All aboard the Hundred Decker Bus!
This week our focus book has been ‘The Hundred Decker Bus’ by Mike Smith. This story takes us on an amazing adventure with a growing bus!
We used our literacy skills to sequence and retell the great story. We discussed how it might feel if we went on an adventure but didn’t know where we were going! In the classroom we created our own towns labelling the different buildings, we created playdough vehicles and labelled double decker buses.
We loved the idea of each deck on the bus been a different place to do things. We decided to create a class decker bus. Thank you grown ups for our cardboard boxes! We all thought about what we wanted our deck to be and then used different materials to create it.
During our Religious Education lesson we learnt more about the Hindu Festival Holi. Holi is a colourful festival, with singing and throwing of powder paint and coloured water. It is a celebration of spring, love and new life. We decided to create our own friend who has taken part in Holi.
This week for poetry basket we used the nursery rhyme ‘Pat a Cake’ we loved creating our own actions. We hope you enjoy watching it!
Maths: times tables
Year 4 is the year where we really smash our times table knowledge! In class, we investigate the patterns we can spot in the tables as well as frequently chanting the multiples forwards and backwards, highlighting the multiples on a 100sq or multiplication grid, using the multiples on a number line and filling in the blanks of number grids.
This week, we’ve even added singing songs to our repertoire of learning tables! Check out these songs at home to help support your learning of tables! There’s loads of these kind of songs around – maybe you could have them playing at home or in the car when you next take a journey- everyone loves a sing-a-long!
PE
Recently, in PE, we’ve been using our knowledge of controlled movements to climb on and around the large apparatus in the hall. We talked about some of the best ways to move and balance on the equipment and what happens to our body movement as we travel, balance, jump and climb.
Writing: Should playtimes be banned?
In their writing lessons, the children have been learning techniques to help them to write persuasively. Today, we received a letter informing us that playtimes are going to be reduced and possibly stopped altogether! What an outrage!
Tomorrow, the class will put forward their argument and begin to plan a letter stating their opinions. To help with this, we created a ‘Conscience Alley.’
What does conscience alley mean?
Help at home by reading the letter below with your child. Create your own debate for and against banning playtimes.
To the staff, parents and governors
I would like your support with my proposal to reduce break time for KS2 children. Break and lunchtime at (St. James’ Primary School) make up a total of 6 hours and 40 minutes throughout the week. In my opinion, that is a significant amount of time being wasted with children simply running around and not participating in learning. My suggestion is to remove first break entirely and reduce lunchtime from 60 minutes (one hour) to 30 minutes (half an hour), which is adequate time for the children to eat, use the toilet and get some fresh air. Here I have outlined my main reasons for making this proposal.
First and foremost, a school’s purpose is for children to learn; children get to play when they are at home. Some may argue that break-time is vital for children to relax throughout the day. I, on the other hand, disagree because they are able to relax from 3.15pm (when our school day ends) until their bedtimes. Additionally, children have the weekends and school holidays to play. Increasing the amount of learning time is crucial for the children because it will increase the progress they make so it will improve the amount of opportunities available to them when they are older, allowing them to have a brighter future.
Furthermore, statistics show that break and lunch times are when the school has to deal with the most friendship problems and medical emergencies. By reducing the amount of time, the children are at break, we will reduce the chances of children falling out with each other. In addition, the increased amount of learning time will allow us to spend more time teaching Living and Learning and Circle Times, where we can equip the children with strategies to deal with friendship problems in the future.
Finally, I strongly believe that it is a waste of teacher’s time to look after children at break. Reducing the amount of break time will reduce the amount of time teachers have to spend supervising children during unstructured play, and allow them to the job they are trained to do: inspire the children with their learning.
To conclude, I consider it my responsibility to do what is best for the children (even if they may disagree), and reduce the amount of break time. In my experience, the more learning time the children have, the better progress they will make. Consequently, they will perform better in their assessments, have fewer friendship problems and be well prepared for the challenges of secondary school.
A Love of Reading
Year 5 and 6 have had a busy reading week! World Book Day was a great success – we had the opportunity to listen to one another talking about their favourite books and authors. The pupils thrived when visiting Year 1 to read with the younger children – we also had a surprise visit from Mrs Payne, who discussed her favourite books and authors with us.
With their refreshed love of reading, the pupils visited the school library this week. Some pupils chose to have an individual book, and some pupils chose to pair up and choose the same book. The aim of this was for the pupils to discuss their book each week and share their love for it. Here are some pictures of pupils enjoying their new books.
5,4,3,2,1 blast off!
Our focus story this week has been ‘The Hundred Decker Rocket’ by Mike Smith. This is a fantastic story based on looking after the places we live and creating a huge rocket for everyone to travel on.
In Reception we began thinking about how we could look after the places we live. We had a great discussion about litter and decided to do a litter pick in our school grounds. This also allowed us to go and see if we could spot any signs of Spring!
In maths this week we have been working on our counting skills and spotting patterns when counting. Did you know when we add 1 more to towers they look like stairs! We had great fun taking part in a bean bag challenge.
We created maps of our school to help others find their way around school and even created maps for the Beebots to follow. It was tricky to program the Beebots at first but we soon got used to what we needed to do.
Our poem this week had lots of fun actions! please check it out on the link.
World Book Day
On Thursday we had a wonderful day celebrating reading! Parents and carers joined us for bedtime stories in class and then we had special visitors from year 3 and Mrs Valentine.
Living & Learning: I know we’re all the same and we’re all different
In this week’s Living and Learning lesson, we thought carefully about how we’re different yet all the same.
We explored what’s meant by discrimination and alongside that, discussed what the term ‘stereotype’ means:
It was fantastic to listen to and see how mature Year 4 are about topics such as discrimination. Everyone was incredibly respectful, mature and knew that to discriminate is not a good thing.
Going forwards, it’s great to know that this class knows how to be great members of our community outside of school! Nice one, Year 4!
Topic – Computing
This half term, our Topic is Computing. Last week, we discussed what a computer is and what sort of devices we might have at home that have a computer built-in.
This week, we have been looking at algorithms. We have been learning all about the program ‘Scratch Jr’ and how to create an algorithm. We know how to set a sequence so that our Sprites (characters) move, shrink, grow and turn.
We also learnt how to debug an algorithm that does not work and how to alter a sequence.
We’ve had a lot of fun using Scratch and learning about all of the buttons and how they work. We are really looking forward to using the program again next week and learning more!
We’ve also started to look at our Geography vocabulary, which you can see below.
English
Our class text is Nothing by Mike Inkpen (This is a YouTube link. Top tip for watching YouTube with your child: go to the settings cog along the play bar and turn off autoplay – this avoids an inappropriate clip coming up automatically, and helps to discourage your child from passively watching clip after clip). We have enjoyed reading and sharing our thoughts on the book this week. We picked out some vocabulary that we weren’t familiar with, explored the meaning and added them to our word wall.
Challenge: Can you use any of these words when talking to friends or family?
Today, we looked at the nouns and adjectives used in the book and wrote some expanded noun phrases.
Check out our fantastic writing!
Challenge: Look around you and come up with an expanded noun phrase.
“The orange, chair”.
“The round, yellow table”.
Living and Learning: strong emotions and feelings
This half term, in Living and Learning with Mrs Bald, we are thinking about emotions and friendships.
We’ve thought about how it feels to be happy, excited, nervous or sad and when we might experience these different emotions. We thought about how our bodies react to our emotions. For example, if we are happy then we will laugh and smile. If we are sad or worried, then we might feel knots in our tummies or we might need to cry. We know that it is okay to experience different emotions and that other people do, too.
We’ve thought about different ways that we could comfort people, and ourselves, if there are feelings of sadness. One example was mindfulness exercises, such as listening to calming music or colouring in. We also thought about what we would say to someone who felt sad and discussed this in one of our circle time sessions.
Another area that we’ve thought about is the idea of friendships. We know that sometimes our friends can make us happy and sometimes we can also be sad because of friendships. Our Christian value this half term is forgiveness so we’ve thought about how we can ask for someone to forgive us or to show forgiveness if a friendship has made us sad.