Charles Darwin was our focus in English, and we started the week by exploring advantageous inherited traits and tried our hand at cross-breeding dogs to create new adapted species. We went on to research Darwin’s life and wrote a biography about him, also using our Darwin-themed text in Guided Reading to support our learning.
Our grammar focus was semi-colons. Semi-colons are mainly used within a sentence to separate clauses. The clauses must be on the same theme and not be joined together with a conjunction; the semi-colon takes the place of the conjunction within the sentence.
Semi-colons can also be used to separate items within a list, to help clarify internal groups if the list already contains internal commas.
In topic, we explored what fossils are and how they are formed. You can find more information on fossils here.
In maths we looked at the distributive law of multiplication.
In this example, 3 is the multiplier (the number of times the group is multiplied) and 2 and 4 come together to make the multiplicand (the size of the group being multiplied). We use this video to help us understand the distributive law.
We looked at factors, as an element of multiplication. A factor is one of two or more numbers that divides a given number without a remainder, e.g. in the number sentence 4 x 5 = 20, 4 and 5 are factors of 20.
Prime numbers also featured and we investigated prime numbers up to 100 using a hundred square. A prime number is a number greater than 1 that cannot be divided evenly by any number other than itself or 1, e.g. 13 or 17 etc.
Finally, we finished the week with an investigation into squared and cubed numbers. A squared number is when you multiply a number by itself, e.g. 2 x 2, 3 x 3, 4 x 4 etc. A cubed number is a number that is the product of three numbers which are the same, e.g. 2 x 2 x 2, 3 x 3 x 3, 4 x 4 x 4 etc.
Friday paired activity (square numbers)
Our handwriting focus was practicing sloped writing with speed, using the letters rr. Our spelling words were: curriculum, correlation, irritate, arrow, worry, warrior.
Next week:
- English – writing a diary of Darwin’s travels using the book What Mr Darwin Saw by Mick Manning
- Maths – continuing with multiplication; looking at formal methods of multiplying (long multiplication) and multiplying/dividing by 10,100 and 1000.
- Guided Reading text here: Guided Reading Poetry – Evolution
- Topic – looking at evolution and creationism and debating the theories
- Mandarin – celebrating Chinese New Year! (begins on 25th January)