As a school...
SIAMS Success
We were pleased to receive our SIAMS report this term, which was sent to families via Arbor. We are incredibly proud of our pupils, who make our school the very special place that it is. A huge thank you to the pupils, our families, the staff team and wider community for all the support and care that is shown to ensure that our vision is lived out every day. The report can now be accessed on the school website home page. Thank you for all the wonderful messages and encouragement that we have received this week regarding this, it is appreciated.
Christmas Jumper Day & Christmas Lunch
Harrogate Christmas Concert Rehearsal
We certainly appreciated the efforts of the Kestrel Class pupils who performed at the Harrogate Christmas Concert on Saturday – they were truly amazing!
The day consisted of two rehearsals and the final performance, which was just brilliant! Our pupils sang beautifully and were an absolute credit to our school. The behaviour of our pupils was even commented on by the organisers, which made us very proud. It was a great evening and a pleasure to see so many of our parents and pupils at the performance. A big thank you to Mrs Hawkes for organising the concert, to Mr Stace for preparing and working with the children in advance and of course - our children!
Aria the Reindeer
Aria the reindeer arrived in school and we were delighted to meet her! Classes enjoyed a really interesting Q&A with her helpers and we found out lots of interesting facts about reindeers. The children all got to even have their picture taken with Aria and they got to take them home in their Christmas cards!
Stay & Play and Celebration of Learning
Thank you to all who were able to come into school this term for our Stay & Play and book sharing sessions. It was a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to share their learning with families and celebrate their wonderful work. It was a wonderful hubbub of sharing and shining from adults and children alike and showed the true community spirit of Burton Leonard.
Simeon Wood & Harrogate Theatre
We had a very special visit from the very talented musician, Simeon Wood this term. He performed some amazing pieces of music using some very interesting musical instruments! The children had a fantastic time and were very engaged and enthused with his performance. After the whole-school workshop, Simeon spent time in classes, so that the children could ask questions. Pupils visited Harrogate Theatre this term to watch Dick Whittington. They enjoyed a fun-packed performance, with lots of laughs and singing! Once again, our children represented Burton Leonard brilliantly!
Make a Difference Day!
The School Council came up with four ideas, litter-picking (to make a difference in the local community), clear-ups (to make a difference for our school), creating motivational images, words and quotes on pebbles to place around Burton Leonard (making a difference to the local community and those who visit it) and finally raising awareness, thinking about current issues around the world and making posters and peace chains to make our voices heard (making a difference locally, nationally and globally).
It was a fantastic day and an opportunity for our pupils to live out our vision to the full. It was also lovely to hear of how so many pupils had gone away and thought about making a difference throughout the week…Pippa made some super posters about litter-picking and Nola had even spotted Paddington Bear making a difference! Great examples of how we live out our reflections beyond our Collective Worship sessions!
Performance Poetry
What amazing effort from the children for Performance Poetry day this term. They always impress us so much with the time that is taken by them to choose their poems and how they are going to perform them. We have lots of budding poets amongst us!
Well done to everyone who took part and to the winning children who received a £5 token for The Little Ripon Book Shop.
Owls
Our Learning Time
Owl Class have learned so much about different cultural celebrations at this time of year. We learned about Diwali and also similarities and differences in how Christmas is celebrated in The United Kingdom, Poland and Slovakia. We hope too you enjoyed receiving the Christmas cards we created in our Design and Technology lessons.
Our Special Reindeer Friend - Arya!
'Twas the third day of the week and all through the school, not a child here was stirring following all our school rules! We heard a clatter as a van pulled into through the school gates and saw her for the first time! It was fascinating to find out so much about reindeer from Arya's owners and what they had learnt from spending so much time with her.
The Bossy King
We just loved discovering more about the first Christmas and sharing our performance of “The Bossy King” with our families and friends. We worked super hard on all of our lines and songs and enjoyed spending time with Mrs Leader and the Owls team to put on a fabulous performance. Thank you to everyone that came to watch our show!
Merlins
Remembrance Day
In Merlins, we spent time looking at Remembrance Day and what this looks like today. We thought about the soldiers that fought back in the days and wrote prayers for them that we read out in our Remembrance Service. We also had a visit from Mr Webley to talk about his experiences in being in the military nowadays and what it was like!
Music
Design and Technology
Kites
Secret Story Teller
We were extremely lucky to have two secret story tellers this term. We had a fantastic visit from Mrs Demspey who read us the beautiful story of Horace the Tortoise. The class were brilliantly able to link the morals and values of the story to our school vision. The reading ambassadors have also added it to their list of books they want to share with Owl class during a future book talk session. Our second visitor was Mrs Triceratops (Mrs John) – who read us an incredibly funny story called ‘The Dinosaur that pooped a planet’. The story was one that all the pupils said was really important, as it was silly, made them laugh and could easily cheer people up. I’ve attached some pictures of the strange scene from the morning!
Diwali
Mrs Pattison came into school to show and explain to Kite Class how Diwali is celebrated in their household. We had already learnt the mythological story behind Diwali but it was incredible to have a modern day perspective of what this celebration looked like. We learnt that it was an incredibly personal and spiritual celebration; each family, region, country may do things completely differently. Every family may do this in their own way and we learnt about the things that were consistent and the things that changed. We then went onto research Diwali being celebrated across the world. Mrs Pattison told us that Leicester’s Diwali was massive and we researched that 40,000 people attended last year. We looked at Fiji, Malaysia, Thailand, and Mauritius. A massive thank you to Mrs Pattison again for taking the time to do this with us.
Geography
This term we have been looking at features of physical Geography, including: volcanoes, earthquakes and Tsunamis. We have studied two different types of volcanoes and how to tell the difference between Shield volcanoes and composite volcanoes. What it means if a volcano is dormant or extinct. The pupils have absolutely loved this topic and have been fantastic with the information they’ve retained from it.
Kestrels
NSPCC Workshop
We had a visit this term from the people from the NSPCC for a talk about keeping ourselves safe and different types of abuse. We handled the difficult topics with maturity and really impressed Mr Stace with the care and respect that we treated the meaningful discussions that we had about the topic.
English
In English, we have been studying our book for this term, "The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries." It tells the story of Ignatius Sancho and the troubles he faced as the first black man to play the lead in a Shakespeare play through the lens of his daughter, Lizzie. The book touches on difficult topics such as discrimination and slavery. We have written diary entries from Lizzie's point of view after the attempt on her father's life during his debut performance and our teachers were really impressed by the level of work we produced.
The Harrogate Music Concert
What a night this was! In music this term, we have been learning all of the songs that we need for the Harrogate Christmas Concert at the Harrogate Convention Centre. On the day, the children started at 1 with the end of the concert at 9 and were fantastic and a shining example for our school throughout the day. We even had a special job for one of our children to interrupt the whole concert with a letter from Santa to the conductor. Mr Stace, Mr Doohan, Mrs Wolfe and Mrs Hawkes were very proud of us and how we sang and behaved.