Fab Feedback

We’re nearly at the end of our first half term – it’s been a long one with lots going on.

I wanted to share some of the ‘Fab Feedback’ we’ve had over the last few weeks.

Harvest

We received a certificate from Wetherby and District Foodbank to say that our contribution amounted to 453 meals.  That’s a really amazing achievement and will make a huge difference to so many families.

Watch us While we Work

At the beginning of October, we invited parents into school to watch their  child learning and hopefully to takeaway some top tips for helping at home.  Lots of parents gave us positive feedback with many saying that they got some great ideas on how to teach times tables and spellings.  Some parents took away tips on how they could support with reading by using techniques like echo reading or working through a RIC (retrieval, inference/interpretation, choice (author’s choice) process.  Most ‘Even better if …’ were to hold more of these sessions! We do have another coming up 26.01.24, 2.30 – 3.10.  We also have two topic reviews coming up: 01.12.23, 2.30 -3.10 and 18.03.24, 2.30-2.10.

Stay and Learn

Our reception parents also came into school to join in with a stay and learn session.  Lots of parents took away a better understanding of our phonics teaching saying that they now understood what segmenting and blending was all about.  Again, parents made comments about how they would try to use some of the reading strategies at home.  ‘Even better if…’ was all about bigger chairs!!

Open morning

For parents looking for a reception place in 2024, last week, we had our first of three open mornings.  Our amazing Year 6 children showed our visitors around school.  We got lots of feedback about what an amazing job they’d done, how confident and polite they’d been and how knowledgeable they were about our school.  We couldn’t have been more proud of them.  The second and third of our open sessions are coming up: 16.11.23, 1.30-2.30 and 01.12.23, 9.30-10.30.  If you, or anyone you know, are looking for a reception place in September 2024, please come along to one of these sessions.  No need to book.

Visitors to school

We’re always welcoming visitors to school and almost all of them have made the comment about how polite and respectful our children are.  The greetings at the gate are an indication of what it feels like to walk around our school.  It certainly feels like a happy and healthy place to learn.

This week’s message (Friday 20 October 2023)

This week’s message (Friday 13 October 2023)

Our Living and Learning message this week has been about respecting yourself. Have a conversation at home about this. What can your child feel especially proud of at home? And at school? Share examples of you feeling proud, too. How can feeling proud and believing in ourselves help us?

Junior Leadership Team

We’ve recently launched this year’s Junior Leadership Team election process. Our Junior Leadership Team (JLT) is one of the ways that children are encouraged to take an active part in pupil voice.

The election process allows children to develop an understanding of one of the British Values, democracy, with a representative from each class chosen democratically by their peers.

Here are some of the qualities our current Junior Leaders think are needed to be an effective JLT member:

• use the 8Rs for learning
• be respectful and polite
• help others
• be a good speaker and listener (to members of your class and in the meetings)
• share and be confident with your ideas
• let others speak
• accept the views of others even if you don’t agree
• be friendly and approachable
• follow our school rules and make good choices in class and around school

This week’s whole school homework is all about the election and democracy, ready for the elections next Thursday 19 October.

Talking of pupil voice…

The Big Ambition

The Children’s Commissioner for England has recently launched ‘The Big Ambition’ to hear directly from children, young people, and parents across the country.

This is an opportunity to hear from all children, in every part of the country and in every setting. The survey will be used to encourage policymakers to think about children and young people’s needs, to ensure children’s voices are reflected in the decisions that will affect them in years to come.

Encourage your child to take part in The Big Ambition survey. 

Measles

Measles cases are rising across the country.

• 9 out of 10 unvaccinated children can catch measles if someone in their class has it.
• 102,000 children starting school in England are at risk of catching measles.

Check your child is up to date with their MMR vaccinations.

Measles is highly infectious and if left unvaccinated nine out of ten children in a classroom can catch the disease if just one child is infectious.

I hope Friday 13th hasn’t been bad luck for you! Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Fantastic food bank collection

A huge thanks for all your contributions to our harvest collection.

Here are a few of our School Council members with your amazing donations

The person from The Wetherby District Foodbank looked both amazed and concerned as he’d only brought his car with him!

After a bit of careful maneuvering, we managed to get it all in.

Your generosity was very much appreciated

This week’s message (Friday 06 October 2023)

Thank you if you voted in the recent governor elections to find a new parent governors, and a particular thank you to the five parents who put themselves forward. In total, there were 139 votes – a good spread across the three Sphere Federation schools. The candidate with the most votes was Candidate B on the voting form: Steven Trangmar, who’s a senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University.

The main parts of this week’s message come from two of the Sphere Federation leaders. Mrs Latham, the Early Reading and Phonics Leaders, has written the first section. Miss Wilson, the Reading Leader. has written the second.

For children at the early stages of reading…

We’re off to a flying start with our reading! Our Reception children started phonics lessons in Week 2 and are rapidly acquiring the skills to become readers. We use the government validated systematic synthetic phonics scheme Little Wandle Letters and Sounds Revised.

Children in Year 1 and Year 2 have also got back into phonics lessons quickly. The lessons happen every day and last half an hour (Reception build up to this over time). In these lessons, children are taught how a letter or letters (‘graphemes’) match to sounds (‘phonemes’).

We also have reading practice groups for children to use and apply their phonics skills four times a week. These are small group sessions, led by an adult, where children read a book that is matched to the phonics they know. The focus is very much on practising reading.

Your child can then share their phonics reading success at home by accessing the same text as an e-book. Please make sure you do this every week. We monitor if and when children are accessing the e-books.

Year 1 or 2 children who have secure phonic knowledge will begin to access a wider variety of books in school and to take home.

Children also take a sharing book home. These books are to enjoy together and read for pleasure. The focus is very much on enjoyment – developing a love of reading. Enjoy stories, predict what might happen and use different voices for the characters. Information books (non-fiction) can also be so much fun to share – finding out facts and discussing new information. Above all: make it enjoyable!

For more experienced readers…

We’ve made a fantastic start to reading this year and have already read a variety of texts – we’ve learned about scientists, read poetry and really got stuck into our class novels.

• Ask your child what they’re reading this week.
• What do they like or dislike about it?
• Who’s the author?
• Can they give you a ten second summary? What about a ten word summary?Children in Key Stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) are engaging well with their weekly Reading Record activities (as directed on their homework sheet). Make sure your child reads at home every day for at least 10-15 minutes and, depending on their age and confidence, read and discuss the book together wherever possible.When you’re reading at home and discussing the book, try the following:
• Give your child plenty of time to find the answer to your question.
• Decide on the best places to pause to convey shock, concern or, sometimes, just to tease. Pausing builds anticipation.
• Tell your child the definitions of words if they don’t know. There’s no point in guessing.
• Use asides to show your reactions to particular events. For example, ‘Oh, no! This isn’t looking like things will turn out well for him!’
• Colour your voice to give words meaning: whooped, wondered, wailed. Or perform an action as you read: sprouted, quivered, squirmed.

Enjoy a weekend of reading!

Harvest collection

On Wednesday 11 October, we’re having our Harvest collection in school.  This year, we’re collecting for the Wetherby and District Foodbank.

Wetherby and District Foodbank are part of a nationwide network of foodbanks, supported by the The Trussell Trust, working to combat poverty and hunger across the UK.

They’ve given us a shopping list of the top items they’d like us to collect:

If you feel able to support us with our collection, please send your donations in on Wednesday 11 October.

The support last year was overwhelming

This week’s message (Friday 29 September 2023)

We’re approaching the end of the first month back at school. The new school year continues to go really well – children are happy, healthy learners with great behaviour. Our Reception children have settled in really well, too.

Thank you to the parents who responded with interest in becoming a parent governor. Because there was more than one person interested, it means there are elections. We’ve sent you a link so you can vote online after reading their expressions of interest. Look out for the reminder message about this. The deadline for votes is noon on Wednesday next week.

Is your child well enough to be in school?

Post-lockdowns, there’s growing concern about the low attendance rate for pupils. This letter to school leaders illustrates the point.

There is wide agreement among health professionals and educational professionals that school attendance is vital to the life chances of children and young people. Being in school improves health, wellbeing and socialisation

The letter makes two things clear:

• ‘It is usually appropriate for parents and carers to send their children to school with mild respiratory illnesses. This would include general cold symptoms: a minor cough, runny nose or sore throat.’
• ‘Worry and mild or moderate anxiety, whilst sometimes difficult emotions, can be a normal part of growing up for many children and young people. Being in school can often help alleviate the underlying issues. A prolonged period of absence is likely to heighten a child’s anxiety about attending in the future, rather than reduce it.’

We’ve shared the link already, but do check out this NHS website to help you decide if your child is well enough to attend school.

Also worth checking out is this parent’s guide to keeping kids healthy this school year.

Finally, Leeds has produced this short document intended for parents and carers of primary school aged children.

Last year’s school attendance here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary was certainly better than the national figures – please, let’s keep it like that in 2023-24.

This week’s message (Friday 22 September 2023)

Thanks to all of you who took part in our Summer Competition this year. Check out the pics on this News page – we love them!

Please remember we’ve a vacancy for parent governor on the governing board of Sphere Federation. If you’ve got some time to commit to the role, please consider helping to contribute to the strategic leadership of Scholes (Elmet) Primary and Sphere Federation as a whole. Read more about the role. If you’re interested, please submit an expression of interest by  22 September 2023. Please use this form.

The rest of this week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who oversees all the topics in school…

Before we dive in to talk about this term’s topic, here’s a bit of background about topics and what they look like…

What do we mean by topics?

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 the intent, implementation and impact of 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 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 on page 16 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.

Nursery open morning

Come and have a look around our happy and healthy Nursery!

Open morning – 10am, Saturday 30 September.

Please enter via the Morwick Grove entrance.

Nursery flier Scholes 2023

Extreme Reading Winners!

Thank you for your ‘Extreme Reading’ photographs.  You made the job of judging really hard. After lots of deliberating, here are our winners.

From Reception

From Year 3,4

Up, up and away

Another from Y3,4 – very brave!

From Y5,6