MrJennings

We have continued to enjoy our Book Week.

Rob Gee visited us today and we did some work with him on performance poetry, creating a class poem about friendship.

Yesterday we did a short design technology project. We examined a wide range of book marks, looking at the materials used and the graphic design. We also thought about the different ways in which book marks are made to retain the page. After doing our evaluations of these products, we designed our own book marks - with a specific book or series of books in mind. Then we made them, using a range of materials including card, wood, fabric and wire.

We have also had PE and another painting session.

We have now reached our summer half-term holiday.

We are having lots of different visitors during our bookweek. Andrew Collett, a poet, gave a presentation of some of his "wacky verse" yesterday and today, the author Matthew Cox came and spoke to us about his books.

Yesterday afternoon we thought about, and created our own book cover for our favourite book.

We have also spent some time writing our own poetry and, today, we have had our YMCA PE session, French lesson and a tables test.

We have continued to explore authors' meaning in poetry and discuss aspects of their style. We have also begun writing some poetry which, it is intended, will become part of a short anthology created by each pupil.

We have also continued our series of maths investigations - thinking about re-creating shapes and using consecutive numbers.

We have tried to interpret some Aztec pictograms recording the civilisation's early history, had a music lesson, done gymnastics in PE and some more water colour painting in art.

Post-SATs life has begun!

We have started a unit of work about poetry in English in which we are thinking about different styles in which poems are written. We are considering the way poets record their poems (visual aspects), the way they use the sounds of words (sound aspects) and the language features he or she employs - the types of words they use; alliteration, onomatopoeia, simile, metaphor, etc. - (language aspects).

In ICT we have begun learning to use the features in Windows Moviemaker. We have loaded the soundtrack of a song, inserted some titles and have also imported some still and moving images to fit to the words of the song.

In maths we have been doing some investigations and we have started our Aztecs topic in history. No-one knew anything about the Aztecs so we started by thinking about - what we would need to find out so that we could say "I know all about the Aztecs".

Today we also had our weekly PE session with the YMCA, French and our tables test.

All the tests are now done and we can look forward to our school day returning to something more like normal!

Next week we will start new units of work on poetry, the Aztecs and the history of communications and technology in the last 100 years.

We have now finished all our English SATs tests (by doing the reading test on Wednesday) and have also completed two out of the three maths tests. All we have left to do tomorrow is the final maths test - the one in which we can use a calculator.

In between times we have been doing some art activities (including some arty-maths ones) and sessions of PE every day.

So far this week we have done our two science tests and our English writing tests. They have been much as we expected and haven't caused us much worry.

In between times we have done a little maths as well as some art and PE to give us a little mental break.

We finished revising our science work before the tests next week by looking at ideas to do with materials, their properties and solids, liquids and gases. We also had a little go a a game to help us revise and learn some science vocabulary.

In maths we have looked at data handling. We revised the whole process, from creating a data collection table, tallying, totalling, producing the graph and finding the range, mean, median and mode of the set of data.

Our English work has focused on non-fiction writing. We read a story which featured a "magic" remote control device which could stop or speed up something that it was pointed at. We have taken this idea and written a report about it, instructions for its use and started a discussion about whether or not it should be allowed to go on sale in shops.

We have also had PE (playing rounders) and art (finishing off our one-point perspective pictures).

In English we have looked at a story text and an interactive text, thinking about how the author conveys his or her meaning, making inferences and explaining the authors' choices of language and layout. Our maths work has focused on the number system - covering negative numbers, sequences, factors and multiples and a range of mental maths questions.

We have spent a good proportion of our time on science. We completed the 2005 Science SATs test and have then gone through this, looking at areas that we found most difficult. We have also revised work on the human body and micro-organisms.

We have also had our Tuesday PE session with the YMCA, our French lesson and music.