Class News

Postcards

The first postcards of the year are written and stamped and ready to go in the post box.

Throughout the year, your child might achieve something significant, continue to show a fantastic learning attitude or just generally be an all round great member of our class – for these reasons (and many others, I’m sure!) a postcard will be written and sent to their home address.

I’ve written six so far… could there be one arriving through your letterbox?

Livin’ on a Prayer!

Today’s music lesson was EPIC! Year 5 & 6 learned one of the classics-Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin on a Prayer’.
I was totally surprised at what a tuneful bunch they are and their sensational efforts at the well known key change were memorable-I especially loved their signature ‘power grab’ at the end..!

I can’t wait to hear more as for the rest of this half term, we’ll be focussing on singing.
Awesome effort by all.

Early Reading

Peer mediator application

We are looking for Year 5 and 6 pupils who believe they would make a good peer mediator to help make St James’ C of E Primary School a happy and healthy place to achieve and believe, particularly during playtimes. The whole class have been given an application form and if they are interested in applying they need to complete the form by Friday 24 September.

This week’s bible story

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

In today’s story, we hear about a man called Zacchaeus. He had always been a loner. He had never had as much as one friend. Not surprising, really. He had lived most of his life as a cheat. It was easy. Just demand more money. That was the beauty of his job as a tax collector. People were a bit afraid of tax collectors. You would not want to get on the wrong side of a tax collector, especially one like Zacchaeus.

He was a small man, was Zacchaeus. Perhaps he was bullied or laughed at. Sometimes people get picked on by others – the tall ones, perhaps, or the short ones, or ones with straight hair, or ones with curly hair, or ones with the wrong clothes. People are certainly not born cheats.

Or perhaps Zacchaeus just thought that money could bring him happiness, or friends. Or maybe he was just a rogue!

One day Zacchaeus was out and about in the streets of Jericho. He heard people talking about Jesus. All excited, they were, that Jesus was going to be passing through their town that day. Read the story to find out what happened to Zacchaeus.

Reflection:
Zacchaeus was a man with a hard heart and no friends. We don’t know why, but Jesus cared for Zacchaeus. Jesus also believed that Zacchaeus had some good in him, if only he could be persuaded to change his ways. Zacchaeus mattered to Jesus, and Jesus’ friendship was able to change how Zacchaeus acted. Think about yourself and your friends. Are there any ways in which you can treat people that might help them to become friends?

Prayer
Dear God,
Thank you that you know us and that you care for us.
Help us to be kind and generous to other people,
like Zacchaeus after he met Jesus.
Amen.

Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning

During our Living and Learning lesson this week, we looked at the 8Rs for learning. The children had some great ideas of how they show the 8Rs in school and we recorded some for our Living and Learning classroom display.

Lily said “We show we are ready by coming in from break time and sitting smartly on the carpet”.

Chloe said “We reflect by thinking about something we have done before”.

Christian said “We take risks by putting our hand up and having a guess”.

These are our 8Rs for learning:

Risk taking

Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.

Responsibility

Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!

Responding

This could be responding to their teacher in class or responding to feedback in their learning.

Ready

Make sure your child is at school on time for a prompt start.
Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!

Resourceful

Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.

Resilience

Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.

Remember

Make sure they have time to learn spellings and times tables – a little practice daily is best.
Play memory games:

Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!

Reflect

Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today.

Transition: Week 2

This week, we welcomed groups 2 and 3. It has been lovely to see the classroom full of busy children doing lots of fantastic learning.
Click here to see what groups 2 and 3 got up to this week.

On Thursday, we had a circle time session. We read the story All Are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. We talked about the book’s key message. No matter what we look like, we all have a place in our school. The children were asked to work with a partner to spot things that were the same and things that were different.
Miss Marsden introduced the class bear to the children. They were asked to think of some names for the bear – we had a variety of names! We wrote their suggestions on the whiteboard and the children voted for their favourite. We counted the votes and Sparkle Shots won!
Isolation work
Next week, we will start emailing isolation work to your personal email addresses. Your child only needs to do this work if they are self-isolating.

PE
PE starts next Wednesday. Please make sure your child comes to school in their PE kit.

Parent Partners
This half-term, we’ll be learning about different families, where we live, and autumn changes. Alongside the main themes, we try to plan other areas of learning according to the children’s interests. To help us with this, Parent Partners are key in this process! Throughout the year, we really encourage that you send photos of any ‘WOW’ moments or new interests your child has at home. You can bring these moments into school or send them to stjameseyfs@speherefederation.org.

Reception Zoom session
Thank you to everyone who has attended our recent Zoom sessions to help you support your child at home. Watch the phonics session and the Early Years introduction. (And apologies for the distracting cursor in the latter – maybe that’s a nervous habit of Mr Roundtree!

Home-Link Challenge

We are geographers!

Today, the children continued with their geography based topic ‘Where in the world am I?’

The class were asked to name and locate the four countries of the United Kingdom. Using the index of an atlas, the children were able to find a place name and then locate the correct page in the atlas.

After finding the countries, they then had to find out the capital city of each country.

Next, after a few reminders about staying safe online, the class used a search engine to find out more about each capital city.

Question your child about their knowledge of the United Kingdom.

Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA)

The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is statutory for all schools from September 2021.

It is a short, interactive and practical assessment of your child’s early
literacy, communication, language and mathematics skills when they begin
school, using materials that most children of your child’s age will be familiar with.

All Reception children will be participating in the reception baseline assessment (RBA) within the first 6 weeks of starting school.

The purpose of the assessment is to provide the starting point for a new measure that will help parents understand how well schools support their pupils to progress between reception and year 6 / the end of key stage 2.

For further information about the RBA, please see this guide.

Introduction to Reception – Zoom session

We’d like to welcome new Reception parents to our school by inviting you to a short Zoom session on Wednesday 15 September at 6pm. This session will be a 30 minute introduction to Reception at our Sphere Federation schools.

The sessions will outline the recent changes to the EY’s Framework and the introduction of a Reception Baseline Assessment. It’ll also offer you a few top tips on how you can support your child at home.

The session starts at 6pm. It will last around 20-25 minutes, plus there will be a questions and answer session at the end of around 5-10 minutes.

If you’re interested in attending this Zoom session, please either send us a message on the School Gateway app or email the school office. We’ll then email the Zoom joining details out to all those who have expressed an interest.

Watch out for further workshops relating to both English and Maths on your child’s class website page in the coming weeks.