Science: experiment
We’re chemists!
In science, we’re learning all about the states of matter – solid, liquid and gas. We’ve also been exploring how temperature can change a material’s state. Today, we conducted an experiment to answer our scientific enquiry question:
Does the temperature of water affect the time it takes for ice to melt in it?
In order for this to be a fair experiment, we had to consider the variables in the experiment.
- independent variable (what we’re changing): the temperature of the water
- dependent variable (what we’re measuring): the time it takes for the ice to melt
- controlled variables (what we’re keeping the same): the volume of water and the size of the ice cube
Your children demonstrated some great scientific skills such as reading thermometers, using a stopwatch, measuring accurately and recording results.
Our conclusion: the hotter the water, the less time it takes for ice to melt in it.
Help at home: try this experiment again at home. Get your child to talk you through the independent, dependent and controlled variables.
Guided Reading Week 5
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 12th December.
Divine Freaks: up to page 193
Spirit Walker: up to page 257
How to Train your Dragon: finish the book
The Considine Curse: up to page 167
The Switch: finish the book
Autumn 2: Week 5
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our role-play area. The children had great fun being elves and decorating the area ready for Christmas.
Owl Babies
This week, we have been reading Owl Babies by Martin Waddell. We remembered key phrases from the story and used actions to help us retell it. The children really enjoyed bringing the characters to life through movement and expression.
Check out our fluffy baby owls!
Phonics
This week, we revisited all of the Phase 2 phonemes and continued to build confidence in recognising and using them. We also practised reading words with the ‘s’ at the end. We talked about how it can change a word to mean “more than one.”
Help at home: Can your child blend (read) and segment (write) the following words?
ships, bags, cats, pots, cups, pins, digs
Tricky Words
We have now learnt all of the Phase 2 tricky words. These words can be challenging because they can’t be fully sounded out using phonics. Instead, the children learn to recognise them by sight. They have been working hard and are becoming increasingly confident at spotting these words in their reading.
Help at Home
Have fun finding tricky words around your house!
How to play:
• Write the Phase 2 tricky words on pieces of paper.
• Stick them up around your house.
• Go on a hunt! How many can you find? Don’t forget to read them aloud.
• You could even turn it into a race with someone at home.
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the Learning Journey drop-ins this week. We hope you enjoyed looking through your child’s book and seeing the amazing progress they have made in their first term at school.
Have a happy and healthy weekend.
PE: gymnastics
This half term, we have been developing our gymnastics skills. We’ve been exploring jumps, balances and putting together sequences of movements.
Help at home: Our personal best challenge is to balance on one leg. Give this a try at home. Remember to look at something still to help you keep your balance. Can you beat your previous time?
Maths – mastering number
At the beginning of our maths learning, the children spend time mastering number. These are short and sharp sessions that teach the class simple addition and subtraction facts that they can then apply to all their maths.
These have been our focus facts during this block.
We spend sessions spotting patterns, reasoning and practising these facts until we have that automaticity that will help us. For example…
We also discuss commutativity which means that if we swap the parts when adding, we still get the same sum! If we know 4 + 1 = 5, then we also know 1 + 4 = 5. The children love using this impressive mathematical language too.
Help at home: Practise these addition facts with your child and see if they know them with automaticity.
Topic: art
Year 3 are well into their current Topic – art. We have two featured artists that we are focusing our learning around.
Wassily Kandinsky
Martha McDonald Napaltjarri
We’ve used our geography skills to locate on a map where these artists were born; Kandinsky in Moscow, Russia and Napaltjarri in Haasts Bluff, near Alice Springs, Australia.
We have since then, explored the use of complementary colours and warm and cool colours. We’ve used Kandinsky’s Squares With Concentric Circles art piece as inspiration and created these:
We put our concentric circles together to create one large piece of art.
The children explored using oil pastels and chalks.
Help at home by asking your child what complementary, warm and cool colours are.
Topic: Art – printing
This week, we drew inspiration from the artist Paul Klee to create our own prints. We experimented with a variety of shapes in our designs, taking extra care as the styrofoam printing plates were very delicate. After choosing a primary-coloured ink, we used a brayer to roll it on and transfer our prints.
We also began making colourful tissue-paper collages, which we’ll be printing onto next week. We can’t wait to see the results!
Food Technology: Tomato and Lentil Soup
Today, Year 6 made tomato and lentil soup! We worked in small groups to prepare the ingredients and then cook them. We made sure that we washed our hands and wore our aprons for hygiene reasons.
We used the bridge cutting method and the claw cutting method to cut up our ingredients. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they help us from hurting ourselves!
Help at home: Have your child show you the bridge and claw cutting methods. Why not try making the recipe at home? It has been sent home with your child.
Food Technology: soup!
Today, Year 4 made leek and potato soup in Food Technology. We worked in small groups to prepare and cook the ingredients before blending them into a soup.
We thought carefully about safety. We washed our hands and wore aprons for hygiene reasons. When cutting, we used the bridge method to prepare the onion and potatoes into small chunks. We also used the claw cutting method to cut up the leeks after we’d washed them. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they keep us from hurting ourselves!
Once we’d prepared the vegetables, we fried the onion and leeks together and added the potatoes and stock. We finally used a hand blender to purée the soup.
Everyone tried to soup but we had some mixed reviews…
I was really impressed by Year 4’s safety and cooking skills and the soup tasted yummy!
Help at home: when preparing some food, have your child show you the bridge and claw method of cutting.
Writing: Narratives
Over the next three weeks, in Writing, Year 6 will be creating their own narratives about a sculpture coming to life. This starting point was inspired by our trip last last half-term.
First, we discussed what makes a good narrative and read an example.
We did some drama to get into the mind of the sculpture awakening from its deep slumber. How would it move? Where would it go? What are some consequences?
Help at home by discussing what types of figurative language your child knows. Can they give you an example of each? How could they use it in their upcoming writing?
We will also aim to use expanded noun phrases and more complex punctuation like semi colons.