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19 April 2013

We’re learning to spell words with y at the end.

Ending a word with ‘y’ can sometimes make a very short ‘e’ or ‘i’ sound, such as ‘party’ and ‘lady’.  However, the words in this list are all single-syllable words where the ‘y’ makes a long ‘i’ sound.

These will be tested on Friday 26 April.

19 April 2013

Over the next few weeks, our spellings are going to focus on a familiar set of letters (eg ough, ight) that are pronounced differently depending on which word they feature in (eg cough, through).

This week, the set of letters are ough.

Encourage your child to think about the different sounds they hear when they say the words, and encourage them to think of others, too.

Is there a new teacher in Y1?

You could be mistaken in thinking there is a new teacher in Y1! However, if you look carefully you will see that one of the children has let me have a rest. Lots of Y1 have brought books in this week to read to each other. It’s great to see how confident they have become.

Incidentally, can you see the questions on the interactive whiteboard?  These questions are about our forthcoming Big Topic – the questions are from the pupils – they help us to plan what to teach during the topic!

19 April 2013

This week’s spellings are homophones. These are words that sound the same but have a different spelling and meaning. Your child will be tested on Friday 26 April 2013.

• meet
• meat
• deer
• dear
• see
• sea
• flee
• flea
• bare
• bear

We’ll be thinking about other homophones during the week too.

19 April 2013

Homework this week is creative. It’s the second of three homework tasks this school year when we invite children to respond to something from a cultural or spiritual perspective (we’ve timed these so they fall close to religious festivals, from Eid to Easter).

I can respond to a programme or film I’ve seen.

We’d like children to present their responses about a recent programme or film they’ve seen. We’re interested to hear your child’s opinions and any connections they might have made between the programme or film and their own life. This might include pictures, an interview (you could write a fictional script between an interviewer and a character), a letter (eg to or from a character) – anything which might include your child’s responses!

However, your child might prefer to do the following:

I can show what Passover or Easter means to me and my community.

Recently, some children will have celebrated the Christian festival of Easter or the Jewish festival of Passover. We invite children to respond to the sentence above – they might include a recount (like a diary entry), pictures, an interview (perhaps in a script), or any other creative response.

Flamingoland: the day in pictures

What a great day!
We had fantastic fun at Flamingoland. These pictures will give you a flavour of the day.
Your children were exceptionally well behaved and threw themselves into the activities with great gusto.
It certainly was an adrenaline-filled day.

Symmetry

The children created symmetrical patterns using peg boards.

Well done and thanks…

The children had a brilliant last half term so I thought I’d take the opportunity to say well done and thanks to a few people.

Maanpreet is new to the school and has settled very well to the learning styles we have at Moortown. The progress he has made, especially in reading, is outstanding. Well done!

I know Mrs Freeman is delighted with the effort and enthusiasm shown by her maths booster group. My reading group – Luke, Ahmed, Husna, Meva and Mehar – have made superb progress too. Well done and thanks to all concerned for their hard work.

I have been amazed by some of the writing taking place in Year Six. Faaizaan, Iona, Grace, Zahra, Ebony and Lili have produced work that has taken my breath away. Great stuff!

Lots of the class have impressed me with how sensible and focussed they are with their learning. Tyler, Max, Zakib, Amir and Georgia are great role models for everyone for how they approach their learning and how they use their targets to improve further.

It’s this commitment to improve and attitude to learning that has made the class stand out for me as a fantastic bunch of children.

Well done and thanks.

Teaching turn around

I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable Easter holiday break. Today at school, I told the children of some staffing changes at Moortown: sadly, the time has come for two of our teachers to move on to new challenges.

Miss Hewson has been successful in her application for a new teaching job in York, which is where she lives. As well as a more convenient location, her new post is part of the leadership team. This is great news: another teacher who joined us as a newly qualified teacher (NQT) now moves on to a leadership role. Miss Hewson is always a very cheerful, friendly person and most importantly is an outstanding teacher. After almost five very successful years at Moortown Primary, she will be very much missed. She will leave at the end of this half-term; one of our existing teachers in school (to be confirmed) will take over the class for the last half-term of the year whilst we recruit a new member of the teaching team.

Miss Maver also leaves us, this time at the end of the school year. Mrs Maver is one of the two Assistant Headteachers at Moortown Primary. She leaves us to take on the role of Deputy Headteacher in another Leeds school. Mrs Maver is great at keeping us all organised, as well as making sure the Y1 children learn so much! With four years of great work at Moortown Primary, she feels ready and able to take on new leadership challenges – I’m sure she’ll be most successful. Mrs Maver’s role will not be directly replaced; instead, Mrs Weekes, our other Assistant Headteacher, will move up to Acting Deputy Headteacher.

I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing them both every continued success.

Super Spring Term Stars

Before we jump into our final term of Year 4, here are some of the highlights for me of last term:

Here come the… boys! This may seem like a lot but all these boys have made some amazing progress in their writing this term.

• Joshua
• Luca
• Mikaeel
• Alex
• Umar

They all should feel very proud of themselves.

Primary School Musical! The production this year was excellent, especially when you take into consideration the incredibly short amount of time which Year 3 and Year 4 had to put it together. A special well done to Kacy, whose solo still brings a tear to my eye!

Super sewing! After doing some sketches in our sketch books we took to our needles and produced some incredible hand puppets. This was one of my favourites. Great work!