Friday 25^th November

Home Learning

English: This week I want you to create your own dictionary. I have stuck several common words in your home learning book and your task is to define (say what it means) as many of them as you can in your own words. Don’t just copy from a dictionary and remember that words are always listed in alphabetical order in dictionaries.

Maths: This week all I want you to do is find 5 items around your house, that are under 30cm in length, and I want you to measure them. List the items you have chosen to measure in your home learning book and tell me what their length is to the nearest mm.

Spellings: You also have another 5 spellings this week.

What we have do this week

The pictures you can see above are of our science lesson this week. It had been a couple of weeks since our last science lesson so we started our lesson by recapping what we had done in our previous lessons on light. We did this by getting into teams of four and completing a ‘Light Quiz’. Each team had a team captain and on the board there were multiple choice questions with an answer on the right and an answer on the left. The team captain’s job was to hold up their left or right card depending on which answer their team had chosen to select. If they selected correctly their team would win a point and 2 teams managed to score ten out of ten!

Next we talked about what happens when light reflects off of something (it is bouncing off of it), and the different types of things that reflect light really well. One of the things we came up with was a mirror which led us onto our main activity. 

For a start each of us wrote down a short message on a piece of paper. We then got our mirrors, put them in a position to reflect our messages and copied down the message as the mirror was showing it. After erasing our original message we were each just left with our mirror code messages, which we put our names on and swapped with one of our classmates. Our classmates’ job was to decode our message and then come and tell us what it said.

Once all messages had been decoded, we sat back on the carpet and discussed some of the reasons why we thought our messages looked different in their reflections. We learnt that the explanation for this was that because a mirror is a highly polished, shiny surface, light reflects (bounces) off it at the same angle that it hits it. This means that when we look at it, we see the image of an object reflected, but the image is back to front, e.g. the mirror writing! 

Friday 18^th November

Home Learning

English: This week I have stuck a contractions worksheet in your home learning books. Read my explanation of what a contraction is and then have a go at filling in the missing words.

Maths: I would like you to continue practising what we have been learning in class this week. I have stuck an explanation of each of your tasks in each of your home learning books.

Spellings: You also have another 5 spellings this week. As I stated last week, from now on spellings will be stapled in reading journals.

What we have done this week

This week started with our Greek Day which was a big success. There were lots of great outfits on display as we all enjoyed all of the different things the day had to offer. For a start we learnt a bit more about the history of Ancient Greece with the help of some fantastic volunteers. We then had a go at thinking like the cleverest of Ancient Greeks trying to solve some very tricky puzzles, before moving on to becoming Ancient Greek battle commanders moving our armies against one of our classmates’. The afternoon started with a very special weapons display from our visitor as we got to see different types of armour, helmets, spears and a sword. This led us onto our very own Olympics in our school hall. We split into two teams and competed against each other in a series of, slightly adapted, ancient events giving everyone the chance to be a Greek Olympian for the afternoon. 

Home Learning

Friday 11^th November

English - This week I have stuck your next ‘Grammar Hammer’ challenge in your home learning books. Try your best to answer each question just as if you were completing it in class.

Maths - I have stuck in some ‘Countdown Maths’ for you to have a go at. Your target number is 38 and you have 6 numbers beneath it that you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide by each other in order to reach it. The rule is however that you can only use each number once. Have a go and see how close you can get and, if you do find a way of making 38, have another go to see if you can find another way of doing it. Record all of your calculations in your book.

Spellings - You have another 5 spellings this week. It has been pointed out to me that it is hard to learn the spellings when they are stuck in home learning books because these have to be returned to school during the week. Therefore from now on spellings will be stapled in reading journals

What we have done this week

With Mr Knights this week we were practising our communication skills. First of all we stood on a bench in our teams. The aim of this game was to get the person from the back to the front of the bench without anyone stepping off and in as quick a time as possible. This involved team members giving each other clear instructions and helping each other by working together to work out the most efficient way forwards. The next task Mr Knights gave us was to try and use our listening skills to find him somewhere in the hall while we were blindfolded. Mr Knights would whisper hello and we had to follow his voice to find him.

We have been busy in Maths this week as we continue to practise our times tables. This week in particular we have been concentrating on division and multiplication facts. The pictures of some of us knocking down skittles is just one of the ways that we have been playing around with our times tables. This specific activity meant us valuing the skittles as being worth 2, 5 or 10 and then multiplying this number by the number of skittle we knocked over.

Our final couple of pictures show us getting ready for next Monday which is our Greek workshop day. On Thursday afternoon we had a go at making some Greek headdresses which we can now wear as part of what I am sure are going to be some amazing costumes.

Home Learning

Friday 4^th November

English - This week I have decided to give you some handwriting practice in the form of a firework poem. Your job is to read the poem ‘Firework Night’ by Enid Blyton (see if you can work out what animal the poem is speaking for) and then trace over the words, taking care to notice the way in which the letters are joined. The poem has been stuck in your home leaning book. 

Maths - I have stuck a worksheet in your home learning book to complete that builds on what we have done on time together in class (and on the playground) this week.

Spellings - I want you to learn these and expect to be tested on them but I’m not going to say when. You will have 5 spellings a week to learn and your tests could be on any spellings from any week!

What we have done this week

Mr Knights now visits us on a Monday instead of a Friday and so we now make sure we have our PE kits in school on a Monday and a Tuesday. This week our session with him was all about communication, listening and working as a team, all things that Class 3 showed we can do very well when we put our minds to it as the first four pictures show.

The next two pictures show us starting our new topic in science for this half term which is 'light and shadows'. On Monday we split into groups and put some items underneath a cardboard box. We then put a hole in the top of our boxes and looked through to see what we could see. We then made more holes in our boxes and asked again what we could see and why? Finally we got some torches, shining them through the holes we had made to see if this made the picture inside the box any clearer and, once more, asked why we thought this was?

The remaining pictures shown in this week's blog highlight our Maths focus, from Wednesday onwards, of time. Specifically the pictures show Friday's lesson. We went outside onto the playground and in our groups of two or three our first job was to draw an analogue clock on the ground using chalk and a big PE hoop. Our clocks showed a time of our choosing to the nearest five minutes. We then had to move onto a clock that another group had drawn and next to it draw a digital clock face showing the same time but in a.m. form. After this we moved on once more and the next thing we added next to our clocks was another digital clock this time showing p.m. time. When we swapped clocks for the final time our last job was to write the time in words. All groups therefore created three clock faces showing different times throughout the lesson and also converted the time shown on their last into written time.