Last week we had great excitement in P3/4 as we received the news that all our diary entries for the Young Writer’s Competition were chosen as winners! I am so proud of the children for the effort they put into their writing. Everyone is excited to have their story published in a book.

This week we have been working hard to plan a persuasive piece of writing linked to our Water topic. The children had the great idea of trying to encourage wider recycling in school, so this is the theme of our writing. So far, we have discussed the main arguments we will include and have gathered facts to backup our points. Next week, we will start the first draft of our writing.

We have learned about synonyms to widen our vocabulary. We identified ‘boring’ words we use too often and used a thesaurus and lots of books to help us create a Synonym Flowers wall display. The children thought of fantastic words we can now use to make our writing even better!

In Grammar, we have been learning about singular and plural nouns. The children have learned different rules for making singular nouns plural – although there are lots of rules to remember! We have practised this through games and sorting activities.

Last week in maths, we revisited multiplication. The children are making big improvements in their mental recall of the multiplication facts of the 2,3,4,5 and 10 times table. We practised our times tables through problem solving activities – the children particularly enjoyed trying to work out secret codes using their times table knowledge!

This week we have been working on place value and addition and subtraction. We have discussed lots of different strategies, comparing them to see which is the most effective.

Next week, we will be learning about fractions.

We had some fantastic discussion around Internet Safety in Health and Wellbeing. The children enjoyed watching a ThinkUKnow video on playing games online. We talked about the importance of being safe, and only speaking to people you know online.

This week we focused on Rights and Responsibilities, and we learned the difference between them. The children found it interesting to learn about their rights, and all the children showed a great understanding of what they are responsible for and how they should treat others.

We have continued with our Water topic this week. We tuned in to a brilliant live session on Marine Plastics on Tuesday. The children were fascinated and shocked by all the information about plastic pollution – this sparked the idea for our persuasive writing in Literacy!

We have learned about hot and cold climates around the world. From this we learned about why plants need water, and where the best places are for plants to grow. We made rain gauges and popped them around the playground so we can measure rainfall over the term.

Today we are carrying out an experiment on dissolving solids – I am sure the children will enjoy this!