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

Story Trail Event

As part of the Leeds City of Culture, there is a local story trail event taking place. The flyers are below and pdfs to download.

Why not take part with friends or family in this fun event?

Leeds23 Picnic Flyer 9th July

Leeds 2023 Poster Story 5 The Fox King QR5

LEEDS 2023 Legends of Harewood Forest Map and Answer sheet

This week’s message (Friday 23 June 2023)

We kick off this week’s message with early news of our annual Summer competition…

Extreme reading

Here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary, we love reading. Over the coming weeks, 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.

For last year’s competition, we gave you a few ideas for your happy and healthy smiley faces spotted in unusual places. This year, we’re not giving you any ideas (yet!), but you’ve plenty of advance warning, so get your thinking caps on!

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.

Our current topic…

…is a Design and Technology one – it’s a great topic to finish the year! The focus for all classes this year is construction (next year, it’s textiles) so children are busy designing and making products.

A key aspect of the Design and Technology curriculum is the understanding that products don’t just get made. Instead, they go through a design process that includes three key elements: evaluate, design and make. Think of this process as a cycle. For example, Sphere Motors want to create a new family car. Before the car is made, they need to evaluate existing products and talk to customers so that they’re clear about what the new car needs to have. They will then design the car and evaluate those designs. They may make a prototype of the car to help them evaluate the designs. Next, they’ll decide on a final design that will go into production and get made. This finished product will be evaluated and the whole process starts again.

Years 1 and 2

Children have been exploring what makes structures stable and strong. Next, they’ll get their design brief: to design and make a new chair for Baby Bear (clumsy Goldilocks has broken it again). Children will design and make their product, using what they’ve learned about strength and stability to help them. Finally, they’ll evaluate the product by testing it and reflect on what they would change about their design to improve it.

Years 3 and 4

Children will use a construction kit called Techcard to design and make a prototype of a go-kart which must satisfy a number of design criteria. They’ll explore how to make strong structures and mechanisms using Techcard before designing and making their prototype. Finally, children will evaluate their finished product by comparing it to their design and testing whether they have achieved the design criteria.

Years 5 and 6

Children have begun the topic by learning about pioneering female designers and engineers.

They then move on to designing and making a moving vehicle which most protect Eggy the Egg in a crash. They’ll need to research and learn about the different safety features that cars use to prevent crashes and protect passengers. They’ll then establish the design criteria and design and make their vehicles. They’ll be using a range of tools and materials to make their vehicles. Finally, children will test their vehicles against each design criteria to see how successful it is. They’ll then evaluate the vehicle based on the results of the tests to suggest improvements.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. You could even talk through the three key elements of the design process: evaluate, design and make (check out Sphere Motors, above).

The class news page of the school website is a good place to go to find out more about what the children are doing.

The school library and local libraries will have some books about Design and Technology which your child will be able to borrow and develop both their reading skills and design knowledge.

Finally, there’s a lot of programmes on CBBC and CBeebies with a Design and Technology focus:

• Bitz and Bob
• Grace’s Amazing Machines
• Junk Rescue
• Maddie’s Do You Know?
• The Dengineers

Uniform update

Each year, we review our Uniform Policy. This year, there’s only a tiny tweak about footwear to make things clearer for you: ‘choose shoes that are safe to run around for healthy, active playtimes’.

Talking of uniform, please remember a couple more points:

• ‘Regarding jewellery, only plain stud earrings (no more than 4mm wide)…are allowed.’ We’ve started to notice more earrings that are bigger and brighter – please save those for weekends and holidays!
• ‘Advisors recommend no earrings are worn for PE; therefore, we will ask your child to remove earrings before the lesson and put them back in after the lesson. This will be carried out by the child. If they are unable to remove or put their earrings back in by themselves, they must not wear them on the day they have PE.’ – so the start of the Summer holidays is a good time for ears to be pierced.

Thanks for your cooperation.

That’s all from us this week – enjoy a happy and healthy weekend (maybe the whole family will get up to some extreme reading!).

This week’s message (Friday 16 June 2023)

Hot, hot, hot! Despite the weather, there’s still loads of learning happening at Scholes (Elmet) Primary!

We start this week’s message with with an important change…