English: Reading and Writing
In English, we have been enjoying reading the book Not Now Bernard by David McKee (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). From this, we have been looking at different pictures of monsters and thinking of nouns and adjectives to describe them.
We then designed our own monsters, thinking carefully about their key features. Look at some of our wonderful writing below:
Help at home:
Use the pictures and word mats below to think of some sentences to describe the monsters. Write some sentences about the monsters. Bring them into school to share with us.
Topic: Art
We have started the practical sessions in our Art learning. We created our own print block, taking inspiration from artwork by Paul Klee. He used lots of shape, lines and bright colours.
We then used our print block to roll on some paint and make our own printing. Have a look at some of our amazing prints below.
Help at home: Use the vocabulary to describe Paul Klee ‘Senecio’.
Spring Attendance Competition
St James’ CE Primary is a happy and healthy place to be – and maybe even a lucky one, too!
Look out for our attendance competition next half term. All pupils with attendance of 96% or higher will be entered into a prize draw to win a £50 Love to Shop vouchers!
So… for the full Spring 1 half-term, Monday 08 January to Friday 09 February (five weeks), if your child reaches a good level of attendance – that’s 96% – their name will be entered into a prize draw. We’ll select one lucky winner on the last day of the half-term (Friday 09 February).
Remember, arriving late for school counts as an unauthorised absence. This affects a child’s overall attendance figure, and that might mean they lose out.
So far this term, 40 pupils have 100% attendance and 80 pupils have over 96% attendance – well done to the children and their families!
PE: Gymnastics
Year 2 have been enjoying their Gymnastics sessions this half term. We’ve been moving our bodies in lots of different ways. We’ve been thinking about how we can change the height of our body.
Topic: Hepworth Museum
On Friday, we had a lovely trip to the Hepworth Museum. We spent the morning exploring the art gallery. We carefully observed the drawings, paintings and sculptures. We focused on the different colours, tones, textures and shapes.
After lunch, we met Sarah, an artist at The Hepworth. We went back into the gallery and created a picture, taking inspiration from the artwork and scenery around us.
We then worked with Sarah in her workshop to do some print making. We used a variety of different materials to create our print and used the rollers to roll the paint on.
Living and Learning: I can talk about my feelings
We started off our lesson by thinking about how we felt today. We had lots of different emotions such as happy, excited, grumpy and nervous. We spoke about how we can feel lots of emotions in a day depending on what it is we are doing. We looked at a list of different feelings and thought about:
- Where in our body we experience this feeling?
- What might happen to our face when we feel it?
- What might happen to our body when we feels it?
We then worked together in groups to read some different scenarios and think about how the characters would be feeling in each one. We then read some help cards and discussed which of the suggestions would be best for helping the characters.
Help at home: What emotions have you felt today? How did they make you feel? What could you do if you needed some help with your emotions?
Living and Learning: Anti-bullying day and odd socks day
We kicked off anti-bullying day with our odd socks to celebrate that we are all unique and different.
We explored our school definition of bullying, created by our junior leaders, by looking at what some of the words meant.
What are the different types of bullying?
Our school definition helped us understand the different types of bullying – physical (hurting our body), emotional (hurting our feelings) or cyber bullying (online).
Our main message is Start Telling Other People and to continue to do that until you are heard.
Seeking help can be done in a number of different ways.
Who could you tell? (taken from our child friendly anti-bullying policy)
- Safeguarding team – Miss Beetson, Mrs Small, Mrs Walshaw
- Any other members of staff
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Help at home: discuss our school definition of bullying with your child. Do they know the difference between falling out and bullying, and between a one-off situation and something that’s happened more than once?
Children in Need
Thank you for all your support raising money for Children in Need.
We have raised £140 for the charity.
Reading: James Mayhew
In our English sessions, we have been reading the book Katie and the Mona Lisa by James Mayhew. Today, we zoomed the author James Mayhew . During our zoom he told us how he came up with his ideas for all his different books through sketching things such as the characters, costumes and buildings. He told us sometimes the drawings go wrong but that’s ok because this helps him to develop and write his stories. He then modelled how he uses drawings to create a story. We listened and watched in amazement as he told a story all about St George, a dragon and a princess whilst he illustrated at the same time.
He read us another of his knight stories. He told us that he likes to find and read old stories and use these to inspire his writing.
During our English lesson last week, we thought of some questions that we’d like to ask James Mayhew about his book Katie and the Mona Lisa.
Where did you get your inspiration from?
Why did Grandma smile secretly at the end of the story?
How did you draw the Mona Lisa so well?
Why did Mona Lisa choose to speak to Katie?
We learnt that the inspiration for the book came from a trip he took to Florence when he visited an art gallery and that he has had over 70 books published. He told us he first started to write when he was 20 but it took 5 years to get his first book published. We spoke about how we have to be resilient.
Help at home: Have a discussion at home about our zoom with James Mayhew. Can your child remember any of the interesting facts he told us. For example: Where does he get his inspiration from? How old was he when he first started to write? Where do his ideas from for his books? Who is the character Katie based on?
Me and My Money Themed Week
As part of our Me and My Money themed week we have been doing lots of different activities around money.
In English, we looked at how money is am important part of most people’s lives and the difference between using money to buy something we need and something we want. We also discussed where money comes from e.g. earning or being given and how people make different choices about how to save and spend their money. We also talked about where we can keep our money e.g. a bank or a money box and how some places are safer than others.
In Maths, we’ve been looking at the different coins and their value. We have been comparing the value of coins and making different values in a variety of ways.
We’ve also been comparing the value of some everyday products by ordering them from the least to the most valuable. We used our new oracy target which is building on the views of others, to have a respectful discussion.
Thank you for the coin donations for our penny trail. We enjoyed adding them to the trail this morning.
Help at home: Watch the Money Matters video clip and have a discussion at home about how we get and use money, where money comes from, the difference between needs and wants, budgeting and saving. Take the quiz at the end to see how much you can remember about using money.