News

Leeds Needs Trees

Leeds City Council have launched a scheme to increase the number of trees around the city. Collect tree seeds (conkers, acorns, beech nuts and sweet chestnuts) and take them to a collection point around the city. The Arium is the closest one to school and you will be helping create new habitats for birds and animals.

Covid-19: What to do if...

There’s such a lot of information about Covid-19 that it’s sometimes easy to get confused.

To help, we’ve produced this guide which sets out nine different scenarios if your child, or someone in the household, had symptoms of Covid-19. The guide tells you what you need to do and when your child should come back to school.

(We’ve also included the guide in our Autumn for All booklet – it’s on page 15.)

Our weekly message (18 September 2020)

Well, we’ve made it to the end of Week 2 without having to temporarily close down a class or even the whole school. Sadly, quite a few local schools haven’t been so fortunate. Whilst the government is determined that primary schools remain open in any form of lockdown (and we absolutely share this determination), please do continue to be really careful:

• hands – wash your hands regularly and for 20 seconds
• face – wear a face covering in indoor settings where social distancing may be difficult, and where you will come into contact with people you do not normally meet.
• space – stay 2 metres apart from people you do not live with where possible, or 1 metre with extra precautions in place (such as wearing face coverings or increasing ventilation indoors), and stick to the rule of six, too

Letter from Leeds City Council

This letter from Councillor Saleem Tariq, OBE (Director, Children and Families) and Jonathan Pryor (Executive Member for Learning and Skills) is for you. Please read it. It includes three important ways to support you, your child and us to stay safe.

Home learning

Your child might have to self-isolate. This might be because someone in the family is displaying symptoms or if they’ve had a test and it’s positive (which means the person has Covid-19). It might be because someone in their bubble at school has a confirmed case.

We’ve been working hard to set up a way to support your child at home. If your child has to self-isolate, our teachers are starting to provide an overview of the teaching and learning for the week ahead. It’s still early days, but check out the new Home Learning page in our Learn More section.

Covid-19 tests and symptoms

Getting a Covid-19 test has proved a challenge for many this week. We’ve heard that a batch of available slots become available at different points during the day, so keep trying throughout the day (we’re told trying for slots after 8pm might be more successful, so don’t give up towards the end of the day).

Earlier in the week (14.09.20), we reminded you of the Covid-19 symptoms and made the distinction between a common cold and Covid-19. This BBC article really helps to explain the difference well. We especially like this table…

Newsletters

Very many of you have told us how much you appreciate the communication from school in the last few months – thank you.

In these busy times, we’re going to trial not sending home a half-termly newsletter. There are quite a few drawbacks with paper copies of the newsletters, including:

• it uses a lot of paper – not good for the environment
• it costs a lot – the costs for printing are high and continue to increase
• it takes up a lot of time – especially for people in the school office (who are currently busier than ever with tasks related to Covid-19) and for teachers who are working on home learning for children self-isolating

Instead, teachers will continue to post lots of class news and school leaders will continue to send messages such as this one.

This is a trial for the next few half-terms. During the trial, please do send us your comments and concerns – speak to the Head of School or drop us an email: headofmoortown@spherefederation.org

And finally…

…this week, here’s the latest edition of the Leeds and West Yorkshire Families magazine. This was a popular addition to our daily messages before summer. In this edition, we especially like the 18 recommended new books and the face-to-face/virtual classes and clubs…

Keep talking to us if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns. Have a really good weekend, staying as happy and healthy and safe as you all can be.

What are the Covid-19 symptoms?

In the Autumn term, it’s quite common for children to pick up a bug along the way – colds, for example. After a long period of isolation away from others, maybe this is even more likely if our immunity thresholds are lower. We’ve got quite a few children absent from school today, but not necessarily with Covid-19 symptoms.

The NHS list these as the three symptoms:

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

It’s the cough symptom that might be trickiest. To help, do read the description: ‘this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours’.

A blocked or runny nose isn’t a symptom listed on the NHS website so we’d still expect this person to be in school.

There are two really important ways to protect your primary-aged child from Covid-19 (and other illnesses):

• wash your hands more often, and for longer – is your child doing this as a matter of routine at home?
• social distance – are you and everyone in your family aware of the rule of six?

Our weekly message (11 September 2020)

Thank you for all the positive comments we’ve received about our daily messages before summer. For the time being, we plan to continue these, but just on a weekly basis. We’ll continue to post other, occasional messages on the website and send other emails, too.

Wow! What a brilliant first week. Our children have returned to school so happily – it’s been an absolute joy to see the smiles on their faces as they arrive at school. Teachers report how impressed they’ve been with how our children have settled. You should feel very proud about how you’ve supported your child so well over the last few months.

We’ve made two important updates to our Autumn for All guide for parents and carers – we’ll tell you about these in this message.

Homework

It’s Friday so your child will be coming home with a homework task: we’re setting weekly homework as we normally do. The key difference here is that Homework Books should stay at home for the time being.

Just as normal, the tasks are posted on the website. Instead of the task pasted into books, children take home a piece of paper with the task on, too. The tasks are a variety of Talk Time, Practice Makes Perfect and Creative, but especially the first two.

Parents can email a picture of the completed task (or task in process) or update about a completed task. (Lots of you were doing this with the home learning tasks we set in Spring and Summer terms). The homework will be reviewed in school, so some pictures would be good!

Emails

Talking of emails, we’re happy for you to continue to use this as the main way for you to speak with your child’s teacher. This might be to send a picture or description of the homework task (rather than sending the Homework Books back to school), or to ask a quick question – the sort of thing you’d normally say to the teacher at the start or end of the day.

We’ve strict policies in place around safeguarding and staff workload, so we’ve agreed a short policy about this – please see page 12 of the Autumn for All guide.

The rule of six

The other update to the Autumn for All guide is reference to the government’s updated rules on social distancing:

When seeing friends and family you do not live with you should:

• follow social distancing rules
• limit how many different people you see socially over a short period of time
• meet people outdoors where practical: meeting people outdoors is safer than meeting people indoors because fresh air provides better ventilation

Limits on the number of people you can see socially are changing. From Monday 14 September, when meeting friends and family you do not live with you must not meet in a group of more than 6, indoors or outdoors.

From 14 September – when the new rules apply – it will be against the law to meet people you do not live with in a group larger than 6 (unless you are meeting as a household or support bubble). The police will have the powers to enforce these legal limits, including to issue fines (fixed penalty notice) of £100, doubling for further breaches up to a maximum of £3,200.

We know you support us in prioritising the safety of all our pupils, parents and staff. If we have concerns, we may have to ask a parent / carer to collect their child from school, possibly to self-isolate for 14 days or until they can provide evidence of a negative test result for Covid-19. This is because we have to be confident children can attend school in a way which does not undermine the safeguarding of others.

Please read pages 13-14 of the Autumn for All guide for more about this.

How to get a test

The main symptoms of Covid-19 are:

• a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
• a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

If you or your child is displaying even just one of these symptoms, arrange a test online or call 111. You can get a test by post, at a drive-through or walk-through, or at a mobile testing unit.

Please remember that a high temperature is one of the symptoms of Covid-19. Whilst a high temperature can mean lots of other more minor illnesses, please be cautious: don’t send your child to school (and don’t just hope that some Calpol will help!).

Thank you and well done

We started this week’s message with some thanks to you because your child has returned to school happily and healthily. This is a reflection on how well you’ve been supporting them at home.

Here are some other ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ messages from us to you…

• Thank you for coming into school as close to the new timings as possible – this has really helped to keep numbers in school low.
• Thank you for keeping your distance from others so well – we know it’s tempting to have a chat, but we’re grateful you’re helping to protect yourselves and everyone else by social distancing.
• Thank you for just having one adult drop off and collect; again, this helps to keep numbers low.

And finally a big one: the prime minister announced this week that attendance in England’s schools was at about 90% this week. At 98.1%, we’re way better than that! That’s absolutely amazing attendance!

Since March, you’ve supported your child so well. It’s clear from their happy and healthy start to the new school year. Again: thank you and well done. Have a good weekend.

Own It app

Has you child got a mobile phone? If they have, do the have the Own It app from the BBC?

The Own It app helps children and young people take control of your online life. It gives them advice when they need it, in real-time as they type. It’s designed to help them make smart choices, feel more confident, and live their best life online.

The Own It app comes with a special keyboard. This can be used like any other keyboard, but it also gives users helpful tips and friendly advice as they write.

There’s also the ability to track how they feel and improve their wellbeing. There are plenty of gifs and emojis so users can express themselves.

The Own It keyboard and app is personal to the user. Everything your child types is kept completely private, and never leaves the Own It app on their phone.

New year, new routine

Welcome back!

It was great to welcome all our learners back to school this morning.  Everyone looked really smart and excited to get back to some kind of normality. We were hoping for a sunny day to start off the term but the rain had other ideas!

This morning highlighted a number of issues that we need to address quickly to protect the integrity of our socially distanced bubbles.

Our start and finish times are as follows:

Please come as close to this time as possible. If everyone comes 5 minutes early, our playground feels very busy and staggered starts no longer work.

If you’ve siblings, please come for the earlier time and drop siblings off after you’ve made the earliest drop off.

If you do find yourself waiting in the playground, please don’t let your child mix with children who aren’t in their bubble. This undermines everything that happens once your child is in school.

It’s essential all adults respect social distancing at all times.

Whilst we want everything to feel as normal as possible, the reality is that things aren’t normal and Covid-19 remains a very real threat. The collapsing of bubbles and time missed from school is the last thing we want.

Thank you for helping to keep everyone safe.

Thank you, FOSP

Our PTA, the Friends of Scholes (Elmet) Primary School (FOSP), have made a contribution to school to make sure we all stay happy and healthy and safe now that we’ve all started back at school.

They write:

Hi everyone. Good luck with the first school run back tomorrow! We wanted to tell you that we have given a huge chunk of our funds to school over summer, to help school in their fantastic plans to keep our children as safe as can be. This is being spent on an outdoor speaker system, starting to resurface the quad as an outdoor teaching space, and buying another ‘fogging machine’ to disinfect the classrooms. We hope that everyone enjoys their first day back!

Thanks very much to all those who support FOSP.

A summer message (03 September 2020)

Today, our teachers are all back, busy preparing classrooms and lessons. We’re all looking forward to welcoming your child back on Monday 07 September.

This morning, we’ve virtually met with colleagues across our federation to consider the key elements in Maths that we need to teach lots of so that children can successfully catch up and consolidate their learning. Later on today, we’ll do the same for Reading.

From next Monday, there are staggered starts and ends to the school day to help social distancing. Read more about this in our Autumn for All guide.

Unlike June and July, we won’t be asking every parent if they’ve been social distancing, but we do need you to be careful to respect the current government guidance. We therefore encourage you to do what you can to reduce the number of contacts your child has, follow the guidance, and socially distance where possible.

In terms of dropping off and collecting your child, for example, you might want to restrict this to someone in your household or someone who regularly visits. Walking to school rather than using a car would be better as the virus is harder to catch in the open air.

Please aim to stick to your allocated drop off / collection time, too, so the numbers of people around school are as low as possible.

One new point in the Autumn for All guide is to make sure that someone from your own household is available to collect your child quickly if they’re at school but displaying symptoms of Covid-19 (or have any other, more ‘normal’ illness, like a cold, too). You might want to discuss this with your employer.

We’re looking forward to seeing you all again.

Wearing PE kit to school - which days?

Hopefully you have read the information in the Autumn for all – Key Info Scholes, which also has a link to our uniform policy.

On the days your child has PE, they should come to school in their PE kit. (Track-suit bottoms instead of shorts would be good on colder days. Footwear : black/brown/grey/white flat shoes which are safe to run around in.)

Footwear on PE days could be children’s ‘school shoes’ which are often a ‘trainer’ style anyway, if you want to avoid having to buy 2 pairs of shoes.

Please find below the days each class has allocated PE times, which will be taught outdoors, except in extreme weather.

• F2 Sunshine and F2 Rainbow (Miss Parling & Mrs Allen-Kelly/Mrs Wilkins) – Wednesday & Friday from week beginning 28 September
• 1KN (Miss Lowry/Mrs Lake) – Monday & Friday
• 1,2V (Mrs Latham) – Thursday & Friday
• 2C (Mr Gathercole) – Monday & Thursday
• 3,4N (Mrs Wadsworth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
• 3,4E (Mrs McCormick) – Tuesday & Thursday
• 3,4O (Mr Catherall) – Monday & Tuesday
• 5,6S (Mrs Hogarth) – Tuesday & Wednesday
• 5,6M (Mr Lindsay) – Wednesday & Friday
• 5,6B (Mr Freeman) – Monday & Friday