A published author in Learners Class

Learners class are bursting with pride, as one of our class has this week become a published author. Learners were delighted to share the wonderful story this week and join in with celebrations. We are extremely proud! What’s more, the Learner is donating all the money raised from the sale of the book to our school charity, the Zambezi Sunrise Trust – what a star! For more information of how to order the book, see this week’s newsletter.

 

This week, Learners have enjoyed being The Landlords in the school Nativity performance at St John’s Church. We were totally awesome and both performances were wonderful. 

In science this week, we have been finding out about George James Symons and were interested to know the meaning of a ‘meteorologist’. We have been watching the daily BBC weather forecasts and were surprised that the people who present these are meteorologists too! 

Learners are holding onto their hats for a fun packed Christmas week ahead, consisting of Christmas crafts with families, Christmas parties and dinner, the annual Christingle service in Church and a visit to the Christmas Pantomime. It’s the most wonderful time and Learners have had a fantastic 2024!

Learner love to learn 🙂

We Went to Bethlehem

After lots of discussion about where Bethlehem was and how you would travel there and what it would be liked, The Pioneers went on the bus to Bethlehem and it was quite remarkable. We discussed that it was all pretend. We were met by two Roman centurions and greeted warmly on Skinner Street. We entered Bethlehem and the Pioneers questioned the lack of sand. We were taken to the market square where we observed greetings and were signposted to the various locations. There were sounds and sights and smells to keep us all curious.
We got to find out about candle making, woodwork and the food that would have been eaten at the time of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem-no oranges apparently! We found out that Bethlehem means House of Bread. We looked at old woodwork tools for smoothing and drilling. Everyone got to dress up if they wanted and listened to the Christmas Story.
Juice and a biscuit was served in the Inn.
We had an impromptu singsong which was a bit of a mashup of our nativity songs. It was done with great energy!
The Pioneers were asked many searching questions and gave brilliant answers.
And we made it back for lunch but were a little late. The afternoon was quite quiet.

Zambezi Sunrise Trust’s “Big Give Week”

We have had a very busy few weeks supporting our friends at the Zambezi Sunrise Trust. The children planned and delivered their own events to raise funds for the charity’s ongoing work for Linda Community School.

The Pioneers organised their own art exhibition. Families purchased the children’s art, as well as work with the young artists to create their own new pieces.

The Learners held a very successful movie night after school. They ate popcorn and enjoyed hot dogs, as they watched their chosen movie. Everything looked very cosy!

During an afternoon, the doors were opened for the Adventurers’ families, who came into school to play games, drink tea and Sunrise scones. It was great to see the event so well supported!

The Discoverers filled the school hall with games and activities for families to enjoy. Alongside the Leaders’ Teddy Tombola, the hall was jam packed, with families and children playing games and bidding for an exciting new teddy to take home. 

All of the funds raised over the events were being gathered as part of the Zambezi Sunrise Trust’s ‘Big Give Week’. The funds raised are being used to support the building of a new computer block in Linda Community School. As we were able to donate during Big Give Week, the charity was able to get match funding. The children’s recent writing unit has focused on understanding all of this great work. 

In total at Sleights, from our fundraising events, we raised £712. Once donated and match funded, we also were able to add gift aid.

But, that’s not all!

As a result of the brilliant continued kindness and generosity of our families, during our Christmas Nativity performances, we also gathered further donations on the Church collection plates. This raised a further £296.

In total, this means that our school’s collective efforts from the last two weeks raised a MASSIVE £1898!

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Spotting Seasonal Change

Learners have enjoyed science lessons this week. We have been thinking more about how ice and frost is formed. We have been enjoying watching the daily weather report and finding out about meteorologists. Since September, we have been recording what time the sun sets on the first of each month and we are interested to see how the days are shortening as we go into winter. We will continue to monitor this as we go through Year 2.

Learners Class had a wonderful evening on Thursday, where we enjoyed a movie and pizza night in order to raise money for The Zambezi Sunrise Trust. We changed into pyjamas and enjoyed a Christmas ambience of candles and Christmas lights, while we relaxed and ate some tasty treats! Our goal was to raise £100 and we raised £115, smashing our target!

We have begun to write our narratives around The Christmas Jolly Postman. Next week, we will focus on some character description of The Jolly Postman., using some expanded noun phrases and interesting vocabulary. We are beginning to use apostrophes for possession and contraction in our writing which is making our writing simply wonderful.

The Nativity practises are taking shape and we are going to be awesome in the performances next week. Please see the newsletter for the dates and time to join us.

Learners are totally amazing and are so keen to learn!

Whoosh! The Jolly Christmas Postman

Our book this week is The Jolly Christmas Postman and everyone loves it. We have read it together and got to grips with the plot by using a storymap. Everyone is able to add some words to read and write and this is so wonderful. We used the story to make some beautiful imaginary maps and these are supporting our narrative writing. 

We took the chance to do a bit of role play using a technique called Whoosh! We built up each page with the Pioneers taking the roles. Sometimes you were a house and sometimes you were the Postman. Two Pioneers became the stile and we had to discuss what this new word was referring to. They had all heard of a hairstyle but did not recognise the word stile. This fitted in very well with our phonics. It is so fantastic to make these links and see phonics and vocabulary acquisition in action.

The maps and the writing are wonderful and we had a lot of fun being a wall of ice and the elves in Santa’s Workshop.

Dance! Dance!Dance!

The Pioneers love their dance session and each week things become more complex. They begin with a warm up and then extend and develop the routine. This involves a lot of skill and focus to listen and follow multi part instructions. This week saw the addition of ribbons on sticks and leadership exercises to end the session.

The energy is palpable.

Visitors From the Past

Henry Freeman, the famous Whitby Lifeboat man made an appearance in Pioneers. This visit allowed them to consider which questions to ask to find out about the past. They quizzed him on the Great Storm of 1861 and his now famous cork lifejacket. The information they gained will add to their biography. They were a bit confused by that fact that Mr Freeman seemed to have the same necklace as Mrs Hann.

Later in the week, while exploring changes in shopping in Whitby, Mrs Elizabeth Botham dropped in! The Pioneers scrutinized old photographs of Skinner Street to see where her shop is. They were fascinated to see the location then and now. Some of the children noted the different modes of transport and street furniture, having seen the dismounting steps in town. They questioned Mrs Botham about her family and noted that she had a dog. Mrs Botham lived at the same time as Mr Henry Freeman but she could not confirm if he was a Botham’s customer or not!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Christmas is well and truly approaching. The Nativity practises are beginning to take shape and we are all busy learning our lines. Learners have had a busy week in the classroom this week. We have welcomed families in to share with our maths learning, where each activity gave an ingredient of our typical maths lessons – eg maths key skills, number sense, times tables and problem and reasoning questions. We had a huge response to this and many families were able to attend, which was wonderful.

In RE, we have been busy learning about Advent and the traditions that occur in Christian lives. We discussed the meaning of the word Advent and why it was important for Christians to celebrate.

In English, we have completed our adverts to raise awareness for the Zambezi Sunrise Trust. We are busy making preparations for our own class fundraiser Movie Night. We have set our own target of £100 and are excited to see if we achieve it. We are all looking forward to enjoying a Christmas Movie and a slice of pizza together!

After a few frosty mornings, we have been looking at how frost and ice forms in Science. We were very interested to learn the freezing temperature of a liquid to solid and drew some wintry frosty pictures during the lesson.

Keep an eye on the diary dates in the newsletter, which will give you all the Christmas information you need.

Learners are looking forward to celebrating Christmas!