News

What have governors done this year?

Our Governing Body Chair, Mrs Becky Lawrence, writes:

Work the Governing Body has undertaken this year includes:

The Chair of our Resources Committee, Andy Miller, has been leading the discussions with Leeds City Council in planning how the school will make use of the land that has been acquired as part of the new housing development behind the school site.

Rachel Greenhalgh has been reviewing how the school makes use of Pupil Premium funding (money that is received from central Government to support learning for disadvantaged pupils) and monitoring the impact of how this money is spent.

Jackie Sykes is our Link Governor with the School Council. Jackie has been attending School Council meetings to ensure that the Governing Body hears issues that are concerning children in school, and to help school councillors understand the Governing Body’s role in leadership and management of the school.

The Governing Body as a whole has reviewed our working practices and identified some areas where we could be more effective. We have drawn up plans to improve our approach to succession planning; to create more consistent induction processes for new governors; to better define the responsibilities of each distinct governor role; and to undertake a skills audit to inform our training needs.

Vivienne Gaskin has picked up the role of link governor for the Early Years and has observed lessons and met with our school improvement adviser. Vivienne has enjoyed seeing the fantastic learning taking place in Reception.

This year governors have also been involved in:

• recruiting new teachers;
• seeing that end of key stage tests are administered in line with the Department for Education’s rules;
• setting a budget for the next three years and monitoring the in-year budget position;
• monitoring attendance levels and agreeing strategies for improving attendance;
• ensuring the school fulfils its health and safety and child safeguarding requirements;
• monitoring the educational attainment and progress of pupils across the school; and
• setting and measuring performance objectives for Mr Roundtree.

Much of our work over the next year will be around developing our newer governors and enabling existing governors to share their skills so that we are building up a knowledgeable and effective team.

Are you getting our tweets by text?

Many of you don’t use Twitter but still receive our tweets in a different way: as a text message on your mobile phone.  If you don’t yet receive our tweets by text, here’s how:

send follow moortownprimary to 86444

If you have signed up for this, please do bear in mind there can sometimes be a delay (that’s the reason why some of you think I send tweets at some crazy hour in the night!).

This message on the Twitter Help Centre might be useful for some of you who have said sometimes they don’t get the tweets:

Missing Twitter SMS updates? This does happen occasionally. If the Twitter SMS queue is too overloaded with text updates, some may be dropped. This means you may experience occasional missing updates from certain people at busy times. If you’re missing updates from the same or all account(s) consistently, this may be a different problem.

Things to check:

• Make sure your phone number is added to your account. You can check this under the Mobile tab in your Settings page on the web.
• Make sure your time zone and your online sleep settings are correct.
• Verify that your Twitter mobile update preferences are set to ON; text ON to Twitter to get a confirmation message that updates are ON.
• Make sure you’re following the person whose updates you’re missing and updates for that specific person are turned on. The default phone setting is OFF until you visit the person’s profile page and turn text updates ON, or text FOLLOW username from your phone, like this: FOLLOW Oprah

If all of the above are correct, then:

• Try unfollowing and refollowing the person whose updates you’re missing. Text OFF [username], then ON [username] to your Twitter code to do this, or visit their profile on the web and turn SMS updates on.
• Try resetting your mobile preferences by texting the word OFF to your Twitter code. Wait a few minutes, then text the word ON to your Twitter code.

If you’re still not getting updates from that person:

• Submit a support request with the details about what’s happening. Don’t forget to include the following info:

1.  Your username and the username of the person you’re missing updates from.
2. The URL of the missing update, e.g. http://twitter.com/coates/status/1114430687
3. Your mobile phone number and mobile service provider.

Rising attendance

Great news!

My last attendance update on 03 June outlined slightly lower attendance figures for the school.  Since then, all seven classes have increased their attendance:

• Reception: 96.2%
• Year One: 97.3%
• Year Two: 96.8%
• Year Three: 98.4%
• Year Four: 97.4%
• Year Five: 96.2%
• Year Six: 97.3%
• Whole school: 97.1%

Our attendance overall is higher now than for the same period in the previous school year – that’s brilliant!

Please note: from September 2015, attendance less than 90% is regarded by the DfE as ‘persistent absence’.

This week we begin our new SEAL theme, Changes

Following our focus on manners last week, we now begin the SEAL theme of Changes. This theme aims to equip children with an understanding of different types of change, positive and negative, and common responses to change. It aims to develop knowledge, understanding and skills in three key social and emotional aspects of living and learning: motivation, managing feelings and social skills.

The key ideas and concepts behind this theme are:

• Change can be uncomfortable, because it can threaten our basic needs to feel safe and to belong
• Change can also be stimulating and welcome
• Both adults and children can experience a range of powerful and conflicting emotions as a result of change – for example, excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, loss, anger, resentment
• Worries about change can be made worse by uncertainty, lack of information, or misinformation and lack of support from others
• People’s responses to and ability to cope with change are very variable, and might be influenced by individual temperament, previous experience of change, and the nature of the change – chosen or imposed, expected or unexpected, within our control or out of our control
• Some children may welcome most forms of change and dislike routine and predictability. Other children may find even small changes very difficult.

Within school, children, who are coping with or have undergone significant change, are supported in a variety of ways:

• Our positive ethos within school
• Support systems, from staff and peers, for children who have undergone change or who maybe new to the school
• SEAL and circle time sessions where children feel safe to talk about their feelings
• Class SEAL boxes for children to record any concerns
• Preparing children wherever possible for planned changes for example, a change of class teacher, Key Stage or even school

£182.60 raised

Thank you for the donations, as part of identity day, during our latest themed week, Who do you think you are? and for entries to the Who do you think we are? competition.

A total of £182.60 was raised and this will be split between one of our school charities, St Gemma’s Hospice, and the Nepal earthquake appeal.

Return of Leeds Sky Ride

Join the cycling revolution in Leeds as Sky Ride returns for its third year bringing thousands of cyclists and spectators to a traffic free city centre.

The free family friendly mass-participation bike ride takes place on Sunday 14 June 10am – 3pm. Registration is now open at  and people are being encouraged to sign up fast as places are filling up.

Previous years have proved to be very successful attracting more than 8,500 people of all ages and abilities, with many more lining the streets to cheer along friends, relatives and loved ones.

For those not jumping on a bike there is plenty to get involved with thanks to the return of the “Tricks and Tunes” area featuring top DJs as well as pro BMX and mountain bikers performing jaw-dropping stunts not for the faint-hearted.

Riders can look forward to starting from the same point, on The Headrow, as cycling legends during last summer’s “Grandest of Grand Départs”. They will also pass iconic city landmarks from Leeds University to the town hall and First Direct Arena.

Riders can challenge family and friends in the Sprint Zone, experience the sensory tunnel and find out more about cycling opportunities in Leeds. Bike experts at Halfords are offering a free bike safety check to everyone who registers and will be on hand to help out with any last minute problems. Join the cycling revolution in Leeds as Sky Ride returns for its third year bringing thousands of cyclists and spectators to a traffic free city centre.

The event is one of 15 to be held nationally and is part of a continuing partnership between Leeds City Council, British Cycling, Sky and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority which aims to encourage more people to get cycling.

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.

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%

Well done, Moortown...

Here’s a message from Roundhay School, which has organised lots of sporting events and physical activities for its neighbouring primary schools over the year:

Over the past year, we have thoroughly enjoyed working alongside Moortown Primary as part of Roundhay School’s PE & Sport Partnership. Moortown has played a prominent part in nearly all inter-primary competitions, fixtures and tournaments over the 2014-15 academic year. Regularly performing well during such events as Indoor Football, Basketball and High5 Netball, Moortown has also been committed to attending termly ‘Come & Try’ sessions. These sessions have been a highlight so far, with staff selecting a variety pupils who they believe will receive the most out of each event.

Working closely alongside dedicated staff, they go over and beyond their ambition to offer their pupils a range of sporting opportunities for all pupils to experience. The enthusiasm Mr O. Catherall and Mrs C. Taylor have shown throughout the year has clearly been passed onto their pupils. Pupils have similarly been a credit to their school, exhibiting exemplary behaviour and enjoyment for playing sport on both a competitive and recreational level. This positive behaviour has been reflected throughout each age group that has taken part so far this year.

To all staff, pupils, parents and guardians at Moortown Primary, well done for this year and we look forward to working together in the near future.

 

Well done, Reception

Well done to Reception who had the most journeys to school on foot during Walk to School Week.  Hope you enjoyed the martial arts session today as your reward.  Thanks to John, from White Rose Martial Arts, for providing the session.