This has been a great first full week of Spring term which was once again jam-packed, starting our new topics across the curriculum including inventions, cricket, multiplication and electricity.
During English this week we have been looking at instructions, focusing on their key features so that we were able to write some ourselves. It began by looking at some (very bad!) instructions for a cheese and cucumber sandwich and deciding how we could have made these better. Each child then wrote their own, improved version that was used by their partner to make a successful sandwich. To finish, the children edited and evaluated each others instructions; writing feedback on how they could improve and what they did well.
In Maths this week we have begun to look at multiplication and division, using arrays to support this. We began the week looking at commutative law and understanding that multiplication is commutative but division is not. We then moved to using distributive law to consider how we can use mental strategies to work out the product of a multiplication efficiently. The children have spent a lot of time working with partners to answer problems and share their process with the class. This provides a great opportunity for children to think deeply about the mathematical processes they are using, reflect upon the various strategies proposed and consider how they may approach a task differently in the future. The worksheets for this week are here: Maths sheets S1 W2
We have now begun our ‘Inventions’ topic, spending our first topic lesson exploring what an invention is. We then considered what makes an invention useful or successful and justified why we thought particular inventions in the classroom were the most important. Following this, we all had time exploring our new learning street – stations this term include; Dragons Den, Invent a PE game, design an invention for the future and researching inventors. Each station will develop across the term, with further stations still to come.
Across this term, we will be looking at electricity in Science. For our first lesson we used a carousel of activities that allowed children to consider and explain their prior knowledge. Questions included ‘Where does electricity come from?’ and ‘What makes a remote control car move?’. We then learnt that electricity can come from a battery or mains electricity and finally produced a Venn diagram of electrical items that used batteries, mains or both.
This term, we are extremely lucky to be participating in ‘Chance to Shine’ Cricket lessons. During our first session, we practiced our throwing and catching skills, ending with a competition where each team had to try and hit the most stumps to win. For our second PE session of the week, each class will be completing a Jasmine PE unit on health and fitness skills. If you would like to do some additional physical activity with your child they can have a go at the ‘Fast Feet’ challenge attached: Fast Feet
Additional information:
All children should now have their Times Table Rockstar logins, they can log in and help their class to earn points and win our weekly tournaments.
Please make sure your child how has their PE kit in school. It is important that they have suitable clothing for both indoor and outdoor PE and will unfortunately be unable to participate if they do not have this with them.
Next week in guided reading, we are reading Chapter 2 of a ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’. We will be considering the following questions across the week:
• How are the children feeling about their move? Use evidence from the text to support this.
• What do you think Count Olaf’s house will be like on the inside, based on what you know?
• What do you think the eyes mean?