Learners Class

Happy new year. The first week  of 2024 has been busy in Learners Class as always.

In English we have been reading fairytales, as many as we could find. All week, we have been choosing snippets of our favourites, in order to create a recipe for our own fairytale stew. On Thursday we each wrote our own recipe, using a selection of ingredients including a strand of Rapunzel’s hair, a horn from the Billy Goat’s Gruff, a button from the Giant’s coat and some bits of bobbly beanstalk – to name but a few. On Friday we delighted in making a class fairytale stew with a big pan and spoon. We took turns to add an ingredient and were able to stir it into the stew. We have really enjoyed this writing topic, which is evident from our wonderful final pieces of writing!

We have been exploring shape in maths this week, identifying 2D and 3D shapes and identifying the names and properties of shapes.

We enjoyed our first PE session with Hawkes sports coaches and are beginning to build skills to help us learn to play basketball.

In computers we were delighted to be programming Bee-Bots, finding out that our commands were causing our Bee-Bots to move where we wanted.

In PSHCE this week, we have been finding out the difference between physical and mental health and agreed that looking after ourselves is extremely important.

On Tuesday 16th January we will start our first swimming session at Whitby pool. Please make sure your Learner brings a swimming costume and a towel in a bag and that earrings are taken out before arriving at school on Tuesday. Learners are very excited to start swimming sessions.

Learners love to learn everyday and enjoy working together in class.

Sleights put on 2 wonderful nativity performances this week. The Church was packed and the atmosphere was magical. Learners class shone in their roles of shepherds and angels and they enjoyed every moment of it.

In English this week we have been creating story maps around the advert Sprout Boy and are keen to begin writing our narratives next week.

We have enjoyed lots of stories this week and Learners have been bringing in their favourite Christmas stories from home to enjoy in the classroom.

We had a wonderful day on Friday, finishing our DT Christmas decorations. We were successful in threading needles and showed some amazing sewing skills. We cut templates and pinned these to our chosen fabric. We then cut around these carefully, fastened them to hessian squares and decorated them with sequins and sparkles. We were delighted to take these home at the end of the day and display these proudly at home. We will be evaluating our design and creations next week.

Next week is jampacked with Christmas crafts, a Christingle service, Christmas dinner and parties and a trip to the pantomime. Hold on to your hats, it’s going to be lots of fun!

Learners class wish you all hope, peace and love for the Christmas holidays ahead.

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!

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!

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!

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!

We have enjoyed lots of great learning this week.

On Wednesday, we welcomed families into the classroom to celebrate Diwali. We had lots of families visit us in Learners class and together enjoyed a range of activities to learn more about this special occasion.

In class this week we have spent time looking at the individuals remembered on our village War Memorial, This was incredibly moving and it was wonderful to discover some members of the class with distant family members named on the memorial. We painted poppies to remember each person who lost their lives. The whole school proudly displayed their work around the war memorial, in the Church and around the village.

In English we have been embracing poetry. Families have sharing their own favourite poems with us, which has been delightful. In class, we particularly enjoyed Michael Rosen’s ‘Don’t’ this week and decided to perform part of it on Tapestry to share with our families.  To inspire our own poetry writing about refuge in the forest, we headed down to our forest to gather key vocabulary. We managed to dodge the rain and spent a sunny morning in the forest.

We finished the week with a visit from the Rotters, who talked to us about food waste. We made a smoothie using pedal power and made our own wormeries and heard about how worms were vital to our soil and our food growth. 

It’s been an incredible week of learning.

Learners Class love to learn 🙂