Christmas! All three classes have started their Christmas preparations, adorning their classrooms with paper chains and other decorations. It’s all looking very festive and we’re all excited about the craft activities and other events that will be happening next week.

News This week the school has been participating in the international ‘Hour of Code’ project.  The children have enjoyed learning how to code simple programs on the computers so that characters move and interact in particular ways. Here are some of Maple Class using the ‘Tynker’ program. They had to use repeat commands to move monsters and make them jump over obstacles to collect sweets!

Literacy All three classes have been using our knowledge about information texts and rainforest animals to create posters or leaflets.  We thought carefully about titles, subtitles, captions and interesting paragraphs using facts written in the present tense as well as labelled diagrams. The leaflets came out really well and we’re all very proud of our work! We also wrote about some original ideas for re-using old newspaper for our talk homework this week. The ideas ranged from using it as pet-bedding or starting a fire to creative activities such as papier maché model making or drawing cartoon features on the photographs! Useful Websites: Homework: The Christmas 201 word story challenge. Can you write a great story about an elf in 201 words or less?

Mathematics In Mrs Prowle’s group, we investigated the probability of rolling a 6 on a six-sided die.  Most of us thought that we were less likely to roll a 6 as it always seems really difficult when we need to do it in a board game! We worked in pairs to roll the die thirty times and recorded our results first in a frequency table and then as a bar graph.  Looking at everyone’s results we found that there was an even chance of throwing all the numbers although the individual bar graphs sometimes showed that one number was more common than another. In Mrs Roche’s group we have been practising drawing accurate bar graphs and then interpreting them. We carried out surveys on favourite colours and ways the children came to school, recorded them first on a tally chart and then worked out the frequency before we plotted our graphs. In Mrs Williams and Mrs Gilder’s group have been practising measuring.  We have measured items such as our shoes, and have started looking at capacity.  Homework: Mrs Prowle’s group – the next page from your Schofield & Simms book Mrs Roche’s group – the next page (test 7) from your Schofield & Simms book Mrs Williams and Mrs Gilder’s group – measure the length, width or height of different items around the house.

Science / Topic We had great fun, learning about the complicated food chains in the rainforest and found out that they all join together to make huge food webs. To help us understand, we made a giant web in the classroom linking all of the plants and animals together with wool.  It was amazing to see how many links there were. We also discussed how the energy flows from the sun at the beginning of each chain through all of the plants and animals until it is recycled at the end of the food chain by bacteria, fungi and insects.

News Lime’s KS2 Assembly Lime class worked hard on getting ready for our first KS2 Assembly. We worked in our groups preparing resources, actions and information. The groups were as follows: Introducing: Sophie S, Sophie B, Niamh Singers (entrance music): Georgie, Carolina Gymnastics: Imogen, Hannah, Issy, Ruby H, Ruby L, Siobhan and Nancy LEGO Friends: Holly, Emily, Juliette and Sienna Gaming: Bailey, Christopher, Freddie S, Freddie Y, Max, Oliver K, Oliver C, Jimi, Edward and Sam Rainforest: Joshua, Joel, Kiran and Adam Piano (exit music): Oliver C We hope to be able to share the video with you soon! ‘The assembly was such a success because we all knew what we were doing and we spoke clearly.’ Issy ‘We all knew our words because we had practised in class.’ Joshua ‘The assembly went very well and we all tried our very best to make it a success.’ Holly ‘We all tried very hard not to fiddle with our words so that everyone could be heard.’ Oliver C

Literacy In Maple, Lime and Poplar have been thinking hard about the usefulness of paragraphs in fiction and non-fiction writing. We learned about using them to group information together and had a go at producing our own piece of writing using paragraphs and interesting words to link our sentences within them. We have also been planning some information texts about Rainforest animals. Useful Websites: Homework: Talk Homework. Please have a conversation about the topic and make plenty of notes to help with your writing on Monday!

Mathematics In Mrs Prowle’s group, we have been continuing our work on data handling. We looked at the graphs we drew last week and discussed ways to improve them including making sure the scale on the y-axis was accurate and had equal intervals. We also used the Numicon to complete an investigation to see whether we could cover all of the numbers on a 100 square just by using different combinations of 3 and 5. In Mrs Williams and Mrs Gilder’s group we have been using our knowledge of timetables to generate related facts. If we know that 3 x 4 = 12, we can use of multiplying by 10 to generate more multiplication sentences. Eg 30 x 4 = 120, 3 x 40 = 120   Some of us also extended our learning by recording some inverse facts. Eg 120 ÷ 4 = 30, 120 ÷ 40 = 3 Generate some of your own sets of multiplication sentences. You could use a dice to generate your numbers. In Mrs Roche’s group we have been looking at data handling. We started this week looking at tally charts, frequency charts and pictograms. Homework for Mrs Roche’s group will now be given out on a Wednesday to be returned on Tuesdays. This week the children have been asked to complete test 6 in the Schofield book, if in the past they had gone ahead with the tests they have been given a different work sheet to do this week. Please only do the Test given, complete it in pencil and write down the time taken. If they have been helped in anyway please indicate this. Homework: Mrs Prowle’s group – creating a frequency table and bar graph. Please do this homework neatly in your yellow books. Mrs Gilder’s and Mrs William’s group – practise multiplying using known facts.

Science This week, Maple Class and Poplar investigated the water cycle. We made a model of the earth’s surface using a clear mixing bowl, some warm water, cling film and ice and watched as the water vapour cooled, condensed and fell back into the bowl, just like rain! We made some great posters to demonstrate what we had learned but some of us found it a bit tricky to use the words evaporation and condensation accurately.

Art We have been learning about Henri Rousseau who painted a lot of rainforest scenes.  We were amazed to find out he had never been to the rainforest because his pictures are so detailed and lifelike!

Topic In Maple and Poplar Class we combined Topic with Literacy to research and make notes on more information about the Rainforests and the animals that live in them.

Music We have been learning, along-side Mrs Williams, what a pentatonic scale is.  We enjoyed singing some songs which use pentatonic scales.