MrJennings

We had a quiet week to end our term.

We continued our play-script writing activities by looking at a play adaptation of episodes from Peter Pan, which we read and acted out. We also read dramatised versions of Theseus and the Minotaur. The main maths work focused on solving problems (with and without a calculator).

On Monday, our ICT session returned to graphics and creating images with vector graphics. We concentrated on re-sizing and grouping to produce a picture of an insect. Then, using copying and pasting, rotating and re-sizing to make a puzzle page comprising a mass of these insects. We then made a single change to one of of these insects by ungrouping and editing one feature a little (e.g. leg, wing, antenna) to finish our "odd-one-out" puzzle.

The week saw the funeral of our much-loved colleague, Alan Caldwell, and the joy of the Years 3 & 4 Easter production.

We finished the term with a technology day in which we tested the bridge structures we had made and investigating stability (using K'NEX to create the towers). The bridges were tested to destruction across a 75 cm gap and were compared by finding out which could carry the greatest load and which had the best load to weight ratio.

School is now closed for the Easter holidays.

We have begun a new unit of work in English this week as we turned our attention to play scripts. We have read and studied some scripts, annotating their key features and compared the way information is conveyed in a play script with the way an author would convey the same information in a story (novel). We then re-wrote part of a play script as a story and have begun to adapt a story into a script. In maths, we have worked on "proportion" problems and the revised and developed our knowledge and understanding of coordinates, angles and area (of rectilinear shapes).

On Monday, we followed up our visit to Southwell Minster by writing a report and our reflections on the different activities that we did on our Time Travelling visit to create a "scrap-book" about the visit. We had our usual PE and Spanish sessions and today, we finished the week by beginning the final, main task, of our technology project on bridges.

In addition to our normal activities, this week had two very special highlights. On Thursday we had a class visit to Southwell Minster on their Time Travelling programme. This was an excellent day in which we all had a go at six different activities which ranged from learning about prayer and communion through looking at the architecture and stained glass windows to drama and singing. The session opened and closed with an "assembly" involving all the children from the different schools which were represented when we sang the songs that we had practiced.

Friday was Red Nose Day. All the classes in the school came together to have a sale to raise money for the charity appeal. Lots of members of the class made and brought in things (ranging from crafts to biscuits and cakes) and we also had the chance to make things for the sale in one of the morning lessons. Our class made two things. We made marshmallow-face sweets (by icing facial features on to white and pink marshmallows and sticking on a red sweet for the nose). We also made place-name labels for the Red Nose Day tea table. These were made of a piece of folded card (with a line on where someones name could be written) and a large "red nose" formed from a piece of red paper and a white dot highlight (to give a 3D effect). We made these place-name labels using a "factory method" so, rather than making two or three each, different children did different jobs at which they quickly became skilled and were then able to accomplish quickly. Consequently we were able to make almost 300 place-name labels in about 40 minutes.

We finished our study of The Odyssey in English this week, writing parts of the story from Odysseus' (rather than the narrator's) point of view. We have also done some comprehension work using the story of Jason and the Argonauts. In maths, we have been thinking about fractions and decimal numbers. We have been developing our understanding of equivalent fractions, matching fractions with decimal equivalents and relating mixed numbers to improper fraction equivalents.

In ICT, we have started to learn how to use Windows MovieMaker to make a short music video. We are using Louis Armstrongs' What a wonderful world as the music track and are choosing a combination of still and video images to produce the visual element, matching images as closely as we can to the words of the song.

Our work in RE this week helped us to learn about the important Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj. Using a series of websites, we found out about the sequence of activities that pilgrims do on the Hajj as well as the places they visit, the stories from the scriptures that are being remembered and the meaning underlying some of the things that the pilgrims do.

We finished the week with another in a series of short activities in our Design Technology topic on bridges. This week, we were investigating the strength of different kinds of beams. Each group made beams with circular, triangular or square cross sections our of paper (five of each) and these were tested to destruction. We found that the square section beams were very weak, collapsing easily under weight, but that both triangular cross-section and cylindrical beams could support a surprising load.

In our first week after the Spring half-term holiday, we have continued our English unit of work on myths and legends. We have studied further episodes of the Odyssey, thinking about Odysseus' role as a "classical" hero by reflecting on the series of challenges he faces up to, the ways he confronts and overcomes these (often on his own, using his intelligence, cunning, strength and combat skills).

Our maths this week has been about shape and the properties of shape. Our main work has involved considering symmetry of quadrilaterals and other regular and irregular polygons. We have also learned to describe the relationship between the sides of a shape using the terms parallel and perpendicular.

On Wednesday we had a special art day. We did some Australian Aboriginal-style pictures as the traditional symbols incorporated are often used to represent a journey (and this links with our guiding theme for the term in which our work in other subjects includes the Odyssey, pilgrimage and bridge-building). We made pictures using paint and sticks and some of us tried producing the pictures using other media too.

We have also started a new RE topic about prayer and pilgrimage this week. The main activity of this topic will be our visit to Southwell Minster in a couple of weeks. We started by thinking about places that are special to us and talking about these and the feelings and memories that they bring to us. We then drew and wrote about them. We finished the week by beginning to learn the songs for our Time Travelling visit to the Minster.