News

Last half-term's SEAL theme...

…was very successful!

At Moortown Primary, we’re dedicated to the value of SEAL (which stands for stands for Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) in promoting a happy and healthy place to learn.  However, last half-term we chose to meet our children’s needs and interests in a different way.  We broke away from the national SEAL themes to think about our rights and responsibilities.  Here are some examples of our Y3 – Y6 children’s thoughts:

Staying safe

• I have the right to make an emergency call and the responsibility not to make prank calls.
• I have the right to walk to school by myself and the responsibility to make good decisions about the route I take.
• I have the right to be protected by the police and the responsibility not to lie to them.
• I have the right to go on social networking sites and the responsibility not to give personal information away.

Being healthy

• I have the right to do PE and the responsibility to remember my PE kit.
• I have the right to exercise and the responsibility to use equipment safely and properly.
• I have the right to a balanced diet and the responsibility to make healthy choices.
• I have the right to a healthy lunch box and the responsibility to eat what’s in it.

Enjoying and achieving

• I have the right to achieve and the responsibility not to boast about it.
• I have the right to enter contests and the responsibility not to cheat.
• I have the right to have stars and steps (Moortown Primary’s teacher marking / feedback system) and the responsibility to follow them.
• I have the right to be successful and the responsibility to earn the success.

Making a positive contribution

• I have the right to live in this world and the responsibility to keep it clean.
• I have the right to suggest ideas and the responsibility to make sure they’re sensible.
• I have the right to put my hand up with an answer and the responsibility to let others have a go.
• I have the right to be in the School Council (from a newly-elected Councillor) and the responsibility to listen and represent others.

Jobs and money

• I have the right to a job and the responsibility to work hard and keep my job.
• I have the right to earn money and the responsibility to use the money wisely.
• I have the right to work and the responsibility to arrive on time.
• I have the right to be an Office Monitor (from a Year 6 pupil who takes care of the office at lunchtime) and the responsibility to have good manners.

During all SEAL topics, children develop skills to work with others and awareness of positive choices and attitudes.  I’m sure you’ll agree the awareness and attitudes our children have demonstrated here are extremely impressive!

Our new SEAL theme is...

Good To Be Me.

SEAL stands for Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning.  This is a national scheme that promotes self-awareness, managing feelings, empathy, social skills and motivation.  At Moortown Primary, we’re dedicated to the value of SEAL in promoting a happy and healthy place to learn.  Good To Be Me is one of the national SEAL themes that we think about in the year.

The Good To Be Me theme explores feelings in the context of the child as an individual, developing self-awareness and helping the child to realise that it really is ‘good to be me’.  The theme is about understanding our feelings as well as considering our strengths and weaknesses as learners. It aims to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in three key social and emotional aspects of learning: self-awareness, managing feelings and empathy. The theme focuses on:

• understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious;
• self-awareness – feeling good about yourself, taking risks;
• managing feelings – relaxing, coping with anxiety;
• standing up for yourself – assertiveness, standing up for your views.

As you can see, some important messages are promoted.  Starting next week and continuing each week this half-term, we’ll concentrate on a different area:

• Week beginning 27 February: I can respond to difficult situations in a positive way.
• Week beginning 05 March: I can help someone with a worry.
• Week beginning 12 March: I can receive a compliment in a sensible way.
• Week beginning 19 March: I can recognise my talents.
• Week beginning 26 March: I can do something that makes me feel proud.

Each Friday, SEAL certificates are awarded to children who have demonstrated particularly well their ability to act upon the statements.  More importantly, the themes, and others around Good To Be Me that are especially relevant to your child’s class, are discussed and promoted.  Perhaps you can support your child’s learning by discussing these statements at home, too.

...before a new School Council is elected!

Next week, on Thursday 09 February 2012, we’ll be holding elections in school for new School Councillors.

This follows a recent assembly led by local MP Fabian Hamilton, in which he talked about similarities between the School Council and Government, and today’s assembly about democracy and what characteristics are need to be an effective School Councillor.

Two children are elected from each class, including Reception. In the past, the school councillors have played an important role in major decision-making such as choosing our school charities, selecting playground equipment and even choosing our logo and the colour of our uniform (we changed from dark green to our current red in 2008).

Please talk to your child about the elections and encourage them to stand. They will need to be confident in speaking with older children and adults. If your child would like to stand, they need to tell the class teacher by Friday.  Then, next week, they should be ready with a presentation – they could talk about what they would like to do for the school and its pupils if they were elected. They will deliver this speech early next week and the elections will be held on Thursday.

The final School Council meeting...

Our current School Council met for the last time on Tuesday.

The group has been excellent, from Yutaro and Rosie (both of whom have now moved on to new schools) to Dominic and Grace (who became Councillors in Reception and are now in Year 1).  A special well done and thank you to Vikram and Lauren who have minuted every meeting most efficiently.

The last decision of this School Council was to amend the school rules.  They have chosen to replace We use positive language with We respect everyone and everything.  The main reason to do this is that the new rule includes the previous one, but covers more – respecting property, equipment and and animals, for example.  Another key decision taken by the group was to select our two new charities, Water Aid and Dogs’ Trust.

Achieving Level 3 of the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard...

Most of you will know by now that we have achieved Level 3 (the highest level) of the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard.  The assessment visit took place earlier on this term, led by members of Leeds City Council’s Equalities and Entitlement Team.  Here are some extracts from the final report:

• The inclusive curriculum is a major strength of the portfolio and shows that the school is working hard to provide a curriculum which positively reflects the religious, linguistic and cultural diversity of society, promotes race equality, prepares pupils to become responsible citizens and increases empathy for global equality and fair trade.  Teachers identify opportunities for developing multiculturalism in medium and short term plans and these are monitored and evaluated for overall coverage.
• The school makes very good efforts to engage all parents in the life of the school e.g. newsletters, Relax and Read in Reception, PTA, School Council, parents’ evenings, curriculum workshops etc.  It also makes good efforts to engage the wider community and to develop the pupils’ sense of community through, for example, “Who do we think we are?” Themed Week, disaster appeals and links with other schools.
• Since achieving Level 2 of the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard in 2006, the school has been very active in promoting diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism and has received various chartermarks including: Inclusion, International Schools Award, Basic Skills and Healthy Schools.
• The school’s self-evaluation, development plans and action plans actively promote the process of embedding race equality throughout the school.
• The school ethos and learning environment makes a good contribution to harmonious learning communities.
• It has an excellent policy to promote positive behaviour with roles and responsibilities clearly outlined as well as positive and negative consequences.

Of course, we always want to keep getting better and better.  We welcome the action points which are noted in the report.  These were:

1. to incorporate some role-play scenarios for older pupils around racism, so they are prepared for the possibility of such incidents after Moortown Primary where they may encounter no real incidents at all
2. to continue efforts to recruit staff and governors who fully represent the school community, although there was an understanding that we must always recruit the best people for our children
3. to prepare to publish equality objectives which will become statutory for all public bodies later this year
4. to support other schools in achieving the Stephen Lawrence Education Standard

Our homework policy

Our Homework Policy was written to support and engage as many learners as we can, and to provide opportunities for others – family, friends – to support in a positive, constructive way.  It’s great to see more and more children are putting more and more effort into their homework.  Recently, a few parents have asked about expectations.  I hope the following will clarify what we can expect and what you can expect:

Talk Time

Teachers have noticed that, in some instances, a lot of time has been taken on the presentation of the Talk Time homework.  Children are welcome to do this although it is not necessary.  The purpose of Talk Time homework is to encourage a conversation around their current learning. Any notes made in their homework book should simply be there to aid them as a prompt when it is discussed in class the following week.  For this reason, teachers tend to give verbal feedback during their talk time session in class.  We want our children to be expert talkers, using a variety of sentences and expressions, and able to back up their points or disagree with others in a polite way – this is more important than written notes for Talk Time.  Simply: it’s hard to be a good writer if you’re not a good speaker, so Talk Times using ambitious words, useful phrases, interesting sentences is the best way to support your child.

Creative

This is where your child’s creative juices can flow!  Creative homework is an opportunity for your child to choose whatever they want to demonstrate some learning.  For example, the Y3 and Y4 homework this week is Creative: I can show what I know about food chains.  Your child could present all their learning in so many different ways, from a diagram with notes to a story or comic strip.  Parents’ and carers’ role is to support, encourage, help but (obviously) never to take over and do the homework!  Teachers always look forward to seeing how creative children can be.  If you notice the work has not been marked, please don’t worry.  Teachers will have looked at and celebrated the homework in another way – the work might have been viewed by the whole class using a visualiser which allows the work to be projected to the whole class and a discussion of ‘stars and steps’ will happen.  Peer assessment is also effective – children are very able to share what’s good and what needs improving!  These sorts of verbal feedback strategies are often more effective than a written comment because it’s more instant and it makes sure the child understands (and their work is praised publicly!).

Practice makes Perfect

This is similar to what you might consider traditional homework: it may be a worksheet or a writing task (such as Y5’s current homework: I can write instructions).  Practice Makes Perfect is useful homework when something has been taught in school but needs consolidation.  The work should be fairly straightforward for the child as there should be no need for new learning, so just some encouragement from you is needed.  However, it would be a great time to get your child to teach you – they should be able to explain the key points or processes!  We use this type of homework less often because usually the best practice is where a teacher can keep feeding back and presenting new challenges when they see it as appropriate.  Teachers mark these activities in line with our marking policy.

As always, please ask if you’ve any questions or concerns.

Our two new charities are...

…Water Aid and Dogs’ Trust.

This week, children in our school chose two new charities to support over the next two years.  The selection process involved five stages:

1. Talk Time homework: children were asked to discuss Which two charities should we support and why?  
   They were given prompts such as whether we support a local charity like St Gemma’s or a children’s charity like Unicef or even whether we should support charities in school at all.
   
2. Class discussion: as always, following Talk Time homework, there was a class discussion; each class shortlisted two charities for the School Council to consider.
3. School Council chose to disregard some charities: Archie in Y2 suggested one or two charities could be removed from the long-list for various reasons (eg there were two Leeds-based medical charities, so the School Council voted to remove one from the long-list).
4. Councillors put forward the views of their classmates: Iona in Y5 represented the views of Henry in her class, who had spoken about everyone’s right to water (he’d decided to support Water Aid in his Talk Time homework), and lots of Y3 and Y4 children had supported Dogs’ Trust (one reason for this was that dogs have rights, too).
5. School Council vote: after all the stages, Councillors were left with just four charities to consider: Water Aid, Dogs’ Trust, St Gemma’s Hospice and Cancer Research.  Each Councillor voted secretly for two of these, and then all the votes were added using tally marks.  The results were extremely close.

For the past two years, we’ve supported WWF and NSPCC.  Over the next two years, we’ll support our charities in various fund-raising ways, including our Christmas, Easter and Summer productions and an occasional fund-raising event.  Because we choose to support these charities, we don’t always raise money for other national events, such as Comic Relief.

Attendance

Attendance is monitored closely in Leeds.  We have been set a school target of 96% minimum.  Our school average so far this year is 96.7%.  Well done to Y2 and Y6 who are above average.

Here are the class averages so far:

• Reception: 94.8%
• Year 1: 96.8%
• Year 2: 98.0%
• Year 3: 96.5%
• Year 4: 96.6%
• Year 5: 96.3%
• Year 6: 97.5%

Our new SEAL theme is...

Rights and Responsibilities

SEAL stands for Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning.  This is a national scheme that promotes self-awareness, managing feelings, empathy, social skills and motivation. 

At Moortown Primary, we’re dedicated to the value of SEAL in promoting a happy and healthy place to learn.  However, we’re always thinking about other ways to meet our children’s needs and interests.  That’s one of the reasons we choose to sometimes break away from the national SEAL themes to do something different.

This half term, we’ll think about our rights and responsibilities and, importantly, that if we have rights, we also have responsibilities.  We last taught this in Spring term 2010 and it was very successful.  For example, children said:

• We have the right to resources; we have the responsibility to look after them.
• We have the right to have money; we have the responsibility to earn it.
• We have the right to live in a clean and tidy city; we have the responsibility to not drop litter.
• We have the right to food; we have the responsibility to make healthy choices.
• We have the right to play sports; we have the responsibility to follow the rules.

As you can see, some important messages are promoted.  Each week this half-term, we’ll concentrate on a different area:

• Week beginning 03 January: being healthy
• Week beginning 09 January: community and making a positive contribution
• Week beginning 16 January: learning
• Week beginning 23 January: jobs and money
• Week beginning 30 January: staying safe
• Week beginning 06 February: general

Perhaps you can support your child’s learning by discussing and promoting rights and responsibilities at home, too.

We're outstanding!

Mrs Rush, the Chair of Governors, writes: 

‘Moortown is an outstanding primary school’ (Ofsted, November 2011)

I’m delighted to tell you that the recent Ofsted inspection of MoortownPrimary School concluded that our children attend an outstanding school.  The report was extremely positive about the school:

Learning

Based on Key Stage 2 SAT results for 2010 and 2011, we already know that progress and attainment at Moortown Primary is extremely high.  It’s good to have this confirmed by Ofsted:  ‘All pupils attain highly by the time they leave the school, having achieved outstandingly well both academically and in their personal and social skills… Pupils are happy at school because they really enjoy learning and take great pride in their work.’ 

Other outcomes

As well as achievement, the inspectors conclude: ‘A number of aspects of their personal development are outstanding, including the extent they feel safe, their behaviour, the contribution they make to the community and their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.’  Unsurprisingly, the extent to which they adopt healthy lifestyles was also judged to be outstanding.  In addition, thank you to all parents and carers who have avoided term-time holidays in recent years: attendance over the last three years is now judged to be good.

Teaching

The quality of teaching is judged to be good overall with instances of outstanding teaching.  As part of the inspection process, Mr Roundtree observed some lessons with an inspector to make sure his judgements were accurate; feedback to us (not in the final report) is that his judgements are very accurate and reflect high expectations of his staff.  This is good for us long term because we know we can rely on the school’s own monitoring and evaluating process in the future, and on the high standards expected by the school’s leaders.

Curriculum

The school’s curriculum was radically overhauled in 2008-09 so that children could learn through topics and themed weeks.  The new curriculum is described as ‘exciting’ whilst retaining ‘excellent attention to the basic skills of literacy and numeracy’.

Leadership

The report praises the governors’ good leadership which has led to ‘the development of an exceptionally strong staff team which is totally committed to ensuring the best for each and every pupil’.  In particular, it refers to Mr Roundtree’s high expectations and his ‘visionary’ leadership, and cites this as one of the main reasons why our school has gone from ‘good’ (Ofsted, 2007) to ‘outstanding’ now. 

An area to develop

The previous inspection (2007) had two areas to develop, one of which was to improve the teaching of basic skills of learning and writing in the Foundation Stage in order to speed up progress in Reception and Year 1.  The inspectors this time reassured us that teaching in the Foundation Stage is good.  This is something with which local authority advisors and school leaders agree.  Inspectors now think the provision (which is more about making best use of space and resources to enable challenging learning to take place) can be improved further, with better use made of outside activities and greater challenge for more able children.  Some of the feedback given from different inspectors about the Foundation Stage appears a little contradictory.  Also, some of the findings appear to conflict with the principles of learning through play and with the assessment data (Moortown’s Reception children attain higher than the local authority and national averages); however, we’ve already begun to consider how we can put these actions in place, bearing in mind the limited space we have. 

(The report also states: ‘Many improvements have been made since the previous inspection, including the management of provision for pupils with special educational needs’ – this was the other area to develop from the last inspection.  We’d like to say well done to Mrs Weekes, who is responsible for all aspects of inclusion.)

Parents’ and carers’ views

We’re happy to note that the inspectors were impressed by the school’s attempts to engage all parents and carers, from its ‘first class website and use of new technologies’ to its more traditional ‘family’ ethos.  You’ll be able to see a summary of parents’ and carers’ responses to the Ofsted questionnaire in the final report.  In the meantime, it’s perhaps best summed up by the fact that 99% said that ‘overall, I am happy with my child’s experience at the school’.  A sole respondent disagreed with this statement, and only a very small number of parents and carers (always less than 5%) disagreed with others.  It’s impossible to deal with each individual concern in an anonymous survey, but please be assured that if you follow our school policies (whether they are for uniform, term-time absences, behaviour or some other aspect of school life) and if you raise your concerns in the way set out in the school’s complaints policy, then school teachers, leaders or governors will be ready to listen.

I’m sure some of you would like to read more.  The inspection report will soon be available on our own school site and on Ofsted’s website.  You might be interested to hear more about the inspection, its report and the next steps forMoortownPrimary School– we’d like to invite you to an informal meeting led by governors: either Wednesday 11 January 2012 at 2.30pm or 6.30pm.  You don’t need to confirm attendance.

Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to say a big well done to all school children and staff on this wonderful achievement.