11 November 2022

Vocabulary is the focus of this week’s Talk Time.

We’ve just begun a new Art topic and with it comes new Art vocabulary.

This half-term, each phase is learning about different forms of Art. Y1,2 are focusing on sculpture, Y3,4 are focusing on digital art and Y5,6 are focusing on printing. Here’s a list of key words that are being learnt and applied as part of our learning. Over the half-term, practise using these words with your child.

Years 1 and 2 Art vocabulary:

• graphite: mixed with clay, graphite forms the ‘lead’ in a pencil
• HB: referring to pencils, HB stands for ‘hard black’ – a medium hard pencil
• H: stands for ‘hard’
• B: stands for ‘black’; these pencils are soft
• primary colours: three colours (red, yellow, blue) that can’t be made by mixing other colours, but can make other colours
• secondary colours: three colours (orange, green, purple) that are made when two primary colours are mixed using paint
• pattern: arrangements of things such as colour, shapes and lines that repeat in a logical way
• texture: how something feels, like smooth or rough
• op art: short for ‘optical art’, op art is a style of art that uses visual illusions
• pointillism: a form of painting where very small dots are used to form colours and images
• forgery: copying another artist’s work and making money from it

Years 3 and 4 Art vocabulary:

• complementary colours: colours that are opposite on the colour wheel (roughly, a primary and a secondary colour can be paired up like this)
• warm colours: roughly one half of the colour wheel, warm colours (like red, orange, yellow) usually represent heat and emotions like anger and excitement
• cool colours: roughly one half of the colour wheel, cool colours (like blue, green, purple) usually represent cold things and emotions like calm and sadness
• form: often used to talk about sculpture or the human body, form is the physical aspects or the shape of the artwork or parts of the artwork
• space: usually used to describe areas or parts of an artwork where there are large blocks of colour or ‘gaps’
• medium: the type of art (eg painting, sculpture, printmaking), or the materials an artwork is made from (plural: media)
• digital art: art that is made or presented using digital technology
• architecture: a specific form of design: buildings and other structures
• architect: a person who designs buildings and other structures
• commission: a person or people chosen to produce something, eg a portrait, a building

Years 5 and 6 Art vocabulary:

• pastel: a coloured drawing medium, usually stick-shaped, produced in soft, hard and pencil formproduced in soft, hard and pencil form
• art: the expression of creativity or imagination, or both
• art movement: a style in art followed by a group of artists, often linked to a time and place or to particular artists (sometimes called an ‘ism’)
• printing: transferring ink (or some other medium) from one surface to another
• Arts and Crafts Movement: a design movement started by William Morris in 1861 which aimed to improve the quality of design and make it available to the widest possible audience
• graphic design: covers a range of design activities including logo creation, advertising and typography (fonts)
• industrialisation: the process of using machines to work that was previously done by people.Some of these words have been introduced already this week but there may be others that are going to be covered in the coming weeks.

Art Topic

This half term, our topic is Art. We will be focusing on the work of George Seurat and Bridget Riley.

Seurat used a technique called pointillism.

Zoom in and look at his Sunday Afternoon painting. Can you see all the small dots used to create the painting?

Bridget created op art pieces.

We have started by talking about the topic vocabulary, which you can see below.

Digital Art

This half term, the children will have an art themed topic. As well as developing the children’s practical skills, we will be learning about art history. Our art will be created and presented using digital technology.

In lessons, we will be studying some architecture. Spend some time at home discussing these questions and images. What do you like? What don’t you like? What’s the same and what’s different? Which are modern and how do you know? How could you describe these amazing pieces of architecture?

What is an architect?

What job do they do?

Can you name any famous architects?

Below is a list of the vocabulary the children will be using throughout this topic. Ask your child if they know any of these words and can they tell you their definitions?

Spellings

Next week, we will be learning about how to make words plural. Learn the following words for a test on Friday 11th November:

communities
attaches
categories
dictionaries
wolves
hooves
puppies
crutches

Community week

This week, we’ve had lots of visitors into school because it’s been our community themed week. The week got off to a great start when the Mayor of Wetherby visited us and spoke to us about his responsibilities within the local community and how he became Mayor through a democratic vote.

Throughout the rest of the week, we had our local community police officer visit us to talk to us about staying safe in our community; Wetherby in Bloom came into school to talk to us about how they support our local community and our younger children potted some plants with the help of some of their volunteers; Boston Spa, Wetherby and Villages Community Group came into talk to us about how we can help the environment; and Wise Charity spoke to the children about supporting the elderly within the local community with the help of their mascot owl!

Children in Years 4- 6 Zoomed some children at Moortown Primary School to compare our school communities and found out some similarities and differences. A group of children also had the opportunity to speak on the local radio station, Tempo FM. It’s been a busy week!

Thank you to all our visitors for making our week so enjoyable.

04 November 2022

This week, we’re thinking about homophones – words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings.

We need children in Year 4 to not only know how to spell these words but to also have the skill of knowing which word is the right one to use at the right time!

hear/here

break/brake

heel/heal/he’ll

berry/bury

whether/weather

buy/bye/by

there/their/they’re

to/too/two

where/wear/were

who’s/whose

St James’ does Tempo FM!

Today, some children did a fab job of representing St James’ on Wetherby’s very own local radio station – Tempo FM!

Maybe you tuned in and heard Dexter deliver the weather or Aubree tell us about local events or perhaps you heard Mrs Bald explaining why our school were visiting Tempo FM…

As part of community week, we joined up with the community radio station. All week, we’ve been thinking about what community means and what it’s like to be a part of a community.

Check us out in action…

This week’s message (Friday 04 November 2022)

We hope you and your child(ren) managed to have some time over the half-term to rest and recuperate. Now that we’re firmly settled in to the school year, this week’s message has three important reminders, and ends with an invitation to share your views about Leeds admission policy…

Our expectations for attendance

Our attendance rate for Autumn 1 was 94.4% – this is lower than the national figure of 95.1% (subject to change) for primary schools.

Our aim is for the whole-school attendance to be at least 97%. Well done goes to our Reception, Year 2 and Year 3 class – all have attendance over 95%.

The government is trialing a new service – check out national attendance figures, updated regularly.

Read our attendance policy. Remember, we don’t authorise unnecessary term-time absences. Holidays during term time are likely to result in a penalty notice.

Our expectations for home learning

At St James’ CE Primary, we expect every child to read at home, every day. The most important thing you can do at home is to make sure this is happening – reading independently and reading aloud together.

The reading should be at least 10-15 minutes and can include books, comics, websites – any reading! Please comment in your child’s Reading Record at least once a week.

There are two other things we expect your child to do at home each day:

• spend about ten minutes each day practising number facts, like number bonds to ten (eg 3+7 and 4+6) and learning times tables; NumBots (mainly for children in Key Stage 1) and TimesTables Rock Stars (Key Stage 2 children) will support number fluency, as will practice in the car or walking to school (eg chanting forwards, backwards and alternating as you count through can all help)
• spend a similar amount of time practising spellings, using the homework sheet we send home each week to see the weekly list of words to learn in preparation for a test on the following Friday (your child could use the words in written sentences or stories and in conversations)

As well as these three daily activities, there are weekly Talk Time prompts (set out on the homework sheet we send home each Friday and published on our website) and Living and Learning ideas (check these out in the school calendar, usually on Mondays – next week’s is I consider the views of others).

You’ll find occasional extra ideas in your child’s Class News page, too.

Read our guide to all the home learning that your child can do.

Our expectations for uniform

This week in school, we’ve been enjoying a themed week: Me and My Community, a celebration of all the different communities to which we belong. We want our children to come to school proud of being part of their school community – uniform is an important part of this. Please take a moment to check our uniform policy – for example, is your child coming to school with long hair tied back, wearing discreet earrings (if any), and the right shoes?

Of course, we welcome the occasional non-uniform day as a break from routine to celebrate or raise funds. Coming up is the Children in Need fund-raising event for which we’ll have a non-uniform day. However, on days like this, we do still expect pupils to dress appropriately and respectfully for school. Check out the policy for more details.

Leeds Admission Policy

Leeds City Council is running a public consultation on the 2024/2025 admission policy for Leeds community and voluntary controlled schools. Share your views – you have until 07 December.

If you’re celebrating Bonfire Night, have a safe one, and – as always – a happy and healthy one.

04 November 2022

Below are the new spellings for the next two weeks. On the first week, use the look, say, cover, write, check method. On the second week, write the spelling words using dots then connect the dots by tracing over them.

• is
• love
• me
• my
• no

Term 2 Week 1

Welcome back to Reception!

We hope you all had a lovely half term break and are ready for an exciting term 2 in school.

This week we have been learning more about our local community and all the people that can help us and others. We were excited to meet Olly the owl from WISE and one of our local police officers PC Masters.

Our work on festivals around the world focused on Diwali this week. Diwali is also known as The Festival of Light. We learnt more about how Diwali is celebrated and joined in with the celebrations. We created our own Diva Lamps using dough and decorated them with bright colours.

Quick reminders:

We have two fantastic maths events coming up this month. There will be an early maths zoom session on Monday 14 November at 6pm. Zoom details will be emailed out to everyone shortly. We also have our marvellous maths session. This is a great opportunity for you to come into class and see a live maths session. This will be on Thursday 17 November 9 – 9:30.

Thank you for all parents/carers who are helping us with our e-books. We would like all children to be reading everyday. If you have any problems logging in please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Mrs Payne