Our weekly message: Friday 17 October 2025

Let’s start this week with news about the return of our attendance competition…

Remember 100% in November

It’s the return of our attendance competition…

In the four weeks of November, children with 100% attendance will be entered into a prize draw to win one of four £25 Love2Shop vouchers. There are four vouchers to be won – one for every phase in school:

• Early Years (Nursery and Reception)
• Key Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2)
• lower Key Stage 2 (Years 3 and 4)
• upper Key Stage 2 (Years 5 and 6)

So… if your child attends every school day on time from 03 November to 28 November, their name will be added to the prize draw.

We’ll select four lucky winners on Friday 28 November.

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.

Thank you

A few weeks ago, we asked for donations to support our Cooking curriculum. To make sure that we can continue to offer this, asked for a voluntary donation of £3 to £6 to pay for the ingredients. So far, we’ve received £132 which will really help to pay for the ingredients we need. Thank you for your support.

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 A this year.)

Arbor

We have recently moved our Management Information System (MIS) to Arbor. Arbor will allow us to communicate with you more efficiently and will eventually bring all core school data into one system.

Yesterday, you should have received an email letting you know how to login to the parent portal/app for your child. If you’ve not received this, please let the office know.

You can familiarise yourself with Arbor using this link: Getting started – Log into the Parent Portal and the Parent App

Arbor also offers access to other training resources, which can be found here.

Before the half term break, we hope to have finalised the payments area in Arbor, so you’ll be able to pay for school meals on the portal or app. We’ll let you know when this is live.

If you’ve any questions, please contact the school office.

Well done…

…to our newly elected Junior Leadership Team:

• Year 1: Eleanor and Joey
• Year 2: Cora and Alfie
• Year 3: Kupa and Harry
• Year 4: Isabella and Freddie
• Year 5: Ethan and Kiara
• Year 6: Tommy and Chloe

We’re looking forward to meeting with the new team very soon.

Happy and healthy

At St James’ CE Primary, we’re proud to have been awarded the Gold School Games Mark for 2024-25. The School Games Mark is a government-led award scheme. It celebrates schools’ commitment to developing competitive sport within their school and community. Here’s a few recent pics of our happy and healthy physical activity…

Have a happy and healthy weekend!

Our weekly message: Friday 10 October 2025

This week’s Living and Learning theme has been about the nine protected characteristics – characteristics protected in law. Nine is a lot to learn about, and some are more suitable for older people to consider. More important than simply remembering all of them is to encourage your child to be aware of fairness and equality.

Community Cafe and Advice Hub

Earlier in the week, we emailed to advise you of a new supportive space for families in our area to access services and additional advice and support: the Community Cafe and Advice Hub. It’s open between 10am and 12pm every Friday at the Church Room, St James’, Wetherby. There are free refreshments and young children are welcome.

Check out this poster with the essential details and the newsletter.

You said, we’ve done…

Just before the Summer holiday each year, we ask you to complete a short survey. We take your views really seriously. School leaders have met and reviewed thee suggestions you made. Some might be useful across all Sphere Federation schools and others relate more specifically St James’ CE Primary. We’ll look to action quite a few points.

Don’t wait until the annual survey! One parent recently raised some really useful suggestions about how the Junior Leadership Team is elected in order to make it fairer – they were great suggestions and we’ve planned a few small changes (such as no prepared PowerPoint presentations) that might just make a big difference.

Flu vaccinations

From September 2025, the School Aged Immunisation Service (SAIS) began delivering flu vaccinations to primary and secondary school-aged children across Leeds. The vaccine offers vital protection against flu, helping safeguard both individuals and those around them. Read more about these immunisations.

The Spy books series

We want to make you aware of a recent issue affecting some popular children’s books by Andrew Cope, including the Spy Dogs, Spy Cats, and Spy Pups series.

Some editions of these books include a printed web address at the back. This link used to go to the author’s website, but the domain is no longer under his control. It has since been taken over by another party and now leads to inappropriate adult content.

The publisher, Puffin, has stressed that the website has no connection to the author or publisher.

What this means for you:

• If your child has any Spy Dog, Spy Cat or Spy Pups books at home, please check the back for website links and make sure they do not try to visit the site.
• It’s safe for children to continue reading the stories themselves — the concern is only with the outdated link.
• We recommend talking with your child about the importance of not following web addresses in books without checking with an adult first.

Reception Stay and Learn session

Thank you very much if you managed to attend our recent Stay and Learn in Reception. And thanks for the feedback we’ve received:

Lovely to watch how they are taught things!

If you’ve time, please let us know your feedback.

Finally this week, as the half-term holiday approaches, you might be looking for a holiday club. Check out PE Partner.

As always, have a happy and healthy weekend.

Our weekly message: Friday 03 October 2025

We’ll start this week’s message with a letter from the Safer Leeds Partnership. You should be aware, although it’s probably more relevant if you’ve older children.

This week’s message has four articles, including a couple of different ways to support your child…

Perfecting some poetry

Yesterday, we celebrated National Poetry Day by performing poems. It was wonderful to listen to so many poems being performed with expression, actions and lots of smiles. Last week, our whole school home learning was to learn and practise a poem: thank you for helping your child to engage in poetry. It’s a chance for children to develop their vocabulary, memory and general awareness of poems.

Support with sleep

Does your child struggle with sleep sometimes? If so, you might like to attend a workshop coming up from MindMate Support Team. The workshop will cover:

• Why sleep matters for mental health
• Common sleep difficulties and their impact
• What healthy sleep looks like at different ages
• Tips for building a consistent and positive bedtime routine
• Evidence-based strategies to make bedtime calmer and more manageable

The hour-long session is on Wednesday 15 October 2025 at 5pm. It’s at Collingham Lady Elizabeth Hastings C of E School, LS22 5BS.

Top trips

Class trips are a wonderful enrichment to the learning going on at St James’, especially in Topic and Science. We’ve recently reviewed the trips, taking on board the views of pupils and teachers, and your comments from the annual survey in the Summer term.

The visits are mapped out across Reception, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 to ensure progression and continuity (subject to change eg if a venue is temporarily closed). The 2025-26 school year is in Cycle A.

Read more about our curriculum, including the Topic and Science long term plans.

12 ways to help your child make friends

Some people might think of school as being all about learning. It’s not. Making relationships with other children is one of the prime purposes. The social aspect of schools is vital to the socialisation of children at important points of their lives. Properly socialised children make for properly socialised adults, who in turn make excellent citizens in later life.

For some children it may be easier said than done. Navigating the topsy-turvy of these nascent relationships is not for the faint hearted, yet it must be done. ACAMH Learn has produced a webinar (it’s short – only 15 minutes) to explore some of the ways this can be helped: watch the webinar here.

Year 5: Bikeability

Bikeability takes place in the Spring term for children in Year 5. This year, it will take place from Monday 09 to Wednesday 11 March 2026.

The training has two core elements: basic skills and road safety. If your child is unable to ride a bike, they may be unable to take part in the road safety aspect as they will not be able to cycle outside of school. We’re giving plenty of notice, in case your child would like to practise before March.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Our weekly message: Friday 26 September 2025

This week in school, children in Key Stage 1 and 2 have been considering rights and responsibilities, part of Living and Learning.

A key message is that alongside every right comes responsibility:

• At school for example, children have the right to play and relax, and alongside this comes the responsibility to play alongside others safely and respectfully.
• In lots of situations, we’ve the right to express our views, and alongside this  we must do so in a respectful way.

Spend some time thinking of more examples in different situations: rights and responsibilities at home, in a shop, in a park…

BBC Bitesize ‘Rules, rights and responsibilities’ is worth checking out with children in Key Stage 2.

Assessments

Just so you’re aware, primary school pupils in England take part in six statutory assessments. Click on the links for more infomation from the Department for Education.

• Reception Baseline Assessment: It’s likely your child has already completed this assessment, which must be done within the first 6 weeks of entering Reception
• Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment: Towards the end of the Reception year, teachers consider whether your child has reached what’s called a Good Level of Development
• Phonics Screening Check: In June of Year 1, (and for some pupils in Year 2, too), pupils are asked to read some words (real and made-up) to assess their phonics skills, crucial as a step in learning to read
• Key Stage 1 tests: Pupils do these near the end of year 2, which is the end of Key Stage 1
• Multiplication Tables Check: Pupils in Year 4 do this online check in June
• Key Stage 2 tests (often called ‘SATs’): These tests happen in May of Year 6

All of the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 tests feature in our school calendar. (The two assessments which happen in Reception are more gradual and ongoing, so they don’t feature – your child won’t even be aware of these.)

Attendance

Talking of assessments…

There’s lots of national evidence about the link between attendance at school and success at school and beyond. Here’s a simple conclusion from just the three schools in Sphere Federation. It’s based on the 87 pupils in Year 6 last year (2024-25).

33 pupils out of the 87 pupils across the Year 6 classes (38%) had excellent attendance (98% or higher)…

• Almost all of them (around 92%) reached Expected Standard in the Reading and Maths SATs tests (there’s no test for Writing).
• Almost half of these pupils reached Greater Depth Standard in Reading.
• Just under one third reached Greater Depth Standard in Maths.

15 pupils out of the 87 Year 6 pupils (17%) had low attendance (92% or lower)…

• A much lower proportion reached Expected Standard in Reading and Maths: 30%.
• Only about one in ten of them reached Greater Depth Standard

Check out the NHS website to decide if your child is well enough to attend school.

Finally this week, you might like to check out some more images of Wetherby High School’s new building. Quite a few of our children move on to this secondary, so the pics might be of interest.

Smiley face competition

We had so many wonderful entries for our smiley face competition this year. Thank you to everyone who sent photos- they were all very creative and entertaining to look at.

A big well done to the overall winners: Frankie, Emily and Orianne.

Our weekly message: Friday 19 September 2025

Last week, we started our rock band sessions. The children are learning to play guitar, drums, keyboard and singing. The bands sounded fantastic!

• ‘I really like the session and I think it’s good because we have different musical experiences.’ (Kiara, Year 5)
• ‘We can express ourselves and we’re going to learn to play different types of music.’ (Emily, Year 5)

At the moment, all our bands are full but if you’d like your child to be put on a waiting list then please let the school office know.

Cooking

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

• Year 1 and 2: banana sandwich, fruit salad, a wrap
• Year 3 and 4: leek and potato soup, pitta pizza, and salad and dressing
• Year 5 and 6: lentil and vegetable soup, omelette, and a tomato sauce base

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 A 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.

Staying safe

As you and your child settle back into school routines, keep online safety top of mind this school year.

Check out these parent guides to help get you up to speed on what children are up to online and any risks you should be looking out for.

Finally this week, a message from the Department for Education…

Best start in life

The Best Start in Life website replaces the Childcare Choices website as the main source of information for early education and childcare support – offering a broader range of resources for families, including eligibility for childcare offers, information about free breakfast clubs and Best Start Family Hubs in their area, and support on pregnancy through to starting school and beyond. Although the website has changed, the offers for parents – such as support for working parents and the 2-year-old childcare offer – are not affected.

The weather feels like summer is months ago. One of the joys of autumn is seeing the excitement on children’s faces when they collect conkers. Over the weekend, why not look out for other signs of autumn? 

Our weekly message: Friday 12 September 2025

Let’s start this week with a message not from us but from Wetherby High School. It’s about their new building. The plans are ready to go out to informal public consultation. On Wednesday 17 September, the school will be joined by the representatives from the Department for Education and contractors to share more detailed designs of the building and how the actual building progress will work. Read more here.

The rest of this week’s message is all about the half-term topic we’ve just started in Key Stages 1 and 2.

What do we mean by topics?

For children in Key Stage 1 and 2, topics are the vehicle for delivering much of the learning in foundation subjects (History, Art, Geography, for example). Each half-termly topic has a driving subject: the main focus for teaching your child the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in life. The driver changes with each topic.

Although there’s a focus on one subject in each topic, there are opportunities for enrichment through other subjects. For example, learning in a History driven subject may be enriched by observational drawing of an artefact. In this example, the enricher is art.

For more information about our topics, click here.

What is this half-term’s topic?

This half-term, we’re geographers. The topic is called Where in the world am I?

We’re focusing on the geography of the United Kingdom and helping to develop children’s sense of where they live through the use of fieldwork. As you read about the learning planned in each phase, you’ll see how the learning progresses across the primary age range.

Children in Years 1 and 2 will learn about the different countries that make up the United Kingdom and their capital cities. They’ll learn about the difference between physical and human geography and identify examples of both in the local area. They’ll also learn about the four compass points and use geographical vocabulary to describe what is north, south, east or west of them. A big chunk of the learning will have a focus on fieldwork. They’ll think of questions about the locality. For example, what types of trees are growing in the school grounds? They’ll then collect and present data to answer the question.

Children in Years 3 and 4 will develop their locational knowledge by using maps and atlases to locate some of the other cities in the United Kingdom. They’ll learn about counties and use the eight compass points to describe locations. The big focus for this phase is on maps. They’ll learn how to use Ordnance Survey maps and their keys. They’ll learn about four figure grid references and use these to locate features. They’ll then apply this learning more locally by mapping a route in the locality.

Children in Year 5 and 6 will learn about national parks, using maps to locate them. They’ll then learn about urban green spaces and their importance before learning about how Leeds has expanded over time. Importantly, children will get an understanding of how a geographer works by completing fieldwork in the locality. They’ll gather data about the amount of carbon stored in trees and present that data.

How can you help?

To kick off with, check out the links for each phase (above) to explore more about the United Kingdom, Ordnance Survey and national parks.

Regardless of the year group your child is in, Google Earth is a brilliant tool to help develop children’s understanding of their sense of place in the world. Zoom right in on your home and then zoom out to reveal the area of Leeds that you live in. Zoom further out to see what city you live. Zoom further for the county. A little further and you might start to spot some national parks. Further still and you can see the country that we live in. Keep zooming and you’ll see the continent we live in (though this isn’t labelled). Before you know it, you’re floating in space and circling the Earth!

Google Maps is another great tool for investigating where you live. Try the street view option and you can walk along your street. You can even toggle between different data points to see what your house or garden looked like in previous years. (My lack of gardening skills were laid bare in a staff meeting when we compared my unkempt garden in 2019 to the lush, wildlife haven the previous owners had lovingly created in 2008!)

Have a quiz with your child about some locational knowledge to help them remember important information. I’ve listed some examples below. Use the age-related expectations and vocabulary on page 17 and 18 to find the right pitch for your child.

• What country do we live in?
• Which county do we live in?
• Which city do we live in?
• Which part of Leeds do we live in?
• Which four countries make up the United Kingdom?
• Which national parks are located in Yorkshire?

If you can, go to the library and get some geography related books, especially an atlas. You could compare maps of the same place to see what type of information they show. For example, you find lots of maps of the United Kingdom. One might show the countries and capital cities. Another might show the mountains, rivers and national parks. Another might give information about the climate.

Children could draw a plan/map of their bedroom with a key. Older children could try to do this for each room of their house. Children could also create a map of a mythical location with an accompanying key.

For children in Key Stage 2 (Years 3-6), there are lots of different games and activities on Ordnance Survey Mapzone. I especially like the jigsaws in the Map Puzzles section of the Games.

Also for KS2 children, there’s a lot of information and some tasks and quizzes on BBC Bitesize.

Our weekly message: Friday 05 September 2025

We’re delighted to welcome back all our children and adults. We’re also happy to say hello to new faces in our Early Years and in other year groups, too. We’re also welcoming Miss Gilliland, who is our new Year 3 teacher – I know she’s had a great first week with the children.

We have another newbie at St James’ – Chips the hedgehog! We know how much Mr Kilner loves his wildlife and nature. This year, Mr Kilner and children in Year 6 have decided to put a hedgehog house outside the classroom. It didn’t take long before a hedgehog took up residency and we now have a hedgehog sleeping inside the house! We’ll be keeping an eye on Chips to make sure it’s OK, and we’ll keep a look out for other wildlife that may join us.

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 smiley face spotted at some time in the holidays. Monday’s the deadline to send in a pic.

Dates

Here’s a list of key events across the year.

For a fuller and up-to-date picture of what’s going on, check out our school 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.)

A few reminders

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. One of the pages to be aware of is Policies and Other Points – this page contains lots of information, including our Positive Relationships policies and our Uniform policy.

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.

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 Geography topic – start asking your child now what they’ve been learning in Geography!

Our Christian value focus this half-term 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

Summer smile competition

Have you captured a smile for our Summer competition yet? This summer, we’re looking for smiley faces to sum up our happy and healthy place to achieve and believe!

Over the Summer holiday, we want you to stay alert to happy and healthy faces all around you… and take a pic of any hidden smiley faces in your surroundings: a day out at the beach might include creating a smiley face, for example! Here’s our suggestion (look for the smiling face!)…

…but we’re sure you can do better!

Look out for things around you that show a hidden smiley face – a happy and healthy face – or encourage your child to create their own from things around them (pebbles, leaves, Lego…).

To help you get started, look out for some intended smiling faces like McCain Potato Smiles or commercial logos with a hidden smile but they’ll be too obvious to win the competition!

To enter, email your pics to stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org by Monday 08 September. Enter ‘Summer competition’ as the subject.

All entries will be displayed in a happy and healthy display in school, and there are prizes for our favourites.