News

Train to teach

Train to Teach Roadshow Event

When? Saturday, November 29, 10.00am-1.00pm

Where? DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, Leeds City Centre, Granary Wharf, LS1 4BR

Train to Teach Roadshows are designed to provide you with information on pursuing a career in teaching and how to apply for training in your region. There will be a 45-minute presentation to provide general guidance on the routes into teaching and information on writing a great application. After attending a presentation, you can find out more by:

• Speaking to our teaching experts in the advice zone; they can give you one-to-one advice on your training options
• Meeting teacher training providers from your region, who can tell you about the courses they offer and their entry requirements
• Meeting School Direct schools within your region, who can tell you more about the places they have on the School Direct training programme
• Talking to current teachers in the ‘Meet the Teachers’ area

Get into Teaching has lots of information about how to get into teaching and the various training options available.

Maths workshop

Thanks to all of you who visited us this afternoon for another learning workshop so that you can support your child’s learning at home – this week, the theme was maths.

• “Another useful session, particularly for practical ideas on how to explain maths concepts at home.”
• “Very beneficial – the right amount of information squeezed into the right amount of time.”
• “Great to have some fresh ideas on how to help at home.”
• “Well explained in parent-friendly language – it’s always useful to have a re-cap on what is being taught.”

If you didn’t manage to make it, or if you have any more questions, comments or concerns, please do speak with your child’s teacher or come and see Mrs Weekes or Mr Roundtree.

Finally: many of you wanted calculation methods explained in more detail.  Look out for our Moortown Methods video, coming soon!

Phonics visits

Thanks to all parents / carers who have visited the Reception classroom to watch and learn more about phonics. These open-sessions have taken place on Wednesday and Thursday, with one more tomorrow.  We’ll repeat the open-sessions when we move to a new stage in phonics teaching and learning – look out for when. Parents’ comments have been extremely positive; feedback includes:

• “These sessions are amazing. They allow us to fully support our children, working together with school. Team work!”
• “Fantastic! Amazing to see how engaged the children were and how you teach them, making it easier to support learning at home.”

Half-term coming up...

The museums and galleries of Leeds have got plenty to keep families entertained this October.

Leeds Discovery Museum

• Investigating Masks, Wednesday 29 October, 10am – 12pm
• Investigate real Asian masks from the World Cultures collection. Discover the history and stories behind them and design your own.

Lotherton Hall

• Spooky Scarecrow Trail, Friday 24 October – Sunday 2 November, 11am – 3pm
• Back and better than ever… beware: we aim to scare! Follow the clues around Lotherton Hall and see the spooky scarecrows on display. Don’t forget to visit the Witches’ Cottage! Plus five Days of Spooky Fun from Mon 27 – Fri 31 Oct, 11am – 3pm.

Abbey House Museum

• Spooky Murder Mystery, Thursday 30 October, 10am – 12pm & 2pm – 4pm, Saturday 1 & Sunday 2 November, 2pm – 4pm
• There has been another murder in our Victorian Streets. Follow the clues and see if you can discover the murderer. Suitable for families with older children.

Leeds Industrial Museum

• Halloween Family Fun Day, Sunday 26 October, 1pm – 4pm
• Join us for storytelling and face painting and see the amazing camera obscura bringing the outside to life.

Leeds City Museum

• Sparkly, Clay Diwali Lamps! Tuesday 28 & Wednesday 29 October, 10am – 12pm & 2pm – 4pm
• Mould, squidge and shape a lamp from clay, then adorn it with sparkles and colours. Join us to light up the museum with colours for Diwali.

Kirkstall Abbey

• Fairy Creatures Scarecrow Hunt, Tuesday 28 October – Sunday 1 November, 10am – 3pm
• Hunt around the abbey for our scarecrows inspired by fairy creatures. There will be good fairies and bad fairies, goblins and elves.

Temple Newsam

• Spooky Spooktacular, Friday 31 October, 5pm – 8pm, Adult £7, Child £4, Family £20, booking essential
• Bring your little ghosts and ghouls to trick or treat through the darkened house and farm. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Leeds Art Gallery

• Creatures of a New World in Artspace, Monday 27, Tuesday 28, Thursday 30, Friday 31 October, 11am – 4pm
• Taking inspiration from the latest exhibition, Shezad Dawood’s ‘Towards the Possible Film’, sci-fi creatures appear in Artspace, will they need to live happily in our land?Join our artist-in-resident Karen Babayan to find out.

Thwaite Mills

• Scary Skeletons, Thursday 30 October, 11am – 3pm
• Make your own scary skeleton Halloween decoration complete with flashing eyes.

Family draw-along with Nick Sharratt

One of our favourite illustrators, Nick Sharratt, is coming to Leeds for a family draw-along!

• When? Monday 27 October ar 2pm
• Where? Main Auditorium of the Carriageworks Theatre
• How much? Tickets are £5 (£3 concession)
• Who? All children aged 5+ are welcome

Nick Sharratt is one of our best-loved children’s illustrators. He has illustrated more than 200 books for children, including several award-winning picture books, Jacqueline Wilson’s novels, stories by Jeremy Strong and many other leading children’s authors.

In this family friendly, fully-interactive event, Nick will show how he creates his characters and share his drawing tips. Bring along a pencil, pad and a hard surface to draw along with him and after the show you can have Nick sign either a book you’ve brought from home or you can purchase one of Nick’s books at the event. (If your child is entitled to the pupil premium money, school will refund the cost of the book if you present a receipt to us.)

Early birds can create a special card or sign for Nick telling him about their favourite character.

Festive lights switch-on

Moortown Community Group invite you to join in the Moortown Festive Lights Switch-On at 6.45pm (for 7.00pm start) on Wednesday 19 November.

This year, The Community Group will be gathering outside the ‘Transform’ premises, opposite the entrance to M&S, where mulled wine and mince pies, fruit juice and decorated biscuits will be served – all kindly donated by our local branches of Marks and Spencer and Cooplands.

For more information please see the Moortown Community Group website or their Facebook page.

The group looks forward to seeing you at this start to the festive season. Last year, they were not so lucky with the weather but the event will go ahead as planned whatever the weather. Fingers crossed for a fine night!

Drop-in parent workshops

On Monday 06 October, Mr Owen, Mr Wilks and Miss Rushbrooke led the first of three learning drop-in sessions to support your child; this one was in English. Here are some of the comments.

• I like the handouts and the way the content of them was explained.
• Teachers are very approachable and explain everything in our language. It’s a great opportunity to get a feel for what’s going on in the class.
• Really pleased I came – learned lots.
• The practical suggestions of how to include writing in daily life and good ideas for encouraging reading were useful.
• Very useful session to find out some additional ways to help at home. The small group format worked well and it was helpful having the split by year group. The information to take home was very useful too.
• It was very organised with lots of practical ideas. It was a great idea to split the workshop into year groups.
• Very informal, good opportunity to ask questions and to talk to teachers and other parents about what works at home.
• Good advice and tips about how to encourage reading through asking plenty of questions. I liked the different methods of practising writing including using iPads.
• I feel more confident when discussing work with my children.

There is a similar drop-in workshop on on Monday 20 October at 2.30pm for Maths.

For Reception and Year 1 parents, Mrs Weekes and Mrs Burke lead a learning workshop where you get ideas about how to support the early stages of reading, writing and maths. This is on Monday 13 October at 2.30pm.

Your views matter... 5

In four previous news items, I’ve discussed your responses to the end-of-year annual reports and to the annual survey.

Don’t wait until June to raise any questions, comments or concerns!

On Friday last week, a mum came to see me to discuss how she could support her son at home – someone who’s already beyond the age-related expectations in reading, writing and maths. It was 5pm or later (nearly the weekend!), but I was happy to talk through some ideas, especially since she had quite a few ideas of her own about how we might be able to help. One idea was to buy a subscription to Mathletics – a computer program that would allow her child to practise maths at home, without needing an adult to support. From discussions with parents of children in other schools, she’s heard that it’s really good.  Just days after her suggestion, we’re now exploring subscriptions. We won’t rush into it – we don’t want to waste money.  We’re checking out costs and I’m asking other headteachers if their schools use it and whether they would recommend it. (We’ll let you know if we subscribe…)

Also this year, I’ve acted on feedback about school dinners. I hope problems here are teething problems following the introduction of free school meals for all younger children – a massive planning and organisational task to accommodate 60 more pupils (and numbers continue to rise for older pupils, too). Mrs Weekes has listened and responded to parents about children and concerns with regards their special education needs. We are restricted by funding as to how we respond – it would be great to be able to buy in more support or resources – but Mrs Weekes has excellent relationships with professionals who offer advice and guidance. I know class teachers have also responded to your views. Again, it’s not always appropriate or possible to act on every request, but we do listen and consider. When a parent mentioned their child was struggling to read the whiteboards in class, one teacher immediately re-arranged seating. When someone else mentioned their child was feeling a bit anxious this year, we included the child in a small, SEAL group (to promote social and emotional aspects of learning).

We can’t always act on your suggestions (some just aren’t possible) and we can’t always listen to your views (whether you think your child would benefit from a term-time holiday or not, we won’t authorise one, for example!). However, as always, please raise your questions, comments and concerns to me or one of the teachers in school: we do care and we do listen.

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…