We are beginning to get to grips with fractions now in maths, often using drawings and computer apps to help us visualise what the fractions look like before answering questions. We have just made a start on learning how to calculate with fractions and we are really rising to the challenge!
We have been working hard in English lessons, completing our work on Kensuke’s Kingdom with some persuasive letter writing to the Indonesian ambassador about the plight of the orangutans. We have extended our work on Michael Morpurgo as an author, reading extracts from ‘Warhorse’ and ‘Private Peaceful’ during whole class reading sessions, and also beginning a new unit of work in English lessons on ‘The Giant’s Necklace’, where we will be working on setting descriptions, learning about personification, similes and metaphors. Mr Fernandes has already been impressed with our turn of phrase!
Recent practical work in science included dissecting daffodils as part of our work on plant life cycles.
We have really been impressing Mrs Richardson with our art skills over the last couple of weeks. As you will have seen on Class Dojo, to celebrate the Lunar New Year and the Year of the Tiger, we followed a tutorial to draw some fantastic tiger faces:
We have also taken some amazing black and white photos, and you can have a close look at all of the children’s individual photographs on the Class Dojo ‘stories’. We enjoyed thinking about composition, contrast and shape in our pictures.
Our music performance is in the final stages of planning now; we have been learning the parts on different music instruments, we can do the singing parts beautifully and even composed a small section for the instrument part of the performance. Fingers crossed we get it finished in time to record a video before the holidays!
This week is Safer Internet Week, and the class have been discussing the issues in an assembly, as well as taking part in a related art competition and completing computer-based activities on this year’s theme, which is ‘All Fun and Games? Exploring respect and relationships online.’
As part of our ‘Sow, Grow and Farm’ topic, we have been investigating why birds lay eggs in science, which involved closely examining real eggs and discussing their structure.
In DT, we have been learning how to prepare vegetables by peeling and chopping ingredients which we turned into carrot and cumin soup.
In computing, you may have seen the videos on Class Dojo of the algorithms that we were able to turn into code, to program motors and multi colour LEDs to work in certain ways. We are working towards creating our own models with lights and moving parts in future weeks; watch this space!
We are continuing to develop our skills in shading during art lessons, experimenting with different kinds of shading as well as various materials, including India Ink, different sized marker pens and pencils of varying softness.
We are still working hard in maths and English lessons as well. We have just started a new unit on fractions in maths, and in English we have been creating non-chronological reports about orangutans linked with our work on Kensuke’s Kingdom.
Mrs Richardson has been so impressed with our ability to play musical instruments along with the Adele track ‘Make You Feel My Love’ in music lessons; we have even been able to include as many as 4 different notes while playing glockenspiels together, and hopefully some of us can progress onto playing the melodies on recorders as well.
All of this combined with swimming, PSHE, French, Geography and more has created a busy couple of weeks, but we have learnt so much!
In English lessons we have started a new book, ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ which we are really enjoying.
The children have settled back in well after the half term holiday and seem to have taken all the staff changes in their stride.
In maths we have been looking at subtracting fractions. In English we have started to read the book, ‘The Nowhere Emporium’ by Ross MacKenzie. We finished ‘Kensuke’s Kingdom’ before the holidays, and the children seem to have enjoyed it.
The children very much enjoyed the visit from the author, Dan Smith, on Tuesday. They listened carefully as he talked about how he retreated into books as a child to escape from his misery at boarding school, and how this influenced him in later life to become an author.
In science we have moved on to a new topic – Human Reproduction and Ageing. We began by exploring a lot of the vocabulary relating to the topic, so don’t be thrown if you hear your child talking about foetuses, adolescence, embryos and puberty.
In RE we are now studying Islam and began the topic by looking at the five pillars of Islam. In PE the children have been practising their football skills with Mr Robertson.
In our geography topic we are continuing our study of farming. This week we have been looking at how the varying climates in North and South America influence the types of farming that are to be found there.
World Book Day was great fun. Thank you to all the parents who got their children dressed up as characters from books. We had an exciting range of characters in the class that day.