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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.

07 November 2014

This week’s homework is creative and is due on Wednesday 12 November.

I can be an artist.

As we’ve been looking at so many pieces of art and tried a few ideas out in class, it’s now time to see what we can do ourselves. Create any piece of art you want.  Don’t forget, there are all sorts of types of art. Choose the one you like best or one you’ve never tried before…

• painting
• sketching
• pastel/chalk
• sculpture
• ICT
• photography

…and many more. We’re really looking forward to seeing your amazing art.

Moortown Festive Lights Switch-On

Moortown Community Group invite you to join in the Moortown Festive Lights Switch-On at 6.45pm (for 7.00pm start) on Wednesday 19 November.

The Community Group will gather outside the ‘Transform’ premises, opposite Marks & Spencer, where mulled wine and mince pies, fruit juice and decorated biscuits will be served – all kindly donated by Marks and Spencer and Cooplands.

For more information please see the Moortown Community Group website or their Facebook page.

Governor vacancy

Becky Lawrence, our Chair of Governors, writes:

The governing body has a strategic leadership role in school. For example, governors are a source of challenge and support to the headteacher, and they ensure that money is well spent in school.

This term there have been some changes to the Governing Body at Moortown Primary School. The new chair of governors is Becky Lawrence, who is a co-opted governor, and the new vice-chair is Rachel Greenhalgh, who is a parent governor. Co-opted governors are people who are appointed by the governing body based on the skills required to contribute to the success of the school. There is currently an opportunity for another parent to join the governing body as a co-opted governor.

Governors use skills from other areas of their lives to help the school. We would be particularly interested to hear from anyone with experience of premises management, strategic or financial planning, or data analysis. Most of all, however, governors need to be committed to helping improve the learning experience for all pupils at Moortown Primary and have an ability to ask questions.

If you are interested in becoming a co-opted governor, please email Becky Lawrence: beckylawrence@moortown.leeds.sch.uk

You might also want to discuss the role informally with Rachel Greenhalgh, who’s around school at the start and end of most days – ask Mr Roundtree to put you in touch if you’re unsure of who she is.

Working for Catering Leeds

Looking for work to fit in with school hours? School holidays hard to cover?

Leeds City Council’s School Meals Service is recruiting kitchen assistants to help provide and serve meals to the children of Leeds.

• Local jobs
• Term-time only contracts
• Working hours between 11.30am and 1.30pm
• £6.54 per hour
• No experience necessary as training and support will be provided
• Equality of opportunity – applications are welcome from all, irrespective of sex, race, marital status, age, disability or whether lesbian or gay

You will need to:

• Be enthusiastic and a good team player
• Be reliable and hard working
• Enjoy working with children

Appointments are subject to a satisfactory enhanced DBS (Criminal Records) check.

For more information or to apply, phone Catering Leeds on 0113 37 82323, email helen.collins@leeds.gov.uk or apply online.

Starting school in September 2015?

Information about applying for primary places to start September 2015

The application process (including the on-line system) opened on 01 November 2014 and runs until the deadline of 15 January 2015. If you have a child due to start school in September 2015, you should have received a letter and ‘quick guide’ from Leeds Admissions team inviting you to apply. The letter and guide includes information about important dates, how to apply, types of schools, our admissions policy and waiting lists etc.

If you haven’t received this letter from the Admissions team, please feel free to contact us or contact the Admissions team directly on 0113 2224414 to confirm that we have your correct address details.

Remember: even if you have a child in school or attending early years provision, you must still apply for a place.

Computing in Y5

Scratching away at a maze game!

Train to teach

Train to Teach Roadshow Event

When? Saturday, November 29, 10.00am-1.00pm

Where? DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, Leeds City Centre, Granary Wharf, LS1 4BR

Train to Teach Roadshows are designed to provide you with information on pursuing a career in teaching and how to apply for training in your region. There will be a 45-minute presentation to provide general guidance on the routes into teaching and information on writing a great application. After attending a presentation, you can find out more by:

• Speaking to our teaching experts in the advice zone; they can give you one-to-one advice on your training options
• Meeting teacher training providers from your region, who can tell you about the courses they offer and their entry requirements
• Meeting School Direct schools within your region, who can tell you more about the places they have on the School Direct training programme
• Talking to current teachers in the ‘Meet the Teachers’ area

Get into Teaching has lots of information about how to get into teaching and the various training options available.

Learning to write

The children are progressing quickly with their phonics learning and reading. Alongside blending to read, the children also need to segment words to spell. Children often find this harder and lack confidence in their ability to write.

In Reception, the children take part in shared writing activities where they can ‘have a go’ on whiteboards with the support of adults. We then encourage independent writing in all the areas of provision. This includes writing a label for their model, writing a shopping list in the role-play shop or writing a letter to a friend. At the moment the children are busy writing messages to their favourite superheroes! We value all the children’s attempts at writing and model writing (and making mistakes) to them.

You can help at home by:

• Providing plenty of different types of pens and pencils and encouraging your child to use a correct grip
• Encouraging them to use the school’s handwriting style and to use lower case letters; we teach that a capital letter is required for the first letter in a name and at the beginning of a sentence
• Spelling is harder than reading words – praise, don’t criticise. Little whiteboards and pens are a good way for children to try out spellings and practise their handwriting
• Remember that at this stage children’s phonetic attempts are valued. They will learn the correct spellings of words later.  We want the children to become confident writers by ‘having a go’ and using their phonetic knowledge independently.
• To be able to write, children need to be well co-ordinated through their whole body, not just their hands and fingers. Games that help co-ordination include throwing balls at a target, under-arm and over-arm, and bouncing balls – also skipping on the spot, throwing a Frisbee, picking up pebbles from the beach and throwing them into the sea.

Have fun!