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.

Our last weekly school message of the year: Friday 18 July 2025

We’ve reached the end of the school year – we hope it’s been a happy and healthy one at St James’ CE Primary for you and your child. Our message this week is a long one:

1. Our first message is some early news about assessment outcomes
2. Our next message is about swimming – it’s especially important for parents of children moving into Year 3 next year
3. We’ve a uniform update – this is for everyone
4. A short, but very grateful, thank you to our wonderful PTA
5. Also for everyone are some links for holiday ideas
6. After this, we’ve an array of celebrations of our happy and healthy school!

Well done!

At the end of the school year, there are different statutory assessments for children in different year groups. With assessments still coming in or yet to be confirmed, it’s early days to look too closely at the results, but here’s a quick first look:

• The vast majority of our Year 1 children reached national expectations in the Phonics Screening Check – 86.2% compared to the national figure of 80.1%
• Our Year 4 children’s average score in the Multiplication Tables Check was 23.0 out of 25 – we don’t know the 2025 national average, but that’s comfortably above last year’s figure of 20.6
• In the Key Stage 2 tests (the SATs) in Reading, Maths and Grammar and Punctuation, the outcomes for Year 6 match the national figures

Well done to all the pupils for doing so well.

Swimming lessons

In September, your child will start swimming lessons as part of the PE National Curriculum. Lessons will take place at Wetherby Leisure Centre.

• boys: swim shorts under PE kit
• girls: bring their swimming costume to school, ready to get changed at school before walking down to the leisure centre

• towel
• goggles (if needed)
• underwear for afterwards

If your child needs arm bands, they’ll be provided at the centre.

Uniform update

Please remind yourself of our Uniform Policy so you and your child can be ready for September. We’ve made a couple of minor changes: nothing major, mainly making the guidance around additional items hopefully a bit clearly.

Thank you to our PTA…

What a wonderful year packed full of fun events courtesy of our PTA. Thank you to everyone who’s helped or taken part in PTA events this year. Read the 2024-25 annual report from PTA.

Happy and healthy in the holidays

Our weekly message: Friday 11 July 2025

This week has been our Being Healthy themed week, the second of our Living and Learning themed weeks in the year. A particular was our Sports Day – despite the heat, a fun day was had by all. Thanks for coming along and supporting this end of year highlight!

Home learning

Our first message this week is here for two reasons:

• to help parents of children going into Year 1 in September know about home learning
• to make sure other parents are aware of our expectations for home learning (this stems from feedback in our 2025 annual survey)

At St James’ CE Primary, we set out five home learning tasks for children to do:

• Reading – daily for at least 10-15 minutes
• Number fluency – use NumBots or TimesTables Rock Stars for about ten minutes each day
• Spellings – daily for 5-10 minutes
• Talk Time – weekly for about 15 minutes
• Living and Learning– weekly for about 15 minutes

Altogether, this varied diet of home learning totals about 35 minutes each day (that’s allowing for a day or two off). Read our Home Learning Policy. This includes a Homework Guide which you might want to print off and keep somewhere for easy reference.

Summer production

The Year 6 leavers’ production of ‘Let the Games Begin’ was a huge success. Well done to all of the children and staff involved in putting on a wonderful performance. Thank you, also, to all of you who managed to attend. We hope you enjoyed it.

Summer Fair

Thank you to everyone who attended the Summer Fair and all those involved in organising the event. The total raised on the day was £2,107.54! This is a fantastic amount and it will be a huge contribution to the playground trim trail that the PTA are saving up for.

Governance

For those of you interested to read more about our Governing Board, the Sphere Federation Annual Governance Statement for 2024-25 has been published.

We do still have a vacancy on the Governing Board. Please mention this to any friends or relatives! Anyone interested should contact the chair of governors, Mrs Rachel Cooper: rachelcooper@spherefederation.org

That’s a date!

At Sphere Federation, we like to be organised because we know many of you do, too. That’s why you’ll find most of the key dates in our calendar for 2025-26. Because we’ve got these planned in so far in advance, there’s a small chance one or two might need to be changed (we’ve not had to do this very often this year!). Well over 50 events are listed, including:

• Christmas events
• Church visits
• Early Years events such as Stay and Learn sessions
• Happy and healthy school community sessions (formerly known as our Coffee mornings, but renamed because some are in the afternoon now, too!)
• all our Living and Learning statements (with improved prompts for continuing the  learning at home)
• Living and Learning themed weeks (Me and My Money and Staying Safe)
• Living and Learning themed days (Anti-bullying day and Safer Internet Day)
• National assessments
• Productions across the year
• Watch us while we work sessions (so you can see some teaching and learning in core skills like Reading, Writing and Maths)
• Topic review sessions (come and and see the learning in Art and Computing)
• Some online presentations (Y6 SATs and residential; Y1, Y2 phonics and early reading; online safety)
• Parent-teacher meetings (in October and February)
• Photographer (for individual and class photos)
• lots of events to celebrate Reading
• Sports Day

Safeguarding over the Summer break

During the Summer holiday, you might have a concern about a child that you feel needs acting on. In term time, we would encourage you to share the concern with us at school but this isn’t possible when school is closed.

Here are some options for you if you have any concerns:

• During office hours: You can call Children’s Social Work Services on 0113 222 4403 (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, except Wednesdays when they’re open from 10am). You can also discuss your concerns with someone who works with children and families, such as your health visitor or your GP
• Out of office hours: If you think a child is in immediate danger call the police on 999
• Our Federation Safeguarding Lead will also be picking up emails. You can contact her using our safeguarding email address: stayingsafe@spherefederation.org

Talking of summer, don’t forget…

Our Summer competition

The aim is simple: capture or create a smiley face to sum up our happy and healthy place to achieve and believe! 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 in the sand, for example! We’re sure you and your child can do than our suggestion (look for the smiling face!)…

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 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.

Next week’s our last week of the 2024-25 school year. The last day of term is Friday 18 July. If your child’s in Year 6, we’re looking forward to seeing you for our Leavers’ Service at St James Church on Thursday at 2.00pm.

Our weekly message: Friday 04 July 2025

You should have received your child’s annual report this week. Please contact your child’s teacher if you’d like to discuss the report – your questions, comments and concerns are important.

We start this week’s message with a repeat of an email from yesterday…

This week’s message has a few repeats of previous messages so you’re prepared…

Themed week: Being Healthy

Next week is the second of two themed weeks in the year. Here are a few reminders.

• Children should wear PE kit throughout the week, but please make sure it follows our Uniform Policy:

• Travel actively to school – scooter, walking, riding their bike safely! For the chance to win a book token, send your photos by Thursday 10 July to stjamesoffice@spherefederation.org
• Thursday 10 July is our Sports Day: Early Years at 9.15am and Key Stage 1 and 2 at 1.30pm.
• Pupils have an online health questionnaire at home for their homework.

To help us continue with themed weeks such as this, we’re asking for a small contribution: £2 per pupil (Gateway) will help us to pay for visitors for themed weeks. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far.

Production

Don’t forget our Key Stage 2 Summer production next week, too. There are two performances:

• Tuesday at 1.45pm
• Wednesday at 6.00pm

2025-26 classes

As we come to the end of the school year, we’d like to update you on the teachers for the next school year.

We’re saying goodbye to Mrs Palmer who’ll be moving to Moortown Primary (one of our federation schools). We wish her all the best at Moortown. We’re also saying goodbye to Mrs Cowgill who has been covering maternity leave in the Nursery class. Mrs Cowgill has done a fantastic job and we’ll miss her lots.

We welcome Miss Gilliland who is joining us from Scholes (Elmet) Primary. Some children will remember Miss Gilliland when she did her teaching placement at St James’ last year.

Yesterday, your child met with their new teacher and spent some time getting to know them. I’m sure they’ll want to tell you all about it when they get home.

Here are the classes for September:

• Nursery and Reception: Miss Kendrew
• Year 1: Mr Nash
• Year 2: Miss Gledhill (M, Tu, F) and Mrs Bye (W, Th) (In January, Mrs Ward will return from maternity leave and will teach in Year 2 with Mrs Bye)
• Year 3: Miss Gilliland
• Year 4: Mrs Poole
• Year 5: Mr Freeman
• Year 6: Mr Kilner

Rock steady

On Monday, we had an exciting visit from Rocksteady Music School. The key focus of the visit was to engage pupils in music, to learn about various instruments and how to play them. We kicked off with a whole school assembly where children learnt all about what it takes to be in a band (sing along to some of the latest hits!). After this, there were separate workshops where a pupil band was put together in just 30 minutes!

That’s all for this week. Before we end, here’s an idea if there’s a summer birthday in your household…

Herd Farm is a council-run activity centre offering a range of outdoor activities and pursuits for both adults and children. They’ve recently launched a Birthday Adventure Offer which they’re trialling during the summer holidays. Interested? Check out this video clip.