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Computing ambassadors

We’re always very proud of the achievements of our pupils. Here’s a recent letter (11.11.14) from the National STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) Centre praising the great work our children. Thanks to Mrs Garside for supporting this, and well done to Ava, Jorja and Mia for being excellent ambassadors for our school:

Dear Mr Roundtree

I wanted to thank you for the excellent work that some of your Year 4 children exhibited at our Raspberry Jam and Maker Event on the 1st of November, 2014.

The National STEM Centre has been built to showcase exemplary practice in education across the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths curriculum and we were proud to host the good work that your children demonstrated on the day.

The girls were a credit to your school, presenting their work to members of the public and knowledgably answering questions put to them about how the computing equipment helped them to learn concepts in new ways.

The conduct and behaviour of the children from Moortown Primary School was exemplary and I would welcome your school to attend any events at our centre in the future.

Learning at home

It’s great to see many children doing extra learning at home.  Take a look at this clock that was made at home after learning about time in class – the clock even has moving hands!  Thanks to all of you who are supporting your child’s learning in different ways.

Key Stage One Art Gallery – one day only!

This afternoon saw Key Stage One’s Art Gallery opening.

Parents, children, aunties, uncles, grandmas, grandads and siblings alike came flooding into Key Stage One’s Art Gallery today. Thank you to all of you who came to view the amazing work Year 1 and 2 have one during our Katie and… topic. If you couldn’t make it, here’s a sneak peek. Step into the pictures, just as Katie would have, and imagine you were there.

You could put on your headphones and listen to the pieces of music that inspired us to create art that matched it.

Take a comfy seat in the book area and read the books that helped us create all of this amazing art.

Take a vote on your favourite piece of art or spend the time trying to find art by names you recognise.

Lots of people enjoyed our live art exhibition and joined in by printing a poppy onto the field for Remembrance Day (11.11.14). Thank you to those people who made a donation to our school charities.

Thank you to Year 1 and 2 for all their hard work and enjoyment of the Katie and… topic.

Athletics preparation

Recently some children from Year 4, 5 and 6 visited Roundhay School to practise their athletics skills ahead of the first round of the competition next week.  It was great to use the equipment and everyone had a blast!  Good luck with the competition.

The 8 Rs for Learning

This half-term, we’re thinking about the ‘8 Rs for learning’. This theme is about promoting good learning behaviour for your child. Each week, we’ll focus on two ‘Rs’ (and in the week beginning 08 December, we’ll review all eight). We use an animal to symbolise each ‘R’, which might help your child remember all eight – can your child remember which animal matches the correct ‘R’?

You can support your child at home – we’ve listed a few ideas to help you below. Ask us if you’ve any questions or comments.

Download top tips for promoting the 8Rs for good learning behaviour.

I can show I am ready to learn.

• Make sure your child is at school for a prompt start of 08:50.
• Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
• Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!

I take responsibility for my own learning.

• Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!
• Make a link between rights and responsibilities: your child has the right to a great education, but needs to be responsible for their own learning.

I take a safe risk.

• Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.

I am resilient.

• Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
• Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
• Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
• Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.

I respond to feedback.

• Ask your child if they remember their ‘stars’ and ‘steps’ in English and Maths.

I am resourceful.

• Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
• Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.

I remember.

• Make sure they have time to learn spellings, number bonds and times tables – a little practice daily is best.

Play memory games:

• Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
• Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!

I reflect about my learning.

Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about:

• how they learnt
• why they learnt it
• when they’ll use their learning
• how they would teach this to someone else
• what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today
• etc

07 November 2014

This week, children have been set an activity on Mathletics instead of their normal Practice Makes Perfect homework. Ask your children about Mathletics; they’ve been using it this week in school and should be able to use it as easily at home! However, if you have any problems or questions at all, please find me.

Our creative homework is:

I can show how to be safe.

Using the Year 6 assembly as our inspiration, I’d like the children to creatively show how they can be safe. Any digital homework can be emailed to our class email address: y5@moortown.leeds.sch.uk

Children could choose one of these situations, or find a new one to stay safe in:

• food
• rail
• road
• stranger
• smoking
• bullying
• coastal/water
• online

07 November 2014

We are revisiting one of our key spelling rules this week: drop the y for an i. For each spelling, you have to drop the y and replace it with an i before adding ly to make the word an adverb. Children will be tested on the adverbs in Friday’s test.

Group 1

Group 2

Leeds United PE Coaching

We’re really excited about our PE sessions this term as we’re being taught by a coach from Leeds United.

Warning!

In the annual survey of parents / carers, someone requested more information about what happens with a warning. Since then, we’ve displayed more notices around school to explain – you’ll be able to read one on the Parents’ Noticeboard.

Summarised from our Relationships Management Policy, here’s some more information about warnings – and rewards, too!

Warnings

We have just three school rules:

• We keep hands, feet and objects to ourselves.
• We follow instructions.
• We respect everyone and everything.

Staff at Moortown Primary employ consistently and clearly a hierarchy of negative consequences (our ‘warnings’) if a child breaks a school rule. This is to ensure a safe and effective learning environment in which positive, happy, healthy relationships flourish. Warnings are recorded and monitored. (These whole-school consequences vary slightly at lunchtimes to allow lunchtime staff to operate independently, although lunchtime consequences are communicated to class teachers.)

Low-level, on-going disruptive or unco-operative behaviour (eg not following instructions straight away, talking in class, interrupting) are small issues but over time may stop a child and others from learning or feeling settled. We aim to keep this to a minimum and aim to spot patterns when warnings occur. The following stages are followed to reduce such behaviour:

1. a letter to parents to inform of high number of warnings caused by low-level disruptive / unco-operative behaviour incidents
2. a letter to parents to advise this has continued and therefore we need to see an improvement within a fixed period of time; a behaviour chart at school to track incidents will be used (in addition to any other support)
3. a meeting between parent, pupil, learning mentor and teacher

For children who regularly have to stay in at lunchtimes and who don’t seem to be making progress towards improved learning behaviour, we may set them additional English / Maths at playtimes to make up for the missed learning in a class.

Serious misbehaviour (eg disrespect to staff, property or cultures, swearing, fighting) is very rare at Moortown. Such behaviour would mean warnings are automatically by-passed to four or usually five warnings. Similarly, any pattern in warnings or consistent warnings means parents are contacted. We contact parents to keep them in the picture and to discuss ways to respond and gain a consistent message between home and school. A serious incident report is completed in such cases.

We do recognise that there are occasionally overriding factors or circumstances, but these are rare and so variation from the warnings system is rare. This is to maintain their effect and impersonal nature ie we aim to remove the personal judgement so children understand and accept the school rules. We allow for differentiation of sanctions where appropriate. This is to reflect different levels of culpability (or fault) while maintaining consistency and fairness of the treatment of pupils. We expect children to try their best in all activities. If they do not do so, we may ask them to redo or complete a task. We expect children to make good choices and older children to set a good example to younger ones. We expect children to not support the misbehaviour of their peers. We expect and encourage children to tell an adult of misbehaviour.

The class teacher discusses the school rules with each class, and also creates a Classroom Charter as part of their New Beginnings SEAL work. This is agreed by the children and displayed on the wall of the classroom. In this way, every child in the school knows the standard of behaviour that we expect in our school.

Rewards

Each teacher and their class develops their own systems of reward and praise, based on the overall school principles set out in this policy. This will include at least individual and class rewards and typically, especially with older children, group rewards to promote inter-personal relationships.

Some of the positive consequences for the good learning, good choices and good behaviour that children show are:

• regular verbal feedback to reinforce positive behaviour
• children are congratulated
• stickers or other small prizes / treats
• certificates: usually at least one based on learning and at least one based on a Social and Emotional Aspect of Learning
• postcard mailed from the headteacher to a pupil at their home address
• Golden Time if a class has achieved a class target

Cool Class Tokens are given to children for good choices, good relationships, politeness, co-operation or acts of kindness in school – the class with the most Cool Class Tokens are awarded the Cool Class Cup in Friday Assemblies.

Assemblies, especially our Friday Assemblies, are an opportunity to publicly celebrate the good choices children have made in school and to share some of the good work they have been producing. Also important is to celebrate achievements out of school in order to promote a wider range of interests and a broad outlook.

Attendance is also rewarded. We give termly certificates for good attendance and at the end of the year there is a raffle for all children who have attained outstanding attendance.

Sweets are rarely used as rewards; as a healthy school, we prefer to reward in other ways. Where they are used, it would be by an external party and would meet standards set out here.

07 November 2014

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a spelling test on Friday 14 November.