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This week’s phonemes

This week, your child will be learning the letters s, a, t, p, i, n and the sounds they make.

The children will be taught some of the terminology we use. So that you don’t feel left out, here are a few definitions:

• A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.
• A grapheme is the letter, or letters, representing a phoneme, such as t, ai, igh, ch.
• A digraph is two letters, making one sound; a consonant digraph contains two consonants (sh, ck, th), whilst a vowel digraph contains at least one vowel (ai, ee, ar, oy).
• A trigraph is three letters making one sound, like igh, dge.
• Blending is recognising the letter sounds in a written word (for example c-u-p), and merging or synthesising them in the order in which they are written to pronounce the word ‘cup’ (this is essential during the reading process).
• Segmenting is the opposite of blending; it involves identifying the individual sounds in a spoken word (eg ‘him’ = h – i – m) and writing down letters for each sound to form the word (segmenting supports the writing process).
• A c-v-c word is a consonant, vowel, consonant word such as c-a-t and also sh-o-p.

Encourage your child to read and write cvc words, especially using letters and sounds that you know we’ve covered in school – this week, lots of words can be blended and segmented using s, a, t, p, i, n.

Hobby Half Day

Check out our fantastic photos of our first Hobby Half Day!

Children from Year 1 to Year 6 had the opportunity to participate in an afternoon of learning something new. The activities ranged from everyday baking and cooking to the unusual: creating their own carbon footprint.

Even easier ways to vote for Bronwen!

Following a previous item urging people with a Leeds Learning email account to support Bronwen (a Y6 pupil) in her bid to be Leeds Mayor for the Day, they’ve made it even easier for everyone with email to vote.

Voting opened on Leeds Learning Network (LLN) on Monday 17 October and since then over 1,700 votes have been cast. In addition to this, following feedback from schools and in the interests of a fair democracy, organisers at Leeds Children’s Services have now enabled individuals without LLN accounts to vote via the city’s ‘Breeze’ website.

So, to summarise:

• if you’ve a Leeds Learning account, please use this to vote for Bronwen;
• if you don’t, please use the Breeze site and then send a quick email with your vote.

Voting closes at midday on Friday 04 November. If you haven’t yet voted please take three minutes to do so – as a smaller school than other candidates, it’s really important that as many as possible vote. The results have been so close in previous years that every last vote can make a difference!

Our new SEAL theme

Our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for the second half of the autumn term is Getting On. This theme covers four main aspects:

• developing the social skills of friendship
• working well together in a group
• managing anger
• resolving conflict

Group work takes place across all lessons and even at lunchtime and playtimes. Some questions for children to consider are:

• Did everyone take turns?
• Did everyone listen to what other people thought?
• Did each person have chance to tell the group what they thought?
• If people had different ideas could the group reach a compromise?

It’s the holiday…

…so there are no homework or spellings.

However, there are lots of ways you can support you child’s learning, first and foremost by visiting our Help Your Child section.

There are lots of things to do in or near Leeds, from geo-caching on Monday to a spooky Halloween walk on Sunday.  Here are a few other ideas to fill the October half-term holiday with activities…

• take your child for an autumnal walk in Roundhay Park to collect chestnuts for a game of conkers or autumn leaves for an autumn collage;
• on a cold, autumn day, stay indoors and spend time baking (What unit of measurement will we use to weigh? If we want to make twice as much, how much will we need? When will the food be ready?);
• take a trip to Leeds Art Gallery – the Damien Hirst exhibition should prove a great opportunity for lots of discussion, description and possibly disagreement!
• and, as always, enjoy some relaxing reading (why not read some Tintin stories from a local library in preparation for the forthcoming film?)

School re-opens on Tuesday 01 November 2011 (following a training day on Monday 31 October 2011).

An Amazing Assembly

Last Thursday, Year 1 shared their learning in “a really fab assembly”. The children have been learning about the people in our community and showed this through drama and singing.

“What a wonderful show. Excellent theme for them to appreciate all the people that help us.”

As you can see from the quotes, our parents thought the children did really well.  Thank you to all the parents for your support.

“What a fantastic performance – such confidence from all of the children.”

Green Fingers in Y5

On Monday 17 October, a group of Y5 children did some fantastic work in our local community.  We have created a partnership with Moortown in Bloom and over the past few months we have been helping them develop a patch of land at the end of Stonegate Road and Scothall Road.  Here are some of the children in action!

Vote Bronwen for Leeds Mayor!

We’re very proud that Bronwen, a Year 6 pupil here at Moortown Primary, has been selected as one of ten finalists for the Leeds Children’s Mayor competition. All the Year 6 children completed a manifesto of what they would like to change if they could become Mayor for the day and Bronwen was chosen as our entrant for the competition.  Her manifesto is brilliant, meeting all the criteria set (see below).

Vote for Bronwen! Voting has now opened for the finalists and anyone with a Leeds Learning account can vote. If you know of anyone who has one, please encourage them to vote. 

Voting will remain open until midday on Friday 04 November.

Representatives of Leeds Children’s Services and Leeds Council undertook the difficult task of short listing the twenty Children’s Mayor entries they received down to a final ten. In order to make the short listing a fair and transparent process, they used score cards and scored the manifestos individually against four criteria: 

• How clear and focused the manifesto idea was
• How practical, achievable and affordable the manifesto idea was
• The number of children and young people who would benefit from the manifesto idea
• The extent to which children would work alongside adults to make the idea a reality

As well as Moortown Primary, the schools whose entrants made the final this year are Allerton Bywater Primary School, Bramley St Peters Primary School, Calverley C of E Primary School, Hill Top Primary School, Kippax North Junior & Infant School, Queensway Primary School, Shire Oak Primary School, Strawberry Fields Primary School and Whinmoor St Paul’s Primary School

This whole programme is about encouraging children to show an interest in democracy and to get them into the habit of voting on issues that affect them. 

We know children at Moortown Primary already make a positive contribution to the school and their community through the School Council, litter-picking, raising money for charity etc. It’s great individuals like Bronwen want to go the extra mile to have their views heard!

Parents Evening Times

‘Packed lunches lack fruit and veg’ – not at Moortown

Research published earlier this month suggest that ‘children’s packed lunches lack fruit and vegetables’.

At Moortown, a packed lunch survey carried out last week showed a massive 86% of our packed lunches had at least one portion of fruit or vegetable with 43% having two or more portions.  One of our Year 6’s packed lunch even contained her five-a-day of fruit and vegetables!  Children excitedly and proudly showed their fruit and vegetable choices.

It has been one year since we introduced our packed lunch guidance which includes advice and ideas for healthy packed lunches.  As part of the guidance, we encourage children to bring at least one portion of fruit and / or vegetables.  Our guidance was introduced, for parents / carers and children, as packed lunches do not follow the same nutritional guidelines introduced for school dinners.   Data collected prior to producing the guidance has been used as a comparison to assess the impact of our work on improving packed lunches.

Results from the latest survey have shown some positive results:

• 86% of packed lunches now contain at least one portion of fruit or vegetables (compared to 80% in 2010).
• There is a greater variety of carbohydrate items within packed lunches eg pasta salads.
• The number of children bringing snack items has reduced slightly with children commenting they don’t bring these items in every day, but as a treat.
• The major impact we have seen in the results has been the reduction in the number of children bringing sweetened drinks eg Fruit Shoots (65% 2010 to 25% in 2011) and now choosing water which we provide on the tables at lunchtime or their own water bottles.  Did you know that over a year these parent / carers will be saving approximately £48 by not providing a daily fruit shoot drink?
• We have also seen an increase in the number of children choosing to take a school dinner (flexible packed lunch / school dinner combinations are also available).

Sadly, one or two children don’t have any fruit or vegetables in their packed lunches – often, these children tell us they want some, and usually blame mum or dad!

Please chat with your child about how they might make one small step to a healthier choice.