Leeds Children's Mayor update
Unfortunately Ahmed, our entry for the Leeds Children’s Mayor competition, wasn’t successful in reaching the final twelve. With a record number of entries this year, thirty six, all entrants were congratulated on their efforts. Well done, Ahmed.
‘We really appreciate you taking the time to enable your Year 6 children to take part and that having your Year 6 think “big” about changing the city and their local community was an interesting citizenship activity for them.’
The Leeds Children’s Mayor project provides pupils with the opportunity to develop their knowledge and understanding about democratic processes and being an active citizen, promoting this aspect of ‘British Values’. All pupils are encouraged to take part in the election itself by reading the manifestos of the final twelve and casting a vote for their choice of the next Leeds Children’s Mayor.
Please note that voting goes live at 12pm on Tuesday 13 October and closes at 12pm on Thursday 05 November. The winner of the election will be announced on 9th November by the Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Judith Chapman.
Attendance update
What’s your child’s attendance like so far this year?
For the year so far, up until Friday 09 October, here’s what attendance is like for each class:
- Reception: 95.8%
- Year 1: 98.1%
- Year 2: 97.5%
- Year 3: 97.6%
- Year 4: 97.8%
- Year 5: 98.7%
- Year 6: 98.3%
This gives us an overall attendance figure for the school: 97.8%. Last year, the whole-school average was 97.2% – this year, let’s aim to continue beating this figure!
Writing and grammar workshop
Thank you to the parents / carers who attended this afternoon’s Writing and Grammar Workshop.
“Great overview with resources to get more information if or when needed.” (Year 3 and 6 parent)
In the 2015 Annual Survey, 82% of you agree that adults in school explain how to support your child’s reading at home. We want this to be higher, so have lots more workshops – including evenings ones – coming up this year…
- Maths (2.30pm on Monday 19 October 2015, to be repeated at 6.00pm on Monday 23 November)
- Learning in Reception and Year 1 (2.30pm on Tuesday 10 November 2015)
- What is mastery? (2.30pm on Monday 16 November 2015, to be repeated at 6.00pm on the same day)
- Reading (a repeat workshop to be held at 6.00pm on Monday 02 November)
- Grammar and writing (a repeat workshop to be held at 6.00pm on Tuesday 10 November)
Need half-term activities...?
The Nurtury next door has asked us to let you know about their holiday club, the Fab Fun Club:
Are you panicking at the thought of a half-term break without childcare – please don’t! The Montessori Nurtury, Moortown (right next door to Moortown Primary) is hosting a Holiday Club from Monday 26 October to Friday 30 October.
We will make sure the children are challenged, inspired, respected and, importantly for them, they can have loads of fun! We offer a day of activities that match the age-range and interests of the children who are there – everything from ‘Kids Cook!’ to Art and Crafts, Drama Days, treasure hunts, orienteering, Sports and plenty of outdoor time and events.
The Club opens daily between the hours of 8am and 4.45pm. If a longer day is needed, we then offer a hot meal and children can stay until 6pm.
- Option 1: 08.00 – 16.45 £28.00 – packed lunch provided by home
- Option 2: 08.00 – 18.00 £32.00 – hot meal for tea provided by Club
Bookings are on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact The Nurtury on 0113 268-6141 or e-mail: leedsmontnurtury@aol.co.uk for the necessary booking form.
Leeds Children's Mayor
Every year, year six pupils in primary schools are invited to enter the Leeds Children’s Mayor programme. Pupils write a short manifesto saying how they would improve Leeds if they were the Children’s Mayor. The manifesto must be based on one of the 12 wishes for a more child friendly Leeds.
Our entry this year, titled safe and independent, is by Ahmed. Here’s his manifesto. Good luck Ahmed!
If I was Children’s Mayor of Leeds, I would like to create a system which would mean certain shops have a poster on their window that shows the child walking past that it is safe in there. This means that if the child is scared about someone following them or doesn’t want to be out alone they can go in there and know that they are safe. This also follows one of the ‘12 Wishes for a more child friendly Leeds.’ This wish says that all Children and young people can make safe journeys and easily travel around the city.’ This is what would happen if I was Children’s Mayor.
To continue this manifesto, I would like to highlight that I am a strong leader and, as an observant member of year 6, I can listen and see problems. Furthermore, I can use my supportive fellow students, friends, and family to find solutions to problems. Plus, I would like to think I am a kind and caring person. Also, my older brother is part of a group for children and young people who deal with issues regarding children for the whole of England so I have learnt a lot from him and have gained experience about how to deal with problems like child poverty and unhappy children.
I would also like to put in place a special council made up completely by children and chosen by children. I think this is important because, as kids, we know what is best for us and what we really need. We should be able to make or at least have a say in the important decisions that concern us. Like my other point, this also supports the statement, ‘Children and young people express their views, feel heard and are actively involved in decisions that affect their lives’ and the fact that we will be allowed to participate and shape our lives according to decisions that we as children have made agrees with this wish. It also would mean the wish ‘Children and young people are treated fairly and respected’ is also fulfilled.
I hope I have the chance to become a candidate for Children’s Mayor for Leeds and I hope I am able to make a difference.
Let's keep happy and healthy at school!
Every so often, we receive a health and safety bulletin from Leeds Health, Safety and Wellbeing Team. The most recent one has some useful advice that you can follow at home, and encourage your child to follow everywhere. Below is an extract…
The winter is nearly here and with it will inevitably come Norovirus, more commonly known as the ‘winter vomiting bug’. This bug thrives in warm atmospheres where there are a lot of people concentrated in one place – like schools, which are the perfect breeding grounds and are often some of the worst hit places with staff and pupils becoming ill. The illness itself often comes on quite quickly and can last a few days.
Although it cannot be eradicated completely, there are some ways schools can attempt to reduce numbers and hopefully avoid a full outbreak.
This is some of the guidance from Public Health England to reduce the risk of contamination / outbreaks:
- Regular thorough handwashing – use soap and warm water, rubbing front and back of hands and between fingers, rinse carefully with water and then dry hands thoroughly. Washing your hands properly should take at least 15 seconds – or about the length of time it takes to sing ‘Happy birthday to you’ twice through!
- Hand-washing is especially important after going to the toilet and before touching any food.
- Children need to be encouraged to wash their hands by being shown how to do it properly and having a good example set for them by adults.
- If you have a cold, use tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, throw used tissues away as soon as possible and wash your hands. Try not to cough and sneeze directly into your hands and wash them immediately if this is unavoidable.
At Moortown, we encourage the ‘vampire method‘ if we’ve no tissues nearby!
Reading Workshop
Just a small number of people attended the Reading Workshop this afternoon.
“An enjoyable and very helpful workshop. I’m leaving with some good ideas and new ways of helping my son with his reading.” (Year 3 parent)
In the 2015 Annual Survey, 82% of you agree that adults in school explain how to support your child’s reading at home. We want this to be higher and have arranged for more workshops this year than ever before. Please try to come. To help, Mr Owen and Miss Rushbrooke are arranging some repeat sessions to start at 6pm – we hope this means more of you can attend.
Workshops coming up…
- Grammar and writing (2.30pm on Monday 12 October 2015)
- Maths (2.30pm on Monday 19 October 2015)
- Learning in Reception and Year 1 (2.30pm on Tuesday 10 November 2015)
- What is mastery? (2.30pm on Monday 16 November 2015)
…and look out for the evening workshops, too!
Thinking of a career in teaching?
Are you thinking of a career in teaching? If you are, you’ll be interested in School Direct Primary and School Direct Early Years with Early Years Teaching Status.
Come to the information evening on Wednesday 21 October from 6.00pm to 7.00pm at Pudsey Primrose Hill Primary School, LS28 6AB.
Pudsey Primrose Hill Primary School on behalf of Noctua Teaching School Alliance is pleased to
announce that it has been selected by the National College of Teaching and Leadership to offer places
on the School Direct routes into teaching.
We offer three School Direct routes:
- School Direct (Salaried)
- School Direct (Fee Paying)
- School Direct (Early Years)
The entry requirements differ for School Direct (Salaried) and School Direct (Fee Paying). A salaried
trainee must have at least three years of paid employment prior to beginning the course. School Direct
(Early Years) is a fully funded course. Further details will be given at the information event.
At the information event we will:
- Begin with a short presentation at 6.00pm to explain the courses in more detail, including entry
requirements and course programmes - Give opportunities to talk to current and previous trainees as well as course leaders.
- Present information about how to apply.
For further information or to book a place at these events please email: admin@noctuateachingschool.org.uk
Happy and healthy... and busy!
A group of our Year 3 pupils were part of over one thousand children from across Leeds who took part in the Rugby World Cup Big dance Big sing event in Millenium Square.
Singing and dancing to the RWC theme tune ‘World in Union’, the event was to celebrate the upcoming RWC matches in Leeds this weekend.
- ‘I loved it and I tried my best.’
- ‘It was exciting when we did the dance.’
- ‘I enjoyed using the rugby balls for the dance and singing the song too.’
Earlier this week, our three lucky ticket winners to Saturday’s RWC match at Elland Road were announced.
Other upcoming events planned are the children’s Brownlee triathlon and another trip to the RWC fanzone in Millenium Square to take part in rugby activities and meet author Tom Palmer, who is writing a live story during the RWC.
Annual survey results 3
In this, the final review of this year’s Annual Survey, we talk about your responses on page 2 of the survey. This part asks more open-ended questions about key areas of school life. This year, we asked about the different subjects of the curriculum because there have been so many changes introduced by the Department for Education over the last year or so.
Maths
“Mathletics is a fabulous way for children to learn.” (Year 4 parent)
We’re delighted that Mathletics has proved to be so popular. Children tell us they enjoy it, and your responses help us to know this is a valuable investment so that children can practise at home, too. Aspects of Mathletics you praised include the competitive aspects, the certificates and the ability to practise at home so regularly, whether doing the teacher-set activities or not. One of the reasons we’ve invested in Mathletics is that you’ve told us in the past you’d like more ways to support your child at home, especially in Maths. Other schools ask parents to fund this by making a donation; we’ll continue to fully fund this, partly by using a small amount of pupil premium funding, for as long as we can – certainly another year. One or two of you made some suggestions (including an alternative to Mathletics which help develop greater understanding) or put forward points to act on (such as appropriate times to post the activities) – these comments will be passed to Mr Owen, who leads on Maths in school, or to the relevant teacher for a particular child.
There were two concerns raised: the increase in screen time amongst children and the feeling of pressure to answer questions quickly. We agree these are valid concerns. Regarding the first, children don’t spend a great deal of time in front of computer screens at school, and when they are, it’s always active learning rather than passive viewing (studies suggest there’s a crucial difference in terms of health and attitudes). Regarding the latter, it’s true that one element of Maths is some rapid recall of facts and responses to calculations; it’s not the whole aspect of Maths, however, and we encourage you to try different ways to promote Maths skills if this pressure is excessive for your child – we can give you suggestions if you ask.
Whilst we prompted you to comment on Mathletics, we were also interested to read your responses about Maths in general. There were just a few.
Amongst these, requests for more challenge in Maths came up twice – I do encourage you to attend our workshops on Maths (19 October 2015 at 2.30pm) and on What is Mastery? (16 November 2015 at 2.30pm). The last one is especially important to help communicate the shift primary schools are making in response to the National Curriculum and expectations set out by the Department for Education and Ofsted – briefly, there is a move away from rapid progress to more secure learning where children will remember and better able to use and apply their skills. For higher attaining pupils, we need to explore ways of providing more depth to their learning with challenge in different contexts.
The other responses were a request for more Maths to be included in creative homework tasks (a great idea) and more worksheets (something which many education and Maths specialists might disagree with, but we’re open to the idea; in Year 1, we are trialling a new Maths scheme from Singapore which includes workbooks, and in Year 5 and 6 last year, based on parents’ feedback, we introduced weekly Practice Makes Perfect homework which often features a worksheet).
English
Lexia is a programme to support skills in English which is made available to all Year 1 and Year 2 children and some older children who need the extra support. Whilst we prompted you to comment on Mathletics, we didn’t do so for Lexia. Despite this, quite a few of you praised it which we’re really pleased with as it confirms the decision to invest in this programme to raise standards even more in phonics and wider literacy skills.
“My daughter enjoys using Lexia and practising her targets. This really motivates her to do more and improve her English overall.” (Year 1 parent)
It was also great to read praise for First News, a children’s newspaper we’ve begun to subscribe to.
“Reading ‘First News’ has led to some good conversation at home so that to gets a big thumbs up.”
Overall, people praised various aspects of English – some say their child loves how we teach grammar, others enjoy reading comprehensions and so on.
Of concern for a couple of parents was the lack of reading books sent home at the start of the year in one particular class – this problem was sorted a few weeks into term and I want to take this opportunity to apologise. This year, Miss Rushbrooke is working hard to promote reading in our school – she’s started by promoting the library service’s Summer Reading Challenge more than we’ve ever done before (and with great effect: from five people completing the challenge in 2014 to at least 17 this year) and her next big job is improving the quality and availability of books in the library (that’s why you may have seen quite a few books being sold at the start of the year – guidance is that books over a certain age should be disposed of so children access up-to-date books). Teachers have also improved their reading areas in school wherever possible.
Other points raised were more use of the library (and Miss Rushbrooke’s on the case with this one!) and not having time to finish guided reading books (thankfully, this parent left their name so we can sort this out in future – we agree this is not good). Finally, one parent asked for more guidance around choosing appropriate books out of school (again, that parent left their child’s name so we can speak directly and explore ways to solve the problem).
Topics
Of the 39 completed surveys, 31 contained comments in this section (eight had no comment).
Only one contained a criticism: “Some topics have been boring and not varied enough.” The remaining 30 comments were positive. Many noted that they help to really engage their children and stimulate discussions at home (“We know what the topic is about due to the increased questions and interest in that topic at home.”) and the variety they bring (‘The topics vary the learning.”)
A few parents suggested more Science-based topics. Lots of the mini-topics (the shorter, two week topics) have a strong Science focus. Also, in the Spring term, is a whole-school Big Topic called Life, which covers lots of biology.
Lots of parents cited particular favourite topics, and even more responded to the prompt to suggest other topics – thanks for these suggestions, which will be passed to Mr Wilks and Miss Valentine who lead on this area of teaching and learning. We can’t promise every suggestion will be taken up, but they will help to form a ‘bank’ of ideas for teachers.
Find out more about our curriculum.
(PS We won’t be repeating the medicine theme as part of the Time Travel topic – far too gruesome for Year 3!)
Other learning
The same number of completed surveys had comments in the final box, which asked for general comments about learning, but which featured some prompts such as themed weeks and Hobby Half Days. Both of these were subject to lots of praise – that’s great news, and we’ll make sure we say a big well done to Mrs Taylor, who organises the themed weeks; Miss Valentine, who organises the Hobby Half Days; and to our support staff, who lead many of the Hobby Half Day activities.
“My son loves the themed weeks as the children mix with other years for their lessons. Hobby half days are great – he loves to do different things in lessons which aren’t normally taught.” (Year 5 parent)
Themed weeks and Hobby Half Days are times when visits and visitors to school are frequent. These were also praised.
“My daughter has really enjoyed some of the new physical activities she has been introduced to – for example, she has raved about the boxing session… she enjoyed and found useful the visit from the police during the themed week.” (Year 1 parent)
A few parents also praised PTA events in this section for the events which they put on. They mentioned the trip to the panto and the movie nights – well done and thank you to all who actively help out in the PTA (and others are always welcome).
There were no critical comments here, just some suggestions which we’ll try to respond to:
- don’t consider changing the amount of homework
- more singing and dancing
- themed weeks around the arts and more arts-based activities during Hobby Half Day
Thank you to everyone to responded and gave us your views. Please don’t wait until next year’s survey if you have any questions, comments and concerns – tell us whenever they arise.