Science: environmental dangers
In our science lesson this week, we’ve been learning about how humans can cause environments to change and how this can have a negative effect on the plants an animals that live there.
We learnt about how deforestation is leading to habitat destruction for lots of plants and animals. We also learnt about how plastic pollution in the environment affects sea creatures.
Children were then tasked with creating a short video to inform others about these dangers and what we can do to help.
DT: maze making
In DT lessons over the next two weeks, we’re designing and making marble mazes.
In this lesson, children had to design their maze on squared paper. The colouring serves an important purpose as each colour represents a different length of maze wall that they will have to saw. This will help them know how many pieces of each length they will need.
Oracy: performing a poem
In our reading lesson yesterday, we had an oracy (speaking and listening) focus. We have been retelling The Ugly Five by Julia Donaldson with some changes. We then practised performing them in a pair with focus on appropriate volume and intonation. They were great!
Living and Learning: building relationships
In this week’s Living and Learning session, we were learning about attributes that will help us to make friends. We were all given an attribute and children had to decide where to place it on a continuum showing whether it was a positive or negative attribute for building good relationships.
Art: watercolour paint
This afternoon, we’ve been painting British garden birds with watercolour paint. The concentration was impressive and the artwork was excellent!
Living and Learning: 8Rs for learning
For the start of this half-term, our Living and Learning focus is the ‘8 Rs for learning’. This is about promoting good learning behaviour for your child.
In class, the children will focus on different ‘Rs’. We use an animal to symbolise each ‘R’, which might help your child remember all eight – can your child remember which animal matches the correct ‘R’?
You can support your child at home – we’ve listed a few ideas to help you below. Ask us if you’ve any questions or comments.
Download top tips for promoting the 8Rs for good learning behaviour.
Risk taking
Talk about the difference between a safe and unsafe risk. At school, we want your child to take a safe risk by having a go at answering, even if unsure; trying something new and attempting harder learning.
Responsibility
Provide time and space at home so your child is able to organise themselves: their PE kit, reading book, homework, spellings and tables… Don’t organise everything for them!
Make a link between rights and responsibilities: your child has the right to a great education, but needs to be responsible for their own learning.
Responding
This could be responding to their teacher in class or responding to feedback in their learning.
Ready
Make sure your child is at school on time for a prompt start.
Make sure your child has had plenty of sleep so they are alert and ready to learn at all times.
Encourage your child to ask lots of questions – that shows they want to learn!
Resourceful
Encourage your child to be organised so they can play with a range of different toys.
Encourage your child to try new ways to solve a tricky problem.
Resilience
Encourage your child to keep going! Set a tricky challenge or puzzle for your child to do.
Encourage your child to think of different ways of doing things.
Don’t let your child win when they play a game – they need to experience losing, too!
Celebrate mistakes as opportunities to learn – be happy that your child found some learning hard and encourage them to ‘bounce back’ and learn from the experience.
Relate this ‘R’ to Humpty Dumpty and our current whole school topic, After the Fall.
Remember
Make sure they have time to learn spellings, number bonds and times tables – a little practice daily is best.
Play memory games:
Kim’s game: show them objects for 30 seconds… can they remember all the objects?
Can they build up the sequence, ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple and a bike.’… ‘I went to the shop and I bought an apple, a bike and a cucumber.’ etc … Take turns!
Reflect
Talk with your child about what they’ve learnt, asking questions about how they learnt, why they learnt it, when they’ll use their learning, how they would teach this to someone else, what learning might link with what they’ve learnt today…
This week, children will have the opportunity to not only reflect on their learning in general but also reflect on how the 8Rs supports their learning.
Of course, these characteristics are referred to throughout the year across all subjects to promote good learning behaviour.
Reading: inference skills through drama
In our reading lesson this morning, we’ve been using drama to show our understanding of a character’s feelings at different points in a story.
Science: learning about animals
In today’s science lesson we’ve been using secondary research to find out about different animal classes.
We then used iPads to create a presentation about a particular class of animal.
Can you find the treasure?
This week, in our Year 3/4 bubble, we’ve been part of Captain One Eye’s crew and after we read our instruction text about how to make a treasure map, we decided to have a go ourselves. The children followed the instructions to create their own versions including their directions to the treasure. Next, it was time to make our own treasure boxes and consider what treasure is important to us in our lives.
Virtual sports day results and skipping challenges
Well done to all children who took part, at home and at school, in the virtual sports day yesterday.
The results are in and can be accessed here.
Here’s our overall school results for each challenge (out of 217 schools).
Netball challenge 56th
Keepie uppie challenge 27th
Rugby challenge 93rd
Speed bounce challenge 46th
Skipping challenges
If you are interested in trying another physical activity challenge, Jodi from Skipping School – a regular visitor to school, is running a daily skipping skill challenge this week. Sadly, Year 2 and Year 4 have missed out on their skipping festivals this year so these videos will help the children to recap the skills they have learnt at school.
