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Mathletics

A quick well done to those children that have been using Mathletics at home. We’ve really enjoyed playing on Live Mathletics and some children have tried Level 2 questions and even Level 3! Have a look at the activities you can complete, particularly in the Counting and Number section and Grouping and Sharing.

I have assigned everyone an activity this week that you will have to complete before you can go on anything else. All of the children should be confident with this as it’s related to arrays, which has been our maths focus this week.

Please let me know if your child’s multiplication activity doesn’t seem to have been assigned.

Silver!

The Sainsbury’s School Games Mark is a government-led awards scheme launched in 2012 to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community. Schools in England are able to assess themselves across bronze, silver and gold levels of the Mark. We had a visit from someone from Sport Industry Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University to check our assessment. I’m delighted to say we’ve just been awarded a silver level for 2013-14 and proudly display our ‘medal’ on our health page and PE and sports funding pages.

Here are some extracts from the report (dated 04 November 2014):

Moortown Primary School has been awarded the Silver Mark Award for the academic year 2013/2014.

Moortown Primary School received a validation visit for their application for a Mark award on Tuesday 21st October 2014. It was clear from the evidence provided that the school met the criteria to achieve a Silver Mark and in some areas of the criteria met Gold standard.

Every pupil in the school receives at least two hours of PE and school sport per week (in curriculum time only). The school organised school sports days for KS1 and KS2 that incorporated teams within the school. The school’s sports leaders plus other pupils helped in the organisation and running of the sports day.

Moortown Primary School has an excellent take up of extra-curricular sporting activities with 43% of the students participating in these activities; this exceeds the silver standard criteria. It is clear that sporting extra curricular activities are a crucial part of sports provision at the school with numerous lunchtime clubs and after school clubs taking place.

The school provided clear evidence of offering talented young sports people support in developing their sporting potential. The school have adopted an excellent policy called a ‘learning mountain’; this involves talented children teaching other students their specific skills during PE lessons. Alongside this the school has a well-maintained gifted and talented register.

The delivery of sporting opportunities at the school is good with 7 sports being offered at level 1 and 7 sports at level 2. This exceeds the standard for silver. Moreover, the school provided clear evidence of providing three B teams in football, rugby and football. The school showed excellent signs of promotion of School Games activity to parents in newsletters and have an active school twitter page, which regularly posts photos and team results. Moortown have an excellent policy in place where some students are asked to write match reports on school fixtures and then the reports are uploaded onto the school’s website.

11% of pupils are engaged in leading, managing and officiating in School Games activity, which exceeds the percentage required for Silver, the Gold standard is 20%. While the school actively engages students in the planning and development of School Games activity, currently the school does not have a school sport organising committee or crew in place. There is a need for a separate school sport organising committee to be in place to meet the criteria for gold in this category.

The school provided clear evidence of having three active links with local sports clubs and utilising sports coaches to support school sport. It is also clear the school uses the resources available to them to train wider school staff to support school sport. Last year the school brought in a specialised sporting teacher and this member of staff has trained other members of staff to lead sporting activities in the school.

The following are suggested improvements to the collection of evidence should the school wish to submit for gold next year:

• Looking at ways to increase the extra-curricular activity from 43% to above 50%, and increasing the percentage of leading / managing / officiating activity to meet the 20% requirement at gold. The Your School Games website has a section around School Sport Organising Crew which may highlight some additional roles and responsibilities that are included.

• Currently Moortown Primary School does not have a separate school sport organising committee in place. To achieve a gold Mark, a separate sporting committee would have to be in place and regularly meet to discuss sporting matters at the school. It was noted that the school does have a council and therefore to formulate a separate school sports committee should be straightforward.

• The school provided excellent evidence of having 3 active links with local sports clubs, which all seemed to be longstanding partnerships. However, to achieve a gold Mark Moortown Primary School needs to have at least 6 active links with local sports clubs.

• Currently Moortown Primary School offers 7 sports at level 1 and 7 sports at level 2 of School Games activity. To reach gold standard the school needs to be offering at least 9 sports at level 1 and 9 sports at level 2. Alongside this the school currently only has three B teams competing at level 2, to reach gold standard the school needs to have four B teams and one C team in place.

Congratulations on achieving your Silver Mark.

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.