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05 June 2015

This week’s spellings are common words that are often spelt incorrectly. A good way to practice these is to put them into sentences.

05 June 2015

The homeworks this week are Practice Makes Perfect and Creative.

The Creative homework prepares us for our new topic by asking children to show what they know about Earth and Space. Your child could write a poem, create a story or report about our solar system. They could do some number crunching about planets. They could collect data over the weekend about light and shadows. They could speculate about other beings that we share space with.

The Practice Makes Perfect homework are two Mathletics activities. The first is about measuring angles which we’ve learnt recently in class. The second supports the learning this week on transformations: reflections, translations and rotation (though this is not part of the new curriculum in Y5).

Top Mathletics tips:

1. It is not a timed activity. Do not rush!

2. Do not rush!

3. Read the questions carefully.

4. Use jottings on a piece of paper to help you.

5. Tell me if you are finding an activity hard and I will find time to help you with it.

05 June 2015

The spellings this week are all words where the ‘i before e except after c’ rule applies. You’re in luck this week because there aren’t many of them!

05 June 2015

Here are this week’s spellings.  There will be a spelling test on Friday 12 June.

Please note that Green Group may be tested on other forms of the verb eg adding the suffix “ing” or “ed”.

05 June 2015

This week’s homework is practice makes perfect.  Please make sure it is handed in by Wednesday 10 June; there are a few children forgetting to hand their books in. 

I know the days of week, months of the year and seasons in order.

Well done, Mr Owen and Year 6

Today, we have a visit from someone who wanted to check that our assessments of Year 6 writing are accurate.  This is important because there is no formal SAT-style test which assesses writing – the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Local Authority rely on teachers’ assessments.  Whilst teachers assess according to criteria, this can be quite subjective – some teachers might be generous whilst others may be very cautious.  To be useful, the data from writing assessment needs to be as reliable as possible.

Over the course of the afternoon, the moderator looked at the writing and Mr Owen’s assessments of a sample of pupils.  Here is the feedback given to Mr Owen…

Thank you for your time and for letting me look through your children’s work. I was hugely impressed by the writing produced this year in your class. This is in no small part due to your hard work and diligent, effective approach to marking and feedback. The books were full of signs which told the children what to do next and what had worked well. Progress was evident throughout. Children seemed to really engage in the self-assessment/redrafting process and this again will have impacted positively on their writing. Congratulations on a very productive and successful year.

We briefly discussed the range of tasks and genres available to the children. Perhaps you could extend this a little and incorporate some further work on poetry which may help with their stylistic choices.

…And here is the feedback to me…

Thanks you for making me feel so welcome and the organisation and preparation which has gone into today. I was very impressed by the professionalism of your Year 6 teacher and the books speak for themselves in terms of his dedication to the teaching of writing at Moortown. Congratulations!

I would strongly recommend your Year 6 teacher offering his skills in the teaching of writing in a wider capacity.

Well done, Mr Owen.  Well done, Year 6.

The report also contains notes the writing of the various children.  A set of notes for one child are as follows:

Composition & Effect: Clear purpose and seeks to engage reader. Genre appropriate features maintained throughout. Vocabulary a little unaspirational and imprecise and use of stylistic features limited. Safe writing.

Text structure & Organisation: Clear organisation and sequencing of events, paragraphs linked (sometimes in a basic manner), chronological links used effectively.

Sentence Structure & Punctuation: Good variety of sentences used with some excellent complex sentences attempted (usually successfully) for effect. Subordinating connectives used appropriately. Verb tenses show occasional disagreement but this is rare. Punctuation nearly always accurate and a wider range evident, particularly towards the end of the collection.

Next steps: After a good discussion, we felt that the writer showed enough consistency of level 5 criteria to merit awarding a level 5. The writer lacked ‘flair’ and it was evident that he was not an avid reader. Wide reading would certainly bring this child on quickly as technically he is very competent.

The moderator’s notes and ‘next steps’ suggestions for all the children looked at were useful and interesting.  This one is especially important for all parents / carers as it shows the importance reading has for someone’s ability to write.

Getting green-fingered

We kicked off our Green Fingers topic this week by planting some seeds. It was really interesting to see how the seeds were different shapes and sizes and it helped us to understand where they came from. Grace liked how different the Marigold seeds were (long and thin) and Farai really wanted to try eating a sunflower seed.

Hopefully, we’re green fingered enough to keep our seeds warm, watered and with plenty of sunlight to help them grow.

Attendance matters

Sadly, our attendance figures fell slightly last half-term.  96.8% is the whole-school average – it would be great to get this back above 97% by the end of the year.  For the five half-terms of the year so far, attendance figures are as follows:

• Reception: 96.1%
• Year One: 96.9%
• Year Two: 96.4%
• Year Three: 98.3%
• Year Four: 97.0%
• Year Five: 95.7%
• Year Six: 96.9%

Getting more skillful

Today we began our six weekly coaching sessions with Leeds United.  Developing skills that can be applied to any game, we started by throwing towards a target.

Some tips were to put your opposite leg in front aiming towards the target and swinging your arm all the way through and also pointing towards the target – this helped a lot.  There were lots of accurate aiming.

Fire Safety

This afternoon, Rob and Steve from Moortown Fire Station talked to us about how we can ensure we stay safe if we encounter a fire.