News

New SEAL theme - Changes

This SEAL theme tackles the issue of change and aims to equip children with an understanding of different types of change, positive and negative, and common responses to it.

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

We begin this half term with a focus on manners: I don’t talk with my mouth full.

Subsequently, I can get better at my learning is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme of Changes.

Safety, health and social benefits of walking to school

In association with Leeds City Council and Living Streets we are taking part in this year’s Walk to school week.  We all know how congested the area around school can be at the start and end of the school day and so this week we are asking children to take part in the Leeds City Council Ben E. Fit competition.

Children who walk, or scoot, to school or walk part of their journey (at least five minutes, maybe by parking further away than usual) every day will be entered into a prize draw.

On Wednesday, Leeds City Council will deliver a whole school Walk to school assembly followed by pedestrian training for Year 1 and Year 2.  We also start our scooter skills training this Friday for some of our Key Stage 2 children.

Why walk to school?

Our walk to school video has lots of facts and tips about walking to school.

According to Living Streets, there are many benefits to walking to school related to health, safety and the environment.

Time and money

• Trips to and from the school gates by car waste thousands of hours of parents’ and other road users’ time and cost an average of £400 per family per year
• At the peak time of 8:35am on week days in term time, the school run generates approximately 21per cent of all trips by urban residents in the UK
• 16% of school journeys under a mile are driven to school. This distance could be walked in 20 minutes

Safety

• Driving the school run denies children the chance to develop road safety skills, independence and an understanding of their local environment
• Child pedestrian collisions on the walk to school peak at about 12 years of age. This could be due to parents not preparing their children for travelling independently and practising road safety skills when their children are younger
• Parents of children who are driven to school overestimate the risks of abduction and ‘stranger danger’ while underestimating the risks of traffic

Benefits for your children

• Children who walk to school are actively engaged with their community and have better knowledge of their local area
• Children who walk to school have wider social networks: In a study by Living Streets, 84 per cent of the children who walked to school reported always or sometimes meeting up with classmates on the way to school, while only 66 per cent of those who were driven to school had the opportunity to do so
• Walking to school improves children’s social development in future years
• The more contact children have with their natural environment, the higher they score in tests of concentration and self-discipline
• Short-term and even superficial exposure to natural areas through brief walks have been found to have positive effects on mood, reducing feelings of anger and anxiety
• An American study found that after as little as five minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (i.e., running, walking), children were able to concentrate more

Health benefits of walking for parents and children

• 24.5 per cent of adults and 14 per cent of children (aged two to ten years old) in the UK are obese and obesity can reduce life expectancy by 9 years on average
• Young people who are obese are likely to have lower levels of fitness, suffer from social discrimination and have low self-esteem and lower quality of life
• Research has suggested that, without appropriate intervention, overweight or obesity could affect as many as nine out of ten adults and two out of three children by 2050
• Walking one mile (1.6 km) can burn at least 100 calories of energy and walking two miles (3.2 km) a day, three times a week, can help reduce weight by one pound (0.5 kg) every three weeks
• Three out of ten boys and four out of ten girls do not cover the recommended minimum of one hour a day of physical activity
• Children who generally travel to and from school by car, bus or other vehicle are more likely to be overweight at age 5 than those who walk or cycle

The environment

• The school run is adding two million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year
• It is estimated that 17% of the total school carbon emissions can be attributed to school travel

Staffing update

Here’s a short update with regard staffing at Moortown Primary.

Miss Hewson, who is taking up a leadership role in a York school after almost five very successful years at Moortown, will leave at the end of this half-term.  We haven’t yet confirmed who will take Year 2 for the last few weeks of the year, but we will let you know as soon as we can.  In the meantime, we’ve had over a hundred applications for the teaching vacancy for which we are interviewing on Wednesday 01 May.

Miss Maver also leaves us, this time at the end of the school year to take on the role of Deputy Headteacher in another Leeds school. Mrs Maver’s role will not be directly replaced.  As you know, Mrs Weekes will move up to Acting Deputy Headteacher.  In addition, we have added to the leadership team.  Following successful internal recruitment, I’m delighted to announce that Mr Owen and Mr Wilks are now part of the senior leadership team at Moortown:

• Mr Owen will lead on achievement (looking at assessment data, monitoring marking, etc)
• Mr Wilks will lead on enrichment (ensuring our curriculum and planning remains the best it can be by monitoring and supporting planning, themed weeks and other events).

Their appointments were made last Friday.  To ensure a fair, robust process, a headteacher from a local school was present at the interviews and made a recommendation to two governors who also attended the interviews; the headteacher was most impressed by the quality of the applicants.

I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating Mr Owen and Mr Wilks.

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 –assertiveness skills, standing up for your views.
• 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.

The key ideas and concepts behind this theme 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 can do something that makes me feel proud‘ is the first SEAL statement for the theme of Good to be me.

Teaching turn around

I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable Easter holiday break. Today at school, I told the children of some staffing changes at Moortown: sadly, the time has come for two of our teachers to move on to new challenges.

Miss Hewson has been successful in her application for a new teaching job in York, which is where she lives. As well as a more convenient location, her new post is part of the leadership team. This is great news: another teacher who joined us as a newly qualified teacher (NQT) now moves on to a leadership role. Miss Hewson is always a very cheerful, friendly person and most importantly is an outstanding teacher. After almost five very successful years at Moortown Primary, she will be very much missed. She will leave at the end of this half-term; one of our existing teachers in school (to be confirmed) will take over the class for the last half-term of the year whilst we recruit a new member of the teaching team.

Miss Maver also leaves us, this time at the end of the school year. Mrs Maver is one of the two Assistant Headteachers at Moortown Primary. She leaves us to take on the role of Deputy Headteacher in another Leeds school. Mrs Maver is great at keeping us all organised, as well as making sure the Y1 children learn so much! With four years of great work at Moortown Primary, she feels ready and able to take on new leadership challenges – I’m sure she’ll be most successful. Mrs Maver’s role will not be directly replaced; instead, Mrs Weekes, our other Assistant Headteacher, will move up to Acting Deputy Headteacher.

I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing them both every continued success.

School Council 2013

The results are in and the following pupils have been elected to represent their classes:

• Reception – Theo and Ripley
• Year 1 – Grace and Oliver
• Year 2 – Grace and Addam
• Year 3 – Isabella and Lennox
• Year 4 – Isra and Abigail
• Year 5 – Amit and Maeve
• Year 6 – Ebony and Mehak

Congratulations to all our new school councillors.

The votes have been counted

Today, all children have visited the Moortown Primary ‘polling station’ to vote for their chosen candidate in our school council elections.  The children experienced what it is like to vote with voting booths, ballot papers and a ballot box.

The votes have now been counted and our new school councillors will be announced in the assembly tomorrow.

Well done to all children who prepared and delivered a speech to their class and congratulations to our winning councillors.

Ofsted data

This week, Ofsted published short data reports based on end of Key Stage assessments for 2012. The data for any school in England can be accessed on the Ofsted website – this includes the Moortown Primary data.

I’m delighted to draw your attention to our excellent Key Stage 2 results. For Reading, Writing and Maths, we are in the top 20% of similar schools. Progress is a little lower – this is due to being in a relatively small school where just one pupil can make a difference. What the tables don’t show is the stories behind the data. We’re proud of our results, but they are a little lower than 2010 and 2011. One child missed out on a Level 4 by a couple of marks in Maths but achieved Level 4 in English this is shame, especially since Ms Hazell reports that the pupil was working quite securely at Level 4 for much of the year (perhaps SAT nerves or test technique let this pupil down on the day ?). Another much-loved child has very specific special needs meaning he could not do the tests at all, but is included in our school results parents and carers are often surprised to hear even pupils with quite extreme special needs are included in Ofsted data.

Our results for Key Stage 1 are nearly always above national levels in 2010, 2011 and 2012. This is good, but we want it to be better. I’m happy to report that our forecasts for the current Year 2 and Year 1 classes are looking very promising. We’re confident that our continuing aim for excellence is having a good effect on learning in Reception, Year 1 and 2, and this will show in the 2013 data.

Finally, it’s great to see that attendance is in the top 20% of all schools in the country.

As always, please contact me if you have any questions, comments or concerns.

School Council elections 2013

Today, during our whole class assembly, we launched our annual school council elections.

Our current school council feel these qualities are very important in a school councillor:

• Good listener
• Confident speaker who is prepared to contribute in school council meetings and feedback to their class
• Has lots of realistic ideas and suggestions to improve the school
• Good decision-maker
• Works co-operatively with others

Other key points about the election include:

• Two members of each class, including Reception, make up the school council.
• Current and previous school councillors are welcome to stand again in the elections.
• Children can vote once for one person.
• Children can vote for themselves – just like in a UK election.
• Vote for the candidate with the best qualities to make a good councillor – don’t just vote for a friend.
• Good school councillors represent the class well – always!

If your child is interested in representing their class on the school council, they need to prepare a speech to present to their class.  This will be the homework for this week.

Here are the key dates for the election process:

Friday 01 March

Homework to prepare a speech for those children interested in becoming a school councillor.

Wednesday 06 March / Thursday 07 March

Speeches from all the candidates to their class.

Thursday 07 March

Children vote for their chosen candidate.  Results counted.

Friday 08 March

New school councillors announced.

Good luck to all children who choose to stand as candidates and thank you to the current school council for their valuable contributions and decision-making over the last year.

New SEAL theme - Relationships

Our new SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) theme for this half-term explores feelings within the context of our important relationships including family and friends. The key areas of learning are self-awareness, managing feelings and empathy.

There is a focus throughout the theme on helping children understand the feelings associated with an experience that we all need to cope with at some time: that of loss – whether of a favourite possession, a friend, a family home, or a loved one. Although relatively few children are bereaved, most will experience losses of other kinds during their childhood; losing a home, losing friends because of moving house or changing schools, or losing a pet are examples.

We would therefore ask for parents /carers to alert us to any experiences your child has had that might make this area particularly difficult for them – for example, a bereavement.

‘I know how I feel and how others make me feel‘ is the first SEAL statement to launch the theme of Relationships.