This week’s message comes from Miss Beatson…

As we come to the end of the school year, I’d like to reflect on what a great year we’ve had at St James’ CE Primary School.

The children and staff have worked incredibly hard and this is reflected in our end of year outcomes for our children. The highlights have been the progress made by our Reception children, the Year 1 phonics scores, KS1 SATs outcomes and our KS2 reading and writing outcomes- we’re very proud of everyone’s achievements.

Summer term has seen the opening of our fabulous forest school. Years 1 to 5 have had the opportunity to learn in the St James’ Woodland and the feedback from children, parents and staff has been so positive.

• ‘It makes me feel happy and go out of my comfort zone.’
• ‘I enjoyed making a slack line and a swing with ropes – we were told how to stay safe.’
• ‘We’ve created art and made a snake hotel using a big tube and leaves for a bed!’
• ‘I’ve enjoyed the fire – I learnt that it needs three things: air, wood and sparks. I enjoyed toasting the marshmallows too.’

We really value the benefit of forest school for the personal development and wellbeing of the children. With help from the PTA, we’ve managed to secure funding for forest school to continue for next year which means all the children in school will have the chance to attend.

We’ve also enriched the curriculum with trips to various places: Early Years visited Piglets Adventure Farm, Key Stage 1 visited Cannon Hall Farm, Key Stage 2 had fun on the beach in Filey and Year 6 went on their residential to Robinwood. These are experiences the children really enjoy and will remember forever.

This week, we’ve had the Key Stage 2 performance of Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies. The children were brilliant and we had some lovely comments from those who came to watch.

It’s also been health week this week. As part of the themed week, we had our sport’s day. Thank you to all the visitors who cheered the children on in their races (and took part themselves!). Well done to the blue team for achieving the most points overall. Check out our recently updated guide: Physical Activity. Also, make sure your child completes the health questionnaire alongside you – it’s this week’s homework.

As we come to the end of the academic year, we’re sadly saying some goodbyes. Year 6 will be leaving us to go to secondary school. I’m so proud of the Year 6 children who were in Year 1 when I first started at St James’.  It’s been a pleasure to watch them grow and mature into fantastic young people- I wish them all the best in their futures.

We also say goodbye to some members of staff: Mrs Rowley, Mrs Valentine, Mrs Payne and Miss Kay. Thank you to them all for their hard work and commitment to the children at St James’ – you will be missed.

In September, we’ll see new arrivals in our Nursery, Reception and teaching staff. We’re looking forward to welcoming them into our school community.

This year, our school chosen charity has been Cancer Research UK. Thank you for all your donations throughout the year. Some of our staff have raised money for events outside of school, too. Mrs Payne and Miss Gledhill were busy baking and selling cakes at a recent cake sale at St James’ Church and last weekend a group of staff participated in the Race for Life event in Harrogate. Miss Gledhill had a special mention on the day for being one of the top five fundraisers! Well done to all involved (and thank you if you donated).

We’ve one more week to go but I’d like to wish everyone a happy and healthy Summer break. We look forward to seeing the children back on Tuesday 05 September.

Happy Friday!

Big brains

A recent news article caught our eye – front page of The Times (28.06.23):

Here’s an extract from the article:

Young children who love reading grow up to be cleverer teenagers with better mental health, a study has found.

Research by Cambridge and Warwick universities found that reading a lot between the ages of two and nine was linked to better academic performance at secondary school, greater happiness and a reduced likelihood of depression, anxiety or behavioural problems.

Bookish children spent less time on their phones or watching TV. Scans revealed that they had bigger brains.

The research authors stressed the value of parents and carers ‘doing their best to awaken the joy of reading in their children at an early age’. The reaserch suggests that the ideal would be for children to read about 12 hours each week.

Talking of reading…

Extreme reading

Here at St James’ CE Primary, we love reading. Over the Summer holidays, we’ve a challenge for your child… Show us how reading-obsessed they are by sending us a pic of them reading in an extreme place or position.

Here’s someone who’s already getting stuck into some extreme reading. (can’t think who it could be!)…

To enter, email your pics to stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org by Friday 08 September. Enter ‘Summer competition’ as the subject.

All entries will be displayed in school, and there are prizes for our favourites.

Running to raise money

Our school charity this year is Cancer Research. Lots of our staff are doing The Race For Life in Harrogate on Sunday. If you feel like donating, we’d be very grateful!

Governance

Each year, the Sphere Federation governors produce a document that outlines their work over the year. Read the 2022-23 Annual Governance Statement.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

This week’s message comes from our Junior Leaders. Before this, just a wee reminder: the last few weeks of the school year are busy (annual reports, productions, sports day…) so it’s a good idea to check out our school calendar.

It’s been a pleasure to be part of the Junior Leadership Team this year.

In the Autumn term, our classes elected us to represent them at the JLT meetings and we hope we’ve done this by sharing their ideas and discussing them at JLT meetings.

At the start of the year we took on the role of reviewing the anti-bullying policy. We read through the policy and discussed some small changes. Then, we made sure that this was shared with the rest of the school and that everyone was clear on what bullying is and what we can do about it.

This was followed by the JLT deciding on a charity that school would support this year. Class nominations were brought to a meeting and we took a democratic vote. As a result, Cancer Research became our charity this year.

Another fundraising event we supported was Sports for Champions. This was an exciting day when a professional female footballer came into school. We helped Mr Freeman organise the sponsored event by helping set up activities, promote the event around school and reward children on the day.

Part of the role of a JLT, when you’re in Years 5 and 6, is to become a collective worship leader. This year, we’ve supported adults who lead worship as well as planning and leading our own worships about Eid and Holi. We really enjoyed working together as a team to present information to the rest of the school about different festivals.

Recently, we met as a JLT to share our views about changing the school rules. We discussed this at length and we all decided that our new school rules (we’re respectful, we’re ready, we’re safe) are really good because they are simple and clear to understand.

As we come to the end of term, we are hoping to raise thel ast bit of money for Cancer Research by shaking buckets at the KS2 production in a few weeks.

Junior Leadership Team