Author: Mr Roundtree

At St James’ CE Primary School, we learn about Christian values that help us to become well-rounded citizens in society. These values have been chosen by our Church Council, a group of pupils who advise us on aspects of our provision. The values are woven into our everyday school life. Each half term, we have a new Christian value that will be embedded into our collective worship and our reflection areas.

This half term, our Christian Value is perseverance.

‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’ (Galatians 6:9)

The Church Council chose this because ‘Jesus always said to try our best’ (Y4 Church Council member).

Endurance is needed when standing firm in the face of any difficulty. It is the special gift that we have when life is difficult or painful that helps us not to give up. Difficulties might include hardship, persecution or scorn, although we hope these difficulties do not arise in our school. We use it more in the context of ‘keeping going’ and ‘not giving up’.

Help at home! Talk about perseverance together…

• How can we show perseverance in school?
• How can we show perseverance in home, or in other situations?
• Who do you know that shows lots of perseverance?
• What does perseverance look like to you?
• Tell me about a time when you showed perseverance.

Thank you to everyone who attended parent-teacher meetings recently. It’s great to see that almost all parents / carers took the time to hear how their child is progressing and to find out more about how to support their child at home.

Talking of support at home, the Learn More section of our website has lots of different top tips. Go to Help Your Child.

Of course, there are loads of games and activities online, too. Perhaps there’s too much – going on-line can be overwhelming. Here are two sites we suggest – useful for children of any age.

We really like IXL. Here, you’ll find pages for every year group, with activities to practise English and Maths skills. There are usually well over 100 pages for each subject. This could be overwhelming, but each subject is then broken down into helpful sub-categories. (For example, in Year 6 Maths, these are sections on Numbers and Comparing, Place Value, Addition, Understanding Fractions etc.)

This site is especially good to explain – and avoid – a common mistake in writing: ‘run-on’ sentences, which we call ’squashed’ sentences in school. These are two (or more) sentences that are squashed together. For example:

In half-term, I went to the cinema I saw Early Man it was great!

In this example, there are actually three ‘chunks’ (clauses) that all make sense and need to be split up (using a full stop or a dash or a semi-colon):

In half-term, I went to the cinema. I saw Early Man – it was great!

The sentences could also be joined with a conjunction:

In the half-term, I went to the cinema and I saw Early Man – it was great!

On IXL, there’s at least one activity to practise this in Y3-Y6 – start with the Year 3 one, even if your child is older.

The BBC Bitesize website has recently been updated – it’s probably best you avoid the old archived one, so use this link. The site contains pages on most National Curriculum subjects and it’s definitely worth checking it out.

Speak with us about other ways to support your child at home.

Have you see the recent Change4Life campaign encouraging children to have no more than two packaged snacks per day to reduce their sugar intake?  Remember fruit and veg are always the best snack and count towards your child’s 5 A Day.

The campaign is launched as Public Health England reveals half the sugar children consume comes from unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks. Children in England are eating nearly three times the recommended amount of sugar.  Too much sugar can lead to harmful fat building up inside and serious health problems, and also painful tooth decay.

At St James’ CE Primary, we’re always wanting to keep getting better and better. Because of this, we value the support and advice from the Local Authority. Recently, our School Improvement Advisor visited; he spent a long time examining the learning journeys of children in Year 4 and, as well as providing us with useful recommendations, made lots of positive comments. These include:

In Maths books…

pupil response to feedback… is consistent and impacts on deepening of understanding

incisive and immediate feedback impacts on learning

clear learning journeys that provide appropriate incremental challenge and extended challenge for the more able

In Writing books…

clear evidence of learning sequences whereby elements of composition and grammar or punctuation are taught, rehearsed and applied via frequent (at least weekly) extended writing opportunity

good evidence of how reading is used to support the sentence level and grammar work seen in the children’s writing books

there is evidence that the majority are developing a neat, legible, joined handwriting style

In Reading books…

children have access to a wide range of texts including poetry, fiction, non-fiction and reference

teaching sequences are invariably linked to work seen in writing books

In Topic books…

the application of maths in topic work is some of the strongest the advisor has seen. These activities, which include Venn diagrams, classification tables, Carroll diagrams to categorise, and graph work are all relevant to the topic in hand and effective in helping children understanding the wider use of mathematics

good evidence to demonstrate the children enjoy a skills-based curriculum; for example, using map reading skills, globe use and practical science learning

Our School Improvement Advisor also did a ‘learning walk’ around school, spending some time in each class observing the teaching and learning that’s going on. He concluded:

Without exception across the school, teachers were observed demonstrated good subject knowledge and used this well to structure learning appropriately.  Subsequently, the learning behaviours of the vast majority of children are such that they listened attentively, settled quickly to task and and applied themselves well. For example, in Y5/6 classroom the children were focused on an extended writing task that had been developed from exploring Romeo and Juliet… The teacher’s working knowledge of the children…meant all children, regardless of ability, could access the challenge. Meanwhile, in Early Years, the provision appeared imaginatively organised. Challenge boards evident in each area ensured activities had purpose. In Y1/2, although the children were coming from and going to an additional church-led activity in another part of school, they showed some good resilience in their adventure story writing activity.

Great stuff!