PE – Dance
Yesterday, in PE, Y5 became urban freestyle dancers.
We had a great time choreographing and performing an urban-style dance -off. We started by performing a section of the routine that we were given before creating our own short dance sequences in groups.
I was particularly impressed with the fantastic attitude shown by all of Y5 throughout the lesson. Despite dance not being everyone’s favourite PE subject, they all got involved, gave it a go and, most importantly, had fun. It’s important that we challenge ourselves to do things we might not always do on a regular basis – taking a ‘safe risk’, you could say.
Here’s a collage of pictures from the lesson. You might not recognise some of us as our urban dancer alter-egos!
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.
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.
PE and Sport Premium funding
We are required to publish details of how we invest our PE and Sport Premium funding.
What is the Primary PE and Sport Premium?
The government provides funding to improve provision of physical education and sport in primary schools. This funding is ring-fenced and therefore can only be spent on provision of PE and sport in school.
Each school receives £8000, plus £5 per pupil on roll. This gives us a total each year of about £9,000.
For 2016-2017, our grant allocation is £8910.
How will we invest this at Moortown Primary School?
At Moortown we have developed a provision plan to ensure this funding is invested (rather than ‘spent’) to maximise the long term impact of our PE provision for pupils and staff. The funding is invested in various ways and the impact of these initiatives is closely monitored through assessment of children’s skills, staff and pupil feedback, uptake of clubs etc. At Moortown Primary, we pride ourselves on being a happy and healthy place to learn.
Our 2015/16 PE provision plan is now fully evaluated with impact from last year’s investment.
Our 2016/17 PE provision plan detailing proposed investment is also published.
Mathletics
Well done to children who, in recent weeks, have been awarded a Mathletics certificate.
We’ve not had any for a couple of weeks so why not log on and attempt some of the multiplication and division (our recent Maths learning) tasks that have been assigned.
While Mathletics is an optional activity to do at home, it’s a good way to reinforce learning which we’ve been doing in class.
Do let us know if you have any access or log in problems.
02 December 2016
The homework this week is talk time and is due in on Thursday 08 December.
I know how the 8 Rs help me to learn.
Children should consider which Rs they do and how they use them. Conversely, they should think about the Rs they could use more an when they might use them. Adults, this may be useful for you too!
A quick reminder of our 8 Rs for learning:
Responsibility, Risk-taking, Resilience, Responsive, Resourcefulness, Readiness, Reflecting, Remembering.
02 December 2016
Here are the spellings for this week:
02 December 2016
This week, as usual, we have two homeworks. Both pieces are due on Thursday 08 December 2016.
The first is Talk Time:
I can reflect on my start to the year.
This links to our current SEAL theme: The 8 Rs for learning. It is an opportunity for children to think about their own learning and their attitude towards it. In class, we reflect a lot on our learning and Y5 are very good at this. They are honest and are not afraid to admit to making mistakes: this will undoubtedly make them better learners in the future. I’d like them to be as honest in this reflection as possible. Is their attitude consistent across the day/week? Is it consistent across subjects? And most importantly, I’d like them to make suggestions for how they could improve. No matter what is said, this conversation should be positive as it should lead to improvements.
The second is Practice Makes Perfect.
I can show I understand word classes.
We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about word classes so far this year (nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, articles) and this is a chance for children to show that they have remembered this learning.
Children have been given a sheet to help them show their understanding.
Forces – levers and pulleys
This week, we started our new mini-topic: Forces. We’re focusing on levers and pulleys.
To begin with, we used some paper and a toy car to figure out what we we already know about forces. Help at home by asking your child what forces act on a toy car or a falling piece of paper.
After that, we investigated levers and pulleys. Levers and pulleys are essentially a mechanism to exert a larger amount of force with less effort. To demonstrate this we did a little experiment:
That’s right. Despite weighing less than half what I do, Noah was able to lift me up. Ask your child how this works?
We also thought about more common examples of levers and pulleys – ones we might use in everyday life like scissors (ask your child about how were going to remember the silent ‘c’ in the word scissors) and lifts.
Tomorrow, we’ll begin working on a little project, in which we’ll apply our knowledge of forces, levers and pulleys: (attempting) making a rube goldberg machine.
