News

After-school club availability

Some of our after-school clubs, starting from next week, are now open to other year groups.

Monday

• Dance (Mr Lynch) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.

Wednesday

• Gymnastics (run by Leeds Gymnastics) – This club is now open to Years 1-3.

Thursday

• Dance (Miss Marsden) – This club is now open to Reception.

Please contact the office, by Thursday 26 January, if your child would like a place on these clubs.

Internet safety: understanding terms and conditions

Many of us, maybe even all of us, ignore what is written in the terms and conditions of the internet and software services that we use on a daily basis. We really should, but who has time to do that? And don’t we trust those companies to look after our data properly?

We tell children to be careful online, but as adults we ignore many of the rules, so why would children be any different?

The Children’s Commissioner published a report recently called ‘Growing Up Digital’. The report makes interesting reading, but one aspect particularly caught media attention…

Around half of 8 – 15 year olds use Instagram. The ‘Growing Up Digital’ report authors asked legal firm, Schillings, to look over the 17 pages of Instagram’s Terms and Conditions, written at a level that could only be understood by a graduate. Schillings’ own lawyers simplified the T&Cs to help children (and the rest of us, probably) understand what they mean.

Here are two of the reader-friendly clauses:

“Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that.” (Or, put more simply: we can sell the stuff you upload without asking you or paying you.)

“We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert.” (Or, put more simply: we can send you stuff and you won’t know it’s an advert.)

In their simplest form, these clauses are really quite thought-provoking. We all have a right to know about this, and children need educating about it. It would be worth talking to your child about Instagram’s simplified Terms and Conditions, or another social networking site.

(Incidentally, it’s worth remembering that most sites have guidance around age restrictions – like most, Facebook specifies users should be 13 years old or older.)

Leeds Let's Get Active

Leeds Let’s Get Active is a programme to encourage people to do at least 30 minutes of physical activity, once a week.

Based at Leeds City Council leisure centres, the timetable for Jan to March 2017 is now available.

Cross Country finalist

Following the Leeds North East KS2 Cross Country competition, congratulations to Grace, finishing in 6th position, who has qualified to take part in the Leeds KS2 Cross Country final in March.

Good luck in the final!

Moortown International(!) Primary School #2

So… in this school year, we’ve had great feedback and thanks from Canada and, very recently, from Thailand. You don’t have to have a child attend Moortown to benefit from the learning resources in our Learn More section!

And now… Somerset! OK – maybe not international, but great feedback all the same:

I lead literacy at [a school in] Somerset. I have looked at the documents on your website and would love to have a chat with someone who coordinates writing assessments in your school.
The ARE expectations documents for parents you produced are brilliant. I would be interested to know how you came up with the exemplification for each year group and whether you use those same documents to assess writing.

Please would you be able to put me in touch with your literacy lead teacher or the head teacher for a quick chat? This would be extremely helpful when setting up new systems for our school.

The ‘ARE expectations document’ refers to the age-related expectations we created for each year group in Reading, Writing, Maths and Science and the Foundation Subjects, all to be found on the Expectations page. We created these by taking National Curriculum, which sets out what teachers need to teach and what children are expected to learn, expectations and breaking them down into more manageable year groups. They expectations can be a really useful basis to know how you might support your child at home.

Lib Fest

Leeds libraries are stamping out the shhh during February!

Moortown International(!) Primary School

You may know that our website is used in Canada (news article, Saturday, November 05, 2016).

Now, we’ve had an email to thank us all the way from Thailand!

Please forward my thanks to the author of your pdf document “Phonics and Graphemes”. I am using parts of it to teach ESL Phonetics here at Ubon Ratchathani Rajabhat University. It is concise, valuable and sincerely appreciated.

I of course give credit to your fine school in its dissemination.

Again, thank you.

The document in question is a guide to phonics and graphemes, or the sounds and letters that help us to read and write.

Scholes swimming pool

Way back in October (21.10.16), we invited you support the efforts of parents and carers at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, one of our Sphere Federation partner schools.

The school is very unusual in that it has its own swimming pool. It’s a small, shallow one, but is great for introducing younger children to swimming. The pool has been closed for essential maintenance and a massive fundraising campaign has taken place. We encouraged you to vote for the school to benefit from a grant.

I’m delighted to tell you that the Save Scholes Pool team has won an Aviva Community Fund grant out of the thousands of entries that were submitted. The application made it to the final stage and eventually won £10,000!

This takes the total amount raised to £45,ooo which is the core amount that the Save Scholes Pool team set out to achieve 16 months ago. They’ve now got their fingers crossed for more good news that could take the funds to the £50k total.

Thank you for supporting our Sphere partner school.

New themed menus

Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special Australia Day themed menu on Tuesday 24 January.  This themed menu has recently been selected by our school councillors.

Please contact the office, by 12 January, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.

Another themed menu selected by our school councillors is for Shrove Tuesday, 28 February.

Please contact the office, by 09 February, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.

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.
• 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.

As part of our current science mini topic, What’s the matter?, children will also ask ‘What’s the matter?’ from a social and emotional point of view, understanding feelings and thinking about how they can solve problems.

The theme also links with Moortown’s Got Talent, our upcoming annual talent show.

The key ideas and concepts behind the theme of Good to be me 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 respond to difficult situations in a positive way’ is the first SEAL statement for this theme.