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31 January 2014

For all children in Year 1 – Year 6, the homework this week is creative and is due in on Wednesday 05 February.

I know what makes a good school councillor.

It’s time for children to consider if they would like to stand for election for our new school council.  With two representatives from each class, chosen democratically by their peers, all children at Moortown Primary are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.

Elections for our new school council will take place next Friday 07 February with our polling station and ballot boxes at the ready.  Candidates will have the opportunity to give their election speech to their class on Wednesday 05 February or Thursday 06 February.

What makes a good school councillor has been considered by our current school council and in each class this week.  Suggestions have included:

• ‘Communicating with others – pupils and adults.’
• ‘Having good listening skills to know what to contribute in meetings.’
• ‘Thinking of realistic ideas to suggest in meetings.’

We invite children to respond to the sentence above in a creative way – they might choose to use this time to prepare an election speech or otherwise consider this statement and present it as a character description, pictures, an interview with a current school councillor or other ideas of your own.  For either option you should include the importance of voting.

Hints for your speech include:

• What skills and abilities would a good school councillor have?
• What are you particularly good at that would help you to be a great school councillor?
• What do you think would make the school better? What could you do that people would really like?
• Think of things that are realistic, maybe that you could do yourself, rather than having to ask other people to do?

Thank you to our current school councillors for all their ideas and contributions over the last year.  We hope you have enjoyed this role and responsibility and you are welcome to stand again for election.

Good luck to all children who decide to stand in the elections.  Results will be announced in our assembly on Friday 07 February.

Come and try new sports

As part of a local sporting partnership, Roundhay School are organising two free ‘come and try’ sports sessions that your child (KS2) is invited to attend.  Please note that no member of staff from Moortown Primary will be attending these sessions. It will be the responsibility of parents to take and collect their child to and from Roundhay School at the specified times. You’re welcome to stay and watch.

Trampolining

This taster session will allow your child to experience the sport of trampolining as a recreational activity. Your child must wear suitable sports clothing, tracksuit trousers and socks. This will be held in the Gym at Roundhay School on Monday 10 Feburary 2014 from 3.30pm to 5.00pm.

Basketball

This will a very informal session and a chance for your child to play some matches in a friendly environment and receive coaching from Carnegie Basketball. This will be held in the Sports Hall at Roundhay School on Tuesday 25 February 2014 from 3.30pm to 5.30pm.

Please note that places on these two sessions are limited so please register your interest as soon as possible with the school office.

Hero day

Friday 24 January saw Year 1 and 2 taken over by heroes! There were some absolutely fabulous hero costumes – from Batman and Thor, to Florence Nightingale, army officers and Amelia Earhart!

Throughout the day, our heroes took on many difficult and challenging tasks, rising to them all with courage, enthusiasm and skill!

In the morning, Year 2 designed their own symmetrical superhero capes in maths.

We used squares to help us on our first design and then moved on to creating symmetrical designs on plain capes.

Our second task was to turn ourselves into superheroes. We thought about what powers we might have, what our name would be and what our superhero costume would look like.

Finally, we created our own superhero cartoon about Moortown Man and his quest to defeat the evil Miss Brookerush to save Year 2! Here is the comic in the making…

Stay tuned to see our finished comic appear in the next few days…

Janice Rush, our Chair of Governors

The Chair of Governors at Moortown Primary School, Janice Rush, has been chosen for a national role supporting other chairs of governors to improve governance and school performance.  She was one of only 100 governors to be appointed to the role of National Leader of Governance (NLG) in the latest recruitment round by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL).

Successful candidates were invited to the National College’s learning and conference centre in Nottingham for a formal induction and training for the role.

National Leaders of Governance are highly effective chairs of governors who will use their skills and experience to support chairs of governors in schools and academies for a variety of reasons: the chair may be new, governors may want to focus more on school improvement, or need support in dealing with significant strategic challenges – for example becoming a federation or converting to academy status. They will provide coaching and can support their counterparts in a variety of different ways – for example in using data effectively to improve school performance or by providing more effective support and challenge for their headteacher.

Janice comments: “This is a fantastic opportunity to work with schools across Yorkshire and help drive improvements.”

The role builds on the success of the National College’s National and Local Leaders of Education (NLE or LLE) programme where headteachers use their proven success as school leaders to provide additional leadership capability in struggling schools. (David Roundtree supports other schools in the role of Local Leader of Education.) In some case, National Leaders of Governance may be deployed in partnership with a National or Local Leader of Education.

The overall number of National Leaders of Governance across the country is just over 260, although this will rise to about 300 by April 2014.

Charlie Taylor, Chief Executive of the National College for Teaching and Leadership, has said: “Governors are the people who appoint headteachers and hold them to account so they have an essential role to play as leaders in our schools. High quality governance is vital for improving school performance and it is great that Chairs of Governors like Janice are willing to step up and look beyond their own school in order to help others who will benefit from their support.”

For further information contact Janice: janicerush@moortown.sch.uk

24 January 2014

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a spelling test on Friday 31 January.

Some children don’t seem to be learning their spellings.  Please remember that it is part of the children’s homework and needs to be done.  Five minutes every day will help the children to learn the spellings and be able to apply them in their writing.

24 January 2014

This week’s homework is creative homework.

What is a hero?

After a fantastic “hero day”, we would like to see what the children’s perception of a hero is.  There has been a lot of discussion already about heroes but there are many different heroes from fiction, sport, history and real life day to day heroes.  Ideas and opinions can be shown in any way your child likes and please remember to be as creative as possible.

This homework needs to be handed in by Wednesday 29 January.

Thank you for providing costumes for your heroes; the day kicked off our topic really well and we defeated the villainous character who appeared in Year 2!

24 January 2014

The homework this week is practice makes perfect and is due in on Wednesday 29 January.

I can research and present a report about an animal.

This could be one of the animals we met on Monday or any other animal which your child would like to find out about. Children can present what they have found in any way they like. This could be a leaflet, poster, written report, video, PowerPoint type presentation, etc.

The one rule is that children are not allowed to cut and paste text directly from a website or copy out a section of text from an information source. Instead, they should pick out key pieces of information which they want to use in their reports.

If you would like to submit this (or any other) homework digitally, children can send it to the following email address. Please note, this is a class email address and should only be used to send homework or other school work. It should not be used to send any messages to me or any other adults in school.

y3@moortown.leeds.sch.uk

If you have any questions about this week’s homework, please come in and see me!

24 January 2014

The rule for this week is double up for a short vowel sound.

This week, all the spellings are animals which contain a short vowel sound followed by a double consonant.

Marshmallow tower challenge!

This week’s R for learning is Resilience. We took on a challenge that would require us to be resilient to be successful.

Using only dried spaghetti and marshmallows, we were challenged to be the team to make the tallest tower! It was a very tricky task that had many of us stumped, but we kept trying. Here’s what we came up with…

We kept trying, even when we found it difficult, showing that we can be resilient! Here’s the winning tower: it came in at 43cm tall, with a 42cm tall close second!

17 January 2014

Here are this week’s spellings. There will be a test on Friday 24 January.