Friday 19th January 2023

Leaders have made a brilliant start to 2024!

In English, the children have been learning to write instructions. They explored a WAGOLL based on The Three Little Pigs and how to build a straw house before visiting the forest to build twig houses. Using this experience, the children wrote a set of instructions. The finished work is brilliant!

In maths, Leaders have spent the week tackling converting measures. They have converted metric units of measure, miles to kilometers and imperial measures and applied this learning to a range of problems. 

In art, our new topic is textiles. The children have learned what this type of art is and explored the work of our focus artist, Louise Baldwin. Following this, the children learned how to use running stitches, back stitches and cross stitches. Keep an eye on our class blog to see how we use these stitches in our artwork over the coming weeks.

In history, our new unit is the Victorians. The children have already learned about Queen Victoria, began to create a timeline and explored a range of historical sources to find out more about the British Empire during this time period and its impact on Britain.

In Collective Worship, Leaders have gathered with the whole school and explored our new Christian Value, perseverance. It was also brilliant to see the Reading Leaders deliver an informative assembly to the whole school this week. 

An excellent two weeks to start 2024!

 

 

Happy Christmas everyone!

It has been a wonderful final week of 2023 in Leaders class.

This week, we have enjoyed Christmas crafts with families in school, made Christingles for the whole school, enjoyed Christmas dinner together, visited the pantomime and taken part in the Christingle service. It has been a busy but brilliant end to 2023 in school.

We hope that everyone has a lovely Christmas break!

A busy few weeks in Leaders class

The Leaders have been busy over the past few weeks in subjects across the curriculum.

In maths, the children have been learning about fractions. They can add, subtract, multiply and divide with fractions and use these methods when solving problems. Great work!

In English, the children have developed their persuasive skills to write an advert to advertise visits to the Alps. The children were able to use a range of persuasive devices in their finished pieces to ensure that they met the purpose of this text type. As we are now in the run up to Christmas, Leaders have also enjoyed some festive narrative writing. Inspired by the advert ‘Excitable Edgar’, the children changed elements of the story to make it their own. The finished stories are amazing with a range of openers, amazing vocabulary and good use of punctuation throughout.

In history, the children have been learning about the Roman’s impact of Britain. They have learned about public baths, aqueducts, town life and religion. 

In DT, the children have designed and created their own bags. They have used templates, cut fabric and used pins to secure it onto another piece of material. To complete their bags, Leaders used both hand-stitching and a sewing machine. The finished bags looks incredible!

In art, the children have been applying their drawing skills to landscapes and portraiture. The photos in the gallery below showcase some of their fabulous work!

Sleights Remembers Them

This week, the whole school have reflected on the service personnel who lost their lives and are remembered on our village’s War Memorial Monument. These local heroes have been discussed and their lives researched during the week. The children have each created a symbol of remembrance, including artwork and writing about the local lost soldiers. Today, we came together as a full school and heard the names of these soldiers read out by our children, before beginning our two minutes silence. The hall was still.

The photographs show the work created by the children celebrated around the village. Please do visit the school, community centre, Spar shop, St John’s and the War Memorial to see the work in person. It really is beautiful.

A huge thank you to families who have shared personal memories too. These included finding out about a family connection to one of the individuals on the War Memorial, as well as some very special items from fallen family members.

Friday 10th November 2023

What a great first week back!

This week, to mark Remembrance Day, Leaders have been exploring Sleights war memorial and the people commemorated on it. They have created thoughtful pieces of work around this, which will be displayed around the memorial and village this weekend. We were also joined by Mr Hann, a former Royal Air Force Wing Commander (Retired). Mr Hann worked with Leaders to explore some of his own stories and reflections on his time serving. Mr Hann shared with the children some of his first-hand experiences and brought some of his equipment and uniform into school. The children were really engaged to also see photographs and medals from Mr Hann’s service. The children had so many questions and made some excellent contributions.

The children have also been busy in DT this week. This half term, the children will be designing and making their own re-usable bag. To start this unit, Leaders explored a range of existing bag designs with a focus on their appearance, durability and functionality. 

In English, we have began to explore poetry. The children identified features within a free verse poem and are looking forward to creating their own next week. We have also continued to read our class text, ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’. This week, we learned more about Ahmet’s journey to the UK before completing reading activities linked to this chapter.

 

 

Learning about the past

To support our children’s learning about Rememberence, we were really fortunate to be joined in school by Kevin Hann, Royal Air Force Wing Commander (Retired). Mr Hann worked with children in Adventurers, Discoverers and Leaders to explore some of his own stories and reflections on his time serving. Mr Hann shared with the children some of his first-hand experiences and brought some of his equipment and uniform into school. The children were really engaged to also see photographs and medals from Mr Hann’s service. The children had so many questions and made some excellent contributions. A huge thank you to Mr Hann for giving his time up. His impact across school was significant.

Harvest Festival 2023

The land has yielded its harvest: God, our God, has blessed us, Psalm 67:6

It was so brilliant to be able to welcome so many families to our service on Wednesday. St John’s was full! A huge thank you for supporting us with your very kind donations too. All donated items will now be shared with the Whitby Food Bank to share around our community.

Friday 6th October 2023

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!

Friday 22nd September 2023

It has been another busy week in Leaders class.

In maths this week, we have tackled rounding any integer up to the nearest million and can confidently explain the steps needed to do this. We have also explored negative numbers and can calculate and solve problems with these. 

In history this half term, we are learning about the Romans. This week, we considered how Rome was formed. We explored the story of Romulus and Remus in a reading lesson and then demonstrated our understanding through drama. Each group was given a part of the story to act out, without using any speech, and the rest of the class had to identify the part of the story being performed. 

On Monday, we were joined by Owen from Yorkshire cricket. We played games to practice throwing and catching skills before enjoying a game of last batter standing. The enthusiasm, level of skill and team work demonstrated was wonderful to see. 

In Leaders class, we love to read and we have been enjoying a range of books and texts together and independently this half term. In our whole class reading lessons, our focus is ‘The Boy at the Back of the Class’ and at the end of each day we are currently reading ‘ Can you see me?’. We are already thoroughly enjoying these books and look forward to sharing more with you about them soon.