Our weekly message: Friday 21 November 2025

In case you missed our earlier message… Last week was Children in Need day. Our non-uniform day raised £354.99 – thank you to all who contributed.

Attendance matters

• The national attendance rate for primary schools is 95.4% (that’s for Autumn 1 term).
• Our attendance rate is 95.5% (that’s up until 18 November).

It’s good to see that our attendance is higher, even if just a little. However, it’s lower than it was for Autumn term last year.

Is my child too ill to attend school? It can be tricky deciding whether or not to keep your child off school. Check the NHS website: Is my child too ill for school?

Thinking of a term-time holiday? 468 penalty notices for unauthorised absences have been issued in Leeds so far this year. Check out the legal consequences of term-time absences, from fines to court action.

Applying for a Reception place?

The national closing date for Reception September 2026 applications is 15 January 2026.

Check out these frequently asked questions.

MindMate

On Wednesday, the MindMate Support Team held a workshop about supporting your child with anxiety.

There are three more support sessions coming up this year:

1. Support your child’s mental wellbeing – Wednesday 11 February, 5pm to 6pm at Deighton Gates Primary School, Deighton Rd, Wetherby, LS22 7XL

2. Support your child’s emotions – Wednesday 11 March, 5pm to 6pm at Bramham Primary School, Clifford Road, Bramham, LS23 6JQ

3. Support your child with transition – Wednesday 24 June, 5pm to 6pm at our Sphere Federation sister school, St James’ CE Primary School, Hallfield Lane, Wetherby, LS22 6JS

Read more about the workshops.

Year 5 reading

Scholes (Elmet) Primary has been selected to represent England in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) research.

PIRLS is an international educational assessment study which takes place in over 60 countries. Our school will participate alongside other schools from around the world.

The assessments will involve some children in Year 5 completing a computer-based assessment and questionnaire about themselves and their educational experiences.

Read more about the research in this letter from the Department for Education.

Have a happy and healthy weekend.

Colours in the sky

The children were very excited when they returned to Nursery. They excitedly shared their stories about Halloween with their friends. There was a lot of talk about witches, bat costumes and skeletons.

Wednesday was Bonfire Night, the children played with the bonfire themed small world  area adding the sounds of the fireworks to their play. “whoosh, bang, zoom, whizz”

Along with hearing lots of different sounds the children had seen lots of bright colours in the night sky. They used ” sparklers” to print firework pictures. Outside they painted the dark floor to create the Bonfire Night sky.

Some more fire work activities in the sensory and fine motor areas of nursery.

As part of our phonics learning, we’ve introduced the letter ‘s’ this week.  We took turns to pull some objects out of a bag that all started with the letter ‘s’ We talked about the ‘s’ sound that we could hear at the start of each word. In Nursery, we focus on our listening skills. We’re not learning about letter formation just yet.

We show the children this picture card and use this pronunciation phrase.

Show your teeth and let the s hiss out ssssss

You could try this at home.

Help at home: What can you find at home that begins with the sound  ‘s’?  Go on a sound hunt together and look for some. Let us know what you find.

Next week’s Learning 

It’s World Nursery Rhyme Week so instead of our usual Nursery Rhyme of the week, our provision will be Nursery Rhyme themed. We’ll be singing lots of our favourite rhymes. If you’d like to send us an email with your child’s favourite rhyme and we’ll try to sing it at Nursery next week. [email protected]

Sound of the week – Aa for astronaut and apple

Open your mouth wide and make the a sound at the back of your mouth a  a  a

Story of the week  – Peace at Last by Jill Murphy

In this story Mr Bear moves about the house to try to find somewhere that is quiet to sleep. We will find out how many different sounds he hears.

Reminders

It’s a very busy week next week

• It’s “Odd Socks Day” on Monday 10 November so wear odd socks to Nursery for the day
• Our Nursery Coffee morning is on Tuesday 11 November straight after drop off at 9am. This is your chance to enjoy a coffee and a catch up with other nursery parents. Mrs Beesley and one of our school leaders will be there to share what is happening this this term in nursery with you.
• It’s Children in Need on Friday and it’s a non-uniform day. Please remember it will be a usual Nursery day, so please dress your child in clothes that are appropriate for outdoor and messy play.

Have a happy and healthy weekend everyone.

Applying for a Reception school place 2026

Applications for a Reception place for September 2026 can be made from 01 November 2025 until 15 January 2026.

You will receive your child’s school offer on National Offer Day, April 16, 2026. Ensure you use your child’s permanent address when applying, as this is a key factor in the admissions process. 

If you’d like to come and look around our school, the next open sessions are on Tuesday 04 November at 6pm and Friday 21 November at 1.30pm. No need to book just turn up!

Please remember that you still need to apply for a Reception place even if your child attends Scholes (Elmet) Nursery.

“I can do it”

One of the Prime Areas of learning in Early Years is Personnel, Social and Emotional Development, so learning to take care of ourselves is very much part of our curriculum. This half term we have been working very hard at this. Encouraging the children to put on their coats and fasten them up independently. They are all doing so well and are showing fantastic resilience.  Trying again when they cant always manage it first time.

Changing from wellies to shoes is something that we do many times throughout the day. Pushing your foot into your shoes can be tricky and can take lots of practice.

We have had quite a few coughs and colds this week so our ” nose blowing area” has had lots of use. Getting a tissue and looking in the mirror to check that your nose is clean helps to develop independence.

Help at home  : You can help at home to develop these essential skills. Perhaps on a weekend, when popping out, you could support your child to put on their own coat and shoes.  We can’t wait to hear how you get on and more calls of ” I can do it”  in nursery.

Next week: we will be continuing to enjoy Julia Donaldson’s Room on the Broom. We have been joining in with the story adding our own actions to various parts.

” The witch tapped her broomstick and whoosh they were gone”

As it is the last week of our very first half term we will be rehearsing the Nursery rhymes that we have covered so far. We are sure that the children would love to recite these at home to you all.

Baa baa Black Sheep

Humpty Dumpty

Incy Wincy Spider.

Reminders 

I’m looking forward to meeting with you all next week  for our first parent teacher consultations. If you haven’t managed to book an appointment contact the school office.

Nursery closes for half term on Thursday 23 October.

We will return to Nursery on Monday 03 November

Democracy -3,4C

This week, our Living and Learning statement is ‘I take part in democratic decisions’.

In class, the children had time to discuss and consider what makes a good leader, why people should vote for them and what changes they would make. The children then had time to create their speech if they wished to be considered as the Junior Leadership Team representative for 3,4C.

Yesterday, the children enjoyed voting in the hall using the ballot box.

Well done to all the candidates that took part. We are really proud of you.

Working together.

Thanks to everyone who brought in Autumn treasures. We shared our final few this week. So many interesting things pumpkins, conkers and acorns. We have really enjoyed sharing their contents and finding out all about them.

Using them all we created a display to explore together.  Magnifying glasses helped us to look closely,

“The pine cone looks big”

“I see lines on the leaf”

The artist, Andy Goldsworthy inspired our autumnal creative work this week. We worked together to create a spiral pattern of conkers, pine cones and leaves.

Our interest in autumn has helped us to develop our fine motor skills too. This is the development of the muscles in the fingers. This will help us to develop an effective pencil grip.

We  balanced conkers and fir cones on up- turned cups. Used tongs to add conkers to our recipes in the mud kitchen. Then caught leaves with tongs in the water tray.

Why not try this at home ? Use old kitchen tongs or pegs to pick up the leaves in your garden or at the park. Let us know how you get on.

We always enjoy watching the children lead their own learning in nursery. This happens when they develop their own activities. Last week they used the hoops and decided to collect objects from around the outdoor provision that matched the colours of the hoops. Leaves, bricks, pens, flowers and cars were all placed into colour sets.

They then found orange flowers and  pink bricks, but there weren’t any orange or pink hoops. What to do?  They found some coloured paper and completed the sets. Lots of mathematical talk, co operation and team work. Super learning nursery.

Next week’s learning

Our story next week is  Room on the Broom, it’s written by the very popular author, Julia Donaldson.  You may be familiar with the story from the BBC version. You can watch it on BBC iplayer

Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is Incy Wincey Spider Can you sing this at home?

A few reminders

• Parent Teacher consultations – Please don’t forget to sign up for these 10 minute appointments. This is an opportunity to find out how your child has settled into nursery. It’s on zoom this time, the next meetings will be in person.
• We still need your family photos. The children are really enjoying talking about their special people and seeing their photos in our home area each day.

Dinosaurs

As the children continue to explore the provision lots of different interests have been emerging, this week it has been dinosaurs. We’ve developed a small world dinosaur land to encourage creative play and communication.

“This dinosaurs says roar”

” my dinosaur has sharp teeth”

We enjoyed using the ramps last week. This week we used them to roll some of the apples and conkers that we found in the nursery garden. We counted them as they reached the bottom.

We experimented with other things that roll too. In the paint this week we tried our hand at painting with rollers. This up and down motion will help us later when it comes to developing our skills as a writer.

Next week, we’ll talk about the changes that we are noticing outside.  Look out for a brown bag in your child’s folder – we’d like you to fill it with autumn treasure that you find and return it to Nursery.

Our focus story  is the popular story “We’re Going on a bear Hunt” We will be exploring this story using our own puppets and props.

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt   – watch the story hear told by Michael Rosen.

Our Nursery Rhyme of the week will be Baa Baa Black Sheep. Listen to the rhyme together here

Reminders:

• • Please don’t forget to send a family photograph for our home corner display Please send it to [email protected] 
  • We play outside in all weather – please remember to send your child with a waterproof coat every day.

The Great Big Book Of Families

This week we’ve been reading  The Great Big Book of Families.  (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip.)  Through the book, we have explored and celebrated the variety of families. In the writing area, we drew our families and we used loose parts to make the faces of people in our families.

Help at home: Photos 

Thank you for sending your family photos. There’s still time to email one if you haven’t had the chance yet.  Over the next few weeks, we will also be thinking about our homes. To help support our discussions, please send in one picture of your front door.  You can email photos to [email protected]

Phonics

This week, we have learnt the phonemes (the sounds a letter makes) i, n, m and d.

The children have learnt how to identify the sounds by their graphemes and how to form the graphemes in their writing. They have practised identifying initial sounds and blending sounds together to say the whole word.

We have introduced new vocabulary linked to our phonics learning:

Phoneme– The sound a letter (grapheme) makes

Grapheme– The letter that represents the sound

Segmenting- Breaking up a word into its phonemes and sounding aloud (ie. cat becomes c-a-t)

Blending- Blending the phonemes together to read the word. (ie. d-o-g  becomes dog)

Each week we will be sending a ‘learn at home’ sheet, which recaps the phonics learning from the week. Please look at this with your child and complete the activities.

Help at Home: Be Sound Detectives – Find objects around your house or outside that have an initial sound that we have learnt: s   a   t   p   i   n   m   d

School Library

Over the last couple of weeks we have introduced the children to the school library. They have impressed us with how well they followed the school rule ‘We are respectful.’ They were quiet in the space and they were very careful with the books. This week, your child chose the book they wanted to bring home to share with you. Please remember that this is a book to foster a love of reading. It is a book for you to share at home and not for your child to read aloud to you.

eBooks

Next week, you will be issued your first eBook to share with your child. The first book will be a wordless book. As with the library books, these books can foster a love of reading, even without words. Discussing story events, characters and settings all help your child to understand comprehension in reading.

Please read with your child each week. As teachers, we have access to reading reports. We will be giving out certificates in class to celebrate your child’s reading at home.

Your login details and reading record will be sent home soon. Please let us know if you do not have access to a device to read at home, as we have iPads for loan at the school office.

Poetry Picnic

Each week, we will learn a new poem and will recite this poem every day. By saying the poem out loud, we can focus on the sounds and rhythm of each word or line. We talk to the children about how this can help us become better readers. This week’s poem is called Chop Chop.

Chop Chop
Chop, Chop, Choppity Chop.
Cut off the bottom and cut off the top.
What there is left, we put in the pot.
Chop, Chop, Choppity Chop

Here’s a video of Rainbow Class performing the poem. Look out for  a video of Sunshine Class next week.

IMG_8218

Frida Khalo Gallery

Each half term, we will introduce the children to a new artist. This week we introduced Frida Khalo. We watched a short informative video to find out about her. After that, we set off to visit a ‘gallery’ that we had set up for the children. At the ‘gallery’ we viewed photos of some of Frida Kahlo’s work. We noticed how many of her paintings had bright colours in them and that animals featured in many of them too. Frida’s self portraits will inspire us to paint our own self-portraits over the next couple of weeks.

Let’s get busy.

This week, many children continued with their transition sessions and have stayed for a full day at Nursery.  We’ve had lots of happy faces as children waved good-bye to parents and carers each morning.

Here are a few photos of our play and learning this week – you can see that children are very busy and happily, engaged in play. This is just what we like to see once children have settled into their new environment! We strive to make Nursery a happy and healthy place to learn.

We were really excited to pull up the carrots from our garden this week. Look how big they are. We washed them, cut them and enjoyed them at snack time. Yum, yum.

Now that children are familiar with our Nursery classrooms, over the next few weeks, you’ll start to see some changes in our areas of provision as we introduce new small world areas and themes for our learning.

Help at home – Can you sing the ” Wheels on the bus” nursery rhyme? Can you remember all of the actions?   The Wheels on the Bus

Next week we will be reading our first focus story ” The Three Little Pigs”. We will  be using story props to retell the story. The Three Little Pigs

Reminders

• Don’t forget to let us know your child’s current interests for our “What makes me tick” board.
• We need your child’s All about me sheet brining back to nursery, it’s not too late.

Science-The Human Body

We have begun our biology topic: The Human Body. We have been able to name many parts of our body and learn some new ones. This week we were working scientifically by investigating the question: ‘Do the oldest children have the longest feet?‘ After comparing our feet, we drew around them and put them in order of birthday month. Here are some of our findings:

No because some of the youngest children have big feet.

Some older children have big feet and some have small.

We all grow at different times and will be different sizes.

Help at home by naming and talking about different body parts, bones and their function.