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10 October 2014

This week’s homework is Creative and is due on Thursday 16 October.

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. Take real care with your work as it would be great to include this homework in our gallery event at the end of the topic. 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. I’m really looking forward to what you come up with.

Childline

We had a visit from Sam and Buddy from Childline this morning. We talked about some really important issues and the children had some really good ideas about how they could help people in certain situations.

Remember, Childline is free to call from any phone. The number is 0800 1111.

Creative homework

We’ve looked at our creative fantasy promotions today. There were some brilliant presentations, fabulous audio and visual adverts and lots of disgusting looking potions with accompanying posters! Well done.

Jennifer’s ‘One Wish Spell’ was a favourite. Check out the pictures:

Drop-in parent workshops

On Monday 06 October, Mr Owen, Mr Wilks and Miss Rushbrooke led the first of three learning drop-in sessions to support your child; this one was in English. Here are some of the comments.

• I like the handouts and the way the content of them was explained.
• Teachers are very approachable and explain everything in our language. It’s a great opportunity to get a feel for what’s going on in the class.
• Really pleased I came – learned lots.
• The practical suggestions of how to include writing in daily life and good ideas for encouraging reading were useful.
• Very useful session to find out some additional ways to help at home. The small group format worked well and it was helpful having the split by year group. The information to take home was very useful too.
• It was very organised with lots of practical ideas. It was a great idea to split the workshop into year groups.
• Very informal, good opportunity to ask questions and to talk to teachers and other parents about what works at home.
• Good advice and tips about how to encourage reading through asking plenty of questions. I liked the different methods of practising writing including using iPads.
• I feel more confident when discussing work with my children.

There is a similar drop-in workshop on on Monday 20 October at 2.30pm for Maths.

For Reception and Year 1 parents, Mrs Weekes and Mrs Burke lead a learning workshop where you get ideas about how to support the early stages of reading, writing and maths. This is on Monday 13 October at 2.30pm.

03 October 2014

Our homeworks this week are Creative and Practice Makes Perfect and are due in on Wednesday 01 October.

The Practice Makes Perfect homework builds on our measures learning  in class about length. Children have a sheet in their homework book which asks them to solve some length problems.

The Creative homework is again related to our Fighting Fantasy class novel:   I can create a fantasy item advert.

We will be writing promotions for the next few weeks in our English lessons. Children have to create an item which they might find in the class novel. This could be a weapon like a sword, cross-bow, axe, bow and arrow; a defensive item like armour, a shield or a helmet; a potion or spell which uses particular ingredients to perform a magical power; or it could be something else entirely! The choice is yours!

03 October 2014

This week, the spellings are all verbs which end in the suffix ‘ify’.

Can you find other family members for some of the words? For example, the spelling horrify has these words in its family: horrific, horrible, horrifies.

The spellings will be tested on Friday 10 October.

Your views matter… 5

In four previous news items, I’ve discussed your responses to the end-of-year annual reports and to the annual survey.

Don’t wait until June to raise any questions, comments or concerns!

On Friday last week, a mum came to see me to discuss how she could support her son at home – someone who’s already beyond the age-related expectations in reading, writing and maths. It was 5pm or later (nearly the weekend!), but I was happy to talk through some ideas, especially since she had quite a few ideas of her own about how we might be able to help. One idea was to buy a subscription to Mathletics – a computer program that would allow her child to practise maths at home, without needing an adult to support. From discussions with parents of children in other schools, she’s heard that it’s really good.  Just days after her suggestion, we’re now exploring subscriptions. We won’t rush into it – we don’t want to waste money.  We’re checking out costs and I’m asking other headteachers if their schools use it and whether they would recommend it. (We’ll let you know if we subscribe…)

Also this year, I’ve acted on feedback about school dinners. I hope problems here are teething problems following the introduction of free school meals for all younger children – a massive planning and organisational task to accommodate 60 more pupils (and numbers continue to rise for older pupils, too). Mrs Weekes has listened and responded to parents about children and concerns with regards their special education needs. We are restricted by funding as to how we respond – it would be great to be able to buy in more support or resources – but Mrs Weekes has excellent relationships with professionals who offer advice and guidance. I know class teachers have also responded to your views. Again, it’s not always appropriate or possible to act on every request, but we do listen and consider. When a parent mentioned their child was struggling to read the whiteboards in class, one teacher immediately re-arranged seating. When someone else mentioned their child was feeling a bit anxious this year, we included the child in a small, SEAL group (to promote social and emotional aspects of learning).

We can’t always act on your suggestions (some just aren’t possible) and we can’t always listen to your views (whether you think your child would benefit from a term-time holiday or not, we won’t authorise one, for example!). However, as always, please raise your questions, comments and concerns to me or one of the teachers in school: we do care and we do listen.

Your views matter… 4

This is the fourth in a series of news articles about your views, as expressed in the end-of-year annual reports, the annual reports and (article five) in person to me. The content of this page comes from the Newsletter we sent home earlier this page, along with a few additional points.

Thanks to all of you who returned a survey before the holiday. We received 82 responses this year (a lot more than last year – thanks). Of those who agreed or disagreed, here is the summary of the responses:

Obviously, we’re delighted that so many people who expressed an opinion were so positive – that‘s wonderful news. Thank you for your continued support – it’s this level of enthusiasm for the school that makes Moortown such a happy and healthy place to be.

There was quite a high level of ‘unsure’ responses (not included in the data above). On average across the statements, 7.5% were ‘unsure’.

This is particularly the case for the statement about bullying, where 21 respondents were unsure. However, as one parent notes (and many others commented in a similar way): “selected ‘unsure’…because we’ve had no experience of this”.

Nine respondents were also unsure about supporting their child at home and knowing how well their child is doing. As a result, we’ve planned more learning workshops and we’re repeating the open morning initiative, where you can actually observe the teaching and learning taking place. Parents last year said they found this helpful. (Don’t forget: every Class Newsletter features suggestions to help at home, too – these practical suggestions will engage your child in active, relevant learning!) This year, we’re going to have two of these. We’re also introducing a termly ‘traffic light’ system to let you know how your child is doing – you’ll receive the first at parents’ evening. Because of this response, and because of one parent’s suggestion (see Your Views Matter… 5), we’re also about to subscribe to Mathletics which we hope will enable you to support your child quite easily at home.

There were also nine more of you who were unsure around how well we develop children’s child’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural skills. rather like bullying, we think this has a lot to do with not communicating enough about this important aspect of school life. Over the course of the year, we do feature homework which specifically relates to elements of spiritual, moral, social and cultural  development – look out for these. We also plan, later in the year, to develop a page on the website which explains more.

Your views do matter. I hope you can see that we do listen and we do respond as much as we can. In the next news article, read about how we listen to individual parent concerns and questions, too.

Your views matter… 3

In the previous two news posts, I’ve presented a summary of the end-of-year annual reports and your responses on the subject of behaviour and our ‘warnings’ system. Your views on homework were far more mixed…

The creative homework is good, rather than too much learning by rote.

We feel there’s too much creative homework and we would be in favour of more talk time and practice makes perfect.

On the whole my children enjoy homework (especially creative)…

I am happy with the practice and talk-time homework but feel the creative homework should be reduced.

As you can see from the quotes above, your views vary considerably, even about just one aspect of homework. Of those who put forward a particular opinion, around a quarter were completely positive; a third had mixed views, usually positive but with some suggestions for improvements; and just under a half wanted our homework policy to change in some way. You might think this presents a clear case for the need to revise the policy, but the problem is that the suggestions put forward differed quite a lot. Two broad areas of agreement are:

• many wanted to see the amount of homework increase in Year 5 and Year 6 – this is something we’ve already put in place
• quite a few of you wanted the homework to be more structured / less open-ended / more Practice Makes Perfect – this is something we will look into, perhaps through a subscription to software to enable more practice of skills at home

Look out for two more news articles about your views…

Research findings

Did you take part in the Leeds Beckett University packed lunch parent survey?  Today the findings are published, revealing parents’ choices in providing children’s packed lunches.