Author: Mrs Flynn

Reception Baseline Assessment

Over the next six weeks, your child will be taking part in the Reception Baseline Assessment (sometimes called the RBA). It’s a short task-based assessment of your child’s early literacy, communication and maths skills. This year, it’s slightly different as your child will use an iPad to complete the questions. (It’s worth noting it’s not an assessment on how well your child can use an iPad.)
The data is collected by the Department for Education and used when your child is in Year 6, to measure the progress of the year group – not individual children. There’s no pass mark or score.
In school, we don’t use this assessment or even have access to the data. Instead, we do our own teacher assessments as we get to know where your child is at in their learning. Our focus this half term is to make sure your child settles into school life well – it’s likely your child won’t even realise they’re doing an assessment.

Packed Lunches

Does your child have a packed lunch at school? If so, please download our Guide to Healthy Packed Lunches.

Did you know that popcorn is a choking hazard for children under 5? Lot’s of people don’t! The Food Standards Agency. has published the following advice on how to prepare food safely for your young child.

Reception to Year 1 information meeting

As the weather becomes brighter and we near the end of the academic year you may be thinking about your child’s next steps as they journey into Year 1. Moving to Year 1 is perhaps a less significant change for children, and that’s because we’re a happy and healthy place to learn where we all know each other.

A zoom meeting for parent’s starts our transition process, here you will meet the Key Stage 1 staff and find out about the Year 1 curriculum.

The zoom meeting is on Monday 30 June at 6pm please follow the link that will be emailed to you.

The next step is for your child to spend some time in the Year 1 classrooms. They’ll meet the teachers and join in with the learning, they’ll get a taste of what it’s like to be in Year 1. The whole-school transition, later in July, completes the process, by spending a morning with their new class teacher.

This is a really exciting time of year, moving on and taking those next steps whilst continuing to strengthen the effective learning behaviours they have established in Reception.

Reception parent/carer survey

At St James’ Primary School, we’re always keen to hear your views. We hope that you let us know any questions, comments and concerns (as well as causes for celebration!) whenever these crop up, but we like to gather the views more generally so we can keep reviewing and improving what we do.

This short survey is just for you to think about your child’s experiences in our Reception class. (There’s another annual survey at the end of the year for all parents/carers.) It’ll only take a few minutes or so. You’ve plenty of time to do this – the deadline is Friday 28 February 2025.

We can’t guarantee to meet the needs and wants of every parent / carer, but we do assure you that we consider all the points raised and aim to act on specific points that are raised by many, or a useful idea raised by just a few.

Previously, based on your feedback, for example, we alternated the days Stay and Learns were held – to give all parents an opportunity to attend.

Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey. We’re looking forward to reading your views.

Reading: It’s so important!

We hope that you’re enjoying reading your child’s library book with them. We call this a ‘love of reading’ book – to do just that, encourage a love of reading for your child! Reading to and with your child can have a huge positive impact on your child’s education.

This research is a powerful message of the impact you can have when reading to/with your child:

At school, your child reads a physical book four times a week – with a focus on teaching phonics skills. This is then sent home as an eBook. The purpose of the eBook at home is to celebrate your child’s success (in phonics skills). Your child should be able to read most of this book confidently and really feel like a reader.

We’ve chosen to use eBooks at home for many benefits. Allocating eBooks frees up about two hours of teacher or TA time changing books – now spent teaching reading!

Here’s some information on how to access eBooks but if you’re having any problems please speak to your child’s class teacher.

Happy reading!

BIG thought – a class debate

Today, in RE year 1 and 2 had a fantastic debate. Before we started we talked about respecting other peoples opinions and that it is okay to disagree with others.

I then gave the children the big thought for the day.

“Only Christians can celebrate Christmas”

The children had some fantastic opinions for and against this statement! We are very proud of how each child respected their friends opinions whilst discussing the ‘big talk’. Some children even changed their mind after listening to their friends views and opinions!

Below are some of the children’s fantastic opinions.

“Only Christians can celebrate Christmas because they go to church on Christmas day.”

“Anybody can go to church, even if they believe something else. My friend is a Muslim and she came to church with  me.”

“Other religions can celebrate it too. They can learn about how Jesus was born.”

“Anyone can celebrate Christmas. We need to include everyone otherwise it’s not fair.”

“You can celebrate Christmas because it’s for Jesus’ birthday – anyone can celebrate a birthday.”

“I agree because it’s Christians celebrating Jesus’ birthday.”

“It’s about everyone and celebrating with friends and family – it’s not just about presents.”

“I’ve changed my mind a little bit. Other people can celebrate because that’s kind and including other people.”