Book Club
It’s been lovely and mindful in today’s library session.
“I love the different books we can enjoy here,” said Ethan.
Musa said he likes the library because of its variety of styles and genres.
Back in class, we’ve been practising our reading fluency by reading aloud to an adult or partner. Children have the choice to read their library book or a First News newspaper.
Ask your child what they’re reading at school. Do they enjoy it? Who is the main character? What’s happened so far?
Keep reading everyday at home, too!
Origami
Inspired by our class novel… 
…we’ve been making origami!
We’ve also learnt about pattern in our art lessons so we enjoyed experimenting with different ones.
Just like Humpty, we had to be resilient – one of our 8 Rs for learning – because it was quite fiddly! We were very proud of our efforts at the end, though!
Welcome back!
Welcome back!
We’ve already started to settle into our new normal – I’ve been really impressed with how adaptable everyone has been.
It’s going to be a great year!
“I think the year ahead is going to be really exciting!” exclaimed Noah.
“I’m really looking forward to everything. It’s going to be hard but fun as well. I’m looking forward to learning new things,” said Rayn.
“It’ll be fun to make new friends!” Alishbah stated.
Daisy smiled, “This year is going to be odd but fun.”
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, Daisy.
In maths, we’re gradually building up to year six content by first recapping learning from year five to make sure everyone feels confident. We’re starting with place value (eg In 56,934 what does the 9 represent? It has nine hundreds.) before moving on to addition and subtraction.
Help at home by practising some simple addition and subtraction calculations such as 2,899 + 492 or 5,693 – 411.
In writing, we’re looking at instructions. We’ve already followed some to make some origami! Soon, we will be writing our own about caring for a mysterious creature.
Help at home by practising sentences that start in different ways. You could start with:
- an adjective eg ‘Textured or metallic paper can also be used for origami.’
- an adberb eg ‘Carefully, cut along the dotted line.’ Or: ‘Once you’ve folded the paper, flip it over.’
- a conjunction eg ‘Because this fold is fiddly, use a paper clip to flatten it.’
In reading, we’re using our whole school novel After the Fall. You should check it out – it’s a cracking read!
Help at home by reading every day! I can’t stress this enough. It doesn’t matter what it is, where it takes place or who is reading to who. Better readers make better learners. 🙂
In topic, we’ll be inspired by After the Fall. Watch out for paper aeroplanes, collages and even parachutes…
Own It app
Has you child got a mobile phone? If they have, do the have the Own It app from the BBC?
The Own It app helps children and young people take control of your online life. It gives them advice when they need it, in real-time as they type. It’s designed to help them make smart choices, feel more confident, and live their best life online.
The Own It app comes with a special keyboard. This can be used like any other keyboard, but it also gives users helpful tips and friendly advice as they write.
There’s also the ability to track how they feel and improve their wellbeing. There are plenty of gifs and emojis so users can express themselves.
The Own It keyboard and app is personal to the user. Everything your child types is kept completely private, and never leaves the Own It app on their phone.
A goodbye to our wonderful Year 6 children
Forget watching EastEnders repeats! Turn off the football (it’s not the same without live crowds, anyway)! Instead, watch this…
…40 minutes of heart-warming messages as we say goodbye to our Year 6 children, and they say goodbye to Moortown Primary. Bet you can’t watch it without a smile on your face (and even perhaps a tear in your eye!).
For all the support over the years, thank you to all the mums, dads, carers and other adults at home. We’ll miss you, too.
Miss Wilson writes: ‘It’s been an absolute pleasure to teach every single one of your children. I am extremely proud of the amazing young people they’ve become and can’t wait to hear about their fantastic futures. Thank you for all your support over the last two years. Please pop in to say hello whenever you can because I’ll miss you all lots!’
Very best wishes to our Year 6 friends as they leave us, hopefully to go on to even happier and healthier futures.
Virtual sports day results and skipping challenges
Well done to all children who took part, at home and at school, in the virtual sports day yesterday.
The results are in and can be accessed here.
Here’s our overall school results for each challenge (out of 217 schools).
Netball challenge 56th
Keepie uppie challenge 27th
Rugby challenge 93rd
Speed bounce challenge 46th
Skipping challenges
If you are interested in trying another physical activity challenge, Jodi from Skipping School – a regular visitor to school, is running a daily skipping skill challenge this week. Sadly, Year 2 and Year 4 have missed out on their skipping festivals this year so these videos will help the children to recap the skills they have learnt at school.
Home learning heroes!
Today sees the very first voyage of some excellent homemade vessels.
The task was to design, make and evaluate a boat. In iterative design, this evaluation would inform the next adaption (or iteration) of the design which would continually improve the initial product.
Here are some of the awesome and successful ships made at home.
Top sailing, captain Zidaan.
Excellent evaluation, Laila!
Impressive origami, Dan!
Check out this ingenious design!
Keep up the great work, year six!
Home learning heroes
Our home learning continues to be awesome!
We’ve been saving the world with our magnificent maths skills…
We’ve been showing our fab reading skills in different ways…
And writing some truly fantastic poetry about some extremely important issues…
Or about things that matter to us…
Well done everybody! As always, thanks for working so hard!
Knowledgeable Kahooters!
Recently, within our Y5/6 reading lessons, we have been completing Kahoot’s based on texts that we have read.
Our first Kahoot was about the story: Gaby to the Rescue.
Out of 49 of us who played, there could only be three places on the podium.
These have gone to… (drum roll)
Congratulations to Eliza, Daisy and F (whoever you are)!
Keep up the good work, everybody!
Year 6 outcomes – a celebration
End of key stage 2 assessments (known as SATs) were cancelled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Some children will undoubtedly have felt relief at not having to do these tests, while some pupils tell us they quite enjoy doing them. Similarly, some parents don’t place a lot of importance on the tests, while for others, they’re an important indicator of how well their child, and school, has done.
The data below represents what we predict would be the outcomes of those assessments. The data is a cause for celebration of the children’s great learning throughout their time at Moortown Primary. The outcomes would have been exceptionally high – a true reflection on the great attitudes to learning we’ve seen from these children.
For Reading, Maths, and Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling, our assessments stem from some trial tests that children did in the Autumn term and in February. The tests were all previous SAT tests and were done under test conditions. They were marked and graded based on the thresholds for that particular test. As a result, the assessments below are likely to provide an accurate indication of outcomes in the national assessments in May.
For Writing, the assessment stems from teacher assessment, as it would do for the outcomes in May. Year 6 teachers across Sphere Federation and beyond met at various times in the Autumn and Spring term to review their assessments for children’s writing. As a result, the teacher assessment for Writing is also likely to provide an accurate indication of end of year outcomes.
Attainment: expected standard
Expected standard is where a pupil’s scaled score is 100 or more. 94% of our pupils were on-track to achieve the expected standard in Reading, Writing and Maths, combined. As in recent years, this is securely above the national figure – we don’t have a national 2020 figure, but in 2019, the combined figure was 65%.
The proportions reaching national expectations for each subject, and for Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling, are all predicted to have been higher than the 2019 national:
- Reading: 94% meeting expected standards (2019 national: 73%)
- Writing: 97% meeting expected standards (2019 national: 78%)
- Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling: 100% meeting expected standards (2019 national: 78%)
- Maths: 97% meeting expected standards (2019 national: 79%)
Attainment: higher level
Greater depth standard is where a pupil’s scaled score is 110 or more. 32% of pupils were on-track to reach greater depth in Reading, Writing and Maths combined, which is three times higher than the 2019 national figure of 11%. the proportions for Reading and Writing were predicted to be very much higher than the 2019 figures:
- Reading: 68% meeting the higher level (2019 national: 27%)
- Writing: 55% meeting the higher level (2019 national: 20%)
- Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling: 84% meeting the higher level (2019 national: 55%)
- Maths: 55% meeting the higher level (2019 national: 27%)
Whilst we can’t be certain that these figures would match the outcomes of the real SATs in May, we’re confident they wouldn’t be far off – perhaps a little lower, but just as likely to be even a little higher. What we can be certain of is that our Year 6 children once again have enjoyed and achieved great things at our school – we’re very proud of them.
