MrJennings

In English this week we have returned to focus on non-fiction writing of "non-chronological reports" again. This time we are writing in the context of our history topic. We have written paragraphs for a report about air raid shelters after doing some research on the internet to find the information we needed and, today, we thought about writing introductory paragraphs for this type of text.

We have been working on number sequences in maths - continuing sequences, describing sequences - and also revising work on factors and checking our understanding of square numbers.

Light, and how we see, is our new science topic and we have begun work on this by thinking together about sources of light and how light travelling to our eyes enables us to see things.

As well as our PE, French and handwriting/spelling, we have taken out Design Technology work on a little further by writing up the results of the experimentation we did last Friday.

We completed our unit of work on fiction writing by creating one more story - this time under the title "The Big Event" - and have done some more maths focusing on subtraction, making sure that any misunderstandings about the process are dealt with and then moving on to work on maths problems.

We have had a PE session in which we played a netball style game. The skills we were concentrating on were finding space and quick passing when in possession and marking opponents when the other team had the ball.

In RE we are thinking about symbolism in religious understanding and in religious art (literature and fine art). We produced concept maps about the ideas of light and dark and looked for ideas related to the concept of light in songs and carols written in response to the Christian story of Christmas.

We have also taken our Design Technology work one step further by making different types of beams (using paper) and relating their cross section (circle, triangle, square, pentagon) to their strength.

We finished our stories about the missing pet on Monday by writing the plot resolution. We then discussed story structure a little further and then wrote a complete story yesterday. This had a completely different plot, but we again tried to use a variety of connectives and a range of sentence structures.

In maths we have been working on addition and subtraction. We have been testing our knowledge of basic number bonds and practicing doing maths problems involving these processes. We have also thought about strategies for calculating differences of "near numbers" which cross a "thousands boundary".

In addition to this and our French, handwriting and PE, we have had a science afternoon writing up the science experiment on air resistance we carried out last Friday and thought, in general terms about how science write-ups should be written.

We took a "side-step" in our English work on Thursday to concentrate on the punctuation of speech - making sure that we all remembered where capital letters are needed, how commas should be used and when it is necessary to begin a new line in conversations. Our maths work focused on reading and interpreting scales - scales on different types of ruler, measuring jug and weighing scales.

We also began our Design Technology project on shelters. The main work in this topic is to do with creating strong structures and so we did an activity in which we had to try to make a piece of A4 paper as strong as possible - by changing its shape with folding etc. We then tested what we had made by making them support increasing weight.

To day we had our usual Friday English and maths sessions in the morning and, this afternoon, we had music and then did a little RE. We finished off the day with some science, discussing scenarios concerned with creating well controlled experiments.

We have continued writing our stories this week developing the part of the story where we develop the plot and the characters. We have also done some practice SATs test in English.

Our maths has involved coordinates and translation - and we have learned what "translation" means in maths as opposed to languages! This has been a popular topic because we could use the coordinates to play games.

We did an investigation in science to find out more about the effects of air resistance. We made spinners using paper and paper clips to weight them and did a series of tests to find out the effect of changing the size of the rotors.

We have also looked at a cleverly written mystery story and had our weekly French, handwriting and YMCA PE sessions.

We have continued with our work on measurement in maths - concentrating on being able to convert measures into the same units and then order them or do calculations to answer questions.

In English, we have continued our story work - thinking about the "build-up" section and writing this part of our story about a missing pet. We did some more science - undertaking some practical work to help us think about and explain why things weigh less in water and air.

We have spent quite a lot of time on history this week. Our focus was the blackout and, after looking at a range of different sources of information, we read and categorised a set of statements about the blackout - sorting them into groups to create a concept map. After that we discussed the problems that the blackout caused for people living in England at the time and read some letters that people wrote to the newspapers. Finally we composed a letter of our own supporting or criticising the blackout regulations.

We have also found time for singing, a short PE session and to begin our RE topic on symbolism and religious messages in the arts.

On Monday our maths focused on converting between units of measurement - particularly grams and kilograms. This work was developed today as we thought about other units and began to consider some problems based on units of measurement.

Yesterday's English was a comprehension exercise based on an extract from the book The Demon Headmaster which involved answering questions requiring inference and interpretation while today we returned to the story we are writing and reviewed this work after thinking about the importance of using good connectives to link ideas and sentences.

We have also done ICT/history, looking at a website to find out information about homes during World War 2 and some science work about gravity. Today we also had our usual Tuesday French, spelling/handwriting and PE.

We have continued our work on story writing by looking at a short story and analysing the structure of this (opening, build-up, dilemma, events, resolution and ending). We also looked at how an author builds up character and the setting through a story. Yesterday we wrote a story opening together and then in pairs and will work on this story further next week. In maths we have looked at time problems and multiplication.

Yesterday we had our final swimming session of the year and took the opportunity to weigh ourselves while we were in the water. We had earlier weighed ourselves in the classroom (i.e. in air) and this followed a science afternoon on Wednesday when we measured the force needed to pull shoes across the floor - comparing wooden floor and carpet - and weighing small objects in air and water.

Today we had our Friday English and maths groups and, this afternoon, started our singing practices in preparation for our Christmas Concert before finishing the day with some ICT (continuing our Powerpoint presentations) and a story.