Month: November 2022

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Scott Grason-Taylor

Christmas has been in the air this week in Learners class. The Nativity production is well under way, as we practise our lines and learn the Christmas songs. Learners will be cows and donkeys this year. Please check tapestry to see your child’s costume suggestions. 

Having explored the plot and characters from The Tempest this week, we combined our skills from English and art together to create some scenery. We each painted an image to represent the aspects shown in the play. With great confidence, Learners shared their illustrations of the island and characters. I’m sure Shakespeare himself would have been proud!

We are really excited to launch our new Sharing Shed at Sleights, it is located near the Leaders classroom and will be open before and after school – see this week’s newsletter for more details.

Learners Class love to read and enjoy books. This year Whitby Library is running a new Christmas Reading Challenge to read four books before Christmas. Pop down to the Library for more details and to sign up for the challenge!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and it’s only going to get busier! Hold on to your hats!

Learners love to learn 🙂

Friday 25th November 2022

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week in Leaders class, we have continued to focus on The Tempest in English. On Wednesday, the children used roleplay and freezeframes to explore the thoughts, actions and feelings of the characters Prospero and Miranda. Using this as inspiration, the children then created sentences that used -ed clauses from the perspective of Prospero. 

On Monday, we continued developing our cricket skills. The children demonstrated excellent batting and fielding skills and worked well as part of a team. 

On Friday, we enjoyed our first run through the nativity. Children are busy learning their lines and are excited to perform it to families soon. We also enjoyed creating Christmas decorations that will be on display on the school tree at St Mary’s Church.

Blue and Green and White

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week we have been reading “Lost and Found” and a selection of other texts by Oliver Jeffers. The Pioneers have all drawn wonderful story maps and pictures of the characters. They are able to retell the story using the story map and have added vocabulary to this.

At the end of the week we focussed on finding out about day and night and the rotation of the earth and the earth’s relationship with the sun and the moon. We looked at the globe and representations of our planet, spotting that blue was the sea and greens represented the land. In the story the boy and the penguin travel to the South Pole so we located this on the globe and painted this on our own representations.

 

Celebration time!

Scott Grason-Taylor

On Wednesday, we were delighted to formally open our new classrooms. After months of hard work, it was finally time to celebrate. We held a special event to share with Sleights’ children, families and staff, starting with a special assembly and following with the official cutting of the ribbons by our own Mrs Bland and Mrs McGill. The morning was perfect and enjoyed by all.

Earlier in the week, we were able to enjoy our second cricket session outside in the autumn sunshine. This week (with great excitement) we progressed onto being able to use the bats. There were a few sixes hit, despite some excellent fielding! We can’t wait for next week.

In English, we have been delving into Shakespeare’s The Tempest. We have been excited to meet the characters and to familiarise ourselves with the plot. With the help of story maps and drama, we were able to re-tell the story with confidence and enthusiasm. We are so excited to continue learning more about this fascinating Shakespeare play.

This week has been anti-bullying awareness week. Learners have been able to identify the difference between being rude, being mean and bullying and the clarification of these definitions prompted some purposeful discussions.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and Nativity practise has begun! We will keep you posted!

Learners love to learn 🙂

Wonderful Week!

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hi families,

Another busy week for us in Adventurers. We started the week with another fun session of cricket! We played lots of fun games and did some great work practising our fielding skills.

In English we started to look at the play ‘The Tempest’ by William Shakespeare. We learnt that the play is about a violent storm that causes a shipwreck and the characters are consequently abandoned on an island. We made a story board of the key events, acted it out and drew what we imagined the characters to look like.

In art, we creates some masterpieces inspired by ‘Henri Matisse’. Take a look at some below!

Have a great weekend everyone,

The Adventurers 🙂 

 

 

A Very Dramatic Week

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello All,

This week has been somewhat dramatic, with drama featuring in many areas of our learning. We have been created scenes from Shakespeare’s Tempest, acting out our parts for the Christmas Nativity, and dramatising new vocabulary to help us remember the meaning behind it. We love drama!

On Wednesday, we also created posters advertising our own Diwali festival. As we have been learning all about Hinduism, and the importance of Diwali, we thought it would be great to design a poster that included the meaning behind it. 

Although the rain hasn’t stopped for what feels like the entire week, the sky was bright for a very special event on Wednesday morning, as we were joined by families to celebrate the opening of our two new buildings. This was a wonderful celebration of Mrs McGill and Mrs Bland who have dedicated many years to our incredible school, and have been here since the first buildings were erected. 

Friday 18th November

Scott Grason-Taylor

It has been another wonderful week in Leaders.

In maths, the children have continued to focus on multiplication and division. On Monday, the children worked with cubes to make arrays to identify cube and square numbers and were able to calculate to find them too. The rest of the week has seen Leaders focus on multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 and 1,000 with great application of their learning to reasoning and problem solving questions. 

In English, we have found out about William Shakespeare and began to explore his play The Tempest. On Thursday, we explored lines from Act 1 Scene 1 and were able to predict that there was a ship in a storm, which sank and had a King on board. We then created a storm soundscape using our voices and used drama to add in the lines that we had explored earlier. We then moved on to look at similes and personification  to describe the storm, with excellent descriptions produced by all.

On Wednesday, the children enjoyed the official opening of the new Early Years buildings before welcoming some family members into class. During this session, the children completed their Esther Mahlangu inspired art. I am sure that you will agree that the finished art work looks brilliant!

Seed,Soup and Fungus

Scott Grason-Taylor

We continue to explore the world around us. Sunflower heads have been drying out on the window sill and we got stuck in with the tweezers to harvest the seeds. We dried them out alongside last week’s pumpkin seeds and popped them into jars to plant in the spring. This involved a huge amount of concentration.

We went to the forest to collect forest treasure to add to our version of Pumpkin Soup. Compost,grass,seeds and conkers were mixed and mashed. The Pioneers used mashers and ladles to create a huge Pumpkin Feast. They filled egg boxes with soil and water to make chocolate eggs. Everyone helped with the tidy up job which made life much easier.

We looked closely at a number of different types of fungus but we decided not to touch. All the Pioneers were aware that some things should not be picked.

We noted the changes in the forest and kicked up the wet leaves.

Everyone manged their own welly boots and this is quite an achievement.

Well done Pioneers!

 

 

Remembrance at Sleights

Scott Grason-Taylor

Throughout the week, the children have taken part in some excellent discussions about Remembrance. Children shared their own reflections with great sensitivity and thought. To mark Remembrance Day in Sleights, each child created a piece of art or message. 

After school, Mrs Hann and I walked to St John’s and the War Memorial monument to display the children’s fantastic and thoughtful Remembrance reflections. The work is incredible and is now firmly in place to help the full village mark Remembrance Sunday this weekend.
Well done, Sleights.