Class News

Welcome

Welcome to Nursery!

My name is Mrs Boulton and I’ll be teaching the Nursery class this year. This week, Mrs Cairnes and I have been settling the children into their daily routines and have also spent a lot of time getting to know them. We have shared our favourite stories and songs. The children have been busy learning in all the areas of provision and we look forward to a very happy year ahead.

If you would like to to ask any questions, please speak to a member of staff at the gate or contact us using the following email address:
stjamesnursery@spherefederation.org

What does my child need to bring:

•  water bottle – NAMED
• change of clothes in a small bag – NAMED
• waterproof coat – NAMED
• wellies – NAMED

Living and Learning: The 8Rs

In recent weeks, Mrs Bald has been delivering our Living and Learning sessions  and these have focussed on our 8Rs for learning. These are eight key principals that promote good learning behaviour. Ask your child how many of the 8Rs they can remember (hint).

The children have been taking part in some activities about the 8Rs. During a Diamond 9 activity the class had to work together to decide which of the Rs they thought was the most important and which was the least.

There were some very interesting debates! Is remembering more important than being resourceful? Should you show respect more than resilience?

For their next lesson, the children thought about how they use the 8Rs to help them with their learning.

We will be referring to the 8Rs across the whole of the school year.

Science – sorting different states of matter

In Science this half term,  we are learning about different states of matter. We used a lot of scientific reasoning to decide whether something is a solid, a liquid or a gas. We have some great chemists!

Diary Writing

In our writing lessons, we’ve been learning about all the things that make a great diary entry-Leah’s writing today is an awesome example of WAGOLL (what a good one looks like!)

You’ll find all sorts of technical stuff-fronted adverbials, fab adjectives, emotive language, capitals all in the right places as well as being in the first person.

Nice one, Leah! Keep up the hard work! 👍😁⭐️

Postcards

The first postcards of the year are written and stamped and ready to go in the post box.

Throughout the year, your child might achieve something significant, continue to show a fantastic learning attitude or just generally be an all round great member of our class – for these reasons (and many others, I’m sure!) a postcard will be written and sent to their home address.

I’ve written six so far… could there be one arriving through your letterbox?

Livin’ on a Prayer!

Today’s music lesson was EPIC! Year 5 & 6 learned one of the classics-Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin on a Prayer’.
I was totally surprised at what a tuneful bunch they are and their sensational efforts at the well known key change were memorable-I especially loved their signature ‘power grab’ at the end..!

I can’t wait to hear more as for the rest of this half term, we’ll be focussing on singing.
Awesome effort by all.

Early Reading

Peer mediator application

We are looking for Year 5 and 6 pupils who believe they would make a good peer mediator to help make St James’ C of E Primary School a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe, particularly during playtimes. The whole class have been given an application form and if they are interested in applying they need to complete the form by Friday 24 September.

This week’s bible story

Zacchaeus is friends with Jesus: Luke 19: 1-10

In today’s story, we hear about a man called Zacchaeus. He had always been a loner. He had never had as much as one friend. Not surprising, really. He had lived most of his life as a cheat. It was easy. Just demand more money. That was the beauty of his job as a tax collector. People were a bit afraid of tax collectors. You would not want to get on the wrong side of a tax collector, especially one like Zacchaeus.

He was a small man, was Zacchaeus. Perhaps he was bullied or laughed at. Sometimes people get picked on by others – the tall ones, perhaps, or the short ones, or ones with straight hair, or ones with curly hair, or ones with the wrong clothes. People are certainly not born cheats.

Or perhaps Zacchaeus just thought that money could bring him happiness, or friends. Or maybe he was just a rogue!

One day Zacchaeus was out and about in the streets of Jericho. He heard people talking about Jesus. All excited, they were, that Jesus was going to be passing through their town that day. Read the story to find out what happened to Zacchaeus.

Reflection:
Zacchaeus was a man with a hard heart and no friends. We don’t know why, but Jesus cared for Zacchaeus. Jesus also believed that Zacchaeus had some good in him, if only he could be persuaded to change his ways. Zacchaeus mattered to Jesus, and Jesus’ friendship was able to change how Zacchaeus acted. Think about yourself and your friends. Are there any ways in which you can treat people that might help them to become friends?

Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you that you know us and that you care for us.
Help us to be kind and generous to other people,
like Zacchaeus after he met Jesus.
Amen.

Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning

During our Living and Learning lesson this week, we looked at the 8Rs for learning. The children had some great ideas of how they show the 8Rs in school and we recorded some for our Living and Learning classroom display.

Lily said “We show we are ready by coming in from break time and sitting smartly on the carpet”.

Chloe said “We reflect by thinking about something we have done before”.

Christian said “We take risks by putting our hand up and having a guess”.

These are our 8Rs for learning:

Risk taking

Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.

Responsibility

Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!

Responding

This could be responding to their teacher in class or responding to feedback in their learning.

Ready

Make sure your child is at school on time for a prompt start.
Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!

Resourceful

Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.

Resilience

Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.

Remember

Make sure they have time to learn spellings and times tables – a little practice daily is best.
Play memory games:

Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!

Reflect

Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today.