Author: Mr Roundtree

This week’s message (Friday 16 July 2021)

This week’s message is in two parts: next week (England moves to step 4 of restrictions easing on Monday), and next school year. We’ve tried to keep the messages simple, using a Q&A style…

Next week

Will you be completely back to normal?

No. With one more week left in school, the Leeds Health and Safety team has advised that we should continue with the Covid measures we’ve in place. This means we’ll continue with the staggered school day and bubbles.

If there’s a positive case, will you burst a bubble?

No. The advice we received yesterday sets out what happens. If a child tests positive, they (or parents) will be contacted directly by Test and Trace. This is so that you can tell the tracers who close contacts are. (Good luck with finding out from your child the names of people who were within two metres for a period of 15 minutes!)

What about a bubble that burst before Monday?

They must complete the full ten day isolation period.

What if someone has symptoms?

They should stay at home and book a PCR test. If your child has any symptoms – or just doesn’t seem their usual selves – please keep them at home until you have the results of a PCR test.

There’s lots of confusion about what’s happening next week, and aspects of ‘Freedom Day’ don’t seem to make sense for people. We’ve always followed Leeds and national advice, and we’ll continue to do that for the last week of term. Thank you for continuing to do so, too.

Next year

Will you have a return to the normal start and end times?

Yes. The normal times are 8.50am start and 3.15pm finish. Although the staggered school day has had benefits, there are lots of reasons we won’t continue this. These include:

  • it’s very hard to coordinate for families with more than one child
  • we want children to have the opportunity to play together with friends from other classes – having staggered times for the school day but fixed times for breaks would mean very long or very short sessions rather than the carefully planned school day we normally enjoy
  • it’s hard to track if all pupils are arriving on time

One of the benefits has been a reduction in traffic congestion. We know this is a hassle, but – like other schools – our advice would always be to try to walk, cycle, scoot to school. If you have to drive, park further away and walk the last bit of the journey.

What about Bagel Bar?

Sadly, we won’t be able to continue with Bagel Bar next year. This is due to a lack of funding.

Will you continue to allow children to wear PE kit on PE days?

Yes. We’re going to trial this for another year – it saves time and reduces lost property. You’ve told us you prefer it, too. Please make sure your child’s PE kit follows the uniform policy.

Yesterday was St Swithin’s Day. If we really are due to enjoy 40 rain-free days, then this weekend should be the first of a few good ones. Enjoy.

Home learning

We are half way through our self-isolating and I know that some of you have been working really hard. Many people have been doing the on-line lessons as well as the zoom lessons with me. If you have difficulty getting onto the zooms, you can ring school and ask for some paper copies to keep you going.

In fluency, we used our vocabulary from the text to put into our own sentences. (Even Mrs Rowley joined in!) Here are a few of them:

Edward: Looking sterner than an angry tiger, the lady yelled at the poor boy.

Caleb: I felt awkward when I addressed the queen.

Ellie: She looked sterner than my new cat with only one bit of dried food.

Mrs Rowley: Mrs Welsby is much sterner than Mrs Rowley!

Siana: I fell over so sharply that I almost didn’t recover. My mum was sterner than ever because I’d ruined my new jeans.

Willow: Boris Johnson addressed us with the awkward news about Covid.

Emilija: My mum was really stern when my rabbit chewed through the TV wires.

 

We’ve been learning about fractions in Maths and Ellie has sent in a healthy lifestyle poster to remind us to keep up our daily exercise. Some of the class are completing regular 5 minute workouts with  Joe Wicks   and others have been running their daily mile round their garden.

Don’t forget to email in pictures of your fabulous work! It keeps Mrs Rowley, Mrs Walton and me smiling through self-isolation!

Home learning:

Hello Year 3 and 4. Well done to all of you that managed to log into the live zoom lessons and to all of you that have been working hard at home. Every time you are on live lessons with me, I will add a dojo – some people have earned 3 today!

We looked at number stories linked to the  4x table. Here are two that Ellie sent in:

There were 7 cages and 4 cats went into each cage. How many cats were there altogether? 7 x 4 = 28. There were 28 cats altogether.

There were 7 pans. There were 4 pancakes in each pan. How many pancakes were there altogether? 7 x 4 = 28. There were 28 pancakes altogether.

In reading fluency, we looked at this week’s key vocabulary and had a go at using the words in our own sentences. I thought we’d share them, just like we usually do in school.

Jack: I recovered after a sharp turn.

Ellie: I recovered from stepping on something sharp.

Siana: I skidded very sharply and fell over, but soon I recovered.

Don’t forget to join us in the morning and to share your hard work with us!

This week’s message (Friday 09 July 2021)

Next week is our Being Healthy themed week. It’s all about being healthy, both physically and emotionally. This week’s message is all about the themed week…

Due to the current restrictions, we’re limited to the events and visitors we can host but we’ve still got many activities planned for our children to enjoy. The learning forms part of our Living and Learning curriculum to ensure our pupils are happy and healthy.

Pupils are invited to come in PE kit (in line with our uniform policy) every day of the themed week. Please make sure the PE kit is in line with our Uniform Policy. (By the way, do check out the link: you’ll notice we’re going to continue to allow children to wear their kit on PE days for 2021-22 as a long-term trial – this decision is based on your feedback.)

Sports day events will take place during the themed week. This year, we’re inviting one adult per child to the event to restrict the spread of the virus. Your child will take part in competitive events, but within bubbles, so each class will be competing at different times throughout the day:

  • Y3/4: 9.15-10.15am
  • Foundation: 10.30-11.30am
  • Y1/2: 1.15-2.15pm
  • Y5/6: 2.15-3.15pm

Over the last few months, some classes have been taking part in the Skipping into Summer project to develop and improve skipping skills. We’ll be having a celebration day at the end of the themed week for our children to share these skills.

This themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active ways to travel to school.  We’ll be encouraging children to use a sustainable method of transport, maybe parking further away from school, scooting, biking or walking to school.

We’d love to hear about your child’s physical activity achievements outside of school so please ask your child to share these with us so we can celebrate their achievements and efforts.

We always like to hear the children’s views about being healthy so this week’s homework is to complete the online annual health questionnaire.

Getting enough sleep helps us all to feel happy and healthy. Welcome to Sweet Dreams is an audio play which follows the interstellar adventures of Ivy and her toy rabbit, Bun Bun. Check out the podcasts for families and for children, too – they’re presented by ex-Blue Peter presenter, Zoe Salmon, who introduces leading sleep experts and guests all talking about how to get a great night’s sleep. There’s also an interactive game.

Finally, to support this learning at home, you might want to take a look at the following health resources…

We hope your child enjoys and achieves in our Being Healthy themed week.

Conquering fears at Castle Howard

Today, Year 3 and 4 visited Castle Howard for our end-of-year trip. It was amazing to see the children in a different environment. Different personalities shone through from each of the children. We saw quieter children showing confident and brave personalities. So many children (and staff) took on new challenges, children (and staff) were trying new activities and the whole class showed such friendship and love as they cheered each other on. The children showed great care towards each other and towards other children (often younger) who were enjoying the different areas of Castle Howard.

 

Here is a video with snippets of our day. See if you can spot the member of staff conquering their fear to cross the wobbly bridge – helped over by a pupil, cheered on by the class!

Living and Learning: I can say something good about myself

Our Living and Learning statement last week was about saying something positive about ourselves. This is something that many of us find hard to do. So Y3/4 have been working really hard at recognising our strengths and we have realised that there are LOTS of good things that we can say about ourselves.

Why not have a chat at home about all the things your child is good at? It’s great for our mental health!

This week’s message (Friday 02 July 2021)

Salve!

This week’s message begins with the Latin word for ‘hello’, because we’ve some news about a change to our curriculum next year…

From September, children in Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6) will learn Latin as the Foreign Language part of the National Curriculum. This might come as a bit of a surprise to some of you, with many wondering why switch to an ancient language. Here, we present three reasons, but there are plenty of others.

Learning some Latin will support learning other languages in the future. About 80% of words in Romance languages such as French, Spanish and Italian come from Latin. The Latin for ‘bread‘ is ‘panem‘. Learning this means your child should more easily recognise and remember the word for bread in French (pain), Spanish (pan) or Italian (pane).

Linked to this is what your child will learn when they move to secondary school. In Year 7, your child might learn French, or Spanish, or German… in most cases, there won’t be much choice, and different secondary schools offer different languages for Year 7 students. Latin provides a really useful basis to learn other languages. (And most secondary schools start from scratch anyway, so Latin will be a good grounding.)

A third reason is that learning some Latin will help to enhance your child’s understanding in English, too. About two thirds of English words are derived from Latin, so your child will be more confident when they come across a new word in English if they can recognise parts of it. Here’s an example. The Latin word for ‘father’ is ‘pater‘, which gives us lots of English words, such as paternal, patronise and patriarchy. ‘Mother’ is ‘mater‘ – what words derive from ‘mater‘?

We’ve spoken to a few parents about this already, and the reaction has been really positive. If you’d like to find out more, we’re hosting a live Zoom discussion next week: 6pm on Thursday 08 July (we’ve deliberately avoided Wednesday in anticipation of some important event that night – it’s coming home…!). If you’d like to attend, please contact stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org

Finally this week, a big thank you to all of you who completed this year’s annual survey. We’ll spend some time over the next few weeks looking at the results, and we’ll update you later in the year.

Quia nunc vale!