MrJennings

We have continued with our biography writing- describing in detail Matthew Webb's cross channel swim in 1875. Our focus has been on using appropriate language and text features for this kind of text and trying to use a good variety of sentence structures so that the writing does not become repetitive.

We spent some more time on science, using circuit diagrams to make a series of different circuits using the indicated components and have thought more about area and perimeter in maths (using algebra to describe the perimeter of regular shapes in relation to the length of the shape's side).

Today we had our Friday English and Maths sessions and did some poetry/art with Mr. Harrison.

We have been continuing our work on biography and autobiography in English and have begun working on writing a complete biography of the first cross-channel swimmer, Captain Matthew Webb. We have now written the paragraphs covering his early life and naval career and have begun planning the detailed section describing the actual channel swim.

Our maths work this week has moved away from "number" work. We have been thinking about the properties of shape - focusing on quadrilaterals, listing these, sorting shapes and playing games based on these properties.

In science we wrote up the practical work on circuits that we did last Friday and then made notes on symbols used in electric circuit diagrams while we used our ICT time to research aspects of the geography of Snowdonia and then used the notes we made to make a simple powerpoint presentation.

This afternoon we had our weekly French, handwriting and spelling, and YMCA PE sessions.

We have written some more biography "introductions" after revising and improving the ones we wrote on Wednesday. We have begun to think about ways of altering to order of words in a sentence to avoid repeating the same sentence structure.

We had our Friday English and maths groups today. In English we thought about how the choices an author makes when writing fiction and in maths we looked at some maths problems involving multiplication and division.

We went swimming yesterday and did this week's tables test while, this afternoon, we did some science challenges involving simple electric circuits and the did some more of out art topic practicing constructing figures in the correct proportion.

In English this week we have begun a unit of work about biographical and autobiographical writing. We are currently focusing on biography. We spent some time looking at examples of biographical writing and, together, annotated a biography of Beatrix Potter to highlight the key features of this type of text. We worked with partners to do the same thing on a biography of Julius Caesar and today we looked at opening paragraphs for biographies - writing examples which would provide good introductions and help orientate the reader.

This weeks maths is more work on written and mental multiplication and division. We have been trying some more difficult long multiplication work (including some with decimals) and thinking about ways of approaching sums like 40 x 63 when you have to do them "in your head".

We have done quite a lot more work for our geography topic. On Monday we used a spreadsheet program to allow us to enter temperature and rainfall data and produce graphs to compare these aspects of different biomes. Today we thought about landscape features in mountainous regions, labelling the features found in these sorts of areas and specific features of mountains.

On Tuesday, we had our weekly handwriting, French and YMCA PE and we have also listened to a couple more chapters of the book we are reading (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).

In English this week we have begun a unit of work about biographical and autobiographical writing. We are currently focusing on biography. We spent some time looking at examples of biographical writing and, together, annotated a biography of Beatrix Potter to highlight the key features of this type of text. We worked with partners to do the same thing on a biography of Julius Caesar and today we looked at opening paragraphs for biographies - writing examples which would provide good introductions and help orientate the reader.

This weeks maths is more work on written and mental multiplication and division. We have been trying some more difficult long multiplication work (including some with decimals) and thinking about ways of approaching sums like 40 x 63 when you have to do them "in your head".

We have done quite a lot more work for our geography topic. On Monday we used a spreadsheet program to allow us to enter temperature and rainfall data and produce graphs to compare these aspects of different biomes. Today we thought about landscape features in mountainous regions, labelling the features found in these sorts of areas and specific features of mountains.

On Tuesday, we had our weekly handwriting, French and YMCA PE and we have also listened to a couple more chapters of the book we are reading (Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).

We have had the first sessions with our "Friday" English and maths groups.

In the English groups we began the study of a fiction text in some detail - this week focusing on the characters and making inferences from their thoughts and feelings. In the maths groups we were aiming to reinforce and extend understanding about place value.

This afternoon we had an extra PE session with visitors from Nottingham Forest before filling in this week's target sheet and giving out this week's homework. We had time for a little art and some story before home-time.

We have been revising and developing our understanding of place value in maths this week. The main focus has been on being able to multiply and divide decimal numbers by 10, 100 or 1000.

In English we have been thinking about writing interesting sentences. We have made sure that we can identify the main "parts of speech" and this helps us to be able to discuss the merits of suggested improvements to a sentence. We have been considering using more specific nouns, choosing good adjectives and adding phrases after the noun to produce expanded noun phrases.

We have spent some time on atlas work in geography - identifying major mountainous regions in different parts of the world and marking them on an outline map, finding the highest peaks in different mountain ranges and recording these in a table.

We had our first French lesson of the year and had a PE session with the YMCA as well as swimming this week.

We have been continuing with our revision and practice of basic arithmetic, thinking about multiplication and division and sums involving decimal numbers. We finished the week by tackling a maths investigation exploring different possible values of three coins.

We have done some comprehension work in English based on the story called The Shrinking of Treehorn which required some quite challenging inferences and today, in geography, we did some map work leading into our new topic on Mountain Environments.

Yesterday we did PE, exercising and playing some games in the hall and, today, we started our art project. This is entitled People in Action and, after we had looked at a powerpoint presentation about the work of Eadweard Muybridge, we did sketches showing people undertaking different athletic events.

We finished the week with some story - reading from Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.

The summer holidays are over and we are all back at school for the new term.

We have begun the term with some English work based on the story Dinner Ladies Don't Count by Bernard Ashley. We have done some dictation (to think about spelling), handwriting, some fiction writing (creating a chapter to go before the opening chapter in the book) and some non-fiction writing.

We have also started our maths work - revising standard methods of doing addition and subtraction sums. The rest of the time has been spent on a mini-topic. This involves lots of teamwork and the theme is based around ideas of survival and using decision-making and problem solving skills.