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28 November 2014

This week, the Practice Makes Perfect homework are a couple of Mathletics activities about time.

The Creative homework is also maths based: I can show what I know about time.

We’re learning about time in our maths lessons next week so this homework will help prepare children for the learning.

28 November 2014

This week, it’s a Spell-athon!

We’ve all been given 40 words to learn and the child who gets the most right on Friday 05 December will be be presented with a certificate in assembly! Ties will be decided by a spell-off and the child who scores the highest proportion correctly overall in the whole school will win a prize and be crowned Spell-athon Champion!

Don’t forget this is a sponsored event: the more words spelled correctly, the more money your child will earn for Cancer Research UK.

28 November 2014

This week’s spellings are slightly different – there are 30 of them for each group! – none of these spellings are new; they have all been learnt before.  As you know we are holding a sponsored spellathon next week as part of our “remembering” focus and we would like children to correctly spell as many words as possible from the following lists.

28 November 2014

This week’s homework is talk time – children need to be ready to talk about their homework by Wednesday 03 December.

Our topic, “What’s the matter?”, has made us think about our feelings.  There has been “an emotion” discussed every day including ways to deal with different feelings.  We would like you to discuss the following:

What should we do if we are worried about something?

Some great feedback…

At Moortown Primary, we don’t like to rest on our laurels. This morning, a headteacher visited our school in order to carry out, alongside me, lesson observations to evaluate the quality of teaching and learning. This is useful for one main reason: to check my judgements about the quality of our provision, so we can be confident that our ‘self-evaluation’ is an honest and accurate assessment of our strengths and areas to get even better.

The headteacher (from another outstanding school in Leeds) visited all the classes, spending around 15-20 minutes in each class. This may not seem a lot, but you can get a ‘snapshot’ of standards in a class quite easily in this amount of time. (Any judgements need to then be backed up with pupil progress at the end of the term/year – this is the crucial.)

From the whole-school point of view, the headteacher was impressed by:

• the displays
• the Class Novel Big Topic which has just ended
• the high quality teacher – teaching assistant interactions
• the children’s learning behaviour
• the consistencies around school

In each class, she was impressed by various things; here I list just a couple of examples from each classroom:

• YR: very calm children in a purposeful environment; loads of great shape learning in many of the areas
• Y1: reading on iPads; the support of the teaching assistants
• Y2: encouraging pupils to check and help each other; the extremely purposeful, calm learning
• Y3: confident, clear support for learning; checking pupils’ responses
• Y4: good mix of teaching and pupil activity; the active role of the teaching assistant
• Y5: quality small group work; all children could talk about their writing, and the focus on ‘implicit mood’
• Y6: exciting, vibrant learning environment; the teacher closely checking that pupils are learning and feel comfortable about their learning

There are always ‘next steps’ to try out new or different teaching strategies, but the overall conclusion from the headteacher is that teaching is good and outstanding.

Well done to all staff – what a great team.

28 November 2014

This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due on Wednesday 03 December.

I can remember my lines for the Christmas Production.

The Christmas Production is drawing nearer and that means it is now really important for everybody to know their lines. Not only that, you need to make sure that you know when you come on stage and what you do when you’re on.

Here are a few ways to help you practise…

• Sing the lines to your favourite song.
• Say them in a silly voice.
• Get somebody to read the other lines so you know when you say yours.
• Record yourself and listen to it. Are you speaking clearly and with a confident voice?

Keeping our teeth healthy

Year 1 and Reception have been visiting Year 2 to learn about how to keep their teeth healthy. The children had great knowledge on what they needed to do to have healthy teeth and we tested just how well they were brushing their teeth by using a plaque disclosure tablet. We found the parts of our teeth that we needed to brush most and then brushed for two minutes until they were squeaky clean. We did look a little odd with our purple mouths though!

We are resilient

This week’s Rs for learning are…

• I can be resilient.
• I take safe risks.

To see how resilient we could be, Year 2 took on the Marshmallow Tower Challenge. Each team of three were given half a packet of spaghetti and a whole load of mini marshmallows. Our towers were very difficult to make sturdy and kept falling down! Everybody did a great job staying positive and trying and trying and trying again if their tower fell down.

Great teamwork!

And the prize for tallest tower goes to….

Several times on purpose

Alongside our Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds themed week it has been national anti-bullying week.

Our school definition has been discussed by the School Council and has been amended, 10.11.14, to incorporate the stop message.

‘Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.’

Following a whole school assembly, Leeds Anti-Social Behaviour Team have delivered Show Racism the Red Card workshops across school and in class children have discussed these aspects of bullying:

• Our revised definition of bullying (above)
• Types of bullying – cyber-bullying and prejudice-based bullying related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and belief, special educational need and disability
• What to do if children experience bullying. The key message is to tell someone (start telling other people)

Bullying resources can be found at…

• http://www.childline.org.uk/explore/bullying/pages/bullying.aspx
• http://www.bullying.co.uk/advice-for-parents/
• http://www.youngminds.org.uk/for_parents/worried_about_your_child/bullying

Children tell us what they would do if they were bullied ‘…I would tell an adult, teacher or someone I trust.’

All classes have access to their class SEAL box or a whole school worry box where they can tell an adult any concerns about bullying or any other issues.

Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds

Our themed week, Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds,  has been filled with visits and visitors providing a variety of experiences for the whole school.

We would like to thank the following for their support with our themed week:

• Heart Research UK
• d:side (drug education)
• Betty Sutherland tai chi
• White Rose martial arts
• Chapel Allerton squash and tennis club
• Leeds United
• Molly Cawthorn (Leeds United ladies)
• Leeds Rhinos
• Tesco Seacroft Farm to Fork trail
• Jhardine Farrell who delivered ‘respecting everybody’ circle times
• Leeds anti-social behaviour team
• Year 6 for taking over PE lessons for the rest of the school
• Mr Catherall for introducing the teachers to our new whole school sport, tchoukball
• parents/carers who talked about their health related job to different classes
• Public health resource centre for the loan of resources and providing health related leaflets

Finally, thank you to all staff and pupils who have fully engaged with all the learning throughout the week.  Take a look at the Class News sections of the website to find out what each class have been doing.  We have enjoyed a fun-filled week.

For further information about healthy bodies and healthy minds have a look at the Kids health website and Leeds Let’s Change for advice on more local health issues.

And an extra note from me, Mr Roundtree: I’d like to also thank Mrs Taylor for continuing to organise wonderful, packed themed weeks around being healthy or staying safe.  She puts an incredible amount of effort into ensuring our pupils enjoy some wonderful learning opportunities from staff and visitors.