Fabulous Foundation!
This week we’ve welcomed back our returners moving from F1 into F2 and made some new friends! We’ve made a fabulous start to the year with happy faces, smart uniforms and busy learning. Our little learners jumped straight back into their favourite activities, as well as exploring the new areas we have on offer this year.
The story shed has been a new addition to our outside area; a cosy new space to read books and magazines, tell stories and make-marks.
We also have a new water station next to our mud kitchen, to make all sorts of wonderful potions and mixtures, which has been very popular during our first few sessions.
It makes us so proud to see how settled and content the children are in the classroom, both returners and new pupils.
Please remember that although your children have settled well, we welcome you into the classroom each morning to share some learning with your child and explore the activities on offer in the classroom. This year we have some new additions in the classroom, just for you parents and carers;
Join your child at the ‘Learn with me’ activity in the classroom- a teacher-free zone! A new activity will be placed here each week, for you to complete alongside your child. Our ‘Parents as partners’ board in the classroom is for you to share great examples of learning at home. You can also email us photos and descriptions of your child’s learning at home. Please send these to:
stjameseyfs@spherefederation.org
This half term we’ll be theming our learning around ‘Becoming a story-teller’, using traditional tales as a basis for learning across the classroom. As always, we will also use the children’s interests and ideas to tailor our activities.
We look forward to sharing this year of learning with you.
Leavers’ Service
Thank you to Reverend Stroma and St James’ Church for hosting our year 6 leavers’ service last week. It was a special afternoon where the children reflected on their primary school years together. We are incredibly proud of our year 6 pupils.
Fabulous Library Visit!
Yesterday afternoon, Year 1 and 2 visited Wetherby Library. Have a look at some of the comments the children made and the pictures of them using the library. They were much more confident in how to use the library this time and more focussed on choosing books that suited/interested them.
Ellie – The library trip was great. I got one of my favourite books called ‘I’ll never let you go’.
Lilly – It was fun walking down the library and getting a Harry Hill’s book.
Jack – I like going to the library because I saw a book that I liked about Kart Racing and Mr Wicks liked it too
Harley – It was really fun and I picked a book about fires, police and bees.
Joe – I like going to the library because there are so many books that I would like to get from there.
Daisy-Mae – I liked going to the library because I found some Beast Quest books and I got to get a Molly Broomstick book. I saw a book about a clown but there were no words in it so I think it would be a good book to make up my own words for the story.
This half-term’s Christian value is…
…peace.
Every half-term, we focus on one of our six Christian values.
Peace is about positive harmony and healthy relationships between people. It involves spiritual as well as material security. Peace is a state of true wholeness, a state of well-being.
This value promotes harmony, stability and security within the school and local community.
Why did the Church Council choose this Christian value? ‘Because when Jesus was sent down there was peace.’ (Year 2 Church Council member)
St James’ Head of School post
As you will know, Miss Beatson has been Acting Head of School since September in the absence of Mr Williams.
A recruitment process to find a permanent Head of School culminated yesterday, Monday 19 March, in Miss Beatson’s permanent appointment.
The recruitment was rigorous. Two governors were involved as well as me, the Head of Federation. Also involved was an advisor from the Diocese in order to provide an external viewpoint and the perspective of the Diocese, since St James’ is a Church of England school.
Miss Beatson has a great passion and enthusiasm for supporting all staff and pupils in school, and I know parents also respect her and value the great relationship she has built up with them.
She and I are looking forward to continuing to make sure St James’ CE Primary keeps getting better and better.
Well done to Miss Beatson!
Snow, Sun and World Book Day Fun!
Thank you all for coming to school in your wonderful World Book Day costumes on Monday. We had a great time exploring different popular stories throughout the week and celebrating the importance and enjoyment of reading.
We were a little surprised by the snow on Wednesday! Foundation love exploring the snow, so we took the opportunity to go outside in small groups to do a bit of mark-making with our bodies and sticks.
When the sun came out in the following days, we saw some fabulous child-led learning, as the children collectively decided to work together to make their own stage using the large construction blocks. There were some amazing performers and performances!
The children have enjoyed their first week observing the chick eggs in the classroom. We’ve had lots of discussion and are working together to take care of them. We gently turn them over each day as we count them and are marking off the days until the very egg-citing hatching!
Foundation have all been working on their special cards for Mothering Sunday. F2 have been writing about why their mummies are so fantastic!
If you were able to attend the assembly, we hope you enjoyed seeing our ‘people who care for us’ artwork and hearing about all the lovely things the children wanted to share with you all.
We wish you a very Happy Mother’s Day.
Well done…
Foundation had another great half-term of learning! Enjoy a lovely break with your family and friends and don’t forget to fill in those Time to Talk sheets (sent home on Friday), so that we can hear all about it when we return to school on Monday 19 February.
Learning workshops
Thanks to the parents and carers of Year 2 and Year 6 children who came to school this week for a workshop around supporting their child’s learning at home. We’re really pleased to see people taking the time to learn how you can best support your child at home.
Here are two examples of the great feedback we got:
- ‘We found it very informative on what [our child] should expect and how we can support her and help learning.’
- ‘It helped us as we understand the SATs papers more thoroughly. This will enable us to support her better to achieve positive results.’
Watch a short video about the Key Stage 2 assessments (SATs) here.
Marvellous Mathematics!
A big thank you to all of the parents who were able to attend the Marvellous Mathematics Stay and Play this afternoon. The children are always so excited to share their learning with you and we hope you enjoyed seeing our Maths in action!
12 January 2018
This week’s spellings homework is a spelling list. It’s due in on Thursday 18 January.
Have a look in your child’s book to see which spellings they have.
- Group 1: in, is, it, as
- Group 2: was, you, they, are, my
- Group 3: like, so, do, come, some, were, there, little
- Group 4: grow, grew, fly, flew, bring, brought, fight, fought, teach, taught