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Tuck shop pre-payment

Here is a reminder for our regular customers at tuck shop and for any children who would like to start pre-paying for their fruit.

Please return the recent letter with your money to ensure that you continue to get your weekly fruit at the tuckshop.

The cost for one portion of fruit or veg from 14 January to 01 April 2014 inclusive (11 weeks) is £2.20 and the cost for two portions is £4.40.

Thank you for your support with our tuck shop – 63 customers today!

Happy holidays!

We are reaching the end of the children’s first term in Reception.  It has been a delight to see how the children have changed and developed over the last few months.

Well done Nayaab, Enas, Aisha and Kirsten for  their increased confidence and to Zara for finally gaining the confidence to speak to adults.

Well done, Daniel, for always making good choices.

Jacob, Ben, Zakariya and Musa have  improved their learning behaviour and are listening more attentively on the carpet.

William and Charlie have kept us amused with their great sense of humour and Rabiya, Kismat, Gurnoor and Tasha have shown concern and care for their friends.

We are all impressed with Sam’s perseverance in holding his pencil to write his name and Ahmed’s speed in learning and using English.

Well done to Byron, Alexander and Evie for great learning in maths and Eve, and to Alexandra, Eliza, Eleni and Poppy for their progress in reading.

Everyone has been impressed with Arundeep and Zidaan for their great manners and Maggie and Finlay for their creativity and model making.

Have a great holiday and happy new year from everyone in Reception!

13 December 2013

This week’s homework is creative.

I can respond, creatively, to a piece of art.

Each child has one of three pieces of art in their homework book that have been the focus of three art afternoons this week. We would like them to respond to this art in any way they choose but make it creative.

Here are some ideas to start you off:

• Create your own version of the artwork eg create your own triptych, landscape scene or portrait.
• Write a description.
• Write a story thinking about what might happen in your piece of art, or who it is of.
• Tell us what you think about it.
• Think about whether you can do any maths, writing or reading connected to it.

DfE performance tables: learning

DfE performance tables are published today.  This year, they are more detailed than ever, covering everything from amount spent on resources to absence rates. 

Here’s an overview of learning in 2012-13 for Moortown Primary compared to other primary schools, based on 2013 Key Stage 2 results.

In the tables, there are many, potentially confusing, ways to compare schools and their 2013 results.  You can compare progress, percentage of pupils at expected level, how effective a school is in closing the attainment gap caused by poverty… You can compare test results against teacher assessment, how well children with low attainment perform compared to those with high attainment…

Here are some headline figures:

• proportion reaching Level 4 or more in reading, writing and maths combined is 93% – almost 20 percentage points higher than national (75%) or Leeds (74%) figures
• proportion reaching Level 4B (a mid Level 4, which the current government describes as a level indicating a pupil is ‘secondary ready’) or more in reading, writing and maths combined is 89% – significantly higher than national (63%) and 14th place amongst all 251 Leeds primaries
• proportions making expected progress is also very high: 100% in reading and maths, and 96% in writing – about 10 percentage points higher than for England as a whole, or Leeds overall
• the average level for our pupils was a 5C, which matches quite a few schools in Leeds, but only two schools had a higher level (5B)
• 32% of pupils attained a Level 5 in reading, writing and maths combined – easily putting us in the top 10% of Leeds schools for this measure

Well done to the 2012-13 Year 6 class, to Ms Hazell, Mrs Raseta and to all the previous teachers who have supported the class.

DfE performance tables: attendance

DfE performance tables are published today.  This year, they are more detailed than ever, covering everything from Key Stage 2 results to average teacher salary, from amount spent on resources to absence rates. 

Here’s an overview of absence rates for Moortown Primary compared to other primary schools. 

(Don’t get confused: we often talk about attendance rates – the higher, the better.  The performance tables refer to absence rates, so the converse is true – the lower, the better.)

The absence rate for Moortown Primary is 4.1%.  This compares well against the average across England’s primary state-funded schools (4.8%) and Leeds (4.7%).

I’ve gone through the table and noted the absence rates of 11 other primary schools in the area, chosen in a relatively random way other than schools which are nearby.  Moortown Primary comes about half-way up the list.  It’s great our absence rates are lower than national and Leeds averages.  What we need to keep working on is improving attendance against similar schools nearby…

• if the absence rate of Gledhow Primary and Alwoodley Primary is 4.0%, could our attendance improve by a small amount more to match their figures?
• if Talbot Primary’s absence is 3.6%, should our absence rate be lower than 4.1%?

The attendance tables also include figures to show persistent absenteeism – the percentage of pupils in a school who have particularly high absence.  For Moortown Primary, the figure is 2.8%.  This is much better than national (3.6%) and Leeds (3.5%) rates.  Last year, the 2.8% was made up six pupils.  To put this into context, we can account for four of these children – we know they had / have specific reasons:

• medical conditions where absences are backed up with full medical evidence and / or medical professionals being in frequent communication, or
• other very specific reasons, again, backed up at every stage of absence by communication and evidence from parents and other professionals.

Parents / carers of the other two children could not provide us with any reason for the absences.  Under stricter, clearer guidelines, parents / carers of these children would be fined – £60 per child, per parent.  So far this school year, we have passed on to the local authority two instances of extended and unauthorised term-time absence.

Art in maths – Symmetry

It’s time to get arty in maths this week as we look at symmetry. Today we donned our aprons and used paint to create symmetrical pieces of art. First we tried creating a symmetrical image ourselves, then we painted one side of the paper and folded it in half to make sure it was symmetrical.

Here’s our gallery of symmetry.

Writing!

Reception children are writing everywhere!

Free physical activity after-school clubs

You may have noticed on the latest menu of after-school clubs, for the Spring term, that our physical activity clubs are FREE!  This is one of the ways we are spending Government funding given to all schools for PE and school sport, encouraging children to take part in a range of physical activities.  In order to maximise the long term impact for our school, both pupils and staff, we are looking at the most sustainable ways to invest the funding.  Further details of some of the projects we are involved in will shortly be posted on the website.

In the meantime, if you have any feedback about our after-school clubs please speak to Mrs O’Malley.

06 December 2013

This week’s homework is talk time. 

We all take light for granted every day and Year 1 have been investigating different sources of light.  This week, we have discovered which were the best sources of light with some fair testing.  We would like you to discuss the following question before Wednesday 11 December:

“Is it right that some people live without electric lights in their homes?”

06 December 2013

Here are this week’s spellings.  They will be tested on Friday 13 December.