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03 October 2014

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a spelling test on Friday 10 October.

03 October 2014

This week’s homework is creative homework.  It needs to be handed in by Wednesday 08 October.

We’ve been very lucky to ‘jump into’ many paintings with Katie over the past few weeks – her grandma is magical and can somehow make paintings come to life.

Which painting would you like to jump into?  What would happen when you were inside the painting?

Be as creative as you like! Chat about ideas with your child: Could the homework be in the form of a poster, a letter, a comic strip, some writing, a PowerPoint…? Could it use photos, drawings, fold-out ‘extras’ on the page…?

I would like to jump into this painting:

     What would I find?  Who would I meet? What might change in the picture? Would I want to stay?

03 October 2014

This week’s homework is Practice Makes Perfect and is due on Wednesday 08 October.

I can write a report.

In English, we have written a report on Vincent Van Gogh. It will now be great practice for your child to write their own report at home on a subject they know a lot about and we all know a lot about Moortown Primary School.

Your views matter… 2

I’ve already described how we listen to your responses to the end-of-year annual reports. In this and the following two news articles, I’ll talk through the findings of the annual surveys. Here, I’ll describe the feedback we received on the subject of behaviour and our ‘warnings’ system.

One respondent pondered why we were asking this, and wondered whether it was because warnings and our policy overall wasn’t working. Not the case! We have a Relationships Management Policy (other schools might call this a Behaviour Management or Discipline Policy, but we place relationships at the heart of what we do) and it works really well, including the warnings system. We actually asked the question because we always want to review what we do – a chance to step back and reflect on whether we can do even better – as part of a continual cycle of self-evaluation. (It was also prompted by some remarks by the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, who suggested last year that schools return to using lines as a form of discipline – more on that below…)

Another parent wondered whether we should have positive consequences, too – we do! Each classroom teacher has their own system(s) in place. In Year 3, for example, Mrs Keatings rewards teamwork as well as individual effort, using team points and stars respectively. In Year 6, Mr Owen favours ‘golden tickets’ whilst Mr Wilks is partial to ‘fuzzies'(!). And don’t forget we have our weekly certificate assembly, where teachers acknowledge especially impressive learning and SEAL skills, as well as the coveted Cool Class Cup, awarded to the class whose individual pupils have earned the most Cool Class tokens.

Unlike the question on homework (more about that in a later news article), your views on our behaviour systems were almost all very, very positive: the vast majority of you supported the warnings system as a way to manage bad choices in school and most of you did not want any changes made, whether this involved lines or some other consequence. Many of you were adamant that we should not allow writing to be seen as a punishment, and a sizeable minority took the opportunity to criticise the views of Mr Gove – a ‘dinosaur’ with little expertise in the area of education sums up a significant number of your comments. Whilst I don’t wish to comment directly on Mr Gove’s ideology, or that of any Secretary of State for Education, I am pleased that you do support what we do around relationships and behaviour.

(Incidentally, one parent did say that they had reinforced the five warnings consequence that his/her child had received at school by issuing lines at home. First, it’s really encouraging to know that home treats poor behaviour choices as seriously as school does, and that we will be supported in this way; second, it was great to also read that the mix of consequences at both school and home worked; and third, it shows that a sort of mixture of traditional and modern strategies can work, as long as the overall message about behaviour choices being good/bad is consistent and clear for the child.)

Thank you for your views. Some specific points – like two requests to know more about the consequences at each stage of the warnings system – can be acted on really easily. All the comments will be passed to the Pupil Support sub-committee of the Governing Body for further consideration.

Look out for more news about your views…

Your views matter… 1

Towards the end of the school year, you’ll have received your child’s annual school report.

Just after receiving the report, parents / carers have a third scheduled parents’ evening to discuss its contents. One of the Year 1 teachers (Mrs Taylor) attends this, too, so the transition to Year 1 can be as smooth as possible – it’s a good time to reflect on the year and to ask questions and raise any concerns as the Reception children move up school.  Many of you who have a child in an older class also met with your child’s teacher (either the current or next one) to discuss the report, although this was done on a more casual basis in that you were encouraged to arrange a meeting if you wanted one.

We also asked you to complete a brief response about the report and the school year: what went well, what we could have done better and what questions / comments / concerns (if any) you have for the next year.

Well, we’re in ‘the next year’ now and I have passed the small number of points you raised (typically two or three in each class) to your child’s new teacher.  They have begun to act on the points you noted, and will respond directly to some of them at parents’ evenings (Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 October).  As always, if you’d like to talk sooner, please call in before or after school – teachers are usually available for a short chat (although longer discussions are best left to a pre-arranged meeting).

Incidentally, there were very few points to improve on (just two or three in the entire school), and lots of praise in the report responses.  Teachers have asked me to pass on their thanks for your very positive and appreciative comments.

Look out for some more responses to your end-of-year feedback (the annual surveys) over the next day or two!

Put on your sorting hat.

Naughty Katie destroyed all of Kandinsky’s paintings this week so we decided to help the art gallery by sorting all of the scattered pieces according to their shape.

Sometimes we had to bring our hoops together because some shapes fit under both criteria. This is called a Venn diagram.

Lots of great maths and lots of fixed pictures!

Generating lots of openers in our English lesson…

Working hard in gymnastics!

Art around the world

As part of our Big Topic, Katie and…, we have been finding out about art from around the world – a good chance to check our geographical knowledge from our recent Where in the World topic, too.

Aboriginal art has certain features that we tried to include in our own examples.  Can you see them in the work below?

Phonics in Reception

At Moortown we follow the Letters and Sounds programme for teaching phonics.

We’ll be inviting you to a ‘phonics morning’ where you’ll be able to watch a short phonics lesson and observe the types of activities which will help you to support your child at home. These will be held on 15, 16 and 17 October at 9.20am. A letter will be sent home with your child.

This week, we’ll be busy learning to identify alliteration and rhyme which will pave the way for the systematic learning of phonics.

The children are taking part in lots of activities where they listen attentively to sounds around them, such as sounds in the environment and to sounds in spoken language. Singing a wide range of nursery rhymes and songs and reading books to and with the children helps to increase the number of words they know – their vocabulary – and helps them talk confidently about books.

We’re also learning to ‘sound talk’. The separate sounds (phonemes) are spoken aloud, in order, all through the word, and are then merged together into the whole word: d-o-g = dog. This merging together is called blending and is a vital skill for reading.

Children will also learn to do this the other way around: cat = c-a-t. The whole word is spoken aloud and then broken up into its sounds (phonemes) in order, all through the word. This is called segmenting and is a vital skill for spelling.

This is all oral (spoken). Your child won’t be expected to match the letter to the sound at this stage. The emphasis is on helping children to hear the separate sounds in words and to create spoken sounds.

Ways you can support your child at home:

Play ‘What do we have in here?’ Put some toys or objects in a bag and pull one out at a time. Emphasise the first sound of the name of the toy or object by repeating it, for example, ‘c c c c – car’, ‘b b b b – box’, ‘ch ch ch ch – chip’.

When sounding out, try to avoid the ‘uh’ sound – say ‘sssss’ rather than ‘suh’, ‘mmmmm’ rather than ‘muh’.  This is to keep the sound as ‘pure’ as it can be so there’s no confusion with extra, unwanted sounds when blending and segmenting words.