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General information

PE will be on Thursdays and Fridays. Please ensure PE kits with outdoor trainers and pumps are in school on these days (or have them in on Monday and take them home on Friday every week!).

Show and Tell will be on Thursdays. Four children will be chosen each week to bring in something such as a certificate, a medal or a souviner. The focus will be on children’s speaking and listening skills. Encourage your child to prepare at home first by thinking about who, what, why, where and when (our five Ws).

16 September 2011

This week’s homework is creative. It’s due in on Wednesday 21 September.

I can show something interesting about myself.

16 September 2011

This week’s spellings are high frequency words. The children will be tested on these spellings on Friday 23 September.

Write away!

Did you know we have two published authors in our school community?

Year 3 parent, Emma Barnes, has a new book out for children called How (Not) to Make Bad Children Good. Aimed at 7-10s, it’s the story of naughty child, Martha, who is so bad that an Interstellar Agent, Fred, is sent to Earth to try and sort her out.  Emma will be appearing at Waterstones on Saturday 24 September.

We’re all very proud that Carolyn Hazell, our Year 6 teacher, is also a published author.  Her book, Pav the Plumber Saves the Day, is popular amongst our children, and a great resource in school to promote reading and writing.  Our current Year 6 pupils are being inspired to write great character descriptions, and a former pupil described Miss Hazell as ‘inspiring’ as a teacher and writer.

Find and compare schools’ performance

The following information is an extract from a recent email from the Department of Education to schools.  Parents / carers who need to consider what school their child should move on to after Moortown Primary might find it helpful.  Please note that the most up-to-date 2011 exam or test results may not yet be available.

The Department for Education has launched a new web tool helping parents / carers find and compare local schools’ performance. It significantly improves parents’ ability to choose the right school for their child.

The ‘compare schools’ tool brings together a wide range of performance data in a single place.

Parents can find schools by name, keyword or location or browse via an interactive map. Each school has its own mini-site with a range of useful information such as spend per pupil and test and exam results. Parents can also compare their school with others nearby – or with any other school in England.

For the first time on the Department’s website, parents can:

• select the schools that interest them and compare performance side by side
• view a full list of schools in England and filter to find schools with similar characteristics
• use an interactive map to view local, regional and national averages for school performance.

For more information, visit http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/search

SEAL statement 12 September

Our SEAL statement for this week is ‘I understand what SEAL means.’

This week we are looking more closely at what SEAL represents and in particular what are the social and emotional skills and aspects of learning that SEAL is trying to develop. 

The aspects of learning are:

	Self awareness
	Managing feelings
	Motivation
	Empathy
	Social skills

These aspects are often considered to fall into two categories – personal (eg self awareness) and interpersonal (eg social skills). 

Within each of these aspects of learning there are many skills. 

The SEAL resources allow children to develop the concepts, understanding and skills over time, building on what they have previously learned.

Welcome back!

I hope you’ve all had an enjoyable summer!

I’m Miss Hewson and this will be my fourth year here at Moortown Primary School.  I have taught Year Four for the past three years so I’m looking forward to the new challenge of teaching the Year Two class.  I’m sure that we have an exciting year ahead!

Many of you I will have met from teaching siblings of this class and I look forward to seeing you all again.  For those of you that I don’t already know, I look forward to meeting you . Parents’ evening will be in October.  In the meantime, if you have any questions please feel free to come see me anytime.  Mrs Stewart will be our teaching assistant this year and is often available to answer queries too.

New SEAL statement and theme

As we start the new school year, our SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme focuses on New Beginnings and ‘I can make someone feel welcome‘ is the statement for this week.

New Beginnings

New beginnings allows children the opportunity to discuss and reflect on how they or others may feel in a new situation or setting.  This SEAL theme offers children the opportunity to see themselves as valued individuals within a community, and to contribute to shaping a welcoming, safe and fair learning community for all.

The key areas of learning throughout this theme are empathy, self-awareness, social skills and motivation.

Through discrete SEAL lessons, circle times and across the curriculum, children will explore feelings of happiness and excitement, sadness, anxiety and fearfulness, while learning (and putting into practice) shared models for calming down and problem-solving.

New beginnings supports the development of a learning community in each classroom where all members feel that they belong.  Class contracts, produced at the start of the year, allow children to contribute to how they feel they can achieve a safe and fair learning community.

Goodbye, Year 1

What an absolute fantastic year we have had! We have seen some amazing progress and the children have matured in so many ways.

We would like to say well done to Henry Crozier, our learner of the year!  He has made so much progress in every area and his confidence has increased so much.

Linda, Simran, Allura, Brandon and Shahban made excellent progress in their writing and Yahya, Rayhaan, Harshitha and Jaskirat made brilliant progress in their reading.  Our star in Maths was definitely Henry;  he was a bit of a dark horse with his maths ability!  Ethan, Oliver and Linda also made a lot of progress in Maths.

In other areas we saw a a lot of changes throughout the year;  Oliver showed excellent attitude in our SEAL learning and Roshan became much more confident in her speaking and listening.

Well done to all the children for adapting to having two teachers; it can be tricky at times to get used to different styles of teaching but they all took it in their stride and enjoyed all learning.

Good luck in Year 2 – we’ll be still keeping an eye on you next door!  Miss Hewson will have an excellent year with you, we’re sure. Have a good summer!

Year 2, Class of 2011

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtLANSgG_1g

It was our intention to give every child a DVD containing all of the videos from this year but unfortunately the school is unable to distribute them because for legal reasons. Check back next week for a slideshow of this year’s memorable photographs.