MrJennings

We explored the idea of forces further today, thinking about the forces involved in someone holding a conker, someone pulling a load and someone pulling a sledge up and down hill. We drew diagrams and labelled them with arrows to show the directions in which different forces were acting.

In maths we continued our fractions work. We began by changing mixed numbers into vulgar fractions before practicing converting pairs of different fractions into ones with the same denominator and reviewing how to simplify fractions.

In English we wrote paragraphs to introduce a report about Snowdonia and experimented with writing some sentences in different ways. We finished the day with music - working in groups to compose pieces with a "Chinese" flavour.

We completed our descriptive sentences for our harvest display and organised the layout of these on the computer using Word. Then we watched a video, Flight over Snowdon, to introduce the next unit of our Mountain Environments topic in which will be writing a report about Snowdonia as a class. Today, we used a CD-ROM and some websites to make notes ready for our report. For part of the lesson we made notes on paper and for the rest of the lesson we used "copy and paste" to make notes on the computer. We will evaluate these notes when we come to writing our report.

In maths we have begun some work on fractions. We have revised our knowledge of equivalent fractions and today thought about how we would explain the idea of equivalent fractions to younger children and tried "cancelling".

In science we have been developing our ideas about forces and the direction they act in (for example, we thought about how gravity acts to pull things towards the centre of the Earth) and drew diagrams to show the effect of forces. We will be doing some more work on this.

This afternoon we had handwriting and French and then our PE session with the YMCA.

We concluded the first section of our work on non-chronological reports by writing our own paragraphs (about mountain animals) to add to the report that we had been developing. Again, we concentrated on making the paragraph interesting by making sure that the sentences begin in different ways. We have developed our maths work on multiplication and division into solving problems presented in words.

We had the second of our swimming sessions on Thursday and our special English and maths lessons today.

This afternoon we had some admin time and began preparing text and art work for our "harvest" display.

In English, we have turned our attention to non-fiction writing and, specifically, writing good paragraphs. We have examined a non-chronological report and thought about how each paragraph is developed. Then we wrote a paragraph together (about the weather in mountain areas) making sure that the first sentence outlined the main idea of the paragraph and that the following sentences gave detail, explanation or examples about that idea. We also made sure that we began the sentences in different ways to help keep the readers interest.

In maths we did some more work on multiplication and have been experimenting with different ways of doing these sums "in your head". The main issue, and topic for discussion, is choosing the best method for each particular sum.

We have had our PE session with the YMCA and our French and handwriting sessions. Today we also did some science in which we weighed things in air and in water - comparing the results.

Today we began our new unit of work in maths, thinking about mental maths and different ways of doing multiplication and division sums in your head. Then we had some time in the computer room learning how to play and stop sounds in Powerpoint. By the end of the lesson everyone had produced an interactive, multi-purpose greetings card using powerpoint. After a title page, the children created an index (using hyperlinks that we learned about last week) to allow the user to select their celebration (including Christmas, Birthday, New Year, Wedding, etc.). They made these links open individual pages on which the children had placed a suitable picture, a button to play a tune appropriate to that occasion and a further button to stop the music. They all worked really well.

This afternoon we read the penultimate chapter of Awful Annie and did some more descriptive writing. This time the children tried using our success criteria to mark their own and each other's work. We finished the day with some geography - thinking about some geographical vocabulary related to mountain environments.

We have done some more work on descriptive writing, improving and developing the work we did earlier in the week. In maths we have worked on written methods of doing division sums and, on Thursday, we began our science work on Forces by exploring what we already knew. We then weighed things using different spring balances and discussed how these worked.

On Friday mornings we have special groups for English and maths allowing us to break into small groups to focus on specific ideas in these subjects. This afternoon we had another art session, developing our stick figures into more "solid" bodies.

We spent some time writing descriptive sentences after analysing those in Awful Annie. There was some excellent writing which we shared and enjoyed. Today, in English, we began to map out the plot and track the characters through the story.

In maths we have been revising and extending our knowledge of the processes of multiplication - today concentrating on multiplying decimal numbers and remembering to put the decimal in the answer.

We had our weekly PE session with YMCA, handwriting and French yesterday afternoon and today continued our geography work about mountain regions - completing a chart about different mountain regions and their localities and then thinking about landscape features of different environments including mountain environments.

We also had our school council election in class after those people who were willing to become our class representatives said a few words about how they would approach the task.

We tried some maths problems involving multiplying and dividing by 10, 100 or 1000 in maths and continued looking at description in the Awful Annie novel. We also began two new areas of work:
In ICT, in which we are using Powerpoint to create a presentation, we learned how to create buttons which allow you to create a direct link to a different page and used these to make a contents page with hyperlinks.
In geography we started our Mountain Environments topic. We thought about what we already know about mountains and then looked at how land height is shown in atlases before marking the world's main mountainous regions on a blank map.

We have begun looking at the second chapter of Awful Annie, thinking about how the author uses description to help readers build up a picture of the scene in their minds.

We have continued our PSHCE topic thinking about ways in which we would have to take responsibility for looking after ourselves if we were left alone on a desert island. In our groups we have made rules about hygienic habits, diet and avoiding dangerous situations. We have also used the situation we have been imagining to write a short story.

In maths we have been practicing multiplying and dividing numbers by 10, 100 and 1000 and thinking about how we would explain what happens to the digits to a Year 4 pupil.

On Thursday, we had a PE session in which we did a little gymnastics and also played some bench-ball and today we began our art topic on People in Action by learning how to draw figures.

In English today we began looking at a story by J. B. Simpson called Awful Annie. We studied one of the characters introduced in the first chapter, thought about some phrases which have a meaning which goes beyond the literal meaning of the words and answered a question, providing evidence for our answers from the text.

We began our maths work by revising the reading and writing of large numbers and continued our PSHCE work on keeping safe by evaluating things which help us with the essentials of life. We also had a short PE session.

We seemed to have a good start to the term. There was a certain amount of "admin" to do, but we had time to study an interesting short story about a rather unlikely, but clever secret agent in which we thought about the way the author developed the characters and manipulated the reader to create expectations that we later proved mistaken.

In the afternoon we began our PSHCE work on keeping safe. We looked at a display showing images of different environments and thought about the main hazards and risks to life and safety in these. Then groups planned packing lists suitable for visits to some different environments, balancing requirements to take appropriate equipment and clothing against the desire to carry the minimum in their bags. The best lists were well set out using helpful sub-headings.