Author: Mr Roundtree

Go Go Go-Karts!

We tested our prototype Go-Karts today and what an exciting event that was! This is the final part of the design – make – evaluate process.

All of our efforts in making the go-karts came together in the big test!

It was great to see so many different types of go-karts, with different components, come together. The children went through a quick and steep learning curve when testing them, realising what needed to be strengthened or supported in order for them to function better.

The design criteria for our go-karts was:

  • to roll
  • to steer
  • to keep a character safe inside the kart

We also evaluated our Karts – see Aaron’s great work below.

This week’s message (Friday 16 July 2021)

This week’s message is in two parts: next week (England moves to step 4 of restrictions easing on Monday), and next school year. We’ve tried to keep the messages simple, using a Q&A style…

Next week

Will you be completely back to normal?

No. With one more week left in school, the Leeds Health and Safety team has advised that we should continue with the Covid measures we’ve in place. This means we’ll continue with the staggered school day and bubbles.

If there’s a positive case, will you burst a bubble?

No. The advice we received yesterday sets out what happens. If a child tests positive, they (or parents) will be contacted directly by Test and Trace. This is so that you can tell the tracers who close contacts are. (Good luck with finding out from your child the names of people who were within two metres for a period of 15 minutes!)

What about a bubble that burst before Monday?

They must complete the full ten day isolation period.

What if someone has symptoms?

They should stay at home and book a PCR test. If your child has any symptoms – or just doesn’t seem their usual selves – please keep them at home until you have the results of a PCR test.

There’s lots of confusion about what’s happening next week, and aspects of ‘Freedom Day’ don’t seem to make sense for people. We’ve always followed Leeds and national advice, and we’ll continue to do that for the last week of term. Thank you for continuing to do so, too.

Next year

Will you have a return to the normal start and end times?

Yes. The normal times are 8.50am start and 3.30pm finish (except on Mondays, when it’s 2.30pm). Although the staggered school day has had benefits, there are lots of reasons we won’t continue this. These include:

  • it’s very hard to coordinate for families with more than one child
  • we want children to have the opportunity to play together with friends from other classes – having staggered times for the school day but fixed times for breaks would mean very long or very short sessions rather than the carefully planned school day we normally enjoy
  • it’s hard to track if all pupils are arriving on time

One of the benefits has been a reduction in traffic congestion. We know this is a hassle, but – like other schools – our advice would always be to try to walk, cycle, scoot to school. If you have to drive, park further away and walk the last bit of the journey.

We’re hoping to get lots of after-school clubs back up and running, too.

Will you continue to allow children to wear PE kit on PE days?

Yes. We’re going to trial this for another year – it saves time and reduces lost property. You’ve told us you prefer it, too. Please make sure your child’s PE kit follows the uniform policy.

Yesterday was St Swithin’s Day. If we really are due to enjoy 40 rain-free days, then this weekend should be the first of a few good ones. Enjoy.

Our school charity

Each year, our school community chooses a charity they’d like to support. This year The National Autistic Society was chosen.  If you want to find out a little more about Autism, this is a helpful website.

After some recent news reports about some of the support given to young autistic adults, we decided to reflect on our charity choice.  The Junior Leadership Team (JLT) were very sure that they wanted to continue to support a charity linked with autism, as were the leaders within school.

After doing some research, and considering something more local, the JLT have agreed to make Leeds Autism Services our new chosen charity. Leeds Autism Services have been around for about 30 years and have as their mission statement: To create a more autism friendly society by promoting understanding and acceptance of autistic people.

We hope you agree that this is a worthy cause.

This week’s message (Friday 09 July 2021)

Next week is our Being Healthy themed week. It’s all about being healthy, both physically and emotionally. This week’s message is all about the themed week…

Due to the current restrictions, we’re limited to the events and visitors we can host but we’ve still got many activities planned for our children to enjoy. The learning forms part of our Living and Learning curriculum to ensure our pupils are happy and healthy.

Pupils are invited to come in PE kit (in line with our uniform policy) every day of the themed week. Please make sure the PE kit is in line with our Uniform Policy. (By the way, do check out the link: you’ll notice we’re going to continue to allow children to wear their kit on PE days for 2021-22 as a long-term trial – this decision is based on your feedback.)

Sports day events will take place during the themed week. Sadly, this year we’re not in a position to invite parents in. To restrict the spread of the virus, your child will still take part in competitive events, but within bubbles, so distanced from other classes. We know for many of you this is a highlight of the Summer term. We’re sorry to disappoint, but we’re sure you’ll agree it’s better to take this cautious approach.

Over the last few months, all classes have been taking part in the Skipping into Summer project to develop and improve skipping skills. We’ll be having a celebration day throughout the themed week for our children to share these skills.

This themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active ways to travel to school.  We’ll be encouraging children to use a sustainable method of transport, maybe parking further away from school, scooting, biking or walking to school.

We’d love to hear about your child’s physical activity achievements outside of school so please ask your child to share these with us so we can celebrate their achievements and efforts.

We always like to hear the children’s views about being healthy so this week’s homework is to complete the online annual health questionnaire.

Getting enough sleep helps us all to feel happy and healthy. Welcome to Sweet Dreams is an audio play which follows the interstellar adventures of Ivy and her toy rabbit, Bun Bun. Check out the podcasts for families and for children, too – they’re presented by ex-Blue Peter presenter, Zoe Salmon, who introduces leading sleep experts and guests all talking about how to get a great night’s sleep. There’s also an interactive game.

Finally, to support this learning at home, you might want to take a look at the following health resources…

We hope your child enjoys and achieves in our Being Healthy themed week.

Fantastic feedback

At Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we’ve been working hard to juggle two key priorities this year:

  • keep making sure we’re as Covid-secure as we possibly can be (despite a few bubbles bursting, we’ve been successful at this compared to other Leeds schools)
  • keep making sure we find ways to continually improve teaching and learning (that’s why we ask your views each year in our survey, with specific questions this year about homework, for example, and that’s why we’re making the change to teaching Latin as the statutory foreign language taught in our school)

Linked to the latter, we were keen to invite an advisor in to school recently (all done in a way which followed our risk assessment to make sure we were as Covid-secure as we could be). The advisor – an independent consultant and also a trained Ofsted inspector – carried out an evaluation of how we teach Maths at Scholes (Elmet) Primary.

Here’s some of the feedback:

The teaching of maths is strong overall.

Pupils demonstrate very positive attitudes to their learning and good behaviours. In all lessons visited, pupils were engaged, responding readily to their class teacher’s questions. When working independently they concentrated well.

Pupils make progress through the maths curriculum at both the whole school level and in individual lessons.

Pupils spoke of their enjoyment of maths and the support they received from their class teacher.

There is clear evidence of whole school strategies and approaches in the classrooms to enhance pupils understanding and progress through the maths curriculum. Overall, there is a high level of consistency of practice.

Class teachers are able to lucidly articulate the intent of their lesson, where the lesson fits in a sequence of lessons, including how future lessons will build on learning. Similarly, they are able to explain their thinking behind the chosen pedagogy.

Maths is well-led at Scholes (Elmet) Primary School. The Lead Teacher [Mrs Allaway] has considerable subject and subject pedagogical knowledge. Her passionate commitment to all aspects of the teaching of primary mathematics ensures that the subject is appropriately prioritised and effectively regularly reviewed.

The curriculum is ambitious for all pupils, including pupils with SEND.

Scholes in Bloom – competition winner!

Over the past 5 years Scholes in Bloom have entered the Yorkshire in Bloom competition and have received 3 Gold Rose awards, a Silver Award and a Silver Gilt Award. They work so hard in our village to keep it looking beautiful.

This year, like most years, Scholes in Bloom asked children to create a flower bed design, which will be planted along Station Road.

Today, our lucky winner, had her design chosen and recreated in beautiful flowers.

Well done to our Scholes in Bloom ‘design a flower bed’ competition winner!

 

This week’s message (Friday 02 July 2021)

Salve!

This week’s message begins with the Latin word for ‘hello’, because we’ve some news about a change to our curriculum next year…

From September, children in Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6) will learn Latin as the Foreign Language part of the National Curriculum. This might come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, with many wondering why switch to an ancient language. Here, we present three reasons, but there are plenty of others.

Learning some Latin will support learning other languages in the future. About 80% of words in Romance languages such as French, Spanish and Italian come from Latin. The Latin for ‘bread‘ is ‘panem‘. Learning this means your child should more easily recognise and remember the word for bread in French (pain), Spanish (pan) or Italian (pane).

Linked to this is what your child will learn when they move to secondary school. In Year 7, your child might learn French, or Spanish, or German… in most cases, there won’t be much choice, and different secondary schools offer different languages for Year 7 students. Latin provides a really useful basis to learn other languages. (And most secondary schools start from scratch anyway, so Latin will be a good grounding.)

A third reason is that learning some Latin will help to enhance your child’s understanding in English, too. About two thirds of English words are derived from Latin, so your child will be more confident when they come across a new word in English if they can recognise parts of it. Here’s an example. The Latin word for ‘father’ is ‘pater‘, which gives us lots of English words, such as paternal, patronise and patriarchy. ‘Mother’ is ‘mater‘ – what words derive from ‘mater‘?

We’ve spoken to a few parents about this already, and the reaction has been really positive. If you’d like to find out more, we’re hosting a live Zoom discussion next week: 6pm on Thursday 08 July (we’ve deliberately avoided Wednesday in anticipation of some important event that night – it’s coming home…!). If you’d like to attend, please contact scholesoffice@spherefederation.org

Finally this week, a big thank you to all of you who completed this year’s annual survey. We’ll spend some time over the next few weeks looking at the results, and we’ll update you later in the year.

Quia nunc vale!

DT: design process

In our DT lessons this week, we’ve been evaluating existing products to gain some inspiration and ideas for our own designs.

We’ve also begun to explore our ideas using TechCard and next we’ll be drawing our final designs.

The design criteria for our go kart prototypes:

– move by rolling on wheels
– have a steering system
– a platform to sit on and not fall out of
– a braking system (extra, aspirational challenge)

 

Photos to follow …