Author: Mr Roundtree

Week 5 – The tiny seed

We have had a wonderful week this week learning more about growing and the changes that happen through the seasons. Our focus story ‘The tiny seed’ takes us on a journey through the seasons as a tiny seed. We have done some fantastic writing telling others about how to plant seeds and also how a seed changes through the seasons.

In our maths lessons this week we have been learning more about doubles. With the help of the number blocks we spotted patterns. Olly told us” I can see that 8 is double 4 because 4 plus 4 equals 8″. We used everyday objects to create our own doubles.

We have also created some new friends! We have made our own grass heads! We have discussed what the seeds will need and how we can be fantastic gardeners and help them to grow. Keep a look out for regular updates on our class page.

Our poem of the week is called ‘hungry birdies’ We have been working really hard on the actions so we can create birds using our hands. We hope you like it.

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As always if you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Mrs Payne

Week 4 – Jack and the Beanstalk

This week we have been learning more about the fantastic story ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’.  We found lots of repeating words in the story and enjoyed joining in.

In provision we created our own beanstalks, made castles and furniture fit for giants and measured different beanstalks using cubes.

We thought about what plants need to grow and decided to see if we could grow our own beanstalks. It was lots of fun getting everything ready and patting the bean into the soil. We learnt that the beans will need light, warmth and water to grow.

This week’s message (Friday 17 March 2023)

This week’s message is a short one, kicking off with a reminder…

Class trips

We want to put a long-term plan in place for class trips.

There are lots of benefits of class trips (a chance to make learning more real or practical, a memorable, exciting change from the typical day…), but we know they’re expensive.

To help us, we’d be very grateful if you spend just five minutes completing this short survey.

Attendance matters

We’ve been sent by Leeds City Council an attendance summary for 2021-22.

St James’ CE Primary attendance was lower than the average for other schools nearby and for Leeds primary schools as a whole.

One of the main reasons for this was the number of children with attendance less than 90% – these pupils are classed as ‘persistent absentees’.

About six in ten absences were due to illness. However, about one in ten absences were not authorised due to a holiday, about one in ten absences were due to arriving late, and about 15% of absences were for unknown reasons.

In 2022-23, we’re starting to see some improvements – please do continue to make sure your child gets to school as much as possible.

Special visitors

Today at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we’ve been delighted to welcome people from the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM). Alongside lots of teachers, they visited Mrs Allaway (the Sphere Federation Maths Leader) and a class of Year 4 children to review good practice in Maths teaching. We’re fortunate that Mrs Allaway is a lead teacher for NCETM, regularly supporting teachers in other schools as well as supporting our very own teachers.

As well as Comic Relief, it’s another special day – happy St Patrick’s Day if you’re celebrating!

Have a great weekend.

Maths: buy one get three free..!

In Year 4, time is dedicated to learning and quickly recalling the times table up to and including 12x.

Did you know that your child knows four facts just for knowing one times table fact. Confused? Take a look at this short video explaining what we’ve been working on…

 

Writing: spelling practice

Each week, time in class is spent practising spellings. Words are the building blocks to language and it’s important that words are spelled correctly.

Of course, like all things we practise little yet often, spelling practice can get a little dull..! Why not have a go at what we did in class! Spell the words, chop them up into a mini jigsaw then put them back together again!

This is a great way of practising spellings – you can make it as challenging as you like! The smaller the pieces of the jigsaw, the trickier it’ll be to create the spelling words. The larger the jigsaw pieces, the less tricky it’ll be.

All aboard the Hundred Decker Bus!

This week our focus book has been ‘The Hundred Decker Bus’ by Mike Smith. This story takes us on an amazing adventure with a growing bus!

We used our literacy skills to sequence and retell the great story. We discussed how it might feel if we went on an adventure but didn’t know where we were going! In the classroom we created our own towns labelling the different buildings, we created playdough vehicles and labelled double decker buses.

We loved the idea of each deck on the bus been a different place to do things. We decided to create a class decker bus. Thank you grown ups for our cardboard boxes! We all thought about what we wanted our deck to be and then used different materials to create it.

During our Religious Education lesson we learnt more about the Hindu Festival Holi. Holi is a colourful festival, with singing and throwing of powder paint and coloured water. It is a celebration of spring, love and new life. We decided to create our own friend who has taken part in Holi.

This week for poetry basket we used the nursery rhyme ‘Pat a Cake’ we loved creating our own actions. We hope you enjoy watching it!

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Maths: times tables

Year 4 is the year where we really smash our times table knowledge! In class, we investigate the patterns we can spot in the tables as well as frequently chanting the multiples forwards and backwards, highlighting the multiples on a 100sq or multiplication grid, using the multiples on a number line and filling in the blanks of number grids.

This week, we’ve even added singing songs to our repertoire of learning tables! Check out these songs at home to help support your learning of tables! There’s loads of these kind of songs around – maybe you could have them playing at home or in the car when you next take a journey- everyone loves a sing-a-long!

This week’s message (Friday 10 March 2023)

St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe. We want to keep getting better and better and a key part of this is to hear your views…

We wouldn’t want our son to attend any other school now! The staff are so nurturing and show great care/interest in my child which reflects in his love of school.

That’s one of the comments from a recent survey of Reception parents – thank you to the 11 parents who took the time to let us know their views. We’ll spend some time now reviewing what was said and seeing if we can act on some of the points raised.

We need your help again – this time for all parents and carers to let us know about class trips.

We’re currently reviewing our curriculum plans. We’re keen to put a long-term plan in place for class trips. Class trips are a highlight for children:

  • they’re a chance to get out and about, making learning more real or practical
  • after the trip, children enjoy reviewing and remembering what they did
  • the writing done after the trip is often really rich in terms of description
  • they’re a memorable, exciting change from the typical day

The downside of trips is the expense – we’re very aware that trips aren’t cheap (often due to transport costs). We ask you to make a voluntary contribution to cover the cost, but even then, trips can be expensive for those who contribute and for school. Whilst the contributions are voluntary, we can’t go ahead with a planned trip if we don’t receive enough contributions.

We want to plan a schedule of trips from Reception to Year 6. This is to make sure we plan trips better, so we can closely match the trips with the learning that’s happening in school and to make sure that teachers are clear on our expectations (so that trips are spread out across the years).

To help us, we’d be very grateful if you spend just five minutes completing this short survey.

In the Summer term, look out for the annual survey for all parents and carers, too.

We’ll end this week’s message with another great comment from a Reception parent…

The learning environment in the Reception class is just lovely, and it is obvious through my son’s progress that the children are spent a lot of time with and a lot of thought goes into each child’s individual learning.