Author: Mr Roundtree

Year 2 and Year 6 assessments

The STA has published an information leaflet and two videos for parents/carers of children in Year 2 and Year 6 about national curriculum assessments. The purpose of these materials is to help you understand more about the end of key stage assessments that will be administered in primary schools in May. (The end of Key Stage 1 is Year 2; the end of Key Stage 2 is Year 6.)

The materials provide basic information about the purpose and format of the tests, how parents can best support their children and how results will be reported.

Read the leaflet.

Watch the videos.

Cannon Hall Farm Fun

What a fantastic trip we had!

This week, we visited Cannon Hall Farm for our end of term trip. The children enjoyed seeing lots of different animals and impressed our guide Darrell with their life cycle knowledge.

The highlight of our day was seeing two lambs being born. The children were captivated watching Farmer Robert deliver the lambs. The general consensus was “that was awesome but gross”.

The life cycle of a frog…

This week, we’ve learned all about life cycles in our Life Forces topic.

First, we learned about the frog life cycle. The children were shocked at how many eggs a frog lays!

Have a look at our learning below of the life cycle of a frog.

We were very excited to see the newly hatched chicks in Foundation and learning about a life cycle of another animal. We’re looking forward to going to see them next week and holding a chick.

23 March 2018

This week’s spelling homework is a spelling task. It’s due in on Thursday 29 March.

Year 1

Have a look at the picture below. Sound out the words in the checklist and find them in the picture. (Bonus: add the sound buttons to your checklist words e.g. dog, broom, smile)

Year 2

Cross out the words that are wrong in the sentences below.

  1. I hang my coat/cote on a peg.
  2. We have to cleer/clear up before play.
  3. We learn/lurn how to reed/read at school.
  4. We lyk/like to look at buks/books.
  5. Playtime is goud/good fun.

In the paragraph below, there are lots of words that are spelt wrong. Find them and correct them. Use a dictionary if you need to.

At the weekend, I wet shopping with my Mum. We went on the bus to toun and we went to lots of shoppes. Afta that, we went to Mcdonalds for our tea. I had a burger and sum chips. Then we went home. I wanted to wotsh T.V. but my Mum maid me go to bed. I sed it’s not fair. On Sunday, we went out for lunsh to The Vine. It wos my Mum’s birthday. I gave my Mum a card with flours on. She wos pleased.

23 March 2018

This week’s homework is creative. It’s due in on Thursday 29 March.

I can show what I know about life cycles.

This week, our topic work has been looking at the life cycles of animals in particular frogs. Children can choose a new animal, or use a frog, and display their life cycle. This can be done in any creative way:

  • A story
  • A poem
  • Instructions
  • A comic strip
  • An advert
  • An interview
  • A game
  • Scenarios

…or any other creative ideas!

St James’ Head of School post

As you will know, Miss Beatson has been Acting Head of School since September in the absence of Mr Williams.

A recruitment process to find a permanent Head of School culminated yesterday, Monday 19 March, in Miss Beatson’s permanent appointment.

The recruitment was rigorous. Two governors were involved as well as me, the Head of Federation. Also involved was an advisor from the Diocese in order to provide an external viewpoint and the perspective of the Diocese, since St James’ is a Church of England school.

Miss Beatson has a great passion and enthusiasm for supporting all staff and pupils in school, and I know parents also respect her and value the great relationship she has built up with them.

She and I are looking forward to continuing to make sure St James’ CE Primary keeps getting better and better.

Well done to Miss Beatson!

Marvellous Maths facts – apology!

A news post earlier today referred to Moortown Primary, one of our Sphere sister schools, rather than St James’ CE Primary. The actual data was correct for St James’, but we were too quick to copy and paste from a similar news story on the Moortown site and then hit ‘publish’ without properly checking… Sorry!

Here’s the post again, in case you missed it:

At St James’ CE Primary, we want to be a happy and healthy place to learn. That includes making sure our younger children, in Year 1 and Year 2, know the key number facts that will help to secure fluency in Maths now and in the future – facts like 3+4=?, 2+?=10 and 17+?=20.

Our Addition Facts guide provides a guide to what addition facts we expect pupils in Year 1 and Year 2 to know (the table might look confusing – please ask us if you’re unsure).

In a recent assessment, we can see some great progress made by our children in securing these facts.

For our Year 1 children in the Autumn term, the average score was just 5 out of 20. This is because the aim is for children to be secure by the end of Key Stage 1 – that’s the end of Year 2. That average score has increased to 10.2, with twice as many children getting correct 15 or more questions out of 20.

Our Year 2 children continue this progress. The average score is now 17 out of 20 and 82% of children are now achieving 15+ out of 20.

Well done, everyone! And thank you for supporting your child at home.

Marvellous Maths facts

At St James’ CE Primary, we want to be a happy and healthy place to learn. That includes making sure our younger children, in Year 1 and Year 2, know the key number facts that will help to secure fluency in Maths now and in the future – facts like 3+4=?, 2+?=10 and 17+?=20.

Our Addition Facts guide provides a guide to what addition facts we expect pupils in Year 1 and Year 2 to know (the table might look confusing – please ask us if you’re unsure).

In a recent assessment, we can see some great progress made by our children in securing these facts.

For our Year 1 children in the Autumn term, the average score was just 5 out of 20. This is because the aim is for children to be secure by the end of Key Stage 1 – that’s the end of Year 2. That average score has increased to 10.2, with twice as many children getting correct 15 or more questions out of 20.

Our Year 2 children continue this progress. The average score is now 17 out of 20 and 82% of children are now achieving 15+ out of 20.

Well done, everyone! And thank you for supporting your child at home.

Tremendous times tables

You may have read recently about government plans to introduce a times tables assessment for children in Year 4 – the ‘check’ will be compulsory in 2020. The cost of this new test is estimated to exceed £5.2million. Whether you think the new test to be necessary or useful, it goes without saying that children knowing their times tables can really help not only in Maths lessons but in everyday life.

We’ve been carrying out our own assessment of our pupils’ times tables recall for some time now, in the form of a short test of 25 questions each term. Pupils have recently done the Spring test – with great results!

Year 4:

By the end of Year 4, children are expected to be able to recall all multiplication and division facts up to 12 x 12 and our test checked 25 random facts.

Children scored an average of 20.8 out of 25 with 80% of children getting 20+ questions correct. Last year, the same children scored  only 14.7 as a class average, with only 31% reaching 20 or more. And we’ve still got one more term to improve further!

Year 5:

Our Year 5 children scored an average of 22.4 out of 25 and 88% got 20+ questions correct. This is an improvement on their performance in a similar test at the end of Year 4, when the average score was 20.9 and only 69% had a score of 20 or more.

Year 6:

The average score in the recent test was 21.9 out of 25. This is a small cohort so it’s not appropriate to talk about the proportion that achieved 20+ in the test.

This spreadsheet can help your child test themselves – but before they do, practise together:

  • count in things that link, like 2p coins for x2 and 5p coins for x5, and 4 wheels on a car so 4 wheels (1 car), 8 wheels (2 cars), 12 wheels (three cars) etc
  • count forwards, backwards in 3s, 4s or whatever
  • look for patterns in the times tables (like the digits all add up to 9 when you multiply by 9)

16 March 2018

This week’s spellings are a list of words to learn based on our phonics.

Group 1 – focusing on two trigraphs. A trigraph is three letters making one sound, like ‘ear’ – I have two ears and ‘air’ – I have a pair of socks.

hair, stairs, pair, year, near, beard

Group 2 – focusing on our split digraphs. A ‘split digraph’ is simply a long vowel sound that has been split. For example, in ‘make’ the long ‘ay’ sound is made by the ‘a_e’ – the two letters have been split. (You might remember how this used to be referred to: ‘magic e’.  That term is no longer used as it may be confusing. The ‘e’ is not magic – it’s doing a job.)

make, came, made, even, these, like, bike, bone, those, use

Group 3

path, bath, hour, move, prove, improve, because, want, was, when