MrJennings

In the first week after our summer half term holiday we have completed our study of the Grandpa Chatterji novel. In addition to comparing the plot line of the book with a filmed version, our focus has been on the way Jamila Gavin developed the characters through the story.In particular, we explored how the character of Grandpa Leicester was presented at the start of the novel and later in the story to suggest a change in his personality.

The theme of our maths work this week has been 2D and 3D shapes including visualising shapes that might be made from nets. We have manipulated pentominoes and hexominoes and also learned about translating 2D shapes.

In history, we have been thinking about the lives of women in ancient Athens. We learned about their roles - and the importance of spinning and weaving in their lives - and discussed the issue of whether the wives of poor Greek men or rich Greek men had the better lives.

We have also made a start on the practical aspects of our design technology topic. We are using our old weaving frames for the base of our automata and we cut and fitted an additional strut to our frames to strengthen them. We also worked to develop our designs for our final products.

Today we finished our week by doing some clay work. We made clay pots (and developing designs for decorating these will be a focus of future work) and also had time to make some sculpted clay tiles.