Author: Scott Grason-Taylor

Friday 6th October 2023

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week in English, Leaders have completed their explanations focusing on Global Neighbours. They have used a range of causal conjunctions and adverbials in their writing and have also included parenthesis to provide the reader extra information. Leaders have also been pushing themselves when selecting vocabulary.

In maths, Leaders have learned about prime, square and cubed numbers and have completed some tricky reasoning questions during these lessons. Each day at the start of maths, Leaders also complete key skills and it is great to see the speed and accuracy at which this is being completed. Excellent effort Leaders!

In art this week, the children selected from a range of graded pencils, charcoal and chalks and from a range of drawing techniques to create effects for different purposes, including creating different textures, using Henry Moore’s drawings as inspiration. We are looking forward to applying these effects to our own pieces of art, inspired by our locality. 

On Thursday, Leaders enjoyed gathering at St John’s Church for the first time this year. To welcome the new starters, Leaders shared what to expect from their time at Sleights, which covered lessons, trips, clubs, Collective Worship and lunches! It was a brilliant service and a great way to welcome the new starters at Sleights.

Check back next week to find out about out first class trip of the year!

Weekly roundup for the Adventurers!

Scott Grason-Taylor

What a week the Adventurers have had this week! They started the week with a great session of cricket which they always love! Furthermore, they loved the drama day with Louise where they developed their Stone Age understanding!
School photographs were taken on Tuesday and how lovely they turned out to be!
The children loved their history lesson on Stone Age farming. We also enjoyed our New Beginnings church service on Thursday where the Pioneers and Reverend Jo Parker were welcomed to the Sleights family! The whole school did amazing and the Adventurers amazingly created their own poem and read this out in the service. They made everyone so proud!
They also enjoyed continuing their learning about the rainforests in geography!
We have seen some amazing changes in results on times tables quizzes this week, we are so proud of the efforts they have shown!

We look forward to another exciting week next week, especially with our day in the forest on Tuesday!

What is History?

Scott Grason-Taylor

Learners class were keen to find out the meaning of the word ‘history’ this week. We had wonderful discussions about the past, present and the future and could identify experiences in our own lives from each of these categories. Next week, we will learning how to plot these experiences using a timeline. 

In English, we are continuing to prepare our explanation texts answering the question ‘what is a global neighbour? We reflected on the school visit from the Zambezi Sunrise Trust earlier in the year and could articulate and write about the wonderful charity they run.

We have really enjoyed mark making this week in Art, in the style of Pablo Picasso. We used pencils, wax crayons and charcoals to draw zigzags, curls and lines in our sketch books. I think Learners are definite artists in the making!

We enjoyed computers with Mrs Gurney on Thursday and learned some key E-Safety rules. Learners created a paper chain of  5 trusted adults that they could talk to and ask for help from if they needed to. Learners had great fun making these and ended the session with a game of  ‘Does Sid say yes or no?’

We finished the week with a fun PE session, perfecting our throwing and catching techniques. There was a lot of concentration in the room as we raced each other while balancing beanbags on our heads.

Another busy week of learning in Learners Class 🙂

 

Out and About with the Pioneers

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers spent the day outdoors exploring our wonderful site. We packed up our trolley and took responsibility for the kit we needed. Some helped to carry some very heavy buckets. We talked about looking after ourselves,looking after others and looking after our environment.

As we went along we pointed out hazards like nettles and thorns and big holes in the ground. We speculated that these could have been made by badgers.

Our first Forest Find was a sycamore tree and it’s seeds so we stopped to take a look . We walked the boundaries and discussed where it was safe to go. We then set up camp next to the Oak tree and had a good rummage around. Lots of ladybirds were relocated and acorns and leaves made their way into the treasure boxes. We shared a good book before moving up onto the field to explore.

We had snack in our outdoor area and a good phonics session before lunch.

In the afternoon we headed back to the forest to look closely at leaves,selecting some to press for printing later. One Pioneer suggested this.
We pulled some vegetables which was very exciting.  One Pioneer could identify the vegetable from the leaves.

To finish the day we repeated our bread dough making from last week with greater efficiency and a different kind of mess!

It was glorious.

Adventurers Week 4!

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Adventurers have had a great fourth week back at school. They have enjoyed cricket with Owen and began planning and writing their explanation text about being a global neighbour. The Adventurers also loved cross country on Monday! They have been practising their times tables songs which they have thoroughly enjoyed! They are approaching the end of their place value topic in maths.

We have made further progress with our class book, ‘The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me’ which they are analysing for their reading comprehension. Furthermore, they have been also enjoying their end of day book ‘The Nothing to see Here Hotel’.

Finally, the Adventurers have been practising their singing for the New Beginnings service on Thursday! We look forward to another busy week next week!

Sleights Strikes Again

Scott Grason-Taylor

Welcome to another week in Discoverers’ class 😀

This week it started in style, when we held a KS2 cross country within our grounds. We ran around the front and back fields, and even into the forest. 

After battling across the different terrain, we cheered on the other classes, watching everybody finish with a huge smile of pride on their faces.

What a fantastic week!

Scott Grason-Taylor

What a great week we have had in our second full week back!

The Adventurers have been working hard, continuing with the place value topic in mathematics, whilst also practising their 3 and 6 times tables! 

An instrument has been assigned to each Adventurer, either a trumpet, clarinet, saxophone or a trombone! They are all looking forward to learning these with their music teacher Ralph on a Thursday afternoon. 

Friday was a fantastic morning where the class were visited by their lovely families. This enabled the Adventurers to teach their families the activities that they have learnt so far. This was great to see!

Furthermore, the Adventurers have continued their learning regarding e-safety, ensuring they are able to staff safe whilst online! In addition to this they have continued learning about the Stone Age.

What a fantastic week it has been and we look forward to week 4!

A whirlwind week.

Scott Grason-Taylor

Learners  Class’s feet haven’t touched the ground this week, we have been SO busy!

We started the week with cricket sessions with Owen from Yorkshire Cricket. We REALLY enjoyed this and had lots of fun practising our throwing and catching skills. There was a mention that cricket bats may be coming out in session 2, so we are very excited about this.

Also on a sports theme, Learners visited Caedmon College Whitby on Thursday afternoon and took part in a town multi-skills event. Learners were awesome, we ran, we balanced, we caught, we threw, we jumped over and we crawled under. We thoroughly enjoyed it and  gave it everything we had!

In the classroom, we have been consolidating tricky words in phonics sessions and revisiting Phase 3 and 4 words and sentences. Learners class love to read and Little Wandle phonics sessions are invaluable in building our skills.

In geography we have been looking at our location using google earth. We have been labelling features around our school grounds using an aerial photograph of the area. We were very interested in aerial views and proceeded to draw a map of our own classroom. We had a good look around and identified where things were. Then, carefully using a ruler drew our own maps. Learners worked with great focus and the finished maps were wonderful.

We finished the week with an Open Morning for our families. Learners class was a hive of activity, with a huge parent turn-out. Learners and visitors enjoyed learning together and the classroom had a very happy buzz.

Learners love to learn! 🙂

 

 

Making Sleights

Scott Grason-Taylor

This corner of the room is very popular and always full of activity and conversation. The Pioneers work together to build and create. They have combined a variety of materials to create parts of our village. They have made the river with the railway line running along it and used the foam tiles to make roads and bridges. They added green felt and grass to make the fields. They discussed that trains don’t go on roads and need to be kept on tracks. They built their own houses and talked about where they lived. There with lots of talk about neighbours and the shops in the village. They added signs and their mini-me.

This has built up over the week after reading Sid in Sleights and looking at the photographs of the village. We have now added different types of vehicles that pass through the village.

Fabulous Pie

Scott Grason-Taylor

Pioneers got stuck in to making bread dough. They combined each ingredient-flour,yeast,sugar,water and oil to make a crust for the fabulous pie. This took a great deal of perseverance to continue when their hands were sticky and uncomfortable. Every Pioneer followed the instructions and were successful in their dough making. They then combined this with their selection of animals to retell our wonderful story of Fabulous Pie. 

At the end of the session they were all more familiar with the required ingredients to make dough and some of the actions required to bring the dough together-mix,kneed,roll,rub and scrape.

They used Numicon to clean the table at the end of the session!