MrJennings

On Thursday we continued with our week's work in maths and English and, in the afternoon, we did some more practical work for our science project. We did two experiments investigating shadows. These were designed to help us find out about how the size of shadows are affected by changing the position of the light relative to the object and changing the distance of the object from the screen. We also did PE and some singing to practice the songs for our Christmas production.

Today we had a special day at school. It was maths day and we had a series of special lessons focusing on some creative and exciting aspects of maths.

Early this evening our choir (about ninety children) sang at the ceremony when the Christmas lights were switched on at our local shopping square.

We have been continuing our units of work in both English and maths from last week. In maths, we have revised work on calculations (addition and subtraction) and the fractions work from last week before beginning some activities involving percentages today. To help develop our non-chronological report writing in English, we have been concentrating on writing structured paragraphs (with a good, introductory opening sentence and following sentences which develop that first sentence). We have written about "three wishes" and our "favourite day". Today we made notes about weather in mountain environments from a text book and tomorrow we will try to put these ideas into a really good paragraph.

As well as this work, we have continued our spreadsheet work in ICT, creating formulae to calculate the areas (and perimeters, for some of us) of rectangles. In science we have discussed planning a science experiment and, in RE, we have thought about the religious symbolism of light and begun thinking about symbols and symbolism in Hindu depictions of Ganesha.

We have continued working on fractions in maths, simplifying fractions and converting fractions in order to compare fractions and put fractions in order of size. We have also done some work on division, writing the quotient as a fraction.

In English, we have begun looking at non-chronological reports, annotating a good example to highlight the key language features as well as the way the text is organised and today we have done some comprehension work on a story called "The one that got away".

Our geography topic has moved on as we have used internet based resources and CD-ROMs to learn about different mountain regions, making notes about the location, important places and other important features of these areas. These notes will be used in our writing next week.

We have also begun our RE topic on Faith and the Arts (thinking about the "meaning" of light and dark) and done some more sketching in art.

In maths this week we have tackled some "problems" on Monday, and have now moved on to some work on fractions. We have begun this by thinking about equivalent fractions. We wrote a story in English yesterday and this will be used as part of our assessments for this term.

We have done some work on spreadsheets in ICT (using formulae to do calculations - including adding columns of figures - and using auto-fill to speed up our work) and we have started our new science topic on Light and How we see by thinking about light sources and how light travels.

In addition to these lessons, we have had singing, French, PSHCE and PE. Some of us had the chance to do some cycling today also.

Today we have enjoyed Children in Need day at school, with everyone bringing in their teddy bears and this raised over £200 for the BBC charity.

We have continued our area and perimeter work in maths to conclude this unit of work. We have also had another look at long multiplication calculations and tried some maths problems. We finished our fictional biography writing in English and, today we did some comprehension work based on a non-fiction text. We also finished off our science topic on electrical circuits yesterday with some activities which involved us investigating the effects of changing the length and type of wires used in a circuit. Today has been another day for finishing off, because we completed our Design Technology project on shelters by testing our products to destruction! Although they were only made with paper and thin card, some managed to support well over 20 kg and one over 40 kg of load.

In English we have been continuing our work of biography and autobiography. We studied an extract from Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee as an example of autobiographical writing, identifying the language features and key aspects of the organisation of the text. We have also had time to review our own biography writing using our success criteria. Today we started writing a fictional biography by ourselves. Yesterday, as part of our preparation for the "two-minutes' silence", we also looked at Binyon's poem For the Fallen.

In maths, the focus so far this week has been on calculating perimeters and areas of squares, rectangles and more complex "rectilinear" shapes. We have also done some more science, investigating the effects of changing components in an electric circuit (for example, changing the number of batteries and light bulbs) and thought about the landscape features of mountain regions.

We continued with our extended biography writing yesterday in English after doing an exercise on how to describe the passage of time in different ways (to avoid repetition). In maths we tried some more difficult calculations, focusing on more addition and subtraction yesterday and long multiplication today. We also checked up on conversion of measurements (e.g from centimetres to millimetres etc.).

We have started our new Geography topic about mountain environments. To begin with, we did some atlas work finding and recording, on outline maps, the major mountain ranges in the world and the major upland regions of the United Kingdom. We also used the atlases to find the highest peak in each of these ranges and the continents and countries in which these ranges are to be found.

We finished making our strong shelters in technology today - it will be strength testing time next week - and we also drew our music topic to a close with a final session of composing and playing African-style rhythms to accompany African-style dances devised by the groups.

We have been continuing our work on biographical writing in English, writing further short biographies of fictional as well as historical figures and current celebrities. Again, our focus has been on producing a good quality series of linked sentences. Today we began a longer biography detailing the life and achievement of Captain Matthew Webb. In maths our work has been about calculations (addition, multiplication and subtraction) and has included rounding and approximating activities.

Our new science topic is Changing Circuits and we have made a range of circuits and learned the symbols that are used to represent different components in electric circuit diagrams. We had our usual Tuesday sessions of French PSHCE and PE yesterday and we have also started learning the songs for our Christmas production in music.