Scott Grason-Taylor, Author at Sleights Church of England Primary School

The Elves are Making Requests

January 18, 2025January 18, 2025 Scott Grason-Taylor

The elves are arriving daily and bringing written requests for all sorts of things. The letters include tricky words and the new digraphs taught this week. It is funny how they know just what we are learning about. They must have known that we are looking at materials in science and about joining techniques in DT as lots of their requests were related to using different materials and using a variety of methods to secure these!

We have made little bags to contain boots and crowns and painted pictures to annotate. The Pioneers have built thrones and used the elves to help when finding one more in maths. The Pioneers are writing lists of elf names and elf items and this is so wonderful.

So much collaboration and consideration is happening. There is a lot to get to grips with when sharing resources and space and elves.

So much progress this week! Go Pioneers

Beginning Printing

January 12, 2025January 12, 2025 Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers made a start on investigating printing, making marks with all kinds of loose parts. They chose colours and shapes and arrangement. Some created pictures. Others explored pattern and repetition. Some were creative with their application of colour and the materials used, applying paint to a paper towel and developing this.

We looked at the work of Andy Warhol involving layers of colour and noted the need to let each layer dry. By the end of the session everyone had a better understanding of how much paint was too much paint. This is often difficult to gauge.

The elves, who arrived after Christmas also made a few demands, asking for printing in red and black and green. It is a good job that we have just learned the ee digraph so we were able to read their letter!

Big Box Build Bonanza!

January 12, 2025January 12, 2025 Scott Grason-Taylor

Happy new year and welcome back to a new term in Learners Class.

We kicked off the new term in a fantastic way.

On Wednesday, families filled Learners class (and so did boxes). We used the book ‘It’s Not a Box’ by Antoinette Portis to inspire us and used our imagination to create something wonderful using many sized boxes and some handy resources. We had the BEST time, we worked together and our creations were sensational! We will be using these creations to inspire our instruction writing in English lessons over the next weeks.

This week we have delighted in creating our final art piece inspired by the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Last term we learnt many new painting skills, such as using different paints, colour mixing, creating texture and making tints. Armed with theses skills, we created our own piece using the Kandinsky style of shape, lines and colour and of course listening to music to guide our artistic persuasion. Our final pieces were wondrous and each Learner was SO proud of their piece. Learners are passionate about art and are extremely excited to immerse themselves in this term’s art topic of printing. Kepp an eye on the website to see how Learners get on!

In PE, we enjoyed a cricket session with Owen Batchelor this week (who has recently been voted Coach of the Year). Learners put 100 percent into everything they do and PE is no exception. Learners were fantastic batters this week and also great team players!

Swimming sessions start again this week for Learners, please male sure a costume and towel are brought on Tuesdays and earrings removed! Thank you for your ongoing support.

Keep checking Learners website each week, to find out all about their achievements!

Learners love to learn!

Spring 2025

January 10, 2025January 10, 2025 Scott Grason-Taylor

This term’s diary dates can be found here: Spring Term Dates (2025)

1. Newsletter week ending 10th January 2025

A published author in Learners Class

December 15, 2024December 15, 2024 Scott Grason-Taylor

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

December 14, 2024December 14, 2024 Scott Grason-Taylor

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”

December 12, 2024December 13, 2024 Scott Grason-Taylor

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

December 8, 2024January 12, 2025 Scott Grason-Taylor

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

December 7, 2024December 7, 2024 Scott Grason-Taylor

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.