Fun in the sun!

Last Friday, ZS’s Dad came to help us spruce up our outdoor planters.

In RE, we talked people who are special to us and why some people are particularly special to us.
In Literacy, we used a map to locate seaside towns. We looked at some photographs of Scarborough and talked about the things we might see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds.

FH – The seaside town has a lighthouse but Leeds doesn’t.
OR – We don’t have boats but the seaside does. We have boats to travel on the sea.
DA – The seaside has little beach huts.
LS – The beach might have jellyfish.
LW- The beach has water but Wetherby and Leeds don’t have water.

The glorious weather has enabled us to spend lots of time learning outside. Please continue to make sure you apply sun lotion to your child before school. This stops us from missing any learning time. Thank you to everyone that has done that this week.
Click here to watch us learning outside.
Home-Link Challenge

This week’s message (Friday 17 June 2022)

To kick off this week, do check out this exciting event happening in Leeds: Little Amal has travelled over 8,000km and is in Leeds on Monday evening.

This week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who leads on Science and foundation subjects across Sphere Federation…

What do we mean by topics?

Topics are the vehicle for delivering much of the learning in the foundation subjects (eg history, art, geography…). Each half-termly topic has a driving subject – the main focus for teaching pupils the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. The driver changes with each topic to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum.

Although the learning in each topic will be provided by the driving subject, there are opportunities for enrichment through other subjects. For example, learning in an art topic may be enriched by geography – learning about where an artist was born and lived.

Read more about the intent, implementation and impact of our topics.

What is this half-term’s topic?

Design and Technology is the driving subject for this half-term and it’s a great topic to finish the year! The focus for all classes this year is textiles (next year, it’s construction), so your child will be busy designing and making products using fabric.

A key aspect of the Design and Technology curriculum is the understanding that products don’t just get made. Instead, they go through a design process that includes three key elements: evaluate, design and make. Think of this process as a cycle. For example, Sphere Motors want to create a new family car. Before the car is made, they need to evaluate existing products and talk to customers so that they’re clear about what the new car needs to have. They will then design the car and evaluate those designs. They may make a prototype of the car to help them evaluate the designs. Next, they’ll decide on a final design that will go into production and get made. This finished product will be evaluated and the whole process starts again.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skills and vocabulary that they’ll learn, use and apply across the topic. See page 17 and 18 of our Curriculum Statement.

Years 1 and 2

The product the children will be designing, making and evaluating is a hand puppet. They’ll start by learning about the design process before looking at and evaluating existing hand puppet products. They’ll then learn to use an over stitch and practise threading needles and tying knots. Following this, they’ll be introduced to all the materials they can use to create their puppet. Once they’re familiar with the materials, they’ll design their puppet. Next, it’s on to the making stage. They’ve already honed their sewing skills so they should be confident making and then decorating their puppets according to their designs. Finally, it’s evaluation time: children will compare their designs to their finished products. They’ll reflect on successes and things they’d do differently next time.

Years 3 and 4

The product the children will be designing, making and evaluating is a pouch. The function of this pouch is entirely up to them. It could be used to store some pens, trading cards, a shell collection. Children can be as creative as they like – as long as the pouch can be made using a 23cm² piece of felt!

Before they begin to design their pouch, they’ll learn about a famous designer and how they became a designer. They’ll also learn some important skills that a designer needs. Children will then evaluate existing pouches, with a focus on fastenings, and will then design their pouch. They’ll practise their sewing skills, becoming proficient using a running stitch. They’ll then begin to make their pouches. First, they’ll create a template which they’ll use to cut out the pieces. Next, they’ll join the pieces using their running stitch and create a fastening for their pouch. Finally, they’ll evaluate their designs by comparing them to their designs, testing whether they’re fit for purpose and reflecting on their successes and areas to improve.

Years 5 and 6

The product the children will be designing, making and evaluating is a cushion. Before they get stuck into their cushion, they’ll learn about some designers who changed the world: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, George Stephenson, Lewis Latimer and Jony Ive. They’ll learn about their creations and their impact and look for things that link the designers. Following this, children will learn about the importance of design criteria when designing a product. After this, they’ll be practising their sewing skills and learn how to sew using a backstitch. Next, they’ll evaluate existing cushions. They’ll then decide on the specific design criteria for their cushions and create their designs using an annotated sketch, detailing the dimensions of their product. They’ll learn about the importance of using sustainable materials when researching the filling used for their cushion (the plan is to use old, unwanted pieces of fabric to stuff the cushions rather than Polyfill so please have a look through your wardrobe and keep hold of any old t-shirts or other clothes as we’ll need them later in the half-term).

Children will use a template to cut out the shapes, use a backstitch to add decoration to their cushion before finally sewing the pieces together and stuffing them. The final stage is to evaluate the designs against the design criteria.

Help at home

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. The class news page of the school website is a good place to go to find out more about what the children are doing.

The school library and local libraries will have some books about Design and Technology which your child will be able to borrow and develop both their reading skills and design knowledge.

Finally, there are a lot of programmes on CBBC and CBeebies with a Design and Technology focus:

• Bitz and Bob
• Grace’s Amazing Machines
• Junk Rescue
• Maddie’s Do You Know?
• The Dengineers

17 June 2022

Year 1: hunting   hunted    hunter   buzzing   buzzed   buzzer

Year 2: camel    tunnel   squirrel   travel   towel   tinsel   could   would   looked   people

17 June 2022

This week, we have been learning about words that contain prefix roots such as photo, para and tele. Please learn them for a test on Thursday 23rd June

• redesign
• chronology
• structure
• dictionary
• signalling
• designation
• assignment
• geographically
• automatic

17 June 2022

We’re now a couple of weeks into our final topic of the school year, Design and Technology.

Thinking about the new topic vocabulary, I can begin to use these words at home.

Years 1 and 2:

• design process: the steps that need to happen for something to go from an idea to a finished product
• to plan: to think about and decide how you’re going to do something
• to evaluate: to decide, after careful consideration, how good or bad something is

• felt: a kind of cloth made from wool
• needle: a thin piece of metal or plastic with a point at one end and a hole or eye for thread in the other, used in sewing
• thread: a long, thin strand of cotton used in sewing or weaving

• over stitch / whip stitch: a stitch that circles the edge of a piece of fabric

Years 3 and 4:

• product: something that is designed and made
• function: the purpose of something
• design brief: a description of what a new product should do
• design criteria: the precise features a product must have to be successful
• annotated sketch: a detailed sketch labelled with notes (eg dimensions, materials)

• fabric: cloth or other material produced by weaving or knitting fibres
• binka: a firm piece of fabric with holes in to help beginners to sew and embroider
• over stitch: a stitch that circles the edge of a piece of fabric
• running stitch: a line of small even stitches

• template: a tool used to mark out shapes repeatedly

Years 5 and 6:

• design criteria: the precise features a product must have in order to be successful
• innovative: an adjective to describe new or original ideas
• sustainable material: a material is sustainable if it comes from renewable sources and it does not damage the environment
• dimension: a measurement of something in a particular direction (eg height, length, width)
• aesthetic: something about the appearance (eg something can be aesthetically pleasing)
• running stitch: of a line of small even stitches
• back stitch:  a method of sewing with overlapping stitches to form a solid line of stitching
• applique: pieces of fabric sewn or stuck on to a larger piece to form a picture or pattern
• pattern: a repeated decorative design

When having your discussions at home, you could start by explaining the end goal of this topic. What product are you designing and then making? What materials and skills will be required? Refer to the definitions provided when you’re explaining new vocabulary Challenge yourself to see if you can explain them in your own words.

17 June 2022

This week, we would like the children to learn words that have the consonants s and c together. When these words are pronounced the c sounds like an s.

• science
• ascend
• descent
• scene
• scissors
• scented
• crescent
• scenery
• muscle
• fascinate

A SIAMS inspection

Today in school, we were happy to welcome an inspector for SIAMS – this is the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools. We were last inspected in 2015 – read more about this inspection here.

This was an opportunity to demonstrate all the happy and healthy things we do here at St James’ – happy and healthy learning, happy and healthy playing, happy and healthy achieving and believing.

Thank you to the parents who spoke with the inspector first thing today.

And thank you to all of you for continuing to support our school.

We’ll be able to let you know the outcome of the inspection, and publish a copy of the report, by the end of the school year.

Living and Learning: I recognise that friends and family are important

What makes a family?

As a class we thought about our own family and shared our experiences and came up with a definition to answer the question.

A family is a group of people who love each other, are honest with each other and have a good friendship.

Who is in a family?

We talked about how families are all different and made up of lots of different people such as mum, dad, step-mum, step-dad, sisters, brothers, step siblings, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins and pets.

We read the story about Esma and the time she spends with her grandpa. After, we talked about what they do together and how her grandad shows love and care for Esma.

“He makes her food.”

“He plays games with her.”

“He helps her when she needs it.”

We spoke about other ways he can show he loves and cares for her.

“He can give her hugs.”

“He can read her a story.”

“He can take care of her if she isn’t feeling well.”

Showing we care

Finally, we spoke about how we can show we care to family we live with and to family that live far away.

Family we live with:

“We can help by keeping our toys tidy.”

“Give them a hug.”

“Draw them a picture.”

Family that live further away:

“We can write them a card and draw them a picture.”

“We can give them a phone call.”

Lots of learning

It’s been great to be back at nursery this week. Our new theme is: ‘On the move’ and we’ve been thinking about different types of transport. Some of the children have been making cars and trains from different shaped blocks and bricks and we’ve also had some transport-related number games in our areas of provision both inside and outside. As the last couple of days have been very summery, we’ve taken advantage of the warm weather and have been outside using water to help us learn about letter and number formation and 2D shapes. The children have been making chalked letters and numbers ‘disappear’ by spraying them and painting over them with water. This is an activity you could try at home as it’s good for the development of gross and fine-motor skills. (*For safety reasons, please remember not to re-use bottles which have previously contained cleaning products or chemicals. Cheap spray bottles, which are a different shape and colour to those which contain cleaning products, can be purchased from the gardening section of a well-known budget retailer.)

In phonics, we’ve been segmenting one syllable words like ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ to help us recognise the individual sounds within them. We’ve also been continuing to identify the initial sound in words and have been grouping the sounds together. In our maths sessions, we’ve been talking about ‘our day’ and what we do between getting up and going to bed each day.

Our beanstalks are getting taller (almost as tall as the children) and the beans will be ready to pick and sample soon, as will our coriander. Hopefully, the warm weather will continue next week and we’ll be able to spend lots of time learning outside. With this in mind, please remember to send your child to school with a named hat and a named water bottle.

spellings w/c 13.06.2022

This weeks spellings are focusing on alternative graphemes for the “n” and “g” sounds.

knot

knee

knight

gnaw

knock

gnome

know

knife

sign