Living and Learning: I know what a drug is.
Over the next couple of weeks in our Living and Learning sessions, we will be focusing on “Being Safe”. This week in Living and Learning, we discussed what a drug is and what might influence a person to take/not take them.
We learnt that a drug is: ‘a substance people take to change the way they feel, think or behave.’
We also talked about the term ‘drugs’ and how it refers to all drugs:
• all illegal drugs,
• all legal drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and volatile substances (those giving off a gas which can be inhaled),
• all over-the-counter and prescription medicines.
In small groups, the children created diamond nines of what they thought would be the biggest influence for taking/not taking drugs. Here is an example:
The children also gave reasons for their choices: “feelings/emotions might be the biggest influence as people might think it helps to relieve stress” and “family would not influence you to take them because they love you and wouldn’t want to harm you”.
Science rocks!
The first week back after Christmas has been a week of starting new topics and units. This includes our new Science topic – Rocks, soils and fossils!
Our first week began with the question – How are rocks different? We made careful observations of 12 different rocks and thought about what made them special.
This included things such as;
- Colour – is it one solid colour or does it have mixed colours?
- Texture – is it smooth, rough or both?
- Crystals – does it shine or sparkle?
- Weight – is it heavy or light?
- Layers – does it have stripes or clear layers?
Here are some of the class making their observations:
We then sorted a selection of the rocks into a Venn Diagram. The children had the choice of which features to sort the rocks by.
The class loved the lesson and already had fantastic knowledge in identifying the names of some of the rocks. One person remembered that one of the rocks (Basalt rock) is in the Earth’s Crust! This was from our first Topic lesson about the Earth.
Help at home by seeing if your child can identify any of these rocks based on their appearance!
The ‘Big Brain’ Art Gallery!
This morning, Year 3 and 4 hosted their first art gallery where they were able to showcase all the amazing art they have produced this half term.
We displayed all the pieces across the two classrooms and gave the children the opportunity to look around and comment on their classmates artwork.
A fantastic end to a fantastic half term!
All of the Year 3/4 team wish you a Merry Christmas and happy and healthy holiday.
See you in the New Year!
Living and Learning: mental health
Over the past three weeks, we have been discussing mental health: why it is important and how to look after it. We spoke about mental health being “about our feelings, our thinking, our emotions and our moods – things you can’t see, but affect our lives in lots of ways”.
We talked about how sometimes big emotions (strong emotions that stay for a long time and can stop us from doing what we want to do in our lives) can become very overwhelming but there are strategies to help us. The children talked about taking deep breaths; thinking of happy memories; taking part in something they love or completing a self-care activity.
Help at home: discuss which self-care activities your child might use to help deal with their emotions.
09 December 2022
This week’s Talk Time relates to our Science learning. Each class has been finding out about one or two scientists as part of their Science lessons.
I can show off my knowledge of different scientists.
Year 1/2: John Dunlop
Year 3/4: Jane Goodall
Year 5/6: Carl Linnaeus and Sarah Fowler
Have a chat with someone at home about the scientist that you have been learning about in your Science sessions. Some things to consider when talking about a scientist is:
- who they are
- what they did
- why their work was important
- whether their work has an impact on life today
Challenge: Do you know of any other scientists? Can you talk about their work and say how it has impacted on life today?
World Cup Geography
We’ve had a topical challenge this week relating to the World Cup. Our challenge was to identify the time zones of the different football teams in comparison to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).
If you’ve ever been abroad, have friends or family who live abroad; why not identify which time zones they are in.
Certificates
The children are always excited and proud to get their Lexia and Numbots certificates on a Tuesday.
Can you believe we’ve had 87 Numbots certificates and 73 Lexia certificates so far in Year 2!
This is fantastic learning – well done, Year 2!
25 November 2022
This week’s Talk Time relates to this half term’s Art topic.
I can compare and contrast different artworks, architecture and designs.
I can give my opinions, and back them up with reasons.
In our Art lessons, we’re thinking about the work of these artists, architects and designers and we’re using the following vocabulary:
Y1,2 Artists:
George Seurat
Bridget Riley
Vocabulary: pointillism, op art
Y3,4 Architects:
St Paul’s Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren
London Aquatic Centre, Zara Hadid
Vocabulary: architect, architecture
Y5,6 Designers:
William Morris
Orla Kiely
Vocabulary: pattern, repetition, symmetry, foreground, background
The key to this task is being able to explain thoughts and opinions. It’s worth remembering that the opinions of one person may not match those of another and that it’s okay to disagree.
We’d like your child to speak confidently and passionately about art. Using ‘because’ will encourage your child to think carefully about their own interpretation of the art. Offering your own opinions may also help your child to consider alternative viewpoints and perspectives.
Discussions about the art could take place in a number of ways. Here’s a couple of suggestions:
- Discuss each piece separately before then looking at them side by side.
- Have both pieces side by side from the start.
Whichever approach you opt for, referring to these questions and the vocabulary above will help to focus your discussions at home:
- Explain what you like about each piece.
- Explain what you dislike about each piece.
- How are the two pieces similar?
- How are the two pieces different?
- Considering what is most important to you, which piece do you prefer?
25.11.2022 – Spellings
Practise adding the suffixes -er and -est to these words for your spelling test next Friday:
nice
happy
funny
brave
tall
warm
rude
lonely
You could use rainbow writing to help you learn them!
Science – What’s that sound?
This half term, our Science topic is called ‘What’s that sound?’. We are physicists because we are learning about physics.
So far, Year 4 have learnt how a sound travels into our ears and that is because of vibrations. For example, if an object like a car door is slammed shut, the car door vibrates and the vibrations travel through the air to our ears! To find out more, we went on a sound walk around the school to find as many different sound sources as possible.
The children heard lots of things, such as;
- children talking/shouting
- car horns
- ambulance siren
- car engines
- trees rustling
- foot steps
- fridge humming.
We worked out that we heard most of the sounds in the front playground due to being nearer the road.
Some sounds were high pitched and others were low pitched. The sounds that are there to catch our attention (ambulance sirens) are high pitched and the sounds that are more common (car engines) are low pitched.
Our second lesson was exploring sounds further and fortunately for the children, making sounds with our bodies! We tried to compose a “song” using our bodies. We clicked, stomped, hummed, thumped and shouted. We then experimented with the drums by placing rice on the top and seeing what happened when we hit it hard and hit it softly. In conclusion, the harder we hit the drum, the higher the rice flew and the softer we hit the drum, the lower the rice flew.
Have a look at us in action:
