MrJennings

We have spent some more time in maths on solving problems and making sure that we show the necessary "working out". We continued with our play scripts - not writing any more of the actual script, but describing the set and scenery for a potential director.

In science we thought about the effects of a poor diet and learned the story of sailors in Tudor times and the problems that they had with scurvy before discovering that lime juice (because of the vitamin C content) could stop this disease.

We had another swimming session on Thursday and did some art (our "Talking Textiles" topic) this afternoon. We looked at pictures that had been made on different materials (ancient Greek vase paintings on clay; ancient Egyptian paintings on plaster and the Bayeux tapestry on cloth) before doing some preliminary drawings for our own series of pictures to tell the story of Theseus and the Minotaur.

Our main activity today was creating a playscript. We used the short fable called The Honest Woodcutter and changed it from a story into a play. We had to write stage directions to tell the actors what movements they should make and how to speak to words. We also had to make up some extra dialogue to tell some of the story that was described (rather than told through speech) in the original text.

In maths we worked at written addition and subtraction sums and we did some more work in our Keeping Healthy science topic.

In maths we have been working on some mental maths - addition and subtraction - concentrating on thinking about different methods of doing these sorts of calculations in your head and deciding which methods are best in which situations.

We have started looking at play scripts in English, studying a section from Peter Pan presented in the form of a play. On Monday we worked in groups to interpret the script and act out part of the script, using the stage directions to suggest movements and to guide the way we said the words. To day we re-presented a few lines of the script in the form of dialogue in a story.

To prepare to create a class database about ancient Greek gods, we have used internet sources to collect information and complete a data capture sheet. This will link in with our history work.

In science we have had some fun - and more than a little difficulty at times - finding our pulse and counting to find our pulse rates. We have been doing this so that we can compare pulse rates when we are resting with pulse rates after we have been doing some exercise.

This afternoon we also had our YMCA PE session and Spanish.

In maths we have continued our work on solving problems. We have focussed on problems using information from timetables (such as bus timetables and train timetables) and from charts showing the distances between cities.

We studied more sets of instructions, sequencing them and inseting connectives. Then we wrote a complete instruction text to provide a reader with instructions to play the game of jacks (or snobs as it is known in some parts of the country).

We completed our geography unit of work on farming in the Lake District by learning about the financial pressures on the farmers and considering diversification. The children drew up plans for developing some of the hill farm land for uses other than farming and explained how this would increase the farm's income.

We also spent some more time on our science unit on healthy eating and did some art work, related to our weaving project, exploring different ways of creating an image.

We continued with work on the 24 hour clock and them tried some maths problems connected with time. In English we looked at an instruction text about programming a video.

This afternoon we had PE (with the YMCA) followed by our handwriting and Spanish session.

Today in maths we worked on time. We concentrated on using the 24 hour clock and converting between times in the 12 hour and in the 24 hour clock. This proved to be quite challenging for quite a number of us and we will continue with this tomorrow.

We did some ICT, continuing our work on databases that we began last week and also using the computer to design weaving panels with pictures for our current design technology/art topic.

This afternoon, before finishing the day with a music practice for our end of term concert, we did some history work about craftsmen in ancient Greek. We thought about the different types of craftsmen that were working in those days and then spent sometime writing a description of the way a shoemaker worked, basing our comments on a reproduction of an ancient Greek vase painting.

We had our first swimming session of the year on Thursday. Everyone had a quick test and the children were put into groups according to their ability and confidence. They all seemed to enjoy it.

We continued thinking about how information texts are constructed, analysing a good example of a text and focusing, on Friday, on imperative verbs. In maths, we added some work on area of shapes (mainly rectangles) to what we had already begun on perimeter.

We finished the week with some more weaving - several children have already finished their first woven panel!

Today we started off with a lively English lesson on instruction writing in which we read he instructions for a playground game (called Crows and Cranes), testing them out by seeing if different groups of readers interpreted them in the same way. It was a really good game and we came up with some super ideas about how the instructions would be improved.

In maths we began some work on perimeter, calculating the perimeters of squares and rectangles and then moving on to thinking about formulae for calculating the perimeters of regular polygons.

This afternoon we started our new science topic on Healthy Living by thinking about food and a healthy diet. This fits in well with the Healthy Schools scheme which is running in school at the moment. We ended the day by learning how to use a new database programme, searching databases and sorting information in the files.

A brief entry today - in maths we worked on measurements of length at different scales (millimetres, centimetres, metres and kilometres). We thought about the meaning of the prefixes: milli~, centi~ and kilo~ and began to convert kilometres to miles.

We did some more work on Islam and in the afternoon we had our YMCA PE session, Spanish and handwriting.

We began a unit of work on measurement today. We concentrated on estimating and measuring distances to the nearest millimetre and played a game where you score more points the closer your estimate is to the actual distance.

In English we wrote a story for our Autumn Term assessment. The title of the story was "The Surprise Gift".

This afternoon we had singing and did some geography work about farming in the Lake District. Most farms in that area are hill farms, where the main-stay of the farm is sheep. We learned about the different parts of the farm, the inbye, the intake and the open fell areas and made a farm calender wheel to help us analyse what was done in each of the areas on the farm in different months of the year.

At the end of the day lots of us went to Film Club to watch Shrek ".

We have had a busy first week following our half-term holiday.

In maths we have been working on shape (the properties of rectangles and equilateral, isosceles and scalene triangles). We also did some work on coordinates - including enjoying some games of Battleships.

In English we completed our work on ancient Greek myths and legends. We have been making a great effort to improve our writing by focussing on different ways of starting a sentence. The ones we have worked on are as follow:
proper noun
pronoun
possessive pronoun
adverb (eg ~ly words)
verb (eg ~ing words)
connectives (eg words such as While..., Although..., Because..., Suddenly... and phrases such as As soon as...)

We have spent some time on our ancient Greek work his week. We did had an interesting study of ancient Greek homes, comparing some features of their designs with modern British homes and also looking at evidence which might allow us to explain the development of house design in ancient Greece. Then we turned to farming in ancient Greece and used picture evidence from pictures of original vase paintings to explain how the olive harvest was accomplished in those days.