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

04 November 2022

As we come to the end of our Me and My Communities themed week, children are encouraged to consider charities that are community-based.

With your child, have a look at the list of charities below. Ask your child to consider which charity they’d like to be our chosen school charity – make sure they can express their opinions and back these up with reasons.

Below are the chosen charities that we’ll choose from:

Local
St Gemma’s Hospice St Gemma’s Hospice | Yorkshire’s Largest Hospice (st-gemma.co.uk)
The Clothing bank The Clothing Bank

National
Cancer Research Donate to Cancer Research UK | Cancer Research UK
RSPB Join us – RSPB Membership

International
Cool Earth  Protect Rainforest | Fight The Climate Crisis | Join Cool Earth Big Life Foundation   AREA OF OPERATION – Big Life Foundation

The charities will be reviewed in class on Thursday 10 November. Each class will vote for one charity which will be brought to the Junior Leadership Team who will have the final vote on Friday 11 November.

Community Green Group visit

This week, we have been lucky to have lots of visits into school for our Community Week. The children have enjoyed having different visitors in school and learning about all the things that go on in our community.

This week, we enjoyed a visit from Wetherby and Boston Spa Community Green Group. The children learned all about how the group helps preserve the environment and help the local wildlife. We talked about how the children could help the environment: recycling, turning lights off, or eating less meat, and how we could help the local wildlife: by creating bug hotels, hedgehog highways, or planting bee-friendly flowers.

We finished by looking at the “8 to be great” promise. Can you promise to be any of the 8 to be great?

Community Week: The Mayor of Wetherby

To kick start our community themed week, we welcomed the Mayor of Wetherby into school. Councillor Neil O’Byrne was elected as Mayor and he’s is in his third term of office.

The children listened to the Mayor as he explained his role in the community. Following this, the classes were able to ask questions.

Do you get paid?

Who voted for you and was it fair?

Do the people of Wetherby vote?

Why do you wear the chains around your neck?

Have you made a difference to the people and town of Wetherby?

Was there an election?

Don’t forget, the Mayor will be lighting the Wetherby bonfire on Saturday!

Happy Half Term!

Thanks to all Year 5/6 pupils for their hard work and positive attitudes during the first half term – everyone has started off really well! Thanks also to all parents that came to the parent/teacher appointments – you were all extremely supportive and I am very grateful for that.

Moving into the next half term, I am hoping to continue the progress Year 5 and 6 have already made – well done, everyone!

Mr Freeman

Well done…

…to all those children who put themselves in the running for the new Junior Leadership Team. It can be disappointing if you put yourself forward and you weren’t elected but it was great to see everyone being so positive and cheering and congratulating our new class ambassadors.

Good luck to the new Year 4 Junior Leadership Team: Kamile and Umar!

Junior Leadership Elections 2022-23

This week, we held an election for the new Junior Leadership Team – the JLT. Children had the chance to give a speech in their class and to say why they’d be a great ambassador for our school.

There are two representatives from each class and they will attend regular meetings to help senior leaders to make decisions.

It was incredible to see that the majority of the school had given a speech to their classmates in the hopes of becoming the next junior leaders!

Today, the new JLT was revealed with an exciting balloon pop… The outgoing JLT each had a balloon popped to reveal the name of the new JLT inside. Check out who was voted in…

Year 6 – Harley & Daisy

Year 5 – Emilija & Eliza

Year 4 – Umar & Kamile

Year 3 – Polina & Christian

Year 2 – Emily & Shae

Year 1 – Freddie & Max

A huge well done to everyone who put themselves in the running! We hope those children who weren’t elected this time will have a another go next year!

Good luck to the JLT of 2022-23! Be sure to check back soon to see them decide our new school charity! 

Happy Half Term Year 3!

I want to say well done to all of Year 3 for a brilliant start to the year!

I hope you all have a fantastic and relaxing half term break.

Congratulations to the first member of year 3 to go up on “The Wall of Stars,” due to collecting the most raffle tickets over the past seven weeks!