Over the last 2 weeks we have been planning and writing a newspaper article on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. The children have taken on the role of a journalist, and we have learnt about the key features of a newspaper article. When the children have completed their final draft, I will send a copy of the newspaper articles via Marvellous Me.

For our comprehension work this week, we focused on the ‘Metalinguistics’ reading strategy – this means we explored new words and researched the meanings. This helps the children develop a greater understanding of the text.

In maths this week we have focused on multiplication. Most children have focused on mental multiplication, and we have learned about the halving and doubling strategy to aid us when calculating multiplication problems. Here is the link to the video that we watched which explains the strategy – Multiplication Strategy: Doubling and Halving – YouTube

Some children have been working on long multiplication word problems.

In Health and Wellbeing, we discussed our emotions and our emotional needs. In pairs the children created different characters. I gave the children a range of scenarios, and they discussed whether or not their emotional needs were being met. The children came up with lots of positive coping strategies that we can use if we feel upset or down.

 

We learned about earthquakes for our topic this week. The children researched facts on the chromebooks to answer a range of questions about earthquakes and why they happen. This afternoon we carried out an experiment using jelly, marshmallows and straws – we tried to create an ‘earthquake-proof structure’ that would withstand 30 seconds of shaking in the jelly!