NEWS Well done to Maple Class this week for their sharing assembly and Swing-by Café. I’m sure you’ll agree that the children have thoroughly enjoyed learning about rainforests and did a great job of demonstrating what they have found out! Many thanks to all the parents who came to our Café and made it such a success; helping us to raise a fantastic £37.60 profit The children have decided to use the money to buy an acre of rainforest in Ecuador and adopt an animal (although we are yet to decide what that will be!). What a great idea Maple!

Literacy We have continued to use a lovely book about rainforests this week in our literacy. The children have been searching for information and writing some really creative diary entries as if they were explorers visiting the forest. Homework: Talk Homework about a trip into space. Who would you take with you and what ten items would you want to have in your luggage? Remember, make notes in your green books about the conversations you have so that you have plenty of information to use in your writing session on Monday.

Mathematics In Mrs Prowle’s group, we used our knowledge of partitioning to help us double and halve three digit numbers. We found halving the odd numbers quite tricky at times. In Mrs Roche’s group we have been practising our subtraction. Finding the difference between two numbers. We have taken the smaller number and counted on to the next round number and then up to the larger number in tens. Homework is to complete Test 5 in the Schofield and Sims book, if you finish that within half an hour please practise your tables. Don’t forget to write the time in for how long the test took. Did you do it independently? In Mrs Williams and Mrs Gilder’s group we used our knowledge of arrays to solve multiplication problems.  You could continue practising your multiplication tables using this activity: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/maths/ma13time/game/ma13tabl-game-tables-grid-find/timestables_2.swf

Topic – Rainforests Lime class explored the four layers of a rainforest. We made up a phrase ‘Elephants Can’t Understand Fractions’ to help us remember the order Emergent, Canopy, Understory, Forest Floor. We used the laptops to research a different layer. These websites were really informative: http://mrsgebauer.com/rainforestweb/WebQuest.htm http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/krubal/rainforest/Edit560s6/www/whlayers.html Why not have a look at home and explore more about the rainforest layers. Mrs Gilder would love to hear your findings! Poplar Class too were researching which animals live in the rainforest and which layer they live in. They discovered all kinds of animals which they had never previously heard of. Maple class were working hard on their assembly about the rainforest and enjoyed learning some fantastic songs to reinforce their learning about the layers and the problems facing rainforests all over the world. We particularly enjoyed learning and singing this song: http://freesongsforkids.com/videos/rain-forest-song

Lime – Nurture Group This week we discussed our feelings and what makes us feel good and what makes us feel bad. Some of us have some good ideas of how to help ourselves when we feel bad. Our class target for the week is to take care of someone who is feeling sad. We have lots of examples of this happening throughout the week which is great!

Science Maple and Poplar class had great fun learning about boiling and evaporation this week. We watched water boiling in a clear kettle and were amazed how violent the bubbling gets. We found out that once the water reaches its boiling point of 100˚C it won’t get any hotter and that different liquids have different boiling points. Did you know that even iron will boil and become a gas if it is heated enough? The temperature needs to reach 0ver 2400˚C for that to happen though!