News

Moortown International(!) Primary School #2

So… in this school year, we’ve had great feedback and thanks from Canada and, very recently, from Thailand. You don’t have to have a child attend Moortown to benefit from the learning resources in our Learn More section!

And now… Somerset! OK – maybe not international, but great feedback all the same:

I lead literacy at [a school in] Somerset. I have looked at the documents on your website and would love to have a chat with someone who coordinates writing assessments in your school.
The ARE expectations documents for parents you produced are brilliant. I would be interested to know how you came up with the exemplification for each year group and whether you use those same documents to assess writing.

Please would you be able to put me in touch with your literacy lead teacher or the head teacher for a quick chat? This would be extremely helpful when setting up new systems for our school.

The ‘ARE expectations document’ refers to the age-related expectations we created for each year group in Reading, Writing, Maths and Science and the Foundation Subjects, all to be found on the Expectations page. We created these by taking National Curriculum, which sets out what teachers need to teach and what children are expected to learn, expectations and breaking them down into more manageable year groups. They expectations can be a really useful basis to know how you might support your child at home.

Lib Fest

Leeds libraries are stamping out the shhh during February!

Moortown International(!) Primary School

You may know that our website is used in Canada (news article, Saturday, November 05, 2016).

Now, we’ve had an email to thank us all the way from Thailand!

Please forward my thanks to the author of your pdf document “Phonics and Graphemes”. I am using parts of it to teach ESL Phonetics here at Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University. It is concise, valuable and sincerely appreciated.

I of course give credit to your fine school in its dissemination.

Again, thank you.

The document in question is a guide to phonics and graphemes, or the sounds and letters that help us to read and write.

Scholes swimming pool

Way back in October (21.10.16), we invited you support the efforts of parents and carers at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, one of our Sphere Federation partner schools.

The school is very unusual in that it has its own swimming pool. It’s a small, shallow one, but is great for introducing younger children to swimming. The pool has been closed for essential maintenance and a massive fundraising campaign has taken place. We encouraged you to vote for the school to benefit from a grant.

I’m delighted to tell you that the Save Scholes Pool team has won an Aviva Community Fund grant out of the thousands of entries that were submitted. The application made it to the final stage and eventually won £10,000!

This takes the total amount raised to £45,ooo which is the core amount that the Save Scholes Pool team set out to achieve 16 months ago. They’ve now got their fingers crossed for more good news that could take the funds to the £50k total.

Thank you for supporting our Sphere partner school.

New themed menus

Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special Australia Day themed menu on Tuesday 24 January.  This themed menu has recently been selected by our school councillors.

Please contact the office, by 12 January, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.

Another themed menu selected by our school councillors is for Shrove Tuesday, 28 February.

Please contact the office, by 09 February, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.

New SEAL theme...Good to be me

Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term, Good to be me, focuses on three main areas of learning:

• Self-awareness: feeling good about yourself, taking risks.
• Managing feelings: understanding feelings, and why and how they lead us to behave the way we do – particularly the feelings of being excited, proud, surprised, hopeful, disappointed, worried and anxious and standing up for yourself.
• Empathy

This 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.

As part of our current science mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.

The theme also links with Moortown’s Got Talent, our upcoming annual talent show.

The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me are:

Building emotional resilience

Children need to become resilient if they are to be healthy and effective life-long learners.

Coping with anxiety and worrying

Worry and anxiety are major features in many children’s lives. Many children have good reasons to be anxious. Exploring worries is important.

Calming down

Although getting stressed, anxious or angry are important and useful emotions, sometimes these feelings can be overwhelming.

Assertiveness

The theme encourages children to become assertive – that is, able to recognise and stand up for their rights while recognising and respecting the rights of others.

Understanding feelings and how they influence behaviour

The theme explores the relationship between ‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ and the way each impacts on our behaviour. It looks at Flight or Fight rapid response to situations of threat and our responses to feeling threatened / under stress.

‘I respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.

School Meals

Our school dinner menu is usually changed on a termly basis but this is now changing to half yearly.  Our new menu will therefore be from February 2017.

When we return from the Christmas holiday, we will start on Week 3 of our current menu until the new menu is introduced.

Give your views...

University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are government-funded schools that offer 14-19 year olds something different. UTCs are schools for 14-18 year olds specialising in the delivery of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. The purpose of a UTC is to develop the advanced technical skills required to ensure that the UK prospers in the 21st century and provide students with a deep understanding of the sectors they can apply their skills in as they learn.

A proposal is being put together for a new UTC here in Leeds.

The people setting this up are keen to hear your views. They need to gauge the level of interest in this alternative education institution.

They write:

In a fast-paced, ever-changing digital world and increasingly competitive job market there is a real chance for the students of this proposed secondary school to be one step ahead.

If the bid is successful, Leeds Creative Digital UTC students will gain invaluable skills and be well equipped for the world of work with unrivalled digital expertise – both technical and practical in nature.

Not only will this help develop the future employment potential of our children it will play a huge part in supporting the local area by addressing and improving youth qualifications and unemployment in our region.

Why do we need a UTC?
The UK needs advanced technical skills to prosper in a service-centric world economy – and more importantly, we need young people entering higher education and the technical professions who have the skills, knowledge and experience to be productive from the outset.

Leeds City Region has the largest digital sector outside of London and employs almost 50,000 people, accounting for 4% of the workforce.

In July 2015, Leeds had over 640 active Digital & ICT vacancies on 120 company websites. Sky has created 400 jobs at their New Dock office in Leeds. With 150 empty chairs, Sky’s growth will only be limited by the availability of talent.

The traditional school system is based around a curriculum which changes slowly and offers little opportunity for employers to contribute to developing their ideal job applicants – UTCs address that and also act as a route to workplace degree apprenticeships or for universities to nurture their future intakes.

UTC students work closely with employers, who take an active role – regularly mentoring students and providing opportunities for work experience in a number of areas. Students will work on real-world projects with access to world-class facilities and equipment, with a “working day” that usually starts at 8.30 and finishes at 5 – leaving evenings free for other activities.

Read more about the proposed new UTC.

Complete the on-line survey.

Zipit

It’s easy to think your child is safe once they’re indoors. And it’s easy to think your child will always be responsible and safe online.

However, most older children and young people can be on-line, meaning they’re not quite so protected as you might think. And it’s easier than you think for a child to make a choice that they wouldn’t do in person.

Increasingly, we’re being told of problems on social networking sites. These include grooming.

The ‘zipit’ app is a download from Childline for iOS and Android. The app aims to help young people safely respond to requests for inappropriate images by sending back a ‘joke’ image. Using it might help your child maintain some credibility as well as staying safe.

Safeguarding in sport

The continued disclosures in football have rightly started a national conversation about the sexual abuse of children by people in positions of responsibility.

Talking to your children about sexual abuse?

The BBC published an article last week, ‘How do you talk to your children about sexual abuse?’ which is a good summary of the different ways parents can have conversations about keeping safe with their children.

FA captains’ video raises awareness

Captains of three England football teams have taken part in a film about how to keep children safe in the sport. The video for the NSPCC and the FA explains how parents and children can raise concerns they may have about adults working in football.

Don’t forget we published an article with advice about safeguarding in sport back in October, too.