has lots of plans – he needs no points of action or areas to develop suggested from us. It was a privilege to visit.”
“Since the monitoring visit, the school has accomplished an impressive amount of progress.”
“The school has radically reshaped the intervention programme it operates with pupils… It has put into action what many other schools are now realising – that the huge weight of strategies that have been recommended to schools over the past ten years are of limited effectiveness unless they are tailored to exactly what the pupil needs at the time that s/he needs it.”
“Classrooms all show consistency of approach in teaching – learning objectives visible, use of speaking and listening partners, learning walls for each class… Consistency in marking of writing is assured through a detailed and very clear marking policy. The Year 6 pupils who showed the assessor around school were at pains to draw his attention to these features and kept up a running commentary of how pupils learn (including telling the assessor that in the Reception class it’s ‘learning through play, you know!’).”
“Moortown has successfully devised and implemented a curriculum and teaching methodology that involves pupils in their own learning, is rigorous and demanding whilst at the same time makes learning an enjoyable experience for pupils.”
Thanks to the dedication and support of staff, parents / carers and children, I know we do a fantastic job at Moortown. It’s great to know that visitors to school are struck by this great work, too.
I’m grateful to the five parents who spoke with the Quality Mark assessor, and to the two Y6 pupils who provided a tour of the school.
Kwik Cricket
Well done to all of Year 6 who took part in a Kwik Cricket tournament at Allerton Grange on Friday. We were competing against another local primary school renowned for their excellent cricketers. All our teams played with great co-operation and sportsmanship and overall our first team lost by only nine runs to the other school. This was a fantastic achievement and we were congratulated by the opposing team’s teacher for making it such a close event.
The class will be able to develop these cricket skills further after their SATs as they will be having three coaching sessions with a Yorkshire Cricket coach.