MrJennings

We have continued with our work on explanation writing in English. Most of our work has been done in connection with our geography and history topics. We worked together to explain the processes by which an oxbow lake is formed and then work on writing an explanation of why the Saxon settlement of Nottingham developed into a town (instead of other local Saxon villages of the day such as Sneinton and Lenton).

The focus of our work in maths has been measurement and multiplication.After working on accurate measurement (to the nearest millimetre) we spent a couple of days thinking about perimeter - measuring perimeters and calculating the perimeters of regular shapes. Some of us even began some simple algebra, creating formulae to describe the perimeter of regular pentagons, hexagons, octagons etc.

Another major piece of work this week was our study of pieces of art representing the Hindu deity, Ganesha. We looked at a series of images and tried to identify common features. We also used a website to learn about the meaning that aspects of the images have for people of the Hindu faith. After investigating information about Hindu symbols, we drew our own pictures to represent Ganesha or used a similar style of symbolism to represent the idea of "prime minister".

In addition, we did ICT, French, PE and music. During the week, OFSTED inspectors carried out a two-day inspection of our school.

We have had a special day today for Children in Need day.

We had a non-uniform day for the whole school and the special "Pudsey" activity for our class was for each group to design and make a device to weigh Pudsey. (We were allowed to bring our teddy bears to school for the day.) Most groups made some sort of balance, using standard weights to balance the bear's weight while others made "elastic band scales" which they calibrated using standard weights and then weighed Pudsey against this scale.

During the week we started an English unit of work focussing on writing explanations. We have looked at some good examples of explanation texts, making notes about and highlighting the key features of these texts. We have also thought about why the writer made certain choices about the way these were written. Yesterday we focussed on the kinds of connectives used in explanation.

In maths, our work has covered fractions (of shapes and finding fractions of numbers), further work on factors and an introduction to percentages.

We have also spent some more time of our history topic, trying to understand the significance of the effect of improved farming methods on the rise of craftsmen in society and then the effect of merchant traders on the development of some villages into towns.

In addition, we have had two PE sessions (one of gymnastics and an outside session of football and netball), French and singing.

The highlight of our week was a special history day when we played a simulation game about life in early Saxon Nottingham. Each group was one family and in each turn of the game (which was a "season" - autumn, winter, spring or summer) the group had to decide how many hours to work, how much time relaxing, how many sack of grain from the food store could be eaten. etc. The team had to keep accounts to show how much food was left in the stores and be responsible for making it last until the next harvest. After doing their share of "farm work", they could make things (draw them from text books about the Saxons) for their home. On some occasions we had a "market day" when families could buy and sell the objects they had made. This was done by bartering, using food or other objects to trade with.

Another piece of history work this week was the writing of a speech to persuade villagers back home in Germany that they should move to make a new village in a site in England that a group of explorers had surveyed.

We have done a reading test and a writing test this week and, in maths have worked on equivalent fraction and factors. In addition, we have had PE, French and ICT (when we did some further work on spreadsheets).

Our work in English this week has been all about instruction texts. Writing instructions themselves is not particularly challenging, so we have focussed our attention on making sure that we can write good introductions and raise the standard of our work by including helpful hints and tips and really engaging the reader with our style of writing.

In maths, we have been working on ideas about two dimensional shapes. We have thought about the properties of shapes, sorted them, revised the names of polygons (including different quadrilaterals) and investigated diagonals in polygons. A key part of our work has been learning and using language and mathematical terms needed to describe and compare shapes and we have some of this vocabulary as the basis of our spelling lists this week.

We have started our first history topic of the year - about the history of Nottingham. We started off by learning about the life of Saxon people and then the scenario was that a group of Saxons, due to land-hunger in their homeland meant that the needed to find a new place to live. After group discussions considering the sort of place that they would look for, groups "virtually" explored an area and chose a suitable site for their new village in a new land. We then compared our choices with those made by a real group of Saxons who made their way through what is now England in around 650 AD.

We have also made a start on our technology project for the term. This is our weaving topic. We have sawn the wood for our weaving frame and sanded the sawn ends. We also started practising the songs for our Christmas production with our other Year 5 and 6 classes.