More on algorithms
Last week, we reminded ourselves about algorithms and practised giving them verbally through drawing pictures. This week, we made it a little more complicated by writing an algorithm to get a friend through an obstacle course.
As we realised what worked and what didn’t, we had to debug our algorithms to make them successful.
Where do you want to explore?
We kicked off our Explorers Big Topic today by discussing where we’d like to go exploring. The children shared their thoughts with each other and then their partner fed back. There we re lots of interesting places mentioned: the bottom of the ocean, into space, New Zealand and many more.
Then, we used the Atlases to remind ourselves of some key geographical vocabulary: hemisphere, continent, tropics, ocean names, etc. They also prompted us to think about other places (on Earth) that we’d like to visit which we then visited – via Google Earth.
Finally, we explored some fantastic images – all of which were real places on Earth – and chose which one we’d travel to if we could and why. The Plitvici Lakes in Croatia were most popular in our class.
Learning workshop
Don’t forget our Learning Workshop on Wednesday 20 September at 6pm.
Come along and find out what your child will be learning and how you can help support this learning at home.
The workshop will be an opportunity for you to find out what a typical day in Reception looks like and how you can contribute to your child’s learning journey.
See you there!
Our first week!
Spectacular science
Yesterday, we enjoyed a mind-blowing science lesson in which we practised our observation skills (LO: To be able to use observations to verify predictions).
We started off by moulding some ‘Soapy Foam’ (other brands available) into a sphere.
We knew we were going to leave the soap (untouched) all day. We each made a prediction about what we thought would happen:
- ‘I think it will shrink because the water in the soap will evaporate.’
- ‘I think it will expand because of the pressure from the air.’
- ‘I think it will turn into a puddle because it will melt.’
Then, as a group, we ordered our predictions from least likely to most likely.
We observed the soap throughout the day. This is called an ‘observation over time’. Ask your child what happened and encourage them to explain why they think this occurred.
In the next part of the lesson, we filled a small glass with water. We filled the glass to its absolute full capacity – ask your child what we noticed about the top of the glass. On the table, we had a range of items (cotton wool, counters, paper clip, Base 10 rod, Multilink cube) and predicted what would happen if we put them in the glass. Obviously, the water would be displaced and overflow, right? Well, we all decided that the cotton wool had the best chance of fitting in the glass without any water spilling over the slides so we investigated. We put the cotton wool in the water and observed what happened…
You’ll never believe it but the cotton wool went into the glass without a single drop of water being spilled! Ask your child if they can explain to you why this strange phenomena occurred (hint: think about particles and the three states of matter).
Everyone’s mind was blown. Especially this person…
Homework review (Creative)
I was really impressed with this week’s homework. Well done, everyone! To celebrate the monumental (ask your child what this word means – we came across it in our class novel this week) efforts from Y5 we took part in our first homework review of the year. We had the chance to see everyone’s responses and left comments in books to say well done.
Here are a few of our favourites…
And, here is our absolute favourite piece this week. Well done, Ben. Your model classroom was incredible. I love the attention to detail!
Hotseating
On Thursday, we wrote a diary entry as Henry from ‘The Incredible Book Eating Boy’. In order to get into character, we thought about what questions we’d like to ask Henry if he were real and then some of us took on his character, fabulously.
8Rs Creative Homework
A fabulous start to homework from Year 6. We enjoyed a wonderful presentation from both Edward and Aleena and saw a whole host of different ways we could us the 8Rs at home, at school and in extra curricular activities.
As always, we spent some time looking at each others’ before sharing a comment in everybody’s book.
Here are some we particularly liked:
From constellation art to Mr Fluffy – Year 3’s weekly round-up
This week, the children were extremely excited to make their monsters. As you can see from their facial expressions, they came up with some terrifying creatures! Challenge your child to describe their monster using interesting adjectives!
We discussed vocabulary and their impact upon readers with ‘shades of meaning’. Children worked in groups and talked about what each word meant and where an author might use it.
We had a go at acting out each word, from creeping to marching, from worried to petrified:
Great drama skills!
In maths, we have been working on missing number patterns, using detective skills to figure out which numbers complete the sequence. Not only have we been practising our 5s this week, but also counting in 50s with our ‘First to 1000’ game!
We used iPads and books to research the question: ‘What is a constellation?’, and presented our results back to the class…
We drew known constellations, but designed and named our own creations, too!
We have also been inspired to make some constellation art, using different paints and glitter. Hopefully we’ll have some clear evenings this weekend so you can go stargazing, something a lot of children have been very enthusiastic about. See if you can spot any of the constellations we’ve talked about this week!
Sadly, this week brings the end of our time with Orion and the Dark, but children have been writing their own version of the story. With some fantastically creative ideas from the class, we turned the story on its head and entitled ours ‘Orion and the Sun’. A boy who is afraid to go outside goes on an adventure with his new friend Sunny to find out if there’s more to life than his video games! I’m looking forward to reading the results!
A warm welcome to our new class pet, Mr Fluffy…
…who helped us discuss our Living and Learning theme for this week which was “I show I am ready to learn and I respond to feedback”. Congratulations to Jessica, who won this week’s Living and Learning certificate, for our brilliant conversations about her work and for always being one of the first ready to learn. Congratulations to Adam, this week’s Star of the Week, for his enthusiasm, contribution and all round hard work.
Another great week in Y3! Well done everyone!
Creative homeworks
Here’s a selection of our favourite creative homeworks from this week.
