World Book Day in Year 2
We had a fantastic World Book Day today and loved seeing all the different outfits and the children looked amazing.
In class we read How to be a Lion by Ed Vere and explored Leonard’s characteristics, thinking about what makes him such a unique character. We also took part in a whole-school story where each class wrote a page. Our class had the exciting job of writing the final page and deciding how the story would end.
In the afternoon, we enjoyed some quiet reading time with the Year 3s while having a hot chocolate and a biscuit, which was a lovely way to finish the day.
World Book Day!
Year 3 had a fantastic time celebrating World Book Day this year. Everyone came to school dressed up as their favourite book character and it was brilliant to see so many creative costumes. More importantly, everyone got involved in the activities and shared their love of reading.
This year our class book was How to Be a Lion by Ed Vere. The story explores important themes about identity and reminds us that there isn’t just one way to be something. Even though we might belong to the same group, we can all still be different in our own ways.
After reading the book, we had a fun discussion about what it means to ‘be a Year 3.’ We came up with some ideas together- like supporting Leeds United because it’s our local football team and liking the colours blue, purple and yellow because they are our school colours. Not everyone agreed with all of these! That helped us realise something important: we might all be the same in some ways e.g. we are Year 3, we are 7/8 years old and we live in England, but we are also all different e.g. we have different heights, backgrounds, religions and favourite subjects and interests.
Inspired by the story, we designed our own lions. At first they all looked the same, but when you looked closely at their manes, they were all unique. Each mane was filled with different colours and words that described who we are as individuals.
To finish our wonderful World Book Day, we visited Year 2 and shared some stories with them. Then we ended the day with a cosy hot chocolate while enjoying some more reading together.
What a brilliant day celebrating books, creativity and what makes each of us unique!
World Book Day
We have had a wonderful day celebrating all things books and reading. We have read the book How to be a Lion by Ed Vere and completed some activities linked to the book.
https://anyflip.com/iege/xdzw/basic
Some children have been really creative in making and designing their own lion that is unique to them, then surrounding it with words that best describe them. We also had some children producing their own lion fact files (who knew that a lion was the only cat that roared?) We also really enjoyed and had lots of laughs writing the next part of our whole school story.
Finally, some of our children have brought in potatoes representing characters from a book – they are fantastic!
RE
Year 5 and 6 have been learning how to find readings in the Bible. We learnt that the Bible is made up of many different books (66 in total) and is divided into two main parts: the Old Testament (stories from before Jesus was born) and the New Testament (the life of Jesus and the early church).
We used the contents page at the front (Old Testament) or the end (New Testament) of the Bible to find the page for that specific book. Then, to find a certain section of that book we use the chapters (big numbers) and verses (small numbers).
I was very impressed with how quickly children learnt this new skill.
Help at home – why not have a practice at home? Can your child remember how to find various Bible readings.
Cross Country Finals!
On Tuesday, two of our Key Stage 2 children represented Leeds at the West Yorkshire cross country final at Temple Newsam in the glorious sunshine.
We are very proud of our runners who raced in tough, competitive conditions, with the best runners from across West Yorkshire. They both put in 100% effort and were a great support for each other. The children should feel proud of competing at this level.
Our two runners managed to finish in 56th (out of 141) and 22nd place (out of 151) – a fantastic achievement for both.
Thank you to parents who helped with transport and supported at the event.
Reception parent/carer survey
If you’re a parent of a child in Reception, please complete this short survey.
At St James’ Primary, we’re always trying to keep getting better and better. Your views help us to do that. The survey will only take a few minutes to complete and you’ve got until Wednesday 18 March to complete. (If you’d like us to follow-up any of your responses with you, we can only do this if you leave your name.)
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.
Topic – Computing
Year 5 began our new topic last week – computing. We started by looking at our new vocabulary and talking about how confident we felt about each word. We then began to learn about search engines and how they work. The children were introduced to the idea that search engines use web crawlers to locate webpages with relevant information on. They then store these in an index, which is a huge database. When you search something online, it searches the index for relevant webpages and an algorithm ranks them in order of relevance. Who knew all this went on in the background when you quickly search on the internet for something?! We were surprised to hear this long process happens in less than 1.2 seconds (from pressing ‘enter’ to seeing the results)!
Here is the vocabulary we are using this term.
Help at home:
Can you help your child learn the vocabulary? Maybe play a game of Pictionary.
Reading: Oracy (Railway Carriage)
In reading this week, the children are learning about, and performing, the poem ‘Railway Carriage’ by Robert Louis Stevenson written in 1885.
We recapped our oracy targets from this year and identified which ones would be relevant when performing a poem aloud to peers.
Help at home: Can your child learn this poem off by heart?
Word Book Day
We’re very excited to be celebrating World Book Day on Thursday in school!
If your child would like to, they can come to school dressed as their favourite book character or in something book-related. Please don’t feel any pressure to go out and buy a costume.
Throughout the day, we’ll be taking part in a range of challenges inspired by different books. One of our creative activities will be making a milk bottle Elmer. To help with this activity, we would really appreciate it if you could send your child in with an empty milk bottle (rinsed out, please!).
Love of Reading Stay & Learn
We also have a love of reading stay and learn in class on Thursday 9.00am-9.30am, you are more than welcome to join us for this session. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to watch one of our daily Poetry Basket sessions and share and enjoy lots of stories with your child.
We look forward to celebrating our love of books together!
Reading – Class Novel
To say we are enjoying our new class novel, The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell, is an understatement!
This half term we are trying a new way of reading our class novel. As we listen to the book being read, we are documenting (through words or pictures) what we learn about the characters and the details of the plot.
I hope you enjoy sharing the next chapter of the book together this weekend (photocopies provided with homework sheets.) Please let me know if this is something you enjoy doing and we can make it a regular thing!
Reviews for Wolf Wilder from some highly respected authors
A gorgeous flight of imagination set in a snowy Russian fantasy world, this has both the beauty and the fierce, funny and uncompromising storytelling style that sets Katherine Rundell’s books apart. The Wolf Wilder is a Fabergé egg of a novel – rich, bright and perfect ― Robin Stevens
A triumph! Exciting, moving, highly original, fierce, completely convincing ― Philip Pullman
The Wolf Wilder has everything: it’s a truly compelling read; it’s beautifully written; it’s totally original and yet has the familiar feel of an established classic ― Jacqueline Wilson
Help at home: Watch the ‘Introduction to the Wolf Wilder’ video on Authorfy https://authorfy.com/masterclasses/katherinerundell/ From our reading this week, can your child remember the names of the wolves that refuse to be re-wilded? From what they have read so far, do they agree or disagree with the reviews from Stevens, Pullman and Wilson?