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Your views matter… 4

This is the fourth in a series of news articles about your views, as expressed in the end-of-year annual reports, the annual reports and (article five) in person to me. The content of this page comes from the Newsletter we sent home earlier this page, along with a few additional points.

Thanks to all of you who returned a survey before the holiday. We received 82 responses this year (a lot more than last year – thanks). Of those who agreed or disagreed, here is the summary of the responses:

Obviously, we’re delighted that so many people who expressed an opinion were so positive – that‘s wonderful news. Thank you for your continued support – it’s this level of enthusiasm for the school that makes Moortown such a happy and healthy place to be.

There was quite a high level of ‘unsure’ responses (not included in the data above). On average across the statements, 7.5% were ‘unsure’.

This is particularly the case for the statement about bullying, where 21 respondents were unsure. However, as one parent notes (and many others commented in a similar way): “selected ‘unsure’…because we’ve had no experience of this”.

Nine respondents were also unsure about supporting their child at home and knowing how well their child is doing. As a result, we’ve planned more learning workshops and we’re repeating the open morning initiative, where you can actually observe the teaching and learning taking place. Parents last year said they found this helpful. (Don’t forget: every Class Newsletter features suggestions to help at home, too – these practical suggestions will engage your child in active, relevant learning!) This year, we’re going to have two of these. We’re also introducing a termly ‘traffic light’ system to let you know how your child is doing – you’ll receive the first at parents’ evening. Because of this response, and because of one parent’s suggestion (see Your Views Matter… 5), we’re also about to subscribe to Mathletics which we hope will enable you to support your child quite easily at home.

There were also nine more of you who were unsure around how well we develop children’s child’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural skills. rather like bullying, we think this has a lot to do with not communicating enough about this important aspect of school life. Over the course of the year, we do feature homework which specifically relates to elements of spiritual, moral, social and cultural  development – look out for these. We also plan, later in the year, to develop a page on the website which explains more.

Your views do matter. I hope you can see that we do listen and we do respond as much as we can. In the next news article, read about how we listen to individual parent concerns and questions, too.

Your views matter… 3

In the previous two news posts, I’ve presented a summary of the end-of-year annual reports and your responses on the subject of behaviour and our ‘warnings’ system. Your views on homework were far more mixed…

The creative homework is good, rather than too much learning by rote.

We feel there’s too much creative homework and we would be in favour of more talk time and practice makes perfect.

On the whole my children enjoy homework (especially creative)…

I am happy with the practice and talk-time homework but feel the creative homework should be reduced.

As you can see from the quotes above, your views vary considerably, even about just one aspect of homework. Of those who put forward a particular opinion, around a quarter were completely positive; a third had mixed views, usually positive but with some suggestions for improvements; and just under a half wanted our homework policy to change in some way. You might think this presents a clear case for the need to revise the policy, but the problem is that the suggestions put forward differed quite a lot. Two broad areas of agreement are:

• many wanted to see the amount of homework increase in Year 5 and Year 6 – this is something we’ve already put in place
• quite a few of you wanted the homework to be more structured / less open-ended / more Practice Makes Perfect – this is something we will look into, perhaps through a subscription to software to enable more practice of skills at home

Look out for two more news articles about your views…

Cooking in the new curriculum

Teachers have been busy learning about the different cooking skills we’ll be teaching your child this year!
Today we’ve made a tasty (and healthy) garden salad!

19 September 2014

Our homeworks this week are Talk Time and Practice Makes Perfect and are due in on Wednesday 24 September.

The Talk Time homework is I can talk about the types of books I like and why I like them. 

Children should talk to you and other family members and friends about the subject. They need to have a good awareness of different genres of story and that authors write in a particular style to suit a particular audience. This discussion will hopefully help children with this.

The Practice Makes Perfect homework is I can write descriptive sentences about a character.

This week in English, we have been writing descriptions of characters in the Fighting Fantasy books. Your child has a picture of a character in their homework books and should write about this character. Below is a quick guide with a couple of ideas for how you could help your child to improve their descriptive sentences.

Start with quite a simple sentence:

The scary monster was holding a battle-axe.

1. Improve the vocabulary

The scary monster was holding a battle-axe.  Scary isn’t a strong enough adjective for this sentence so I’m going to change that and improve the vocabulary in the rest of the sentence: The petrifying monster was wielding an enormous battle-axe. 

3. Include an add-in (opener, ender or middler) to their sentence.

I’m going to add a middler to our sentence to give the reader some more information about the monster. Notice the commas used to separate the middler from the rest of the sentence: The petrifying monster, who was bearing down on me, was wielding an enormous battle-axe which was covered in dried blood.

Did you know yoga means union?

From balances to relaxation, Year 1 had a very calming end of the day with a yoga session with Roisin who runs a local children’s yoga class at Yoga Kula in Chapel Allerton.  Information will be sent out about her class for any children who are interested in doing yoga regularly.

Take a look at some of our poses.

Roundhay Park Treasure Hunt

Yesterday, we went on our treasure hunt to Roundhay Park. It was a brilliant day (my favourite of the whole year) and the children were brilliant. All the hunters did a great job finding the clues and then overcoming the challenges before finally finding the treasure. My favourite part was lunchtime where all sixty children sat, ate, drank and chatted to each other more harmoniously than sixty adults ever could!

Unfortunately, I’ve only got a few photos – I was so busy enjoying the day, I totally forgot to get my camera out!

Road Safety

This morning, Howard came into class to talk about road safety. We focused on the importance of wearing seat belts whenever we go in a car.

Some key points:

1. Always wear a seatbelt
2. If you are under 135cm tall, you should use a booster seat
3. Never share a seatbelt with another person
4. Never sit on someone’s knee when in a car
5. Never travel in the boot of a car
6. Always wear a seatbelt
7. ALWAYS WEAR A SEATBELT!

Code Club

The ‘Moortown Scratchers’ talking about their projects in the last Code Club of the year. A big thank you to all the hard work, creativity and resilience you have shown this year. A massive thanks to Linda as well, who has run the club all year!

Ahoy, me hearties!

Year 2 had a great day on Friday 09 May becoming pirates and travelling to a forgotten island!

We made pirate hats at the beginning of the day before setting sail on the seven seas in our boat.

After sailing around the seven seas and performing our pirate duties, we came across a message in a bottle that told of a boy name William trapped on a deserted island. Of course, we went in search of him, using our telescopes, making a raft and rowing to shore.

We found all sorts on the island – Soft leaves, straight twigs, tall trees and fluffy plants! And, of course, we found William. We joined him on the island and drew a map of where we were…

…before writing a sense poem about what we could see in the North, East, South and West of the island.

In the North I see

A leaf as green as a croaking frog.

In the East I see

A gate as black as a dark cave.

In the South I see

A building as hard as rock.

In the West I see

Miss Rushbrooke, as cheeky as a monkey!

Roundhay Football Tournament

A report from Zakir:

“In the semifinal, Year 5 played Talbot Primary School to book a place in the final. Unfortunately, we lost on penalties after a tense match. Talbot scored first then suddenly Year 5 climbed back with a brilliant goal from Harris. The final whistle blew meaning the match was going down to penalties. Unfortunately, we lost the shoot out in a heartbreaking result. Let’s see who wins next year!”

Zakir asked Mr Catherall (the head coach) for his views:
“Everyone was immensely proud of the way both teams played and the sporting manner of both their wins and their defeat.”