Author: Scott Grason-Taylor

Advent adventures.

Scott Grason-Taylor

The festive period has begun and we have been busy preparing for oncoming Christmas activities.

In RE we have been thinking about the different symbols of advent. To consolidate our learning, we were lucky to be able to visit St John’s Church on Friday to look around and identify the signs of advent first hand. We could see the Church colours were purple, which matched our class prayer space. We saw an advent wreath with 5 candles, which represented the 4 Sundays of advent and 1 for Christmas Day. We stood in awe of the magnificent nativity stained-glass window and could identify some key people from the Christmas story.

In art this week, we produced some wonderful self-portraits. We have been working very hard on developing our drawing skills and techniques and were able to showcase these in our fantastic self-portraits. We were extremely proud of the results.

We are keen to begin writing our narratives next week, based around the Christmas advert ‘Sprout Boy’. This week we have been looking closely at Sprout Boy’s emotions through the story and have thought about different story starters. We are all bursting with ideas for our own individual stories.

We are looking forward to performing our nativity performance of Superstar this week at St John’s Church. If the rehearsals are anything to go by, the audience are in for a real treat!

Joining Materials

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers all love cutting and sticking and this week we have added other techniques for joining materials. They have used treasury tags, paper fasteners, paperclips and elastic bands. They tried a bit of weaving the paper and sticking with tape and blutac. They have experimented with cutting slits and tabs to join and have been incredibly focussed and skilled in this. There was not prototype or model to complete and the variety of structures was magnificent. Their creations were used in play during the week. This exploration will continue.

Lost and Found

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week we have been reading Lost and Found and the playing has been wonderful. A boat and a selection of maps have been added to the classroom and these have been very useful. The Pioneers wrote lists of what to pack for their journey. The played with the animals of the antarctic. They looked at globes and maps and atlases and Google Earth to spot the icy land masses. They were very interested in what a harbour was. We talked through the story map adding vocabulary and even sentences. The Pioneers are spotting punctuation all over the place.Mrs Gurney worked with the ipads  and made videos of ourselves retelling the story.

So much learning this week.

Advent-Preparing for Christmas

Scott Grason-Taylor

This week the Pioneers discussed their Advent Calendars and we are starting to get a bit excited about Christmas! We looked at our class book,The Path To the Church which details all the events in the Christian Church calendar. We changed the prayer space cloth to purple to reflect the colours seen in church and we will look for these signs of Advent when we visit next week. We then made our own Advent crowns and put in the candles. We discussed the colours and the textures and the hazards of flower arranging.

The oasis rings were a source of many questions and experimentation.

What An Amazing Week

Scott Grason-Taylor

Hello Visitors,

This week has been AMAZING! We have enjoyed writing our adverts, to try and tempt people to visit the Alps. Did you know the Alps attract over 30,000,000 people each year and they were formed over 65,000,000 years ago? They are the youngest mountain range in the world!

Not only have we been enjoying English, we have also learned lots more about Tudors in history. This week, we studied Elizabeth I, and why her time in reign is known as the Golden Era. Here we are presenting our findings to the rest of the class:

 

A snowy week.

Scott Grason-Taylor

The snow has landed this week, it has prompted lots of discussion and created an air of magic in the classroom.

We have read stories about winter, snowflakes of course Christmas. We have been able to look closely at the ice and snow, which has linked wonderfully to our Science topic of seasonal change. 

In DT we have been learning different ways to join fabrics. We tried gluing, pinning and stapling as possible ways. Next, we will learn how to thread a needle, before deciding the best way to join the fabric in our Christmas decorations, which I hasten to add, we are VERY excited about!

In music this week, we have been finding out the meaning of the word ‘dynamics’. We listened to different types of music and could identify the dynamics and found out that dynamics are needed to make music more interesting and to create mood. We learned the meaning of the words ‘pianissimo’, forte and crescendo’. We really enjoyed this and are trying to keep our classroom dynamics pianissimo where possible and to avoid crescendo!

We had a fun PE session with the Hawkes Sports coaches on Wednesday and their were smiles all round as we learned fundamental skills through some fun games!

We have been continuing to spot newly learned split-diagraphs in our reading books this week.

Learners really are awesome and love, love, love learning!

Let There Be Light

Scott Grason-Taylor

We have read the story of the Creation and retold this with a story map. We have looked at our planet on Google Earth and discussed the colours and what we can see. The clouds are very visible. The white is the ice and the snow and the green is the land. The Pioneers also noticed that some of the land is different colours and knew that this was because some places are hot and dry. The Pioneers then recreated what they saw and talked about what they had painted. They enjoyed mixing and naming the colours too.

A very happy afternoon.

Who Might Live in Our Forest?

Scott Grason-Taylor

The Pioneers looked at our collection of animals and sorted them into groups. We knew that tigers do not live in Sleights! We recognised that some animals are farm animals and some are kept as pets. We made a set of woodland animals and drew these and did a bit of writing too. Bats,foxes and rats.

We researched and found out a bit more about owls and what makes them special. We watched videos of them hunting in the night and talked about how they processed their food.

We read the wonderful Owl Babies and retold this with an annotated storymap. We talked about the colours needed to paint the owl and we were all particularly interested in their eyes. 

The resulting paintings are wonderful.

 

It’s beginning to look a ‘little’ like Christmas.

Scott Grason-Taylor

Christmas is approaching, this week we have begun rehearsing our 2023 nativity in readiness for the up and coming performances. Learners class will be angels and shepherds and we have been busy allocating parts and lines.

On Friday, we delighted in creating decorations for the school tree at St Mary’s Church in Whitby. Our theme was to show our continued school support for The Zambezi Sunrise Trust. After a class discussion, we decided on making baubles displaying sunrises and globes, the finished products were very effective. We were also lucky to be joined by Jo from the Zambezi Sunrise Trust.

This week in computing,  Learners class have used the chrome books to type a Michael Rosen poem. We are still learning to log-in independently and are persevering with using capital letters on the keyboard.

In Art, we have been applying our recently learned drawing skills to create some observational drawing. We identified intricate details of plants and the results were brilliant.

We enjoyed some gymnastics in PE and used benches to travel across, concentrating on our control and balance. 

We have begun to learn about the first Christmas in RE and enjoyed listening to the story and identifying key features while drawing story maps sequencing the characters and  key events.

In phonics this week we have learned about split digraphs and have been avidly spotting split digraphs in everything we have been reading. 

Learners achieved best attendance (again) this week and were proud to be able to choose the ‘coming to school song’ on Friday. 

The weather is turning colder now and Christmas is just around the corner, hold on to your hats!

A wonderful week of learning.

Scott Grason-Taylor

As Learners Class reflect on our Learning at the end of each week, we are in awe of all we have achieved. This week is no exception!

In RE, we have begun to explore Christmas and in the coming weeks we will answer the question “Why does Christmas matter to Christians?” We discussed how we knew Christmas was approaching and the signs we may spot in our daily lives.

In art we are continuing to develop our drawing skills and this week focused on creating light and shade using a range  of pencils. We used the previously used skills of stippling and hatching to help us too.

This week we have completed our poems based on refuge in the forest. We have REALLY enjoyed writing poetry and were delighted with our final pieces. So much so, we chose to perform our poems to families on Tapestry.

We ended the week, joining the Children in Need endeavours and we even came together in the playground to collectively burpee! Following that, Learners enjoyed a gymnastics session in the Hall, focusing on how to move and travel smoothly and with balance and control.

Another wonderful week of learning. We are excited to see what next week has in store!