Category: Leaders Class

The last week of the half term has been a busy one! 

The week began with Leaders enjoying an Egyptian drama experience with Louise – always a bit hit!  The children enjoyed learning about Egyptian life and the gruesome mummification, creating freeze frames, linked movements and then a recorded piece using IPads.  

The week ended with a day of heart related activities in support of CHUF (Children’s Heart Unit Fund).  Leaders learned all about who they are and their work supporting children and families.  They also learned about the ‘clown doctors’ and their important role in keeping the children who find themselves in hospital smiling and happy.  Some Leaders decided to make their own ‘clown doctor’ clip Sleights style.

Here are some of the best bits of our half term:

Noah: I loved the session with Louise.

Mia: CHUF activities.

Corey: I have enjoyed making animations in ICT.

Rachael: I enjoyed using the marbling ink to create different effects.

Reegan: I have enjoyed learning about Algebra in maths.

Hollie: I liked making clay cartouches.

Leila: I enjoyed the mental health session with Mel, learning about the alarm clock in our brains.

Cheyenne: I enjoyed all the different science experiments.

Max: I liked the history activities.

Happy Half Term!

Christmas may seem like a distant memory in Leaders as it has been a hive of activity in the classroom.

Leaders have been showing their investigative skills whilst examining different materials and their properties.  They have been carrying out investigations about solubility, accurately plotting their results using line graphs, before analysing what conclusions their results show and/or whether they raise further questions to be investigated.

With Mrs Gurney, Leaders are learning how to create animations, showing perseverance and patience all round as each movement needs to be meticulously managed and captured, being careful not to move the existing objects.

In collective worship, they have been thinking about perseverance and how this is important when they meet things that they might find difficult.  Leaders are amazing at supporting each other when they find things difficult.  They know that everyone is unique and talented at a range of different things.

Welcome back to our first week after half term.  The colder weather has definitely come to visit and Leaders are thankful for their cosy environment.

This week has been very practical: we have made Rangoli artwork whilst investigating the festival of Diwal; Manglewick candles from our class novel ‘Shadowghast’ whilst investigating shadows; making bridges to help our refuge escape their home country.

There was lots of accurate marking and precision cutting in the building of our bridge structures and we are looking forward to testing out our bridges next week.

In collective worship this week, we have started a new value of Trust and the children have been trying to give trust a definition and investigating what this means.  We have looked at faith as a mustard seed and discussed how, from something small, something much bigger can grow.

Wow – what a busy week!

We started the week with a shared session with Louise, learning all about the Tudors through drama activities.  A session of fun, laughter and ‘hands on’ learning.

Tuesday brought another swimming session – it is fantastic to see the water confidence really beginning to grow.

On Wednesday, it was the girls turn to play football at Eskdale and they all had a fantastic time, playing as a team and developing their football knowledge over the course of the matches.

On Thursday, we visited Scarborough Spa to take part in a STEM fair which showed the children many opportunities in these fields with many more ‘hands on’ activities to take part in; code cracking, brick laying, fulcrum balancing and medicine to list a few.  

With such a varied week – there has been so much learning taking place.

Families – please check Tapestry to see photos from these events.

This week we have spent some time in the forest which allowed us to check on the status of our structures and answer the million dollar question as to whether the kindling was still  dry.  We were not too hopeful as it has been very windy and rainy.   We found a mixture of results but we were able to identify which structures had worked well and why, which should help us in the future. The next questions were: could we light a fire; did we have enough kindling. 

We managed to get the fire lit but quickly realised that there would not be enough kindling to boil our Kelly Kettle.  We decided to fill our most successful structures with more kindling so that we will be able to look forward to a nice warm drink (as it gets colder) the next time we are in the forest.

In collective worship this week, we have been continuing our journey through the bible although we are still in the book of Genesis.  We found out about the test that God gave Abraham in terms of sacrifice and what this means.

Wow, what a busy start to the school year Leaders have had.  We have had lots of fun investigating the new classroom and trying out the different seating options. 

Our topic this term is ‘This is our World’ and we have been polishing up our map skills by using 6-figure grid references and showing our knowledge of famous structures around the world – very impressive!  In history, we are beginning to learn about the Tudors and have re-enacted our own Battle of Bosworth with our class splitting into the same ratios as they would have been then – who knew they would need their maths!

In collective worship this week, we have been investigating this term’s value of thankfulness and thinking about people in our school and the wider community who we are thankful for.  A time to reflect on all the people who help us on a daily basis. 

Good Morning Leaders

Thank you for your patience yesterday with the technical issues that Tapestry was encountering. I am sure you have all being doing lots of fantastic learning. Please don’t worry if you were unable to complete yesterday’s tasks although, it would be great if you could look at the ‘What We’ll Build’ story post as we will be using that to base our English activities on for the coming weeks.

Also, a big thank you to everyone who uploaded a poetry video. I really enjoyed seeing you all and your concentration and characters really shone through.

#English

Today, we are going to think about once of the first pages of the story. We are going to be using the page near the front of the book which is covered in tools.   We use tools to help us complete lots of different jobs. For a bit of fun, I have attached several photos of tools, and I would like you to guess what the tools are used for – some of them look rather strange!

We are going to build up to writing an explanation of how a tool or object works but with a slight twist.   Look at the pages attached of the book ‘Until I Met Dudley’ and investigate the explanations. You will see there are two very different explanations of the same object. Read these carefully and see if you can list the similarities and differences between the two explanations. Your list of similarities should then give you a list of features you would see in an explanation text. Keep this list safe as we will need it during the week.

#Maths

We are continuing with our work on division today.

Year 5, page 16, Dividing. If you would like to check in with the video from yesterday to remind yourselves, please do before you start.

Year 6, page 15, Dividing. Your task today includes some long division. You can use this video to help you recap the long division method or, if you are confident, you might want to have a go at the first one and then watch the first bit of the clip to check your method. https://classroom.thenational.academy/lessons/use-the-formal-written-method-of-long-division-to-solve-appropriate-calculations-c8wk0c?step=2&activity=video

#Art/Outdoors

Finally, your task is to create a cairn. Cairns are man-made towers of natural stones, usually built as a landmark or a memorial. All you need to do is gather a range of flat rocks and pebbles in different sizes, and then stack them in order, with the largest at the bottom and the smallest at the top.

See if you can get your cairn to balance, and count how many stones high your structure can hold.

For an extra challenge, change the foundation of your tower to a smaller stone, and see if you can rebuild it.

If you don’t have any rocks or pebbles, you could get create and use small items around the home.

Have a great day.