This week’s message (Friday 10 June 2022)

And we’re into the last half-term of the year – we hope you and your family had a good half-term break. This week’s message has just two parts: a reminder to complete the annual survey and some important news about classes and teachers next year.

Annual survey

Every year, we invite you to complete a short survey. Your views matter. They help to shape what we do in the forthcoming year(s).

Complete the St James’ CE Primary survey here.

(It’s worth bearing in mind that the survey isn’t the best place to raise individual, specific concerns – hopefully, you’re comfortable to speak with Miss Beatson or a class teacher about these instead.)

Staffing in 2022-23

It’s all change at St James’! In September, there will be quite a few staffing changes…

In July, we’ll be saying goodbye to Mrs Wood in Reception who’ll be going to teach at Moortown Primary School (one of the schools in Sphere Federation). Mrs Wood has been at St James’ for three years and has done a magnificent job in Early Years; I know the children and parents who’ve had Mrs Wood will agree.

Mrs Flynn in Year 1/2 is also moving on, this time to Scholes (Elmet) Primary (another Sphere Federation school). Mrs Flynn has been at St James’ this year and also taught in Reception at St James’ a few years ago. Mrs Flynn has been fantastic in Year 1/2 and the class have made great progress with her as the class teacher.

Mrs Boulton, our Nursery teacher, will be moving to Moortown Primary School. Mrs Boulton has worked hard to create a space where the Nursery children have thrived – she will be missed, too.

Mr Mills is also moving on. He currently teaches the Y5,6 class on Fridays, but is leaving to continue to expand his successful sports coaching business.

We’re excited and proud to welcome new teachers, too…

• Nursery: Miss Ward will be the new Nursery teacher; she currently teaches at Scholes.
• Reception: Mrs Payne will be the new Reception teacher. Some children and parents will already know Mrs Payne: she currently teaches in Year 3 on Thursday and Friday.
• Year 1: Mrs Rowley will returning from maternity leave and join Mrs Palmer in Year 1.
• Year 2: We welcome a new teacher, Miss Kay, in Year 2.
• Year 3: Miss Gledhill, currently teaching in Year 4, will be the class teacher.
• Year 4: Mrs Freeman will move up with her current Year 3 class into Year 4 and Mrs Valentine will be the other Year 4 class teacher.
• Year 5,6: After being the Y5/6 teacher for five years, Miss Beatson will be coming out of class. Mr Freeman (currently a teacher at Scholes and previously a football coach at St James’, too) will be the full-time Y5/6 teacher.

On Thursday 14 July, we’ll be having a transition afternoon where the children will meet their new teacher and visit their new classroom.

As always, if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns, please do speak with us. Have a good weekend.

Welcome back!

I can’t believe it’s the last half-term. Where has this school year gone?
We’ve dived straight into our new topic, Let’s make a splash!

This half-term, we’ll be thinking about days at the beach – we even have our own beach! We’ll investigate floating and sinking, locate seaside towns on a map, talk about what we see at the seaside that we don’t see in Leeds and talk about seaside holidays of the past.

This week, we’ve been reading Sharing a Shell by Julia Donaldson. The children were great at sequencing the key events from the story.

We used adjectives to describe what our favourite character looks like.

In Maths, we’ve been using the rekenreks to help us with our perceptual and conceptual subitising skills. We know to make sure all the beads are at the right-hand side of the rack. This is called the ‘ready position’. We then get ready, set and push using the ‘one finger push’ method.

With sports day just around the corner, we thought we should start practising.

This week’s chilli challenges have been very successful. Lots of children worked really hard to complete all of the challenges.

We drew sea creatures with wax crayons and watched what happened when we painted over it with a blue wash.

Exploring in our new role-play area.
We made signs to put up in our beach.

We used our observational skills to draw shelfs.

Diary dates
20, 21 & 24 June – Learning journey drop ins
23 June – Moving from Reception to Year 1 parent meeting
5 July – Sports Morning
6 July – Trip to Tropical World – look out for the letter!
7 July – Reserve Sports Morning
8 July – PTA Summer Fair
This half-term is very busy!
Please make sure you’ve noted down the events.

Reminder!
Please don’t forget to sign up to one of our learning journey drop ins. A letter went out on Wednesday.

Home-Link Challenge

10 June 2022

Our first Talk Time of this half term relates to honesty, one of the Christian values.

‘Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.’ (1 John 3:18)

 I can describe a situation where being honest was hard, but important.

 The situation you discuss at home may have involved yourself or someone else. It could concern a real person or a fictional character from a book, film or TV show that you know well.

You could respond to these questions to support your conversations:

• Why was telling the truth important?
• Did the person tell the truth right away?
• How would telling the truth at a different time impact the consequences?
• What were the possible outcomes of being dishonest or withholding the truth?

Our oracy focus for this half term is liveliness and flair. The following R2s will help you to keep others engaged when you’re speaking:

• Talk with enthusiasm in your voice.
• Use your imagination to think of scenarios to support your viewpoint.
• Maintain a good level of eye contact with your audience.

10 June 2022

This week, we have been learning about prefixes and suffixes. Learn the following words for a test next week on Thursday 16th June.

• reattached
• unfinished
• definitely
• detachment
• infinitely
• reattachable
• attachment
• finalist

10 June 2022

Year 1: pencil, fossil, nostril, cry, fly, try

Year 2: write, written, wrote, wrong, wrap, table, apple, bottle, little, middle.

Y6 residential: day 2

Yesterday was extremely busy with loads of fun adventures. This is our last morning, with three more activities to go!

Y6 residential

Year 6 are having a brilliant time at Robinwood. Yesterday, we did lots of activities such as climbing, giant swing and the Dungeon of Doom!

They’ve all slept well and are looking forward to another full day of fun!

Ask Italian

This morning, whilst Y6 are on residential, we visited Ask Italian in Wetherby to learn to be a chef and make some pizzas.

We had a great time designing and creating our own pizzas with a wide choice of ingredients: cheese, oregano, sun-dried tomatoes, ham, mushrooms and pepperoni. Check this out to see if we enjoyed our pizzas or not..!

The children were excellently behaved and and had impeccable manners – nice one, folks!

This half-term’s Christian value is…

…honesty.

What is honesty? Honesty is being trustworthy and truthful in our friendships, our relationships, our school and our community. We understand that we need to be honest and truthful with others when working together as a team. The challenge for us is: How can we be honest in our daily lives? How can we encourage people to be honest? What can we do to fix it if we forget to be honest?

 Why was this Christian value chosen?

‘Everyone needs to be honest because Jesus’ disciple (Peter) wasn’t honest when he denied Jesus.’

Home challenge:

Talk with your family about the consequences of not being honest or write a story or draw a picture to show what happens when people are dishonest. Bring it in to add to your class reflection areas.

Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

(1 John 13:18)

This week’s bible story

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

Have you ever heard the story of Burglar Bill – Bill goes out every night. Getting into houses through open windows and taking things. Until one night, Bill found a baby, and that changed his whole life …
There is a Bible story about a man who stole from other people. He took extra money when he gave them their tax bills and became very rich on all the money that he stole. Zacchaeus was a little man and that small people can’t see in crowds. Read the story of Zacchaeus to find out what happened to him.

Reflection:

Jesus loved everyone when he lived on the earth. It didn’t matter how bad people were, Jesus was always there for those who needed him. This is true for us too – no one is so bad that God doesn’t love them. And the more time we spend with God – praying, thinking about him, finding out about him, the more we want to be like Jesus; kind, helpful and good. Just like Zacchaeus, Burglar Bill changed his ways and tried to be more like Jesus by loving those around him. Even though Burglar Bill and Zacchaeus made the wrong choice, God forgave them and continued loving them.

Prayer:

Dear God,

Thank you that Jesus loved Zacchaeus even when he wasn’t making the right choices. Help us to love all of those around us and be honest about our actions.

Amen