Meet your new school councillors
After a week of learning about democracy as one of the British values, we have voted for our school councillors. Each councillor – as well as the other candidates that weren’t elected – had to make a small speech and answer questions on why they should be elected as a school councillor.
We would like to wish them good luck in their roles and look forward to seeing them succeed and help make our school the best it can be!
Odd one out
As you may have seen from previous homework and news posts, the majority of our learning this half term has been about place value and the number system. We have represented, compared and ordered numbers to 1000 in may different ways.
As such, this morning we played a game called ‘Odd one out’. The objective of the game was to spot the odd one out in a series of pictures which depicted a number from 1-1000 using various representations.
Once we had answered questions in our books, we all made them for each other and also a whole class problem on the board for all of you to try at home.
Don’t send in your answers – it’s just for fun!
Homework superstars
Last week, we were asked to create games or quizzes all about our learning on place value in maths.
The time and effort that went into these was astonishing! We have been playing some of the games today and not only are they well thought out and fun, but they actually help with learning too!
Take a look at some of our stand-out stars below!
Living and Learning: I understand with rights come responsibilities.
This week, we expanded our understanding about the rights we have as children.
Building on from our previous discussions, we looked closely at the responsibility that comes with each right:
I have the right to an education so I have the responsibility to make the most of school and be ‘ready to learn’. – Harvey
Several of us mentioned having the right to ‘be myself’. We talked about how these protected characteristics make us who we are, and it is our responsibility not to judge or bully others for being themselves and the choices they make.
We considered how each right fits together with a responsibility, a bit like putting 2 pieces of a jigsaw together. We thought about how our behaviours towards others and the environment can affect everyone:
“I have the right to be warm but it’s my responsibility not to waste energy”. – Lukne
“I have the right to live in a clean environment so it’s my responsibility not to drop litter”. – Jessica
Green radioactive water
Earlier in the week, we were working on measuring capacity using bright green, radioactive water – just kidding… it was only food colouring!
We had to apply our knowledge of place value to count in steps of 10 or 50 on different scales. We also had to make sure we were very accurate in our measuring and not just guessing where the water line was.
Maybe at home you’d like to try measuring out different amounts of liquid. Don’t use bright green, radioactive water though!
Living and Learning: I use the 8 Rs to help me learn
We used several of the 8 Rs straight away during our Living and Learning session as we both Remembered and Reflected on the discussions we have had about the 8 Rs.
In small groups we took one of the 8 Rs and then recalled the ways in which we use it to help us learn both in and out of school. It was fantastic to hear comments such as:
“I keep on reflecting about the neatness of my handwriting…you don’t just reflect once”. DJ
“I show I’m ready to learn by being an ‘active listener'”. Jessica
People began to challenge the opinions of others in a positive way. Someone made the comment you should ‘put your hand up a lot if you know it’. A classmate responded that even if you’re not sure of the answer take a safe risk and try to answer anyway. What’s the worst that can happen? We get something wrong and learn from the experience!
Can you remember the 8 Rs? Talk about them frequently at home and challenge yourself to remember all 8.
Homework Superstars
This week in our homework review, we looked for children who had gone above and beyond what was expected to learn their weekly spellings. We decided we would look for:
- neat and joined handwriting
- using strategies from our school spelling lessons
- remembering the spelling rules
We chose some stand-out superstars. We were especially impressed with one of our superstars, who not only wrote out the spellings, but also the rule for each word.
Orienteering
On Tuesday morning, we got the opportunity to experience a new and frantic activity- orienteering. Checkpoints were placed all around the school grounds and using a very detailed map we had to navigate our way around a set route.
At first, we found it tricky to read the map and understand how to use it, but we showed resilience and soon we were all flying around school desperate to be the first to the finish the course.
Travelling through time…
On Friday, Hobgoblin Theatre company came into school and took the children on a trip through time – from the stone ages up until modern day. Along the journey, the children learnt many fun facts about history including how Thomas Farriner starter the Great Fire of London and wiped out the plague as he did, how Henry VII had 8 wives and how the Vikings invaded Great Britain. After the production, the children participated in a workshop – learning to become actors and how to create freeze frames.
Here are some pictures and quotes from the children about their experience.
“After the show, I liked it when we moulded people into different shapes.”
“I liked making statues.”
“I liked the funny costumes.”
“I like it when the actors told Jack to go and make them cups of tea.”
We’re going on a…. deer hunt.
This week, we thought we’d get creative and instead of just reading our book ‘Stone Age Boy’, we would actually go back to the Stone Age. We gathered branches and made them into bows and arrows.
Making the bows and arrows needed us to read the instructions carefully as well as measure the branches very precisely. We then had to use clay to make arrowheads – it was a very busy afternoon.
After this, we acted out the part from the book where the main characters go off and hunt a deer. As you can see from the pictures, we all really enjoyed sneaking through the hall imagining we were being as stealthy as possible so as not to scare the deer.
