This week’s message (Friday 22 April 2022)

With bright sunny days, what a great week to kick off the Summer term! We hope you all had a lovely break.

Attendance

Our whole school attendance is at 93.8% – that’s a drop from 04 March when we last reported.

• Reception: 94.0% – that’s a rise since 04 March, so thank you!
• Year 1: 95.2%
• Year 2: 95.6%
• Year 3: 90.4%
• Year 4: 92.6%- that’s also a rise since 04 March, so well done!
• Year 5: 95.2%
• Year 6: 94.7%

It’s really clear from our assessments that children who attend school regularly are the most successful. Please make sure your child is coming to school as much as possible and getting to school on time.

Please remember that we’re not allowed to authorise term-time absence unless it’s in exceptional circumstances, and if you do need to request term-time absence it should be done in advance using a form you can collect at the office.

Updated NHS Covid symptoms lists

The NHS COVID-19 symptoms in adults and symptoms in children have been updated. Are you aware of all 12 possible symptoms?

The official advice is that adults and children who have symptoms of a respiratory infection, including Covid, should follow the UKHSA guidance. Children and young people who are unwell and have a high temperature should stay at home and avoid contact with other people, where they can. They can go back to school, college or childcare and resume normal activities when they no longer have a high temperature, and they are well enough to attend.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

PTA bake sale

Just before the Easter break, the PTA organised a bake sale. With your support, we raised £214.20 which will go towards raising funds for school. Thank you to all involved.

Look out for some more exciting events happening this term!

Our Christian value this half-term is…

…peace.

Peace is about positive harmony and healthy relationships between people. It involves spiritual as well as material security. Peace is a state of true wholeness, a state of wellbeing. This value promotes harmony, stability and security within the school and local community.

 Why was this Christian value chosen?

‘When Jesus was sent down there was peace’

 Home challenge:

The dove carrying an olive branch is a symbol of peace in Christianity. Research why this is a symbol of peace. Is Christianity the only religion to have a symbol of peace?

‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.’

(John 14:27)

This week’s message (Friday 01 April 2022)

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a busy week for us…

…because we’ve been recruiting new teachers across our three schools this week. We had an incredibly high number of applications: 184 in total. We want to recruit the very best teachers so our recruitment process involves inviting lots of people in so we can watch them teach – we observed 43 teachers across Monday (Moortown), Tuesday (Scholes) and Wednesday (St James’) mornings. Following this, we invited some people back in the afternoon – we interviewed 15 candidates across the three days. Somewhat exhausted, we’re also delighted by the high calibre of people we met. We’ll update you more about staffing next term.

(A funny aside to this: on one of the mornings, one Year 4 pupil approached the head of school unprompted, and without knowing the reason for the visitors in school, to offer her views and grades for the three teachers who had visited the class!)

It’s April Fool’s Day!

But this year, I promise there are no jokes in the weekly message. Last year, I announced the departure of Miss Beatson. Despite including the words ‘April’, ‘fools’ and ‘day’ in the news item, and then warning readers to be wary of April Fool jokes, it did seem to trick quite a few people! I’m on my best behaviour this year.

It’s Easter!

Well, not quite yet. Unlike other local authorities around us, Leeds has fixed Easter holidays – the first two weeks in April, even if Easter doesn’t fall in the holiday. This year, it does – just! We’ll be open again on Tuesday 19 April.

This Easter, schools from across the city are taking up the Love Exploring Leeds Inter-School Challenge. Help us join the challenge by using the free Love Exploring app to play augmented reality games with your child – like the new Mega Mini-Beast game, developed in consultation with bug experts at Leeds Museum.

The app uses the magic of augmented reality to bring to life magical sights on a smartphone – like the giant butterflies and ladybirds created for the Mega Mini-Beast game. There’s a Dinosaur Safari to play, too.

Love Exploring is available at 15 Leeds parks. By getting active as a family and answering questions on the interactive quiz, you’ll score points which link to our school. There are points for every question answered and for every 100m you walk. All participating schools win a prize. The family with the most points wins an iPad.

The challenge runs from today to 6 June. Look out for special activities in libraries and parks in May.

From all of us, have an egg-cellent Easter.

This week’s message (Friday 25 March 2022)

This week’s message comes from Miss Beatson, our Head of School…

We’re now coming to the end of the Spring term and, with the warmer weather and lighter evenings, it certainly feels like Spring’s in the air. The sunny, dry days have meant the children have been able to play on the school field and use the playground equipment more often – it’s certainly brought a lot of fun to our playtimes.

It’s clear from absences that Covid is still very much present in the community; thanks for your vigilance and support in trying to keep our staff and children safe.

Thank you to everyone who attended the parent-teacher meetings last half term. This half term, teachers will send home your child’s second Learning Update of the year – look out for them on Wednesday.

This week, it was fantastic to be able to hold our first PTA event in two years! The cake sale was a great success and I’d like to say a big thank you to the parents who have re-launched the PTA and to everyone who donated baked goods. We will let you know how much we’ve raised as soon as we’ve had a count up.

Thank you to all those families who are giving a little bit more time in the morning to park further away from school. This really helps with the parking and congestion on Hallfield Lane and it helps keep the roads safe for all our children. Even better, if you can, please leave your cars at home and walk to school as much as possible.

Finally, a reminder about our Easter celebrations next week. We’re looking forward to seeing lots of decorated eggs for the Easter egg competition on Monday. On Thursday, we are going to St James’ Church for our Easter Service – parents/carers are welcome to attend.

I hope you have a happy and healthy weekend – it’s Mother’s Day on Sunday (and don’t forget to put your clocks forward this weekend!).

Non-Uniform Day

Thank you to everyone who donated some money on Friday to wear non-uniform. We raised £121.70! Half of the money raised will be donated to Comic Relief and half will be donated to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

This week’s message (Friday 11 March 2022)

This week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who leads on Science and Foundation subjects. Each half-term, Mr Wilks talks about the current whole-school topic – this time, it’s about Computing…

What do we mean by topics?

Topics are the vehicle for delivering much of the learning in the foundation subjects (eg history, art, geography, DT). Each half-termly topic has a ‘driving’ subject – the main focus for teaching pupils the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. The driver changes with each topic to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum.

Although the learning in each topic is provided by the driving subject, there are opportunities for enrichment through other subjects. For example, learning in an art topic may be enriched by geography learning about where an artist was born and lived.

Read more about the intent, implementation and impact of our topics.

What is this half-term’s topic?

This half-term, it’s Computing. Your child will develop their knowledge of computers and computer programming.

Computer programming is super. Creating games, animations and solving real world problems is fun, encourages creativity and is challenging! Importantly, the skills children will use and develop are transferable to other subjects and areas of life. For example, the concept of decomposition in programming is concerned with breaking down a large task into smaller chunks. This concept could be used when writing a story, solving a maths problem or tidying a particularly messy bedroom! Debugging is the skill of identifying and fixing an error in a program. It requires systematic, objective thinking and plenty of resilience.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skills and vocabulary that they’ll learn, use and apply across the topic. See pages 15-18 of the curriculum statement document.

Years 1 and 2

Children are learning about how technology is used beyond school in our homes and all around us. They’re considering what a computer is and isn’t.

In programming lessons, they’re being introduced to algorithms and will learn about how they need to be written in the correct sequence.

They’re creating their own algorithms in ‘unplugged computing’ lessons and will debug errors in their own and others’ algorithms. Next, they’ll plan and create their own unplugged game where they have to create an algorithm to move a character from one place to another using positional language.

They’ll then use the same concepts using Beebots – simple robots which can be programmed to move and turn. Finally, it’ll be time to create their own game using Beebots.

Years 3 and 4

Children will reason about what exactly makes a computer a computer. Is a games console a computer? Is a TV a computer? Is a bedside lamp a computer? Next, they’ll learn about inputs and outputs and identify different examples of them in everyday technology.

It’s then time for programming. Like Key Stage 1, they begin with some ‘unplugged computing’. They’ll create and debug unplugged programs which use sequence and repetition before they then create their own unplugged game which will require some decomposition. Next, it’s time to program on a platform called Scratch Jr. It’s a free app available on most devices and will allow children to develop and refine their understanding and use of concepts like repetition and sequence. Finally, they’ll create their own game on Scratch Jr using all of the skills they’ve learned over the topic. They’ll to be creative to plan and design their own game, whether it’s a maze game or a simple platform game.

Years 5 and 6

As in Year 3 and 4, children begin the topic by reasoning about what makes a computer a computer. They’ll then learn about what a computer network is and that the Internet is an enormous computer network. In programming lessons, they’ll use Scratch to gain a deeper understanding of concepts like sequence and repetition before learning about selection and variables. Some of this vocabulary may sound alien to you. However, before the end of the topic, your child will be able to tell you what they mean and give examples of how they’ve used them in their projects. Some of the projects your child might make are:

• a Spirograph style drawing animation with some potentially psychedelic visual effects!
• a chatbot program which will ask you questions and decide if your responses are correct or not.
• a times table quiz program that will test you on randomly selected times table questions within a set time limit.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. The class news page of the school website is a good place to go to find out more about what children are doing.

The school library and local libraries have lots of books about coding and computer games – your child will be able to borrow the books to develop both their reading skills and computing knowledge.

Finally, try programming with your child. There are loads of programming apps and software available to download, often for free…

Key Stage 1

• Daisy the Dinosaur (Apple only)
• Beebot
• Tynker Junior

Key Stage 2

• Lightbot
• Tynker
• Scratch Jr
• Scratch

This week’s message (Friday 04 March 2022)

We’re now over half-way through the school year. If you managed one, we hope you had a good break over the half-term period. This week’s message contains an attendance update and a reminder about two things that were communicated earlier in the week.

Attendance matters

The overall whole-school attendance figure up to the end of Spring 1 is 94.2%. That’s the same as we were at the end of the Autumn term, despite Covid – great news!

• Reception: 93.8% – a slight increase since December – well done!
• Year 1: 95.3% – another increase – brilliant!
• Year 2: 95.9%
• Year 3: 91.6%
• Year 4: 92.2% – this attendance has increased a little, too – thank you!
• Year 5: 95.5%
• Year 6: 96.1% – and another year group where attendance has risen – fantastic!

Russia-Ukraine war

On Monday evening, we sent an email to let you know we’d be speaking with children about the current crisis. Children in Key Stage 2 had an assembly about this. Children in Key Stage 1 had a shorter discussion in class. We had no plans to speak with children in Foundation Stage unless a child raised it, in which case we’d respond in a very ‘light’ way.

Children coped well. They seemed to appreciate being told some basic facts and being provided with some reassurance. In case you missed it, we provided some website links so that you can support your child more:

• Supporting your child if they see upsetting content online about what is happening in Ukraine (Childnet)
• How to talk to children about what’s happening in Ukraine and World War Three anxiety (Metro)
• How and when to talk to children about war, according to a parenting expert (Independent)
• How to cope with traumatic news – an illustrated guide (ABC News, Australia)
• Talking with Children About War and Violence in the World (Family Education, US)
• Tips for parents and caregivers on media coverage of traumatic events (The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, US)

Covid caution continues

You’ll know that the government issued new advice about self-isolation and testing. This letter from Leeds Children and Families Team sets out what the new guidance is. If you’ve not already done so, do take a minute or so to read it.

Next week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who leads on Science and Topic subjects – it’s about our current Computing topic.

Sponsored maths challenge

Just before the half-term break, we had a sponsored maths challenge in school.  Mrs Walshaw has now counted the money and we’ve raised a fantastic total of £1290.92! All the money raised will be donated to our school charity- RSPCA. This is an incredible amount so a huge thank you for all your efforts in supporting your child find sponsors and practise their number facts.

Covid caution continues

You‘ll know that the government issued new advice sound self-isolation and testing. This letter from Leeds Children and Families Team sets out what the new guidance is. The main message is included here, too:

Government advice is still that your child should stay at home and avoid contact with other people if they have tested positive for COVID-19 or have COVID-19 symptoms. If your child is symptomatic, they should get a PCR test as soon as possible.

Your child can return to school after 10 full days isolation. They may be able to return earlier if they test negative for two days in a row from day 5 of self-isolation and do not have a temperature. If they continue to test positive during the 10-day isolation they can return after completing 10 full days isolation.

Your child will still receive work to do at home if they need to self-isolate, as well as free school meal support if they are eligible for this.