Year 3
We have had a very busy and productive return to Year 3, not least because our Easter play rehearsals are underway. Thank you for supporting your children to learn their lines. The sooner they know them, the more confident they will become as we practise and perform. The children are bringing home booklets to learn the words to the songs – hopefully you will hear some beautiful singing from them!
Of course, we have started our new topics for the half-term in all subjects. In English, we are focussing on character descriptions. We started by reading The Secret Garden, discussing the text and creating a story board from memory. We also began learning a text map describing ‘Harby’ from The Wild Way Home and discussing the features of his character description. As well as our weekly grammar worksheet, we completed a reading comprehension about British birds.
We have been understanding, ordering and comparing unit and non-unit fractions in maths. In geography, we reminded ourselves about the cardinal points on a compass (north, south, east and west) and the intercardinal points between, using them to find our way around a map and to give directions. We used shapes only to create still life drawings in art and played some games in French to remind ourselves of the colours (Year 3 are super at this). The children labelled the main parts of a plant (flower, stem, roots and leaf) in science and explained what jobs they each do. Miss Spinks is helping the children to learn songs for the play and also introduced the children to ballads in music (ask them to give you a rendition of a Whitney Houston classic!)
Have a super weekend and enjoy the sunshine!
The Year 3 team (Miss Murphy, Mrs Dobson and Mrs Troughton)
Year 4
Our learning this week;-
Maths - we have started to look at decimals. This is often quite tricky for children to understand, and we are taking small steps to make sure they fully understand the concept.
English - we have started innovating our discussion text from last term, changing the focus from smartphones to junk food. It is creating a lot of discussion! With Mrs Harper, the children looked at a piece of poetry in their reading comprehension called 'Woodland Magic'.
Computing - the children were researching temperatures of cities around the world and recording the data.
Science - the children were learning about the parts and process of the digestive system.
RE - the children finished their unit on Hinduism, demonstrating what they have learnt.
Play practice - we have started to practice our play. The children have been given their positions and we have started to work through the play adding the appropriate acting. You are in for a treat!
Please practice the play lines with your child. It is important that they can speak without needing to read from a piece of paper. The rustling of the paper will make it harder for you to hear what they are saying.
Have a great weekend
Mrs Chittock and the Year 4 team
Year 5
In English this week we have been looking at non-chronological reports. We've thought about what features this text type has, created spoken monologues about a mythical creature and had a reading lesson all about a liosp (half lion, half wasp!)
In Maths, we have continued to find fractions of amounts, using short division and short multiplication to help us calculate fractions of large amounts. We've even had a go at working out what the whole would be when we are given a fraction of a number. Again, we have had lots of progress on Times Table Mountain. We even had someone move up 3 times on 3 consecutive days! I don't think we've ever had a class make such tremendous progress on TTM.
We have started our new history unit for this half term: Ancient Egypt. Our lesson on Monday focused on when this period sat in history and it's scale. Settlers first settled around the Nile in 7,500 BCE, so nearly 10,000 years ago. Homework this week focused on key events on a timeline. Try to steer your child away from Tutankhamun - we will be studying the discovery of his tomb later in the term.
In Computing we have began a new unit, using Scratch to help us create a maze game. This week, we designed a backdrop, a maze and a 'main' character and worked out what code we needed for our character to move. Next time, we'll be adding more levels and even introducing enemy characters.... We have completed the next step of this term's DT project.
On Thursday, we taste tested two different Bolognese sauces and began to write the recipes we will use when cooking. We talked a lot about including non-purchasable ingredients - such as trust, teamwork, compassion and compromise! We will cook towards the end of this half term.
Please encourage your child to be practicing their spellings during the week. At 8:15am this morning, 16 children had not logged in and practiced this week's words for their spelling test. The words are getting tricker, so it is imperative that they are practicing more than once just before they take the test.
Have a good weekend. I hope you don't spend too much of it packing and repacking! We've had lots of time to discuss the trip in class so hopefully I've answered the answerable burning questions (I did preface the question time with "There are some things I can't tell you...."
Two school days to go!
Miss Rutter, Mrs Marsh and Mrs Nichols
At the end of this term, we will be making an Ancient Egyptian-style 'death mask' inspired by Tutankhamun. For this, we will need cereal boxes. We have quite a stash of them saved from last year, but we probably need another 12 for this year. If you finish some cereal, can we have the box please? The bigger boxes are better than smaller ones. Thank you!
Year 6
It's been a great first week back - we have had lots of super learning demonstrated this week.
In maths, we are beginning some of our revision, which is really great as the children are able to feel really confident about their ability. We have been focusing on fractions, decimals and percentages, calculating and converting between them,
In English, we have started to read extracts of an abridged version of Macbeth. We have started to explore the idea of themes and how characters' motives are not always reflected in what they say.
In geography, we completed our research booklets, written about whether or not it is too late to save Dunwich.
In computing, the children have continued to create spreadsheets; apply formulae and sort data.
In RE, we were learning about the origins of Buddhism; how it is similar to and different from religions.
In PSHE, we have been considering how to become more mindful of and responsible for individual safety, particularly thinking about how and why this is important with increased independence the children will have in the coming months.
Home learning this week is a decimals revision task. For most children, they will have two sets of spellings to practise: these will be found in their spelling book. I will be testing them on Tuesday.
Have a super weekend.
Nuala Gilmore
Or, it could be a character with superpowers like this: 
