Is your child starting in Year 6? You can now apply online for a Year 7 place.
Nursery open morning: Saturday 30 September, 10am
Come and have a look around our happy and healthy Nursery!
We’re holding an open morning on Saturday 30 September at 10am.
No need to book, just turn up!
15 & 30 hour places available for 3 & 4 year olds.
This week’s message (Friday 21 July 2023)
This is our last message of the school year. We hope you and your child have had a good one. Thank you for all your support throughout the year – it’s always very much appreciated.
You might remember a few months ago we celebrated the sporting achievements of one of our pupils. He goes from strength to strength: at the weekend, he came an amazing third in the Taekwondo International World Championships. Well done!
Perhaps his next challenge is to do some extreme reading at the same time…
Extreme reading
We’re already getting some entries through for our Summer Competition this year. Here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we love reading and thought we’d celebrate that this year with the theme of extreme reading. Here’s a couple of pics – one from Scholes and one from another Sphere Federation school – we love them!
To enter, email your pics to scholesoffice@spherefederation.org by Friday 08 September. Enter ‘Summer competition’ as the subject. All entries will be displayed in school, and there are prizes for our favourites.
Talking of reading, check out the Leeds Libraries Summer Challenge.
Our school day
A reminder…
From September 2023, the school day starts at 8.45am and ends at 3.15pm every day. This is to meet the government’s expectation for a minimum school week of 32.5 hours.
In the schools white paper published in March 2022, the government announced that all mainstream, state-funded schools would be expected to deliver a minimum school week of 32.5 hours by September 2023. The white paper was subsequently abandoned. However, an email from the Department for Education this week reiterates this expectation.
Measles
The following comes from the Department for Education for all parents and carers to read.
Measles can be very serious and spreads easily. Children and adults who contract measles can end up in hospital or suffer long term health consequences. In rare cases, it can be fatal.
Measles is completely preventable with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first dose is offered to children at 1 year of age and the second dose at 3 years and 4 months. Measles outbreaks happen when not enough children have been vaccinated and can be very disruptive in educational settings.
Schools are also encouraged to remind parents to check that their children’s vaccines are up to date. You can catch up on your MMR vaccine through your GP whatever your age.
Read more about the MMR vaccination.
Whatever you get up to, have a very happy and healthy summer. We’ll see you again on Tuesday 05 September – remember the 8.45am start!
Scholes in Bloom
We met the Britain in Bloom judges today, with the winner of the flowerbed competition showing off her design. We talked about the litter picking we had done, plants we had grown and how proud we were of our beautiful village.
Living and Learning (Being Healthy week) : Yoga and mindfulness
Reception, Year 1, Year 2, Year 5 and Year 6 all enjoyed yoga sessions from School of Yoga this week. This helped us learn about the importance of mental wellbeing and wellness, as well as physical health. Time to be mindful is important for our mental health.
This week’s message (Friday 14 July 2023)
This week’s message comes from Miss Hague…
Although there’s just one week left of school, we won’t be slowing down at Scholes. We’ll continue to keep structure to our school day and ensure learning is the priority so that our school can continue to be a happy and healthy place to learn.
Speaking of being happy and healthy, we were sad to cancel our KS2 Sports Day this afternoon. We made the call early to ensure any adults attending could re-arrange their plans. We’ll (weather permitting, of course) look forward to enjoying this on Tuesday afternoon instead.
Just this week, we had another reminder about how amazing our children are. Year 6 SATs results were released this week and we’re so proud of all of them. For each subject, the percentage of our children who met the expected standard was in-line with or above the national average (around 72% for each subject):
- Reading: 74.4%
- Writing: 76.7%
- Maths: 72.1%
- Grammar, punctuation and spelling: 72%
Great results – a massive well done to all of the children, to you for your support, and to all of the staff who have taught them over the past few years. (The figures here are subject to change because we may ask for some test papers to be re-marked.) The Year 5,6 end-of-year production was also fantastic – well done to all!
Our Key Stage 1 children have also been busy with end of key stage assessments. At the end of Year 2, 68.1% of our children are achieving expected level or above in Reading, 61.4% in Writing, and 72.7% in Maths. In Y1, 97.8% of our children reached the expected standard in their phonics – this is amazing!
We’ve had many other highlights this year. We invited Year 2 parents in recently to celebrate the amazing progress their children have made in reading throughout their time in Key Stage 1.
I’d like to say well done to Miss Young, Mrs Patterson and Mr Robson who have all finished their first year of teaching. Thank you for all your hard work.
Sadly, we’ve several goodbyes this year: Mr Robson leaves us to work at a school nearer to home; Mr Nash leaves us to embark on his teacher training (though he will be based at another school within Sphere Federation: St James’ CE Primary School, Wetherby); Mrs McCormick leaves to focus on her personal training business; Miss Lowry leaves to begin her maternity leave; and Mrs Allaway leaves us for a year to work with the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics. We wish them all the very best and thank them for all of their hard work.
As you know, we pride ourselves on being a happy and healthy place to learn. We’ve been even healthier this week because it’s been a Health themed week. Amongst many healthy highlights, we’ve welcomed visitors from D:Side, iMoves and enjoyed taking part in some yoga. Check out our recently updated guide to Physical Activity. Also, make sure you child completes the health questionnaire alongside you – it’s this week’s homework.
Finally, I’d like to thank FOSP. They’ve worked tirelessly this year to raise funds for our school including raising money to kit-out The Hub with a range of cooking equipment for children to use in our Food and Nutrition lessons (part of the Design and Technology curriculum). You’ll also have noticed FOSP selling refreshments before big events such as productions.
As we move ever closer to the end of the school year, I’d like to thank you all for your ongoing support. I hope you have a fantastic summer with your families, making memories and having fun.
Living and Learning (Being Healthy week) : Soggy Sport Roundabout
A big THANK YOU to everyone who came to support our rather wet Sport Roundabout afternoon today.
We all still had fun, despite the rain. The winning team was France – but check out where your team came.
Another THANK YOU for sending children in fantastic coloured clothes to match their country team too.
1st France
2nd England
3rd Nigeria
4th Spain
5th Italy
6th Portugal
7th Germany
8th Colombia
9th Norway
10th Netherlands
11th Argentina
12th Brazil
This week’s message (Friday 07 July 2023)
This week’s message is a short one, starting with a reminder of the our annual Summer competition…
Big brains
A recent news article caught our eye – front page of The Times (28.06.23):
Here’s an extract from the article:
Young children who love reading grow up to be cleverer teenagers with better mental health, a study has found.
Research by Cambridge and Warwick universities found that reading a lot between the ages of two and nine was linked to better academic performance at secondary school, greater happiness and a reduced likelihood of depression, anxiety or behavioural problems.
Bookish children spent less time on their phones or watching TV. Scans revealed that they had bigger brains.
The research authors stressed the value of parents and carers ‘doing their best to awaken the joy of reading in their children at an early age’. The reaserch suggests that the ideal would be for children to read about 12 hours each week.
Talking of reading…
Extreme reading
Here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we love reading. Over the Summer holidays, we’ve a challenge for your child… Show us how reading-obsessed they are by sending us a pic of them reading in an extreme place or position.
Here’s someone who’s already getting stuck into some extreme reading. (can’t think who it could be!)…
To enter, email your pics to scholesoffice@spherefederation.org by Friday 08 September. Enter ‘Summer competition’ as the subject.
All entries will be displayed in school, and there are prizes for our favourites.
Governance
Each year, the Sphere Federation governors produce a document that outlines their work over the year. Read the 2022-23 Annual Governance Statement.
Finally, in case you missed it, check out Miss Hague’s post from a few days ago which describes the themed week coming up next week.
Being Healthy – themed week 10 July 2023
Our next whole school themed week, based around Being Healthy, will be taking place from Monday 10th July. This is the second of two themed weeks in the year.
In our Being Healthy week learning will be based around how to be healthy, physically and emotionally. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of our Living and Learning education. Children can come in PE kit for the whole week.
As part of the week, you are invited to watch your child take part in our ‘Sports Roundabout’ event on Monday 10 July 1.15- 2.15. Come and see your child work as part of a team. For our Key Stage 2 children, you’re invited to come to our competitive sports day on Friday 14 July 1.15 – 3.30.
On Tuesday 11 July, Year 3 and 4 are going on a trip to Magna but the rest of the school is going to be having a go at some yoga! We’ve also got an assembly by the Mindmate team on this day who will be offering advice on mental health and wellbeing.
D:side will be delivering medicine and drug education sessions to all our children on Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 July. The content of these sessions will be age appropriate but will cover some important information.
This themed week is a good opportunity to think about a healthy way to travel to school. We encourage children to use an active and sustainable method of transport, maybe parking further away from school (The Buffers or the church carpark), scooting, biking or walking to school.
Can you help?
If your job involves an aspect of health and you can support our Being Healthy themed week by coming into school, please contact the office to pass on your details.
We will keep you up to date about events during the week through website posts. We are looking forward to a busy healthy week!
This week’s message (Friday 30 June 2023)
This week’s message comes from our Junior Leadership Team. Before this, just a wee reminder: the last few weeks of the school year are busy (annual reports, productions, sports day…) so it’s a good idea to check out our school calendar.
We would like to introduce ourselves as the Junior Leadership Team and we are very excited to be able to share our successes from this year with you. In the Autumn term, our classes elected us to represent them at the JLT meetings and to allow their voice to be heard. We strive to be great role models that promote maturity, responsibility and respect. We make vital decisions on behalf of the school and its pupils and we democratically decide on changes and actions. We aim to make school a happy and healthy place to learn with democracy at its heart.
At the start of the year we took on the role of reviewing the anti-bullying policy. We made sure that children would be clear on what bullying looks like and where to seek help if needed and we contributed more ideas to what includes bullying. Another of our early year tasks was to select our school charity. Each JLT member led a vote in their classes for their favourite charity. These nominations were then brought to a meeting and we took a democratic vote. As a result, Cancer Research became our charity this year.
One of our favourite activities this year has been generating donations for our school charity – Cancer Research. We are often seen at the school gate shaking our buckets, collecting donations. We successfully raised £371.29 for Children in Need and £337.97 for Red Nose Day. We couldn’t do this without your generosity or support – thank you.
Later this year, we were asked by Miss Hague to choose some children that could become lunchtime monitors. Their role would be to support the lunchtime staff and offer support and be a positive role model for children. We ran an interview process based on a set of questions that allowed us to see which children would be mature, supportive, use their initiative and be good role models. We successfully appointed ten monitors who are now doing a great job at lunchtime.
In the Autumn term, it will be time for the new JLT elections. It will be our time to step down and allow others to enjoy the experience of representing our school and making positive changes. We are very proud of our achievements this year.
Thank you to everyone who supported us on our journey to make our school an even better place to learn.
Junior Leadership Team