This week’s message (Friday 24 February 2023)

As a teacher, the year is punctuated with school-related milestones, most obviously the different terms. After just one week away, it’s remarkable how different Spring 2 feels – we’re arriving and leaving work in the daylight, spotting signs of Spring on our way. As you travel to and from school with your child, talk about the changes in the seasons: daffodils, daylight, leaves on trees… Being mindful like this can have a really good impact on our emotions.

Industrial action

Earlier in the week, we emailed you about the forthcoming industrial strikes planned across a series of dates:

• Tuesday, 28 February
• Wednesday, 15 March
• Thursday, 16 March

As it stands right now, it looks that our school will be able to remain open.

However, please remember that all workers, including teachers, have the right to take industrial action without prior notice. This means we might have to close some classes at the last minute. As such, it would be advisable to prepare for some disruption on the days listed here just in case.

Attendance matters

For the school year up to Friday 10 February, our attendance figure was 96.0%. This is continues to be higher than national figures – great news!

• Reception: 95.4%
• Year 1: 95.6%
• Year 2: 96.7% – brilliant attendance!
• Year 3: 95.6%
• Year 4: 96.6%- great stuff!
• Year 5: 96.1%
• Year 6: 96.0%

Good attendance is important:

• regular attenders make better progress, both socially and academically
• regular attenders cope better and benefit from school routines, school work and friendships
• regular attenders find learning more satisfying
• regular attenders are more successful in transferring between primary school, secondary school, and higher education, employment or training
• statistics show a direct link between under-achievement and absence below 95%

Thank you for helping us increase our attendance rate. Please continue to make sure your child is getting to school on time every day.

Have a good weekend, whatever you get up to.

Supporting our school charity

St Gemma’s Hospice is our current school charity chosen democratically by the children.

Today, we welcomed Steph and Stewart from St Gemma’s Hospice for an assembly to find out more about the fantastic work they do in our local community.

Here, two of our junior leaders are presenting them with a cheque for £377 for the money we have raised so far.

Steph and Stewart commented on the impressive behaviour of the children and the intelligent questions they asked.

Our junior leaders are planning a visit to the hospice over the next few weeks to continue this partnership.

Amazing Achievements!

Two achievements to celebrate this week.

First of all, Huey, one of our Reception friends, decided that he wanted to raise money for refugees. He had read a book about the journey of a young girl who is forced to become a refugee. He decided that he wanted to help children like this in the future so it didn’t happen again. He was especially concerned about the children affected by the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey.

He decided to challenge himself to cycle 10 laps of Moortown Park, that’s a lot of cycling for someone with little legs! He completed his challenge and has so far raised in excess of £400 – an amazing amount of money. Well done, Huey.

The second amazing achievement is from this young lady who we have seen before. Over the last three weekends, she has competed in the Yorkshire Swimming Championships. She has beaten four of her personal best times and won silver and bronze medals in the team events.

She is 20 seconds within the Yorkshire time for 11 year old girls, but is only just 10, and is ranked 13th within the UK for 200m breaststroke and 11th in the UK for 100m butterfly.  She is affectionately known as the ‘pocket rocket’ – watch this space; she will be famous one day.

This week’s message (Friday 10 February 2023)

We’ve reached the end of the Spring 1 half-term. Thank you to everyone for attending the parent-teacher meetings this week.

Staying healthy…

Next half term, our Living and Learning sessions return to the theme of mental wellbeing. MindMate supports mental health and wellbeing – check out the resources and support that’s available for parents and carers.
As always the associated weekly Living and Learning statement can be found on our school calendar.

Sticking to the theme of health, find out more about Play Streets, Junior Parkrun and Park Play in this short video.

Staying safe…

This week’s seen us mark Safer Internet Day – talk to your child about what they’ve learnt about in school. To help support staying safe online, have you got parental controls switched on? Check out this easy to follow guide. Read more information about parental controls.

Fab feedback…

As part of the Safer Internet Day, we had some special visitors from the NSPCC come into school. Here’s some lovely feedback…

Thank you for allowing us to visit today to share important messages with children. As soon as we walked through the door, we had a warm welcome from the reception staff, the children on the playground (they all recognised buddy, our mascot) and from the teachers. You have a lovely school, and it had a warm and friendly feel to it!

Both classes [Y5 and Y6] engaged extremely well… There were some great discussions and involvement from all children. Both volunteers commented how well behaved the children were.

Does your child have additional needs?

Over the next few weeks, Leeds SENDIASS (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Information Advice Support Service) is running some virtual information sessions aimed at providing parents/carers with information, advice and support on SEND topics. These will cover topics that they’re frequently asked about, and there’ll also be the opportunity to ask relevant questions at the end of each session. Dates/times for these are as follows:

SEND support in schools
Monday 06 March, 5.15pm
Wednesday 15 March, 1pm

EHC needs assessments
Thursday 02 March, 10am
Monday 20 March, 5.15pm

Section I appeals
Monday 27 February, 5.15pm
Wednesday 08 March, 1pm

Refusal to assess appeals
Monday 13 March, 5.15pm
Tuesday 21 March, 10am

To book a place or for more information, check out their website.

Over the holiday, please keep encouraging a love of reading: books, comics, websites, recipes… Have a happy and healthy half-term.

Marvellous maths makes money!

Hopefully, if you are a parent of a child in Y1 upwards, you will have seen a letter telling you about our sponsored maths challenge. After the success of this event last year, our Junior Leadership Team decided it was worth doing again. We think they’ve made a good decision.

Each class will be doing a maths challenge on 01 March which gives everyone plenty of time to get some sponsors! Children from Year 1 upwards will be having a go at the challenge on Friday, this week, without any practise and then they have got plenty of time to improve their score before the sponsored event in March. The children in Reception will be bringing their letters home on Friday to tell you about their challenge which is slightly different.

Polish those number skills and get practising over the next couple of weeks and see how much money we can raise. Any money raised will be split between our school charity, St Gemma’s Hospice, and school – any money raised for school will be used to improve our outside environment.

Happy sponsoring and thank you for your support.

This week’s message (Friday 03 February 2023)

At a recent meeting of headteachers, we did a quick straw poll: which year group has been most impacted by Covid lockdowns? Well over half of the headteachers said Year 3, and to a large extent we’re finding that, too. No matter what year group, the best way to keep supporting your child is to make sure they’re reading every day and practising number facts. This week’s message comes from our Reading Leaders…

Early reading and phonics

We’ve already done nearly half a year’s worth of phonics in Reception and Year 1 – plus two assessments. We’re very pleased with progress and hope you can see how fluent children are when they’re reading to you at home. Year 2 children have been reviewing their phonic knowledge with an increasing focus on writing and spelling.

It’s all about repeated practice when learning how to read. If children are not reading words with fluency and automaticity (automatically), they probably just haven’t had enough practice. Re-reading to increase fluency, add prosody (rhythm, intonation, expression) and develop comprehension is why we read the same book or text in school all week. Extra reading of the same text at home is a brilliant way to celebrate children’s success and for them to continue to refine all these elements.

You really can help at home by ensuring you give your child the opportunity to read their school reading book or eBook. We’re the ‘expert readers’ so reading to them (at bedtime, for example) is just as important.

Reading in Key Stage 2

This half-term, your child is ‘solo reading’. They’ll be bringing home a book to read that they’ve chosen – usually from our school library. It’s really important that your child is reading this book regularly alongside an adult and that they bring their signed Reading Record into school every week.

Whilst regular reading is the most crucial aspect in a child’s development, there are other things you can do to help at home, too:

• talk about reading
• be a reading role model
• visit a local library / book shop
• ask your child what they’ve read at school
• regularly practise spellings (spelling and reading use the same skills – recognising patterns between letters and sounds)

Industrial action

This week saw the first of four days of industrial action by the National Education Union. Our school was largely unaffected. There are three more planned days coming up:

• Tuesday, 28 February (Northern, North West, Yorkshire and Humber regions)
• Wednesday, 15 March (England and Wales)
• Thursday, 16 March (England and Wales)

Workers don’t have to advise their employer if they plan to strike or not. Our advice remains the same: it might be wise to arrange childcare on these days in case your child’s class needs to close. We’ll keep you updated as much as we can.

We’re looking forward to seeing you in person for next week’s parent-teacher meetings. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend.

Cross country finalists

Today, four Key Stage 2 pupils represented our school in the Leeds cross country final after qualifying in the North East Leeds competition.

Well done to all the children who gave 100% in their races of over 100 runners and with a tough hill at the end.

Special congratulations to our Year 6 runner who after finishing 1st in his heat went on to finish 1st in the Leeds final today! A fantastic acheievement! He will now qualify for the West Yorkshire cross country final.

Thank you to parents who transported and supported the children today.

This week’s message (Friday 27 January 2023)

I can’t believe we’re almost into February already! Safer Internet Day is coming up on Tuesday o7 February. What’re you doing at home to help your child stay safe?

Is your child a gamer?

Check out this guide to keep safe whilst using online software and games. from SWGfL. With advice on reporting and blocking, online socialisation and the considerations on online gaming, the pamphlet can be a useful basis for a conversation about staying safe online when gaming.

Is your child a fan of Fortnite?

Since its release 2017, Fortnite has had a mass appeal for children. This means children are exposed to multi-player chatting with strangers, and financial exploitation via the game’s spend-to-gain-advantage operating style – this allows children to use real world money to gain perks and costumes.

Fortnite has the potential to lead to criminal blackmailing and coercion of nude exchanges by online ‘friends’ posing as children. Internet Matters has published a guide to understanding the game and its terms.

Is your child connected to virtual reality?

Research has shown that two thirds of the UK public lack confidence that child safety is a priority in the metaverse, with 71% of adults expressing doubt in tech companies prioritising children’s safety. However, the study also revealed over a fifth of adults would buy their child a VR (virtual reality) headset if they could, despite these concerns.

To help you understand this new, fast changing issue, the NSPCC has published a guide to both the Metaverse and VR headsets.

Is your child happy and healthy online?

It’s become more and more common for people – including children – to talk to strangers online. A small amount of these relationships turn out malicious – we need to be aware of the dangers if they do.

Children and young people may find it difficult to understand when an online relationship turns out to be a bad one. The Information Commissioners Office, the UK’s information rights agency, has published guidance on what to look for when online relationships turn sour.

And finally, remember some advice from last week, too:

• check devices regularly alongside your child – doing this means that your child can moderate their own behaviour and have regular opportunities to talk about things that might be concerning them
• keep the devices downstairs – the more ‘public’ space means that children make the same good choices they would do in ‘in real life’ and have plenty of opportunities to talk about what they’re doing and seeing

Super swimming

Industrial action - 01 February 2023

Last week, we sent a couple of messages about the forthcoming strikes:

As you know, the National Education Union (NEU), one of the trade unions representing the teaching profession, has announced its intention to strike.

As communicated before, for schools in our region, the dates of the planned strikes are:

• Wednesday, 01 February
• Tuesday, 28 February
• Wednesday, 15 March
• Thursday, 16 March

Mr Roundtree  and I have assessed the situation and the likely impact on our school. Under the current legal framework, workers have the right to change their mind about taking industrial action so we can’t be 100% certain; however, at the moment, we’re confident that we can remain open on Wednesday 01 February. As this is the first day of industrial action, we’ll reassess the situation for the other dates.

Thank you for your support and patience.