Free school meals – are you entitled?

In January 2024, 8,435 pupils entitled to a free school meal missed out on a free hot, nutritious lunch.

Children are in school for 190 days every year, so think of the savings you could make by making sure they are signed up.

Contact the school office to find out if you’re entitled to free school meals or apply online by visiting: https://bit.ly/41SqJ8t

Our weekly message: Friday 10 January 2025

A belated happy new year to you all.

What a tricky start to the new term! Despite this, children came back to school on Tuesday cool, calm and collected, all ready for lots more learning! Thank you again for your understanding and support when we had to make the difficult decision to close on Monday.

New year, new contact details?

Let’s start with a short request: If you’ve got any new contact details for you or other contacts, please remember to let us know. We need up-to-date details for the people on our lists in case of emergencies. (The people on our lists are the ones you gave us when your child started school – in most cases, we should have details for three different people.)

Attendance matters

Our school attendance in the Autumn term was 95.9%. This is a really good figure:

• it’s higher than for the same term last year (95.3%)
• we rank 57 out of 223 Leeds schools
• we’re in second highest band of schools nationally (decile 2: the top 10-20% of schools)

Thank you for continuing to make sure your child gets to school as much as possible.

In particular, a big thank you and well done to Class 3,4C (Mrs Wadsworth’s class) – their attendance is an amazing 97.2%! Also well done to Class 3,4A (96.9%). Class 5,6A, Class 5,6B and Class 2C all come a close third.

As always, if you’re unsure, please check the NHS app: Is my child too ill for school?

Money matters

This time of year can be difficult for many families dealing with additional costs and pressure on their household budgets. The Money Information Centre offers access to free, confidential, and impartial help and advice on a range of money-related matters, with a range of useful information about employment support, energy, fuel and food support and the healthy holidays programme.​

Watch Us While We Work: you said, we listened

​Our Watch Us While We Work and Topic Review sessions are really popular – lots of you attend these. However, some parents have told us being able to visit just one class is frustrating. We’ve listened.

The next Watch Us While We Work session is coming up – it’s first thing on Thursday 23 January.

This time, we’ve asked teachers to plan for two parts within the half hour session. This means after the first 10-15 minutes or so, you’ll get a chance to switch classrooms without disrupting the learning going on.

We realise this doesn’t help if you’d prefer to visit three classes or more because you’ve more children, but we think these 10-15 minutes parts are as short as they can be while making sure you still get the most out of them.

Enjoy your weekend – stay warm!

Bad back anyone?

We did it!

Thanks to some very energetic, strong, hardworking and possibly slightly mad parents, Grandparents and carers, we managed to clear some paths in our playground.

Fluffy snow? No

Rock solid ice? Yes

It was backbreaking work but we managed it.

Thank you so much to those of you who came to help. It was so nice to see our school community come together to help out.  You never let us down!

Weather update for Wednesday 08 January

Just like today, we aim to open as normal tomorrow.

Registers will be open for longer. Your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

This is to make sure you can get to school safely despite the freezing weather.

Weather update (Tuesday 07 January)

We’re open today (Tuesday 07 January).

Registers are open for longer so your child won’t be marked in as late if they arrive later than usual.

Please travel safely.

Snowy weather: update for Tuesday

We’re happy to confirm school will be open tomorrow as normal (assuming there’s not a drastic change in the weather conditions!).

When we’re faced with the question of whether to open or close, we have to factor in travel conditions for families and for staff (some of whom live quite far away); the availability of site staff to clear paths and make them safe; the condition of the rooms (and whether there have been leaks caused by snow, as was the case today)…

Thank you for your understanding today.

Snowy weather: school is closed

School is closed today.

The weather situation hasn’t improved enough overnight so we’ve taken the decision to close school today.

Snowy weather

The weather conditions at the moment mean that any sort of travel is tricky. However, the forecast is an improving one. As it stands right now, please expect that that school will be open tomorrow. We’ll keep the registers open for longer so you can travel safely.

We’ll keep you updated online if there’s any further updates.

Finally… Happy new year! We hope you enjoyed a lovely break.

Our last weekly message of 2024: Friday 20 December

If you came to one of our Christmas performances, we hope you enjoyed it and thank you for your donation. We raised £331 for our school charity: Willow Foundation.

Highlights

It’s our last message of 2024! We thought it would be nice to share some of our highlights…

• Mrs Latham: ‘Class 1,2B were captivated by our Great Fire of London topic this year. We learnt so many new facts about September 1666, Pudding Lane, the bakery and wooden houses! We loved singing this song!’
• Miss Hague: ‘A highlight from the last term has been taking some time to plan some future improvements to our school. FOSP have kindly given us some money to improve our KS1 wildlife area so look out for bug hotels, bird feeders and new signs during the spring. Our library is also getting a face-lift in the Spring term.  We’re working with a design team to create a whole new look! Watch this space.
  We’re also hoping to create a brand new space in school but it’s a bit too early to give you any details yet! It’s very exciting though.’
• Miss Gilliland: ‘My proudest moment to date has been watching my pupils’ confidence flourish and seeing them proudly showcase it during our class assembly.’
• Miss Young: ‘A highlight has to be Adjective Day. The children came to school in fantastic outfits. We had a great time learning new vocabulary and sharing our adjectives with one another.’
• Mr Catherall: ‘I’ve two highlights. The first relates to the many visitors we’ve welcomed into our school so far this year. Each time we do, I feel so proud to walk around school: our children are so positive, polite and respectful; and the teaching and learning happening in all classrooms is fantastic. The second highlight was when I was lucky enough to go to the Royal Armouries and Leeds Discovery Centre with Class 5,6B. The way the children conducted themselves on the day was really impressive: polite, positive, passionate and respectful to all.’
• The Reception teachers: ‘We’ve loved seeing the children make new friends and settle into Reception life. Our highlight has been seeing the children enjoy and progress in their phonics, to become early readers and writers. We’re looking forward to seeing more amazing achievements as we continue our learning journey.’
• Mrs Wadsworth: ‘3,4C have had a wonderful term of learning. A particular highlight was our phase trip to Lotherton Hall to enhance our Science learning within school. We also enjoyed sharing our learning in our class assembly.’
• Mrs Beesley and the Nursery team: ‘Our Nursery highlight this term is always most definitely watching the children sing for you all in the Christmas performances. How they’ve developed from the three year olds we all met at home visits in September! They showed us not only great singing, but self-confidence, happiness and pride in their achievements. What a wonderful start to their learning journeys.’
• Mrs Paterson: ‘A highlight for me has been hearing the children make such thoughtful contributions towards each other not just in circle time, but in the way they look after each other at all times. Whether giving advice about a particular worry, checking in on a classmate so they know they’re not alone or cheering on someone else’s achievements, it’s been amazing to see so many small acts of kindness.’

…and my highlight is simply standing at the school gate at the start of the school day and being greeted by happy and healthy children as they arrive at school – it’s such a positive way to start the day!

Leeds at Christmas

The ultimate guide to Christmas in Leeds includes a whole host of information about what’s happening over the Christmas and New Year period, such as visiting the Christmas markets across the city centre, family attractions including Northern lights at Temple Newsham and where to see Santa.

Finally, all that needs to be said is have a happy Christmas. We’ll see you all again on Monday 06 January.

Thank you for your donations

A huge thanks for your generosity at our Christmas shows.

Our Junior Leaders were stood with collection box in hand at each of the four ‘performances’ that our Nursery, Reception , Year 1 and Year 2 children put on.

We managed to raise £331 for  Willow Foundation

This money will help families who are facing some difficult times to enjoy the opportunity to make some very special memories.  We will continue to raise money for our school charity throughout the year.  As always, a big thank you for your continued support.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas