We took advantage of a beautiful sunny day to have some pod time. We had an obstacle course, an amazing car, a musical performance and a kitchen among other creative set ups. You can see some of our fun in the photos.

This week some of us applied our addition and subtraction skills in problem solving word problems. It is very important that we are able to apply our understanding of maths in many different ways: analysing word problems, breaking the problem into chunks, deciphering the language to work out what operation to use, using our logic and reason to find the answer and talking about the process are important skills we are developing. Pages of sums, which we call calculations, don’t show our ability to apply our skills in a useful and real-life manner. We enjoy showing our understanding in making, doing, talking and writing!
Some of us continued to work on the part, part, whole method of problem solving which really challenged us this week and you can see a photo of this below. You can set us challenges like this at home. We love doing them.
Some of us continued to impress with our ability to add and subtract in 10s and talk about the value of a digit.
Again you can support your child by lots of quick fire addition and subtraction, number bonds recall and number talks as well as online games and challenges. We enjoy talking about patterns in number too.

Kapla is our new classroom resource that uses imagination, logic, mathematics, physics, fine motor skills, concentration and team work. It is natural and tactile and the children already love it!

Some of us continued to develop our knowledge of subtraction with using Numicon to clearly see the process of borrowing a 10. Numicon really helps us to visualise what can be a tricky concept to grasp. Building, talking and writing about what and why really helps our remembering, understanding and applying skills! We also used our knowledge of fact families and the relationship between addition and subtraction to do simple algebra, using what information we have in an equation to find the unknown number and then use this to solve the next problem.
Other children continued to practise their knowledge of place value and partitioning numbers into tens and ones, using Numicon. We are also becoming more skilled at adding and subtracting a ten from a given number and this is something that can be regularly practised at home to build up speed, confidence and accuracy.

This week we combined our knowledge of rainforest creatures, their ability to escape predators and catch prey and our learning about the rainforest layers to create a new rainforest creature! We had to research using our non fiction texts and the active wild website to combine aspects of different animals, birds and insects and understand and use words such as ‘appearance’ ‘habitat’ and ‘diet. Scientists believe that many creatures are still to be discovered in the rainforests so maybe our creatures really do exist!

This week we used our VCOP skills (vocabulary, connectives ,openers and punctuation) to take a simple sentence and make it amazing! We are now skilled at understanding what makes a great sentence and using all the resources on the working wall to help us. Our simple sentence was,
the snake sat in the tree in the rainforest

Here are a few examples of our up-levelled sentences

One boiling hot day in the Amazonian rainforest there was a poisonous snake waiting to pounce on a piranha. Liam H

On a dark night the deadly rattlesnake slithered up in the ivy tree to strangle a monkey. Liam S

In the middle of the night the deadly poisonous snake choked the hunter to death and ate him in one gulp!
Paige

One morning in the Amazonian rainforest the snake slithered up the giant tree ready to pounce! Ava

Everyone did a great job and we look forward to sharing our writing with you at the open evening.

This week some of us have been breaking whole numbers into tens and ones (partitioning) making our numbers with the Numicon and writing about what we have made. We have also had number talks and these are useful to try at home for all children.
write a number
make a number
number before? Number after?
how many tens? How many ones?
add a ten. Subtract a ten
odd or even? How do you know?
Number talks help improve our speed of calculation, our ability to use mathematical language and the visualisation of mathematical processes.
Some of us have been improving our speed and accuracy with addition and subtraction ‘chimney’ calculations and applying these to problem solving. We have been working on more challenging fact family problem solving, using our knowledge of inverse operations (7+3 = 10 10-3 = 7 etc as a very simple example) to find missing numbers and write number sentences. We have been using the part, part, whole method in the attached photograph and this can easily be recreated at home.
You can find lots of games and challenges on Topmarks Maths to build up speed, confidence and accuracy Lots of verbal practice of mental maths skills is also useful.

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/mental-maths-train

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/number-facts/number-fact-families

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/daily10

https://coolsciencelab.com/math_magician_addition.html

https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button

This term we are learning all about the rainforests of the world and the creatures who live there. We will also learn about the current situation in the amazon rainforest and the issue of deforestation. We have learned that a rainforest has different layers and different creatures thrive in these layers. We have also started to create a rainforest in our room and we have been busy painting and crafting this week. Hopefully you will enjoy exploring it when you come on the open evening. If your child wants to research the rainforest at home, here are some of the websites we will be using in class.

Rainforest Facts: The Ultimate Guide To Rainforests – Animals, Plants & People

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/kids/

https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/

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