MrJennings

We have continued our study of the poem The Highwayman this week. We have thought about the use of figurative language (simile, metaphor and alliteration) in the poem and tracked the actions of the main characters, reflecting on how the poet wanted the reader to regard the character. We have also written some poetry of our own.

Our main maths work has been about data and graphs. We have collected data in maths experiments, drawn bar charts, bar line charts and line graphs to represent data we collected or were given and have interpreted graphs to explain what different graphs have shown.

In science, we wrote up a report of the investigation of shadows that we carried out last week and thought about the structure and organisation of science reports in general.

In addition, we had two sessions of PE, did some more Scratch programming in ICT, had a science lesson on healthy diet and we finished with a history lesson about the building and development of Nottingham Castle.

On Monday we concluded our English unit of work on description writing, focusing on writing comparisons. We then moved on to a unit about the poem, The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. We are studying this as an example of a narrative poem and, after reading it through twice and making sure that we understood the vocabulary with a dictionary exercise, we discussed the plot of the story and created a timeline of the events. We have also analysed the verse and rhyme structure of the poem.

In maths this week, we have been thinking about measurements of weight: using standard weights for balancing objects; converting measurements including fractions of kilograms; reading scales correctly and rounding weights written in decimal form. Now we have moved on to some data handling work, revising ideas about the mode of a set of data.

We had an afternoon of science on Wednesday when we planned and carried out an experiment to find out and explore the effect on the size of the shadow when an object was moved closer to and further away from a light source.

On Thursday, we had a special day when everyone in the school was thinking about myths and legends from different cultures and making responses through art. Different children had different activities ranging from collage and papier-mâché to making puppets and sculpture.

In addition to this, we had ICT, continuing our Scratch programming, a Keeping Healthy science session, PE and some play reading.

In English this week we have started a unit of work about descriptive writing. We are basing this on the Flaminal pictures created by Ricky Gervais. In addition to writing descriptions of flanimals, we have written formal letters in response to letters requesting specific information about these monsters.

Problems presented in words have been the focus of our work in maths over the last few days. This has included problems needing more than one calculation to find the answer. We have also been practising our mental arithmetic and speeding up our recall of number bonds.

We have spent some time tying up loose ends from last term's work in RE and Design Technology, reflecting on our learning and thinking about how we can make progress. We did a study of the symbolism of the Christingle to Christians and, in addition to starting a report about our weaving project, completed our DT Record of Achievement and Target sheet. We were pleased with what we had learned and picked out some areas which we could focus on when we do our next technology project (including recording dimensions and measurements in our plans and trying to plan our work as well as our product).

We have had science (learning about how mirrors reflect light and a session on healthy diet), PE and finished the week by doing some art - a one-point perspective drawing activity.