This week’s message (Friday 09 September 2022)

Friday 09 September 2022

We’re sad to note the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II. She demonstrated and represented important values and behaviours. In school today, we have marked this historic moment with a special assembly and teachers have followed this up with a review and reflection in class.

Our first weekly message of the year continues with some important information for the year ahead at St James’ CE Primary School…

Dates for the year

Key dates for the school year are in our school calendar. We’ve prepared this list for you to print out and have ready to check, too.

Support your child at home

Like last year, we’re hosting a series of Zoom presentations to help you support your child’s learning at home – the first one is this Monday.

The invitation is open to all parents and carers across Sphere Federation, although we’ve indicated if the session might be more appropriate for particular age ranges. The full list of presentations are:

All the sessions are at 6pm on Mondays and should last around 30 minutes.

If you’re interested in attending any of these Zoom workshops, please either send us a message on the School Gateway app or email the school office. We’ll then email the Zoom joining details out to all those who have expressed an interest.

Homework

Your child’s first homework task is published today.

Homework is an important part of education and gives you a chance to support your child and find out what they’ve been learning. This doesn’t need to be sitting at home with a stack of worksheets or creating an elaborate project: quality time talking to your child and practising basic skills is enough.

Today, we’ve given each child a new homework book. The book is for your child to practise spellings, writing, times tables and number facts. It doesn’t need to be sent back to school.

This homework guide sets out what we expect children to do and why. Reading, spellings, times tables and number facts are essential for all children to be confident with. The focus of your support at home should be ideally around these areas. Your comments in the Reading Record book (at least once a week) are really helpful for your child’s teacher.

As always, contact school if you have any questions or concerns.

Children settled into the new school year really well this week. It’s likely they’ll feel tired after a busy week back. Have a restful, happy and healthy weekend.