This week’s message comes early, and it’s an unusual one because the majority of it is written by Mrs Weekes, the Head of School at Moortown Primary, one of our sister schools in Sphere Federation:
It was great to spend some time chatting to some of the children at St James’ last week – they were all confident and shared lots of positive things that happen in school. I am the Safeguarding Lead across Sphere Federation so the focus of my visit was to find out what the children felt about staying safe.
There are lots of things to talk about when it comes to staying safe. We talked about behaviour; where they felt safe; being online, at school and at home; and how they can keep themselves safe.
They had a really good understanding of what being safe means and knew that they were safe in school. The school rules were discussed and how they help to keep school a safe place. Children also told me what could be done if they, or someone else, was being bullied.
The online chat was interesting. The children shared a lot of great things that they can do online and how it’s great to be able to talk to family and friends using Facetime. However, it was clear that some of them spend a long time online with very little restrictions. It’s important to make sure that your child has time away from screens and that you make these expectations and boundaries really clear.
There’s a lot of things we can do around healthy and safe use of online devices to keep your child safe. One website with useful information is Internet Matters – please have a look and see what else you can do to keep your child safe.
Thank you for your support.
And some words from Miss Beatson:
As we come to the end of term, we’d like to say a ‘goodbye for now’ to Mrs Palmer who is going on maternity leave. Taking over the class is Mr Nash. He has worked as a music teacher in Halifax and more recently has been a member of staff at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, one of our sister schools in Sphere Federation. Mr Nash started at St James’ in September and he has been a great addition to the team here. The Spring term will be his final term of initial teacher training for Mr Nash. To ensure a successful transition, Mr Nash has been working in Year 2 for the last few weeks. We look forward to hearing the wonderful news of a new arrival in the Palmer household sometime in January.
We say a more permanent farewell to Miss Rigley this week. She has been a teaching assistant at St James’ for the last couple of years and is now moving on to pursue a career in dance. We wish her all the very best.