wb 15.10.18
Date: 15th Oct 2018 @ 5:55pm
Another busy week in store as we head towards half term.
Especially looking forward to our visit to the mosque on Wednesday. Today we have completed some preparatory work starting with looking at the similarities between Christianity and Islam - which blew the class away, they weren't prepared for how close the 2 religions are in terms of what they believe. We also started some work on the 5 Pillars of Islam which is what Muslims base their daily lives upon, as we know we will be getting more information about this on Wednesday. The children who are staying at school will now be with Mrs. Taylor. They will be carrying out some research on the life of the prophet Mohammed and will also be familiarising themselves with the inside of a mosque, working with an online tool from the BBC website. Both of these aspects are part of our RE curriculum for other world religions and these children will be feeding back to the rest of the class on our return.
Maths: we have been using the drop down method to perfom long divisions with some very big divisors - calculations like these feature on the SATs arithmetic test. We have also extended our learning to problem solving using division and deciding whether to round up or down depending on the context of the question. Continuing practice required with the rounding but the children have done well with the calculation process. We are also moving onto factors, multiples and prime numbers this week and next.
MyMaths homework has been set on long division with some problem solving.
English: last week our spelling pattern was -cious, this week it is -cial. We have written a news report based on the story 'The Lost Happy Endings' and started to copy it up from our English books but still need more time to complete it. From the end of this week and all next, we are gearing ourselves up to write the prequel to this storybook - time is against us a little bit so we may need to do some of the work after lunch on a couple of days.
English writing homework this week will be to write a newspaper report to consolidate what we have done in class.
RE: as above.
Science: we have just begun a new topic called 'Evolution and Inheritance'. We have looked at inherited characteristics and our next lesson focusses on how animals are adapted to suit the environment in which they live.
Topic: We have now completed our lessons on The Magna Carta and our next lesson looks at why the Spanish Armada was a significant turning point in British history. It's fascinating stuff when you go into the detail of how it came about and how the fortunes of Spain and Britain changed in the aftermath. We may not get to look at this before half term because English may encroach on some of our afternoon time.
French: I'm aware that french is getting a little squeezed out due to constraints on the timetable. The next lesson is ready to go so I'll be slotting that in as soon as I am able.
Tomorrow is Kenya Day for the whole school. The children in key stage two will be doing a session each on the following: a comparison of geographical images, writing about the Mau Mau rebellion against the British, a P4C seesion philosophising about whether all Kanyans are poor and challenging stereotypes and learning some Kiswahili.
A quick reminder about clothing for the mosque visit on Monday: boys-long trousers please plus usual school uniform, girls-long trousers or tights and skirt plus usual school uniform and a simple scarf for a head covering. There will be time for a snack before departure and we will return for a late packed lunch at about 1:30pm. If you need a school packed lunch please ensure that the office knows before Wednesday.
Please book your parent consultations for Thursday next week if you haven't already done so.