School Journalists: a special interview

Hello there!

Today, we will be talking about Jeevan in Year 5 and his very special talent: Taekwondo.

He is currently the British champion and 3rd in the world for his age. He became the world number 3 in late 2023 and invests a lot of time into it. In the Easter holidays, he will be taking his black belt assessment. This is a very young age to become a black belt. He has also had to write an essay to show why he wants to achieve it and why he is worthy of it (check out the Y5,6 class news post from Mr Lindsay on Friday 22 March to have a read).

We asked him some questions…

Are you nervous about your black belt assessment?

Yes, because there are five grand-masters taking my grading and there is a lot of pressure.

You must spend a lot of time practising your Taekwondo. How long do you spend every week doing it?

I train for two hours with a club  but I do an extra 30 minutes at home each day.

How did you feel and react when you found out you had come 3rd in the world for your age?

Surprised! I never thought I would go that far in the competition.

What is your favourite Taekwondo move?

A 360 back kick. You take your stance, jump and, whilst in the air, you do a 360 and then try to kick to the head!

Do you have your hopes set on a career in Taekwondo?

Yes – I will train a lot and hopefully one day get to the Olympics.

Wow! Thanks, Jeevan.

And, thanks to the readers, too. Have a nice break and we’ll be back after the holidays.

Our weekly message (Thursday 28 March 2024)

This week’s message comes a day earlier than normal…

Policies and other points

We’ve a few policy updates that you might want to be aware of.

Our Food in School policy sets out key points for parents/carers and staff. For parents/carers, this includes guidance around special occasions, birthdays, rewards and the importance of alerting us if your child has a food allergy. We’ve also updated our Packed Lunch Guidance. (Talking of food, you might want to check out the NHS Eatwell Guide for advice around eating healthily.)

Another update is our Smoking and Vaping policy. The message here remains the same: smoking and vaping are not permitted in any part of the school’s grounds.

Finally, please be aware of our Home-School Positive Relationships Policy, which supports the Governors’ Statement of Behavioural Principles.

School meal prices

Earlier this week, we received notification from Catering Leeds, the company who supplies our school lunches, that they have to significantly increase the prices for school meals from September.

Unfortunately, this means that we’re going to have to increase what we charge you:

• Nursery: the cost of a school lunch will increase to £2.60 per day
• Key Stage 2 children: the cost will be £2.75 per day
• Reception and Key Stage 1 children: Universal Infant Free School Meals (UIFSM) will continue, meaning that your child will still be able to get a school lunch provided free of charge.

We appreciate the price rises are a big increase. We’ve been assured that Leeds City Council school meal prices are still relatively low. In 2023/24, Gateshead Council schools charge £3.00 for their school meals, North Yorkshire County Council charges £3.24 and Derbyshire Council charges £3.25.

And finally…

The children were really engaged and all looked like they were enjoying their computing topic. The children had clearly picked up what they had learnt and were able to demonstrate this with their game. The children on [my daughter’s] table were all polite and friendly – they all worked well together.

That’s one of many positive comments following our recent Topic Review session. A big thanks to all who came to the session, and an even bigger thanks to those of you who left some feedback. We’ll read and consider all the comments.

Have a great Easter holiday. See you again on Monday 15 April.

School Journalists

Hi all it’s Jimmy, Louie and Zara here with another news report.

First, it’s Jimmy.

On Saturday, I went to see the City of Leeds Youth Orchestra perform Peter and the Wolf. It is a magical piece of music and can often inspire children to to try playing music. When I was three, I heard this piece and was then trying to play the part of the wolf on the French horn. Five years later, I started my French horn lessons here at Scholes (Elmet) Primary. This school offers lots in terms of music, with lessons on many instruments available including piano, drums and guitar. Music is very important and often brings out creativity and imagination in people. The City of Leeds Youth Orchestra is a music group in Artforms. Artforms is a music and arts service which belongs to Leeds City Council. It helps children achieve their musical goals as well as having fun with their friends.

Next, it’s Louie and Zara.

This week, we’re interviewing Archie in in Y5. We will be interviewing him about a recent trip the Y5s went on. We went to watch Beauty and the Beast at John Smeaton Academy last Monday.

Why did you enjoy the play?

I enjoyed the play because I loved to see the play come to life and it was done by the students in the school.

Who was your favourite character?

The Beast – he did very well to remember his lines.

What was your favourite song?

My favourite was ‘Be our Guest!’

All of year 5 enjoyed the performance. We all thought it was very impressive as it was done by the students. Overall, it was a great experience with smiles everywhere.

I guess that’s all from us.

See you next week!

Our weekly message (Friday 22 March 2024)

Look out for your child’s latest Learning Update which will be sent home next week.

This week’s message comes from Mr Catherall…

Words, words, words

We try to regularly give tips for you can help at home across various subjects. To help with reading, we encourage you to read with your child every day. To help with maths, we encourage the use of Numbots or Times Table Rockstars. To help with writing, we ask you to regularly practise the spellings that are sent home. But, there’s another way you can really help your child with their writing. Before the big reveal, a quick note on spelling…

Why spelling?

Spelling is a really important part of becoming a fluent writer. Our aim is for children to get to the point where spelling becomes automatic for them. When this happens, loads of ‘brain space’ is freed up to concentrate on the content of what you’re writing. If children are having to really focus on how to spell lots of words, they’re unable to write effectively because their brain is working in overdrive just to get the words down on the page (or device).

So, what’s the other way I can help?

Talk.

That’s it – talk to your child. All the time. About anything– it doesn’t really matter.

Being able to speak to others and communicate effectively is a crucial life skill. But, it’s one we need to practise. The more words you know, the better able you are to communicate with others. So, talk to your child as much as you possibly can. Don’t simplify your language, either. Children are sponges for learning new words so the more we can expose them to, the more they’ll have ‘in the bank’ to use.

If children can speak fluently, they can probably write fluently. The more words they know, the more varied and interesting their writing will be.

It’s not just us that think this. There’s a growing bank of research which proves how important vocabulary and language development is.

‘A child’s vocabulary is a big predictor of their future success,’ says Alice Penfold, Project Manager of the Words for Work programme at the National Literacy Trust. ‘It not only affects their chances of performing well in exams, but also their life chances.

‘For example, children who have a poor vocabulary at the age of five are four times more likely to struggle with reading as adults, and three times more prone to mental health issues.’

With this in mind, it’s well worth making an effort to build your child’s vocabulary.

One way we encourage you talk together at home is through our weekly Talk Time homework. This can be done over dinner, in the car, on the way to the park or swimming or football or gymnastics or wherever you need to be. It doesn’t need to be a serious chat but the prompt we give is one we think should stimulate some discussion.

If you need any help, or further ideas about how to support your child with their writing, please contact your child’s class teacher.

Our weekly message (Friday 15 March 2024)

Parents sometimes tell us their children don’t say much about what they’ve been doing at school. It’s not unusual! If you want to have a chat about school, one idea might be to re-phrase the question to keep it specific and keep it positive:

• What’s the best learning you’ve done today, or this week?
• When have you successfully used an R for learning?
• How have you helped make school a happy and healthy place?

Something else that might help is to come along to the Topic Review session on Monday at 2.30pm. This is the second of two drop-in sessions – come and have a look at your child’s topic learning – and maybe be prepared to join in!

If you do come along to this, please remember to let us have some feedback.

Reception Parent Survey

Thank you again for your responses to our recent survey of parents and carers of children in Reception. It’s been great to read lots of your positive feedback, and it’s also a useful time for us to consider how we can keep getting better.

One suggestion we’ll act on is to add another Stay and Learn session into our schedule for next year – we know this won’t benefit you, but hopefully our parents in 2024-25 will appreciate your suggestion. We’ve spoken with any parent (who left their name) who expressed a particular concern about their own child, too.

A couple of parents commented about communications, but for different reasons. We recognise that there can appear to be fewer communications compared to a Nursery provider, but please be assured you can contact your child’s teacher with questions, comments or concerns. We also understand that, at first, the different ways we communicate can be confusing – this is hard to get right, because just as many parents and carers tell us our communications are just right. For clarification…

Our communications

We thought it would be useful to remind you about the different ways that we communicate things with you.

Anything urgent (such as the cancellation of an after school club) or a quick reminder about something (like the photographer being in school) is sent by text. If you have the School Gateway app, it may be useful to set it so you receive notifications of messages. Texts are automatically sent to your app, if you have it installed (it’s free for us to communicate with you this way).

Our weekly message on Fridays contain information about things coming up, such as parents’ evenings or sports days, as well as other information that we think you might find useful, such as top tips to support your child to stay safe online.

Most letters will be emailed out to you, too. We’re moving away from sending out hard copies of letters (it’s better for the environment to send things electronically and things sometimes don’t always get to you, if they’re sent home in bookbags). Please try and check your emails daily, so you don’t miss anything important.

For anything relevant to your child’s class, please check the class news pages of the website (we recommend doing this at least once a week).
Nursery and Reception tend to put reminders on their class news page, as they don’t have a homework page.

Finally today, a couple of thank yous…

Thank you

We recently asked you to consider making a voluntary contribution towards our Cooking and Nutrition lessons for the year. A big thank you for your contribution, which will help to pay for the ingredients for these sessions and therefore ensure they go ahead each term.

And also a thank you for your contributions to Comic Relief today. We’re delighted to let you know that we’ve raised £364.23 for this fantastic cause.

Have a good weekend.

Sponsored event update

I’ve double checked the information that Miss Pallister has just sent me as it’s unbelievable!!

The grand total for our sponsored event is ….. £2296.70!!!

Thanks to everyone who helped us get to this staggering total.  I’m sure lots of family members and friends were asked to contribute along the way.

Sponsored event

Just a quick update on how our sponsored event is going.  With still a couple of days to get those final sponsors in, we’ve already managed to raise £1300!!

It’s an unbelievable figure – well done everyone.

In a timely coincidence, we had Lauren and Keeley from our chosen charity The Children’s Heart Surgery Fund come to school on Monday to lead our assembly.  They shared with us some of the amazing work they do in supporting children and families who are going through very challenging times.  Half of the money raised through our sponsored event will go to this charity.

A massive thanks to all our number geniuses!

This week’s message (Friday 08 March 2024)

After World Book Day yesterday, let’s kick off this week’s message with a word from Mrs Latham about Early Reading…

Early reading (for parents of younger children)

Children learn to read during daily phonics lessons which are taught using a carefully sequenced, systematic phonics programme in Reception and Year 1.

Alongside this, there are Reading Practice groups four times each week. Children read the same book (a ‘real’ book, not an e-book) every day and the aim is to build fluency, prosody (expression) and comprehension throughout the week. The books are for practice. The words closely match the phonics that have been learnt in school. After the four reads in school, children can then celebrate their reading by reading the same text as an e-book at home.

Alongside these practice books, children should also have a book to read at home for pleasure. These books don’t match the learning at school – they’re best to read aloud together to enjoy.

We’ve now invested in some additional Fluency Reading books that follow on from this programme so that children can continue to develop reading fluency. They’re very appealing – children are thoroughly enjoying reading them. Take a look at them.

Help at home by listening to your child read out loud every day or reading out loud to them.

Publication: KS2 tests information leaflet for parents (for parents of older children)

Ahead of the end of Key Stage 2 national curriculum tests and teacher assessments in May, the Department for Education has published a new information leaflet for parents.

This leaflet provides an overview of the purpose of the tests, when they are scheduled, and when results will be shared by schools.

Is your child entitled to free school meals?

Free school meals are available to all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. They’re also available to some older children according to family income. It’s important to register for entitlement to free school meals, even if your child has a packed lunch or is in a younger class – this is so we can receive additional funding (called the pupil premium) which we can use to help your child.

Read our guide to free school meals.

Finally…

Scholes is an excellent school, so happy with the choice I made… [My son] he is always super happy to be there and talks fondly of the teachers and the activities he does at school, lovely teachers in Rainbow class who are always helpful and supportive.

That’s one of the comments from a recent survey of Reception parents – thank you to the 16 parents who took the time to let us know their views. We’re now reviewing what was said to see how we can act on some of the points raised.

School Journalists

Hi again

This is Jimmy, Louie and Zara with a brilliant news report for you to enjoy. We have been interested by the other jobs going on around the school. There are many, including community ambassadors who help to clean the community and lunch time play leaders who show children in Key Stage 1 how to play nicely, be polite and suggest games for them to play. There are also some others like lunch hall monitors and our school librarians.

We interviewed Elliot in Year 6 to find out about his job being a community ambassador.

What do you like about being a community ambassador?

I get to help the community which means there is less litter and more wildlife in, and around, Scholes.

What is your favourite part?

My favourite part is being with my friends and helping the world one piece of rubbish at a time.

Why did you choose to be a community ambassador over the other jobs?

I am energetic and this job lets me go outside and be active whereas other jobs only let you stay inside.

How much litter do you pick on average every time you work?

We usually collect around one and a half bags or rubbish.

We also interviewed Sienna, a lunch time play leader in Year 5 to find out more.

Why did you choose to be a lunch time play leader?

I like to help younger children and I want to help KS1 have less fallouts and accidents.

What is your favourite part of the job?

Helping children play nicely and finding them friends to play with.

How do you feel when you see children playing nicely?

It makes me happy because I have contributed to this along with the other leaders.

Why do you think your job is the best job? (No offence, but our job is the best job!)

I help people and play with them.

Well, I guess that’s all, folks – see you next week!

This week’s message (Friday 01 March 2024)

It’s the first day of March and starting to feel like Spring. It’s also St David’s Day, so if you’ve any Welsh connections (or happen to be called David!) then perhaps enjoy some sort of celebration!

World Book Day is right around the corner but we celebrate reading all year round. We want children to leave school and have a life-long love of reading because the benefits of those who read for pleasure are far-ranging; there’s a strong positive link with empathy, well-being and attainment, just to name a few. Next week (and beyond), try reading something you and your child wouldn’t normally choose. You could create a quiz about the book or pretend to be the main character, acting or talking like them. You might just curl up together on the sofa and take turns reading aloud. The most important thing for children is that they have dedicated time put towards reading and that they have the power of choice over what they read… like a match day programme, song lyrics or graphic novels – anything counts!

The rest of this week’s message comes from Mr Wilks, who’s our Curriculum Leader in Sphere Federation…

What is this half-term’s topic?

This half-term, it’s Computing. We’re developing our knowledge of computers and computer programming.

Computer programming is super. Creating games, animations and solving real world problems is fun, encourages creativity and is challenging! Importantly, the skills the children develop and use are transferable to other subjects and areas of life. For example, the concept of decomposition in programming is concerned with breaking down a large task into smaller chunks. This concept could be used when writing a story, solving a maths problem or tidying a particularly messy bedroom! Debugging is the skill of identifying and fixing an error in a program. It requires systematic, objective thinking and plenty of resilience.

Each phase has age-related specific knowledge, skills and vocabulary that they’ll learn, use and apply across the topic. See page 11 and 12 of our Topic Curriculum Guide.

Years 1 and 2

Children will learn about how technology is used beyond school in our homes and all around us. They’ll begin to consider what a computer is and isn’t.

In programming lessons, they’ll be introduced to algorithms and will learn about how they need to be written in the correct sequence.

They’ll create their own algorithms in ‘unplugged computing’ lessons and will debug errors in their own and others’ algorithms. Next, they’ll plan and create their own unplugged game where they have to create an algorithm to move a character from one place to another using positional language.

They’ll then use the same concepts using Beebots – simple robots which can be programmed to move and turn. Finally, it’ll be time to create their own game using Beebots.

Years 3 and 4

Pupils will begin with some ‘unplugged computing’. They’ll create, and debug unplugged programs which use sequence and repetition before they then create their own unplugged game which will require some decomposition. Next, it’s time to program on a platform called Scratch Jr. It’s a free app available on most devices and will allow children to develop and refine their understanding and use of concepts like repetition and sequence. Finally, they’ll create their own game on Scratch Jr using all of the skills they’ve learned over the topic. They will have some creativity to plan and design their own game. They may choose to create a maze game or a simple platform game. 

Years 5 and 6

Children will begin the topic by reasoning about what makes a computer a computer. They’ll then learn about how search engines work and how to best use them. In programming lessons, they’ll use Scratch to gain a deeper understanding of concepts like sequence and repetition before learning about selection and variables. Some of this vocabulary may sound alien to you. However, before the end of the topic your child will be able to tell you what they mean and give examples of how they’ve used them in their projects. Some of the projects your children will create are:

• A Spirograph style drawing animation with some potentially psychedelic visual effects!
• A chatbot program which will ask you questions and decide if your responses are correct or not.
• A times table quiz program that will test you on randomly selected times table questions within a set time limit.

How can you help?

Talk to your child about what they’ve been learning in class. Our Class News  is a good place to go to find out more about what the children are doing.

The school library and local libraries have lots of books about coding and computer games which your child will be able to borrow and develop both their reading skills and computing knowledge.

Finally, try programming with your child. There are loads of programming apps and software available to download, often for free. Here’s a list:

Key Stage 1:

• Daisy the Dinosaur (Apple only)
• Beebot
• Tynker Junior

Key Stage 2:

• Lightbot
• Tynker
• Scratch Jr
• Scratch