Helping Others

Our school vision focuses on "Working together to be happy; to flourish; to succeed". We are keen to promote children's charitable outreach and support all children to make a wider difference. We help others in a range of ways.

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Together, we can change the world

Our school curriculum was planned to support children change the world. As part of the curriculum, each class explored rights of the child, before considering how they believed the world could be changed. To help their change, each class was gifted £10 and a challenge to make the money grow.

Over a number of weeks, each class identified a cause, with a clear rationale, before planning and hosting their own events. These events included a bring and buy clothes sale, raising £400 for the World Wildlife Foundation and a pizza and movie night for Dementia UK. 

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Linking with the older community of Sleights

image-9  image-26-e1544032473790 Our youngest children, the Pioneers, have enjoyed making links with our elderly neighbours. Organised with Beyond Housing, children enjoy visiting the community centre in the village and playing games and completing activities with our neighbours. 

We have also enjoyed being able to welcome our Pioneer Pals into our school. 

Children have visited Esk Hall care home, in Sleights. The children have been helping the residents there to engage in different activities. The children have read poems to them, and shared stories, as well as simply talking to them about their lives and learning more about their experiences. They played games and encouraged the elderly to be pushed out of their comfort zone, playing catch on the lawn and playing Connect 4.

The children were always welcomed with juice and biscuits and have thoroughly enjoyed building these relationships with people whom then usually wouldn’t have chance to spend time with. As a result of this time together, the children are learning to consider how their actions affect the lives of others and how simply giving their time can have a positive impact on the world.

 

Raising money for charity

As part of the Archbishop of York Young Leaders award, children spent time researching charities and thinking about the different ways in which they can offer their support. The children decided to organise their very own fundraiser and between themselves managed to arrange a school sleepover. They shared a movie, with pizza and popcorn, and then camped out in the school hall, all in order to raise money for Crohn’s and Colitis UK. The children raised a whopping £850.00!

Judith Kirk, the Assistant Director for North Yorkshire County Council came to visit Sleights to hear about our fundraising efforts too.

Improving our local environment

Concerned about the state of the environment and keen to establish change, we encourage the children to play an active part in improving our world. This has included using high quality texts focused on climate change, such as "Someone swallowed Stanley" and writing to the MP. The children also interviewed the MP, Robert Goodwill, about climate change when he visited the school.

The children have learned to take more care of their belongings and surroundings, learning to appreciate all that they have and feel fortunate to live in such a beautiful area. As a result, the children walked around the local community in order to find any areas for improvement. Consequently, they organised a park clean up, where they completed gardening tasks, cleaned the equipment and collected rubbish. The children often bring rubbish into school that they have found on their journey to / from school or the surrounding area.