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More Moortown magic!

We subscribe to the Basic Skills Quality Mark programme – for a very small fee, we receive a ‘health-check’ on how we’re doing.  It’s a useful opportunity to reflect on our practice with someone from outside school; the assessors are supportive but constructively critical in their approach.  This week, we had an interim review visit from an assessor (incidentally, also a trained Ofsted inspector).  The feedback below is in its entirety – if there are any aspects of the report you’d like some clarification or explanation, please contact school:

• The impact of Moortown’s excellent self-evaluation, which gives rise to the accurate identification of priorities for development, and the good or outstanding teaching and use of assessment within an exciting curriculum, is high attainment and achievement for pupils in English and mathematics. Pupils enter school with levels of attainment typical of children of their age, but leave Year 6 with attainment which is high when compared with pupils of that age nationally. This has been the case for many years.

• Almost every aspect of the school was judged to be outstanding in the November 2011 section 5 inspection. An exception to this was progress and attainment in the Foundation Stage (FS) which was judged to be satisfactory. This is despite standards in literacy and numeracy skills (and other areas) by the end of the FS being above that of the Local Authority (LA) average and also that of the school’s statistical neighbours. Over their time in the school from FS to Year 6 pupils make outstanding progress. Nevertheless, the school has extensive plans in place to address the aspects of the FS which gave rise to the inspectors’ judgements. The school has taken advice on this from the LA and has invested in lengthy training for FS staff.

• The headteacher’s management of the “home-grown” pupil progress tracking system has ensured that staff access it with ease and use it to ensure that no pupils remain at risk of failing to make progress for any significant length of time. He has investigated commercially produced tracking systems, but will not consider investing in one unless it proves to be more effective than the current system (which is highly effective).

• Leaders have recently re-assessed the tracker, streamlined it, and investigated the possibility of using it for monitoring pupils in receipt of intervention strategies and other support or provision. In the discussion during this visit, the headteacher spoke of the need to monitor the progress and attainment of pupils in receipt of provision which is not designed to directly affect standards in basic skills in the short term. Examples of this are pupils who receive free fruit, or who enjoyed a visit to a pantomime for the first time. The discussion concluded that the monitoring of this type of provision may not fit into the pupil tracker and may have to be done in a different way, and may have qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes.

• The school’s current priorities for the improvement of basic skills are based on excellent self-evaluation or in considered response to national requirements.

Literacy

• The teaching of grammar is being enhanced through ensuring that staff understand the latest requirements and technical terms. After undertaking sample tests as a staff, they are confident in their subject knowledge.

• Key Stage 1 teachers are confident with the teaching of phonics and leaders have ensured that this is extended to Key Stage 2 staff.

Mathematics

• The school decided to abandon “Using & Applying Lessons” in favour of planning in opportunities to use and apply mathematical skills, knowledge and processes in daily mathematics lessons, or within lessons in other subjects. Teachers are also expected to apply knowledge of the programmes of study for Using and Applying mathematics to offer challenge to more able pupils during lessons, rather than simply expecting them to complete more examples at a lower level, or complete examples using larger numbers than pupils who are less able.

Support

• The school employs a number of intervention strategies which it monitors to ensure appropriate impact on learning and progress. In addition, the school administers a “Short, Sharp Shift” to pupils who have missed essential components of learning in basic skills during lessons. These are based on specific, focused learning objectives. Measuring the impact of this has been problematic to leaders in the school as it may not result in a large “shift” for pupils. However, it is highly likely to bring about clearer understanding of concepts and build a firm basis for future learning and (as discussed) the school should consider recording the impact of this aside from the pupil progress tracker and in a different (non-numerical) way.

• In the near future, the school will investigate “Catch-up Maths” as “Catch-up Reading” has been so successful. Also, the mathematics subject leader will be investigating aspects of mathematics learning through holding “Learning Conversations” with pupils which involve getting them to do some mathematics and then probing their understanding of what they are doing to gain insight into what they understand – and what they do not. This will inform teaching.

• Keeping teachers and teaching assistants up to speed with the requirements for the good teaching of basic skills is accomplished through external input bought from a variety of sources (including the LA) or through regular staff meetings – described as Professional Development Meetings (PDMs).

• Parents and carers are kept well informed about everything about the school including the teaching of basic skills through its excellent website. The school has recently completed videos of pupils doing calculations which will be posted on the website soon. In addition, in an effort to involve parents in supporting their children with mathematics (not as easy as for literacy), the mathematics subject leader will hold a “surgery” on the same day as an ICT workshop.

• Governors are well informed and fully involved in monitoring basic skills through (for example) book scrutiny and enquiry walks.

• A brief tour of the school was undertaken during today’s visit. Everywhere in this attractive, well-organised, well-equipped, vibrant learning environment, pupils are highly engaged with and very evidently enjoying their learning.

Moortown is a very welcoming place and everyone – administrators, staff and pupils contribute to this. I thank Mr David Roundtree for his personal welcome and a very interesting discussion.

Fun and games at Allerton Grange

Allerton Grange was our destination on Monday morning for a PE lesson. After getting changed at school, we walked down to Allerton Grange where we were met by Miss Woodhead. She introduced us to our sports leaders (students from Y10) who told us what we were going to do. We spent an hour playing all sorts of different games and learning new skills. We were certainly ready for our lunch when we got back to school.

18 January 2013

This week’s homework is practice makes perfect. It is due in on Wednesday 23 January 2013.

I can use speech marks.

The children have some sentences in which they need to add the speech marks to – we’ve been learning this in class. They need to put the speech marks before the first spoken word and before ‘said’.

Some children have also been asked to add ‘action enders’ to their writing (only if they’ve been working on it in class).

Here’s an example:

• “It’s snowing outside!“ said Aleena.
• “It’s snowing outside!” said Aleena, looking out of the window.

Try this tasty dip

Year 6 have been developing their food technology skills by making hummus:

Have a try at making hummus!  It is a great source of protein and fibre and makes a healthy alternative to meat if you’re a vegetarian.  To make this tasty dip even more delicious, spread it in pitta bread for a light lunch or dip veg into it for a scrumptious snack.  Try it in your lunchbox – you won’t be disappointed!

Here’s the recipe:

• 410g can of chickpeas
• juice of one lemon
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Whizz the chickpeas, lemon juice and garlic in a food processor or using a hand blender until just smooth.

Loosen with a little warm water if needed.

Great excitement when the builders came into Reception!

Thanks…

At Moortown Primary, we work closely with other companies to enhance our curriculum.

This week, we’ve been delighted to welcome Theatre in Education back in to school to work with Y6 children.  Theatre in Education are great: they produce and perform quality drama which they then follow up with workshops which develop the personal and social awareness and understanding of our pupils.  This week, they’ve performed ‘One of Fagin’s Boys’.  Iona, one of our Y6 pupils, commented, “I think Fagin’s Boys was imaginitive although some of it was hard to understand. Also, I liked it because it was telling us what the life of a child in care might be like.”

We’ve also welcomed Yoga Bugs in to school.  They’ve worked with some of our classes – check out the pics in Y3 Class News for example.  YogaBugs are always popular visitors to school – they develop children’s physical and emotional health through yoga-inspired activity.  They bring stories to life through specially developed moves which combine fun with exercise: children go on wild adventures where they may roar like a lion, fly like a bird or blast into outer space!  Isabelle, who is in Y3, said, “I think it really calms you down and stretches your body.”

We’d also like to thank Leeds Festival Wind Quintet.  Recently, they played at the ceremony for turning on Moortown’s Christmas Lights.  They’ve since made a donation to school to spend on music – a very kind and thoughtful gesture.

Great partnerships!

Bringing the past into the present

Our class novel “Street Child” is continuing to provide many opportunities for us to learn in different ways.  A lot of the drama recently done in Y5 has looked at mood and feelings which will enable the children to include these aspects in their writing.  Here is some of the drama being photographed by the children on our iPads.  They then uploaded the photo into an app and annotated it with how they felt the characters felt.

   

Roll up! Roll up!

What has your child learnt in our Big Topic so far?

12 October 2012

This week’s spellings are continuing the rule of changing the “y” to “i”.  They will be tested on Friday 19 October 2012.

There seem to be a lot of spellings on this list but the children have been learning about this rule all week and are familiar with these words.  Please encourage them to add any more words that they can think of.  The spelling test will test them on 8 of these words and we will be verbally discussing all of them.

Learning in literacy

One of our Year 3 pupils uses an iPad to record a sentence. She then listens to the sentence back and rewrites it on her wipe board.