MrJennings

We have continued our study of the Alfred Noyes The Highwayman. This week we have listened to the poem read by the author, discussed the illustrations of the poem drawn by Charles Keeping and watched another video interpretation of the poem. We wrote questions that we would ask different characters and used these in a hot seating exercise. We followed this up by writing monologues for one or other of the key characters in the poem. We also produced our own illustrations for specific stages of the the narravtive and made "WANTED" posters for the highwayman.

In maths we have continued our work on percentages and fractions, revising division and moving on to some work on place value of decimal numbers. We have done some science work on healthy balanced diet and did some practical investigations about the effects of exercise on breathing rate.

We have spent some time on our art topic about containers. Yesterday we made clay pots (which we will decorate once dry) using two different techniques - we made thumb pots and coil pots. This afternoon we reminded ourselves of the types of designs typical of Bodil Manz and created a series of related designs which we could use for the basis of the decorations we will apply to our pots.

School has now begun its Easter holidays. School reopens on Monday 12th April.

We have stared a new unit in English to conclude the term. Our work is about narrative poetry - that is poems which tell the reader a tale. We have read several, enjoying and producing a short analysis of each but have spent several lessons studying the Alfred Noyes poem, The Highwayman. We have read this poem, listened to is read by others, listened to a version made into a song and watched a video interpretation. We have looked at the way the poet used alliteration, simile and metaphor in the poem and have also investigated the way he used sound and colour in the poem. We will study the characters and the story in more detail next week. In maths, we have been working on percentages and decimals. We have been developing our understanding of decimals as well as relating these to fractions and calculating percentages of numbers and amounts of money.

We finished a section of our ancient Greece topic about homes by looking at historical and archeological evidence and then writing explanations about how we think the design of homes in Greece evolved from simple one-roomed circular huts to the type of dwellings typical in classical times. We also some RE work about prayer in Islam, and reflecting on similarities and differences between Muslim practices and Christian prayer which we learned about at Southwell Minster.

We finished the week with some art, looking at the designs of the Danish ceramicist, Bodil Manz. We looked at images of the porcelain dishes and bowls, identified typical features of the designs and drew some examples in out sketchbooks. We also made our contribution to Sports Relief today, with teams from our class running a mile between them.

We have continued with our explanation writing in English, writing about how the ancient Greek agora is similar in many respects to markets in Nottingham and about how pencil sharpeners work. We finished the week by thinking about the use of pronouns. Our maths has focused on fractions - relating mixed numbers to their equivalent improper fractions and fractions to equivalent fractions and decimals.

The highlight of our week was a visit to Southwell Minster for "Time Travelling". After everyone was gathered (about three hundred children from different junior and primary schools were present) there was an introductory assembly before each group had the first of its seven different activities. The theme was "Signs and Symbols" and each of the activities made reference to at least on of the Christian symbols that are a feature of the cathedral.

Some of our activities earlier in the week were done in preparation for this visit and today we used the materials we were given at Southwell to make a record of what we had done.

We have continued our work on explanation texts this week, focussing on writing explanations. We did some sentence work writing single sentences linking an event with a cause but using a variety of connectives to do this. The we have written some more extended explanation passages about the formation of waterfalls and oxbow lakes (to link with our earlier work on rivers) and the importance of good dental hygene.

Our maths work has been about shape. We have classified and investigated the properties of different sorts of triangles and also done some work on quadrilaterals, thinking about symmetry properties and learning some vocabulary including words to do with angle as well as the terms perpendicular and parallel.

Ancient Greek homes was the area of our history topic that we worked on this week, using text and pictures to compare features of these homes with our own. We used information from the internet and reference books to find out about the Hajj in RE. This work links with our visit to Southwell Minster next week for our Time Travelling visit. We also practiced the songs for this occasion.