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Collective Worship

On Wednesday, Year 3 and 4 led our collective worship based around our Christian value of Forgiveness.

They opened collective worship with our welcome to worship “God is with us” as we lit the candle.

We heard a story about Omar and Freddie. Omar accidentally broke Freddie’s airplane. Poor Freddie was sad so he purposely kicked Omar’s football into the road and it got run over by a lorry. The boys fell out but missed spending time with each other so eventually forgave each other.

Year 3 and 4 taught us that forgiving helps friends to be friendly again and forgiving others makes us happier.

We closed collective worship with a song chosen by year 3 and 4, saying the Lord’s prayer and our blessing.

Supporting your child to stay safe

We continue to try and keep you updated as much as possible with how you can keep your child safe in many situations.

The posts and information about Fortnite and screen time have proved popular for parents – it seems online safety is an area that parents would like lots of support.

Here is our next factsheet with some hints and tips about how you can support your child stay safe during using WhatsApp. The guidance around WhatsApp recommends that users should be 16 years old. We know that a lot of our children use WhatsApp so decided it would be helpful to support you in monitoring your child’s use of the app.

As always, if you’ve any questions, comments or concerns, please chat to someone in school.

24 January 2020

Another busy week in Foundation!

In maths our focus number is number 6. F2 children used the Numicon to make 6 in different ways. We have also been making up number stories using the polar animals. We are going to continue this learning next week.

We try to make phonics fun and active for the children. This week we played Musical Blending. The children dance around and when the music stops they jump on a CVC word and blend it. This is a simple game you can play at home!

One of the challenges this week was to paint an icy picture using their fingers. The children mixed white and blue to make different shades of blue.

Friday 15 November 2019

Friday 15 November 2019

This week, the whole school has the same Creative homework which children should be ready to discuss as part of our homework review on Thursday 21 November.

I know how to STOP bullying.

This homework is a response to our learning this week during anti-bullying week. Throughout the week, each class has had the chance to talk about what bullying is, what the different types of bullying are and how we can STOP it:

• Start
• Telling
• Other
• People

As part of your discussion you may find our school definition of bullying useful, as agreed by our School Councillors:

Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally, several times on purpose.

As the homework is Creative, you can do anything you want to respond to the statement. Here are a few ideas to help you:

• Create a cartoon strip of a bullying scenario and how it is solved.
• Create an acrostic poem using the word bullying.
• Write your own ‘kindness statements’ for your class.
• Create a scenarios quiz for your class to decide what they would do.

The annual survey is now closed

Thanks to all parents / carers who completed an annual survey. The deadline for this was yesterday. School leaders will now start looking through the feedback and this will help tell us how we can keep getting better and better.

We can’t guarantee to meet the needs and wants of every parent / carer, but we do assure you that we consider all the points raised and aim to act on specific points that are raised by many, or a useful idea raised by just a few.

Last year, based on your feedback, for example, we changed how we update you about your child’s progress so that you get five updates over the year: a parent-teacher consultation in Autumn 1 and Spring 1; a Learning Update ‘mini-report’ in Autumn 2 and Spring 2; and a final end-of-year report in Summer 2.

We’re looking forward to reading your views.

Fab feedback

At St James’ CE Primary, we regularly seek the views of others. Last month, we let you know about feedback from a Leeds Health and Safety Advisor (news article on 31 January 2019, deriving from a Health and Safety inspection) and a Leeds Early Years Advisor (news article on 15 January 2019, deriving from a visit to the Early Years class).

In January, we also collected the views of staff for the second time in recent years. We asked staff to complete a survey with questions that Ofsted use during inspections (very much like the survey we ask parents and carers to complete in the Summer term). The survey was completed by ten staff (in any role – premises staff, lunchtime supervisors, teachers, teaching assistants…). Here are some key findings:

100% of staff agree that our school has improved since it was last inspected, with 86% believing the school has improved a lot. (These percentages exclude three staff members who are new to school and can’t comment on improvements since the inspection). Comments include: ‘Massive improvement. Staff morale is so much better.’ and ‘Much better – more consistency and support, much better atmosphere around school, and a team ethos.’

We’re really proud that in other statements, 100% of the staff who responded agreed with the following statements:

• Pupils are safe in our school, with 80% strongly agreeing.
• Leaders support staff well in managing behaviour.
• Leaders do all they can to ensure the school has a motivated, respected and effective staff.
• St James’ Primary is well-led and managed.
• I feel well supported working in this school.
• Leaders and managers are considerate of my well-being: ‘Leaders are supportive and understanding when there are problems in a teacher’s personal life and make sure to check in on teachers.’
• Being in a federation benefits me/my role in school.

Of the four remaining statements (such as ‘Being in a federation benefits this school.’), no staff member disagreed but one or two expressed no views as to whether they agreed or not.

Finally, we asked for any strengths and areas for further improvement…

Strengths

We asked staff to comment in an open-ended question about the strengths of our school. Some of the many strengths they mentioned are:

• ‘Great staff and caring ethos.’
• ‘Staff work well together as a team.’
• ‘Pastoral care and senior leadership.’
• ‘Dedicated teachers and parent partnership.’
• ‘Absolutely amazing head of school. She is so supportive. I feel that my role at school is greatly appreciated.’
• ‘Promoting positive behaviour and Christian values.’
• ‘The effort and team playing of staff which is resulting in better results for children.’
• ‘The federation which we’re part of.’

Next steps

We’re always wanting to keep getting better and better. There were far fewer suggestions for areas to develop, but, based on the survey, our next steps are to keep improving behaviour management for all staff and to keep developing positive partnerships with parents / carers that help to support the pupils in our school.

Thank you to all staff who support our school, with special thanks to those who completed the survey.

Safety week

We have had lots of exciting visitors this week. Our focus was how to make safe choices and look after ourselves.

We learnt about staying safe around strangers as well as safety at home and in school. Road Safety was also covered by a workshop that explained how we should behave on the road.

The NSPCC brought buddy in to see us and we found out about or right to speak out. We also learnt the Childline number song.

Dogs Trust came into our class with Peg. We found out about dogs and how to read their behaviours.

D-side taught us all about our own bodies and what we need to do in order to look after them. We talked about a healthy diet as well as how sleep can affect our leaning.

This has been a very informative week and we will continue to think out making safe choices.

8 February 2019

This week’s spelling homework is a spelling task and is due on Thursday 14 February.

Year 1 words

Year 2 words

Choose one of the following activities to complete using your spelling words.

Year 1/2 Library visit

We had an exciting afternoon in year 1/2. Our class visited Wetherby Library today and we returned our books. We each chose 2 books that we would like to read. Eliza rushed straight over to the history section to find her perfect book.

She said, “I love history, so I know that I’ll love this one. It’s about 100 women who changed history.”

Jack found a lovely poetry book as he shared that he “loves reading rhymes”.

We are looking forward to reading all of our new books.