Living and Learning – I use the 8 R’s to help me learn.
Years 5 and 6 have had a fantastic second week back at school. Pupils’ behaviour and general attitude to learning has been brilliant – I can already see children making serious improvements across many subjects!
On Monday, we had our first official living and learning ‘circle time’. In this session, we get and give the opportunity for all pupils to have a voice and to listen to others. For this session, our focus was using resilience in our lives, which suits with our Christian value this half-term (perseverance), too.
All pupils responded really well and provided advice for others to overcome and succeed in different scenarios. I have since seen pupils using resilience, and many more of our 8 R’s, in school time.
Help at home:
Have conversations with your child on things they may be finding tricky in and out of school. See if you, or they, can come up with some solutions to tackle this issue by using our 8 R’s.
Pupils have also had their first set of homework sent home. Please complete the following with your child:
- times tables practice
- spelling practise (choose around 8 words per week)
- arithmetic practice (use the questions your child wasn’t sure of on their tests, which they should bring home
- read regularly with your child and sign their reading record
A bright start!
Year 3 and Year 4 have settled back into school really well and they have made Miss Gilliland and me (Mr Kilner) feel very welcome in our new roles. We’ve focussed on being ready for learning and establishing our classroom routines and the children have responded well. I’m looking forward to a super year with them all.
A few notices to make you aware of…
Spelling – Spelling has changed slightly on the homework sheets. There’s no longer a specific list of spellings to learn. Instead, there’s a list of 40 spellings that children need to learn within the first half-term. On a Friday each week, there will be a spelling test. We’ll keep track of our scores and support children with their misconceptions as soon as they may happen.
PE days – Our PE days are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays, Year 4 will need to remember their swimming kit as they go swimming at Wetherby Leisure Centre. Year 3 will have PE on this day in school. Please ensure your child comes to school in the correct PE kit for these days.
Homework books and reading records – Your child has brought home their homework book and reading record. Each week there will be homework for them to complete; there’s no need to bring this book into school unless you’d like me to read or mark something. Your child will bring home a reading book this weekend. Please encourage your child to read throughout the week and, if time permits, please try to hear them read. The reading record is for you to record their reading. Children will need to bring this into school every Friday signed by an adult. This is so that we can keep track of the amount of reading the children are doing at home and whether we can support in any way.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions!
Science
Over the next few weeks in Science we are learning about Animal needs for survival. Last week, we started by looking at mammals. We found out that a mammal is an animal with fur or hair on it’s body. We learnt that they have four basic needs for survival (air, water, shelter and food) and they are either a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore. We then grouped images of mammals, based on different categories such as: dietary requirements or whether they inhabit land or sea.
Today, we learnt about birds. A bird has feathers, wings and beak. Most birds are insectivores, meaning they eat insects. Some are also omnivores. We looked at some images of birds and then went on a bird hunt around school and recorded our finding in a tally chart.
Help at home: create a bird feeder to hang in your garden or to bring into school. What birds can you spot (use the bird spotting survey to record your findings). Ask your child what key facts they know about birds.
Geography – Where in the world am I?
We are geographers.
Over the coming weeks, the children will develop their knowledge of location when locating and identifying the four countries that make up the UK and their capital cities. They also learn which seas surround the UK.
The class will be exploring both human and physical features in their own locality using maps, photographs and fieldwork.
To begin with, we used Google Earth to explore our continent, country, city and town. The children were amazed as we zoomed into planet Earth gradually and finally arrived at our school gates.
Help at home by discussing these images with your child. Can they recall which country, city and town they live in?
Next, the children thought about the size of each locality.
The continent is very big! – Woody
Wetherby looks a lot smaller than Europe! – Daisy
Using concentric circles the class were able to compare the sizes of each location giving them a sense of scale.
Below is the geographical vocabulary that the children will be learning throughout this topic.
atlas: a collection of maps, usually in a book
• city: a large town
• capital city: a city where the government of a country is located
• compass: a tool for finding direction
• locality: an area or neighbourhood
• landmark: an object or feature of a locality that has importance and can be used to help you find your way
• physical geography: physical geography looks at the natural things in our environment
• human geography: human geography looks at changes in the environment by humans
• fieldwork: observing and collecting data in a locality
• map: a drawing of a place, usually from above
• map key: a little box on a map which explains what the
different lines and symbols on a map mean
Important days and dates/ Help at home
Important days and dates
PE – Tuesday and Friday
Spelling test – Friday
Library – Friday (books returned each Thursday)
Water bottles
These should be brought to school daily and they will be brought home every day for refreshing and cleaning.
Homework/Spellings
Whole school homework is set every Friday (along with new spellings). Homework and spellings can also be accessed from the website.
Reading
In Year 1, we will continue using e-books for our reading practice. Your child will bring home a log-in for the e-book website. Please log out of last year’s account and log in with the new account. This will ensure any new books are in the account.
Numbots
We will begin to use Numbots in Year 1. Your child has been sent home with all the necessary log in details.
What is Numbots? 
NumBots is all about every child achieving the “triple win” of understanding, recall and fluency in mental addition and subtraction, so that they move from counting to calculating. NumBots focuses on automatic recall of number facts as well as developing conceptual understanding.
Certificates will be awarded every Friday for children who complete the different stages.
Help at home
For spelling practice, reading and Numbots, little and often (10/15 minutes a day) is recommended.
Uniform
Please do check the uniform policy https://www.stjameswetherby.leeds.sch.uk/find-out/policies/ to ensure your child is wearing the correct items including for PE days. Earrings must be removed on PE days.
Finally, please do ask if there are any queries and keep checking back on class news to find out more about your child’s learning!
The adults in Year 1 are:
Mrs Freeman – Class Teacher (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday)
Miss Gledhill – Class Teacher (Thursday)
Mrs Cairnes – Teaching Assistant
Miss Rigley – Teaching Assistant
The Human Body
This half term, we have started our science learning. We are going to be finding out more about these parts of the human body .
For our first lesson we made sure we were certain what a human is. We know that we are animals just like our pets. Unlike our pets, we are humans!
We played Simon Says to hep us find parts of our body and then looked closely at out feet. After comparing our feet to our partners, we thought about if the oldest children have the longest feet.
To hep us think about this, we took a drawing of our foot and put them in order of our ages.
Welcome Back!
As we come to the end of our first week back at school, both Mr Nash and I (Mr Freeman) are super proud of each and every one of our pupils. Not only have the children come back to school calm and settled, their fantastic attitudes and willingness to learn has made our first week a great success.
We are both looking forward to a fantastic year in Year 5/6 and we know the children are, too.
A few notices to make you aware of…
Spelling – You’ll notice that the spelling has changed slightly on the homework sheets. There’s no longer a specific list spellings to learn. Instead, there are a list of spellings that the children need to learn within the first half-term. On a Friday each week, there will be a spelling test. We will keep track of our scores and support children with their misconceptions as soon as they may happen.
PE days – Our nominated PE days are on Mondays and Wednesdays. Please ensure your child comes to school in the correct PE kit for these days.
Homework books and reading records – Today, your child has been sent home with a purple homework book and a white reading record. There’s no pressure to bring the homework books back in every week, but we do need the reading records signed by an adult and shown to use every week. This is so that we can keep track of the amount of reading the children are doing at home and whether we can further support in any way.
Please feel free to contact myself, or Mr Nash, if you have any questions!
Living and learning: rules
At the start of the new school year, the children have been reminded about rules and the importance of rules in our daily life.
Before focussing on our school rules, we started by thinking about…
Why do we have rules?
What rules can you think of?
What places have rules?
Who makes the rules?
Rules tells us what to do.
We need rules so we don’t hurt each other.
Rules help us to know what is right and what is wrong.
Rules help us to be happy and healthy.
In our school we have three school rules. Three, two, one, stop is one of the most important instructions the children will hear at school.
We concluded that following our school rules will make our school a happy, healthy and SAFE place to achieve and believe.
We also agreed our Living and Learning ground rules.
Welcome back
The children have settled really well in their first couple of days in Year 2 with lots of new routines to learn and an earlier start time of 8:45am.
Important days and dates
PE – Tuesday and Friday (however, we’ll be doing Forest School on a Friday for Autumn 1 instead of PE)
Forest School – Friday (Autumn 1)
Spelling test – Friday
Library – Friday
Water bottles
These should be brought to school daily and they will be brought home every day for refreshing and cleaning.
Milk
Please contact the office if your child would like to have milk in Year 2.
Homework/Spellings
Whole school homework is set every Friday (along with new spellings). Homework and spellings can also be accessed from the website.
Reading
Your child’s e-book or free reader book will be updated on a Friday. Daily reading, whether this is their e-book/free reader book, a book from home or the library, is key to making progress in reading and to develop fluency.
Numbots
We continue to use Numbots in Year 2 (using the same login as Year 1).
For spelling practice, reading and Numbots, little and often (10/15 minutes a day) is recommended.
Uniform
Please do check the uniform policy to ensure your child is wearing the correct items including for PE days. Earrings must be removed on PE days.
Finally, please do ask if there are any queries and keep checking back on class news to find out more about your child’s learning!
What a great start we’ve had!
We have been really impressed with how the Year 1 children have settled into their new classroom. Changes can be tricky to manage and we are always here to help if your child struggles to cope with this. Reception Class to Year 1 is a big leap but we do find that the children adjust well to the new staff, routines and environments.
We have started to read our class novel ‘Flat Stanley‘ and this inspired us to create a flat version of ourselves. Check out some flat children below! 
Help at home
Ask your child to retell the first part of the story and discuss the main character.