Our weekly message: Friday 04 October

Watch us while we work

Thank you to everyone who came along to our Watch Us While we Work session – it was great to see so many of you. And thanks if you found the time to fill in our online feedback form – here’s one of the comments:

It was really useful to see the teaching of times tables and how to make practising it fun. All the children were engaged and interested.

We take your feedback really seriously. One thing we’re often asked is whether we can organise this differently to help children who are in different year groups. We’ll keep exploring whether this would work, but in the meantime, do remember to next Watch Us While We Work session on Thursday 23 January.

Class trips

Previously, you’ve told us you’re keen for class trips to happen. We value trips as a way to enrich learning and broaden children’s learning experiences. Our list of the main trips we’ve got planned are on page 4 of our Topic Curriculum Guide (but please remember we sometimes have to re-arrange or even cancel based on availability, or reluctantly if we don’t receive enough in voluntary donations).

The rest of this week’s message comes from our Writing Curriculum Leader…

Spellings

By now, you’ll be familiar with the homework arrangements. Every week in Key Stage 1, or every half-term in Key Stage 2, your child is given a set of spellings to learn as part of their homework.

But why? They’ll probably just use autocorrect on their computer or tablet when they’re older, won’t they? You, like many others, might have found yourself asking these same questions. And, to an extent, there’s some truth in this.

However, we believe spelling is a really important life-skill that is crucial to your child’s success in education. We find that children who can spell more accurately feel more confident about their writing – and we want all our children to feel proud and confident of their learning.

Also, research shows us that thinking about spellings takes up a large part of your working memory when writing (or typing). This means that if you’re able to have to think less about spelling, you’ve more brain power to think about other things: word choice, thinking creatively or pitching your written communication at the right level for your reader.

Help at home by helping your child learn their spellings. This doesn’t need to be for long and it doesn’t need to be boring. Here are some practical tips for effectively learning spellings at home…

• Ask your child to spell their words on the way to school, driving to the shops or walking the dog
• Use some ideas from our Super Spelling Strategies to make learning spellings more creative
• Place the words on Post-It notes around the house so your child is reading them regularly
• Practise them whilst doing something active (throwing a ball, kicking a football, playing tennis etc)
• Most importantly of all, remember that little and often is much more effective than one big session: five minutes every day will lead to much better outcomes than one 30 minute session each week

If you’d like any help about how to support your child with their writing, please speak to their class teacher.

Next week, we’ve the school photographer in to take individual pics (the class pic is taken later in the year. There’s also a Reception Stay and Learn session. Have a good weekend.

Forest school

We’re so happy our forest school is back!

This term, it’s the turn of Year 5 and Year 6 to have their forest school lessons. Today, they’ve been building dens, making wishing wells and climbing trees.

Our weekly message: Friday 27 September

This week’s Living and Learning message is a great one to think about at home: I know that rights come with responsibilities…

• At school for example, children have the right to play, and that comes with the responsibility to play alongside others safely and respectfully.
• Think about this at home. For example, in your house, it might be that your child has the right to be online, but the responsibility to be online for a limited amount of time each day.

Food in school

This week, we want to flag up a page on our website you perhaps don’t visit much – Food in school. This page has lots of information about school dinners (including the current menu), free school meals and packed lunches.

• We’ve a general policy on food in school, setting out some key points, including the importance of water and we don’t allow birthday foods.
• If your child has school dinners, please check out whether they may be entitled to free school meals.
• If your child has a packed lunch, have a look at our packed lunch guidance.

On the subject of food in school, don’t forget to alert us to any allergies that your child may have.

Staying healthy…

Last week, we mentioned the West Yorkshire NHS website Healthier Together, launched to provide consistent advice from local health and care professionals.

Linked to this, check out this guide to keeping your child healthy from the UK Health Security Agency.

…for good attendance

It’s worth thinking about what your child might miss if they were absent for five days in a row…

For younger children learning to read, they’d miss five, half an hour phonics lessons – that’s a full two and half hours of phonics teaching. In this time, they’d miss out on learning four new graphemes (eg ay, ou, oi, ea) and practising reading and writing these in words and in sentences. They’d miss learning up to four new tricky words, too. Your child would also miss valuable time to practise the previous week’s graphemes and developing fluency in reading words containing those sounds. As well as the phonics lessons, your child would miss four reading practice group sessions and would not have the time to read and re-read the physical book in school. In these sessions, we develop fluency, prosody and comprehension. They’d also miss the library session and not be able to choose a new book to take home.

Before deciding to keep your child at home, remember to check this NHS site: Is my child too ill for school?

Governor recruitment

We’ve had two expressions of interest from parents who are interested in joining our Governing Board. This means we now have an election. Please take a couple of minutes to read each of the two candidates’ written statement and make your vote. Thank you.

Finally, a couple of reminders…

We’ve another Watch Us While We Work session next week – Tuesday morning. This is the first of two opportunities in the year to see some Maths and Reading being taught in school so that you can support your child at home.

We’ve also a Coffee Morning for parents of children in Key Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2). This is the first of two coffee mornings in the year. (We’ve another coming up soon for Key Stage 2 parents – Wednesday 20 November.)

See you next week!

Back to school festival

A huge thank you to everyone who attended our back to school festival last Friday. The PTA did a great job of organising the event so it ran smoothly. We raised an impressive £522.36  and £22.23 on uniform sales.

Already this term, the money raised from the PTA events have helped buy new musical instruments to support our music curriculum and a new speaker  which will help our wake up shake up sessions.

Thank you to everyone who helped to organise the event.

Our weekly message: Friday 20 September

We hope you’ve enjoyed this sunny week – this Indian summer.

Our Living and Learning theme has been a simple one this week: ‘I use good manners’. At school, this can mean greeting people politely (including adults as they arrive at school), saying please and thank you, and avoiding interrupting. Have a chat with your child about what it means at home, too.

Cooking

Over the course of the year, your child will enjoy three opportunities to prepare food…

• Year 1 and 2: fruit smoothies, overnight oats, and fruit bars
• Year 3 and 4: egg pots, chopped tomatoes and garlic, and savoury scones
• Year 5 and 6: vegetable and chickpea curry, pasta bake, and bread

We’ve a couple of requests, please:

Most importantly, please alert us to any allergies your child has. We’ll do our best to adapt recipes.

To make sure that we can continue to offer this, please make a voluntary donation of £3 to £6 to pay for the ingredients. We really appreciated your donations last year.

For more about our Cooking curriculum, please check out our Cooking and Nutrition Curriculum Guide – they include the recipes and background information including the food preparation skills children will practise. (We’re in Year B this year.)

Relationships and Sex Education

At the start of each year, we like to encourage you to be aware of our Relationships and Sex Education Policy. Later in the year, your child will have Relationships and Sex Education lessons. In those lessons, we’ll talk about anatomical terms and different relationships. However, we might need to use the terms at other times, such as when dealing with incidents of misuse or disrespectful language, and we’ll talk about lots of different relationships at any time of the year, too.

How we communicate home

Another thing we like to do at the start of the year is help you be aware of how we communicate home. Findings from our annual survey of parents and carers indicate the vast majority of you are happy with how we communicate, but we’re also aware of a small number of you who are less content. We do our best to stick to the following…

Texts

Anything urgent (such as the cancellation of an after-school club) or a quick reminder about something (like the photographer being in school) will be sent by text. If you have the School Gateway app, it might be useful to set it so you receive notifications of messages. Texts will automatically be sent to your app.

Emails

Our emails will usually be a longer message about one specific thing. We’re moving away from sending out hard copies of most letters (it’s better for the environment to send things electronically and things don’t always get to you if they’re sent home in book bags). Please try to check your emails daily, so you don’t miss anything important.

Weekly messages

Just like this one, our Weekly Messages usually contain more general information. They might include reminders, such as forthcoming events or policy details, but will mainly consist of other information that you might find useful. Usually, they’re published on the school website on Friday afternoons and emailed out a little later the same day.

Class news

For anything relevant to your child’s class, please check the Class News pages of the website (we recommend doing this at least once a week). Nursery and Reception classes use these pages a lot because there are often forthcoming events specific to the Early Years.

Homework

For children in Key Stage 1 and 2, your child should bring home a hard copy of their weekly homework, but you’ll also be able to find it on the Homework section of the website. (There’s no specific homework set for children in Nursery and Reception, but read the Class News articles for lots of ideas to help you support your child at home.)

Social media

Finally, we have Facebook. Messages on here are usually repeats of other communications, such as our Weekly Messages. Nothing urgent or particularly important will be posted only on social media because we know that not everyone accesses these things.

Healthier together

We’ve been asked to let you know about West Yorkshire NHS website Healthier Together.

The initiative was launched to provide families, children and young people with consistent, quality advice from local health and care professionals.

September can be a time when there are more common infections and illnesses amongst children. It’s important that families become familiar with different illnesses (fever, coughs, asthma, bronchiolitis, gastroenteritis…) and how to manage them ahead of the new school year.

And on that note, have a happy and healthy weekend, hopefully enjoying the last of the Indian summer!

Summer competition

Before the Summer holidays, we invited you to take a picture of objects in the environment that represented the letters for St James. We’ve enjoyed looking at the photographs sent in-there were so many creative ideas! We announced our winners on Friday. Well done to all the families who took part. Check out some of the entries.

Our weekly message: Friday 13 September

We got some good news this week… We had our School Games Mark revalidated and we continue to have Gold status.

Our Living and Learning theme this week… has been around our 8Rs for learning – all ways to promote good learning behaviour. Help at home: check out our short guide and then talk with your child at home about times when each of the Rs can be especially important.

Governor recruitment

We’ve a vacancy for a new parent governor…

The position will start properly on 20 November 2024. However, the new governor will be invited to attend our Governing Board meeting on 13 November as an observer. Any parent or carer is encouraged to express an interest; governors are especially interested in hearing from people with a financial background.

Look out for a separate email with more information later on today. The first stage is to complete an online expression of interest. If there’s more than one expression of interest, we’d open the recruitment to a vote and part of your expression of interest would be made available to all parents across Sphere Federation to help them decide who to vote for.

The rest of this week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, our Sphere Federation Topics Leader. The message is all about our new KS1 and KS2 topic…

We’re historians

What do we mean by topics?

Topics are the vehicle for delivering much of the learning in foundation subjects (eg Art, History, Geography). Each half-termly topic has a driving subject – the main focus for teaching pupils knowledge and skills.

What is this half-term’s topic?

This half-term, we’re historians. We’ll develop our understanding of the past, both in Britain and the wider world.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skills and vocabulary. See pages 26 and 27 of our Topic Curriculum Guide.

Each phase also has key historical concepts which will feature within most lessons. These historical concepts are themes that are revisited, strengthened and deepened during your child’s journey through the history curriculum. See page 23 of the Curriculum Statement.

Years 1 and 2 

In this topic, children learn about a significant British historical event: the Great Fire of London. Children will learn about life at the time of the Great Fire of London. They’ll learn where the fire started and how it spread so quickly and the innovative ways that it was extinguished. Importantly, they’ll learn about the different sources of evidence that have helped us answer these questions, including Samuel Pepys’ diary. Finally, they’ll learn about the significant changes that occurred as a result of the fire, such as legal changes about the way houses were built and the beginning of a fire service in London.

The key concept that children will learn about in this history topic is innovation.

(Help at home… As well as thinking about History, talk with your child about ways to stay safe around fire.)

Years 3 and 4 

In this topic, children learn about Ancient Greece. Children begin by sequencing periods of British history and seeing where the ‘golden age’ of the Ancient Greek civilisation sits alongside. They’ll then learn about two contrasting city states: Athens and Sparta. Children will learn about the type of government these states had and what the lives of the people living there were like. They’ll then debate which city state was the best.

Importantly, they’ll focus in on the influence that Athens has had on the world: democracy, mathematics, philosophy, literature, culture… Finally, they’ll learn about how the civilisation ended.

The key concepts for this topic are power and innovation.

Years 5 and 6 

In this topic, children learn about Stone Age to Iron Age Britain and contrast it with Ancient Egypt. They begin by looking at and creating timelines which sequence the periods of British history and also placing Ancient Egypt on this timeline. They’ll learn about the advances and innovations that occurred during the New Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. They’ll learn about and understand that the sources of evidence we have are limited to archaeological evidence. They’ll then learn about the Ancient Egyptian civilisation and contrast this with what was happening in Britain at the same time – it’s a stark contrast!

The key concepts for this topic are innovation and power.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. The Class News pages of the school website are a good place to go to find out more about what the children are doing.

Find some books from the library which match what your child is learning. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of books about the history your child will be learning about.

Watch television shows about history. Horrible Histories is great (regardless of your age!).

The BBC Bitesize history webpage have some really good pages about the different KS2 units being studied this half-term.

For KS1, there’s an excellent website about the Great Fire of London. As well as a game for children to play, there’s information for adults as well.

If it’s a rainy weekend and you’re looking for something to do, why not spend a morning or afternoon in a museum? A visit to Leeds City Museum (next to Millennium Square) would be great for all children but especially for Y3,4 and Y5,6 children as it has some Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian exhibits, including Nesyamum, the 3,000 year old Leeds mummy!

Our weekly message: Friday 06 September

It’s been great to see you at the school gates and to welcome the children back to school – and to welcome new children joining us, too. Children have all settled really well.

Summer competition

Did you enter our Summer competition this year?

Thank you to those of you who did. We invited you to send in a pic of each letter that makes up ST JAMES – each year group had a different letter to work on. We’ve loved checking out all the wonderfully creative ways to make an S, a T, a J etc! Today was the deadline to send in a pic – we’ll be deciding the winner next week.

Attendance update

Our attendance this week has been great – 97.9% is a great start to the year. Thank you.

Here’s an important update from Leeds City Council about absences from school…

One of the things to be aware of is that if a parent takes their child on holiday during term-time every year, then the penalty notice is higher the second time and by the third year, they’ll face legal action.

The impact of five days off school is significant. In our Weekly Messages over the year, we’ll feature examples of lost learning in different subjects.

Our website

As it’s the start of a new school year, we thought it might be a good time for a quick ‘tour’ of some of the key pages of our website.

The Find Out section is there mainly for the key information you need to know about. Particularly useful pages are:

• the Calendar: at the start of the year, we send home a list of key events across the year but for a fuller and up-to-date picture of what’s going on, check out the calendar (have a look at our weekly Living and Learning theme at the start of each week in the calendar, too – this week, our theme’s been ‘I follow the school rules’ so please talk about these at home)
• Policies and Other Points: this page contains lots of information, including our Positive Relationships policies and our Uniform policy – important ones for you to know about
• Meals: check out the current school dinners menu here!

The Join In section describes lots of different ways that you and your child can get involved, from wraparound care and clubs to any job vacancies we may have. There’s information about our Governing Body in this section, too. (Look out because we’ll have a vacancy for a new parent governor soon!)

The Learn More page is where to go for ways to support your child’s learning. The Class News pages are always the some of the most visited pages – they help to keep you up to date with what your child’s learning. Other pages give you information about different subjects – Reading, Writing, Maths and other curriculum subjects. If you’re a parent of a child in Nursery or Reception, check out the Early Years page, too.

Talking of supporting your child at home, next week we’ll talk about our new topic for children in Years 1-6. It’s a History topic – start asking your child now what they’ve been learning in History!

This half-term's Christian value is...

…perseverance.

At St James’ CE Primary School, we learn about Christian values that help us to become well-rounded citizens in society. Each half-term, we have a new Christian value that will be embedded into our collective worship and our reflection areas.

This half term, our Christian value is perseverance.

‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’ (Galatians 6:9)

Endurance is needed when standing firm in the face of any difficulty. It is the special gift that we have when life is difficult or painful that helps us not to give up. Difficulties might include hardship, persecution or scorn, although we hope these difficulties do not arise in our school. We use it more in the context of ‘keeping going’ and ‘not giving up’.

Help at home by talking about and encouraging perseverance…

• How can we show perseverance in school?
• How can we show perseverance in home, or in other situations?
• Who do you know that shows lots of perseverance?
• What does perseverance look like to you?
• Tell me about a time when you showed perseverance

Our last weekly message of the year (Friday 19 July 2024)

We’ve reached the end of the school year…

Thank you…

…for attending all the events we’ve held across the year, whether that’s events to help support your child’s learning like our Watch us While We Work sessions or productions and PTA events. All the key events for 2024-25 are already in the calendar (including training days).

Thank you…

…to all those who completed the 2024 survey of parents and carers. We’re delighted with the results, including 100% of those who expressed an opinion saying they’d recommend St James’ CE Primary to others – fantastic! We’ve spent some time reviewing the suggestions, too – we can’t act on all, but we’ll certainly look at some of them more closely.

Thank you…

…for all your support throughout the year. Whether this is a simple smile and greeting at the school gate or something more, we’ve really appreciated it.

Have a lovely Summer break. Don’t forget our Summer Competition (in case you missed details, check back to last week’s message). See you all on Tuesday 03 September!