Friday 11th November
During Guided Reading this week the children read both fiction and nonfiction works covering Armistice day and reasons for wearing poppies. We also looked at how the effects of war has been captured in music. The children carefully read the news article, read the poems and listened to and discussed the songs.
They were very moved by the works and discussed the topics surrounding our work both sensitively and passionately.
Here is some of the art work we produced to accompany the poem, In Flanders Field.
We will remember them.
Friday 4th November
We are very proud of the excellent team work we have done this week. We have worked together well in maths, PE and English, teaming up to develop some very intense descriptive sentences. Another area where we felt we had really shown off our teamwork is in Art.
We extended our learning in History by examining two portraits of Tudor Royals and discussing what we can learn from them. We also discussed first hand accounts from the time and decided that maybe the famous portraits are not as reliable as we may have first thought. We feel that the royals have exerted their powers to encourage a more favourable image than real life. In Art we chopped the two portraits into 15 pieces and then each child took part of the portrait to copy, sketch and colour. We found it fascinating looking at each interpretation and learnt another important lesson about history which supported our previous discussion, not everyone experiences things in the same way. We will bare this in mind when we use historical sources in the future.
Friday 21st October
What a lovely week to end the half term on. The children have completed some fantastic persuasive texts. Watch out for their efforts over the holidays! They can put forward a point full of emotive language, facts and opinion and they can repeat themes and ask punchy rhetorical questions like pros now!
This week we particularly enjoyed our inter-house football competition! The children really showed off the skills they have developed this half term. Some of the things I was most impressed by was their ability to hold their positions, look for space to pass or dribble into and their ‘jockeying’, the ability to slow down the opposition player. Well done everyone in Africa class!
Hope you have a fabulous half term break!
Friday 7th October.
This week we have enjoyed studying poetry as part of our English work. We used the book, The Lost Words, to support our learning. We started the week by going outside and writing down everything we could see, then we created descriptive sentences about it. Then, disaster! We found out that some words had been stolen and we couldn’t use the anymore. Our sentences were decimated and we were very sad. With a bit of magic, we managed to bring the words back and using similes and metaphors we created our own acrostic poems inspired by The Lost Words. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed creating them.
In Science last week, we looked at scientific circuit symbols and learnt what they represent in a real circuit.
We labelled circuits using the correct scientific vocabulary.
Then we designed and created our own circuits. We started using 2 wires, 1 bulb and 1 cell. Then we added in either a motor or a buzzer. We recorded the circuits we made using the correct symbols.
This week we built on our learning by recognising that it would be useful to be able to turn a doorbell or light off. The solution we came up with was using a switch in our circuit. We recognised that there is a difference between a circuit being on then switched off to a circuit that was incomplete. An incomplete circuit will never switch on because the electrons cannot travel all the way round the circuit.
As you can see we had lots of fun.
Friday 16th September.
Well done for your stickability this week Africa class! you have come in with a great attitude and we have made lots of progress because of this. In maths lessons we have been really focusing on our foundation knowledge to support column addition and I have been blown away by their determination to develop speed as well as accuracy within their recall. They thought about different approaches to working out sums then were able to think about the most efficient method to use based on the addends we had. Well done!
We also spent some time thinking about role models with a focus on Queen Elizabeth II and her dedication to serving our country. The children thought of messages of celebration and thanks and we decorated crowns with our messages and pictures. I think you’ll agree they are thoughtful and moving.
Already looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday ready for our Yoga festival!
Happy weekend!
Friday 9th September
What a great first week back we have had. The children have settled in really well and taken to life in Africa class brilliantly. We started off the week with some ‘about me’ activities and some team building games.
One of these activities was had a DT theme. We had to create a bridge which a car could travel over. This really tested our architecture skills as well as our problem-solving strategies but the wowed me by never giving up. This class produced the most amount of stable bridges I have seen to date! Well done!
We have also had a great time learning about timelines and creating our class timeline to use in history lessons. The children were excellent at ordering both themselves and dates – well done!
In Art this week we looked at African artwork and the traditional story of Anansi the Spider. We then took inspiration from Roman mosaic artwork and created our own Anansi Spiders. I think you will agree that they are fantastic!
I hope you have a relaxing and restful weekend and come back next week ready to go again!
Happy weekend!