Tag Archives: idl

The Twits

Last term our class novel was The Twits. For those of you who don’t know, The Twits is written by Roald Dahl and features Mr. and Mrs. Twit, a spiteful, lazy unkempt couple who continuously play nasty jokes on each other to amuse themselves, and exercise their wickedness on their monkeys.

We absolutely loved reading the novel and enjoyed using jam boards at the end of each lesson to record our predictions for the following week. We were always very eager to read on to find out what was going to happen as the story developed and enjoyed leaving the story on a cliff hanger each week.

We used Literacy, ICT, Drama and Art and Design to link our learning with the Twits. We wrote poems, instructions, comic strips, menus and more. We used materials to recreate Mr Twit’s disgusting beard and we used our drama skills to reenact parts of the story. At the end of the novel we worked in teams to complete a Twits quiz. Each team scored very highly.

We are looking forward to reading another Roald Dahl novel this term. 📚❤️

ICT

In ICT we have been learning to use different tools on Microsoft Word. Last week we learned how to use the shape tool to insert shapes and change their size, colour and position. We used this tool to create pictures of Viking homes and longships as part of our Vikings topic.

The Vikings

We are thoroughly enjoying our Vikings topic this term. To begin with we didn’t have much previous knowledge about the vikings but over the course of the last few weeks we have enjoyed learning lots of interesting information.

For those of you who don’t know, the Vikings were people who lived in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages. They originally settled in the Scandinavian lands that are today the countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Vikings were also known as the Norsemen. Norsemen means ‘people from the North’ They were great travellers and sailed to other parts of Europe, where they traded, raided, and often settled.

The Vikings made longships for exploration and raiding. Longships were long, narrow boats designed for speed. We followed step by step instructions on how to draw longships. We used pastels and pens to colour our boats, sea and sky.  We worked together to create a huge Viking longship for our class display and love how this turned out! 🛶🛡

Lung models

As part of our human body topic, we learned about the lungs and the respiratory system; the group of organs and body tissues associated with breathing. We took part in different types of exercise to see the effect this would have on our breathing.

Next we made a model of the lungs using a plastic bottle and balloons.

The balloon at the bottom works like your diaphragm—a strong muscle that expands and contracts to cause your lungs to fill with air and then empty out again. The movement of the balloon matches your breathing – when you breathe in, your lungs fill with air just like the balloon inside the bottle did. That’s because the diaphragm expanded making room for air inside the lung. When you breathe out, your diaphragm contracts (or squeezes in) pushing all the air out of your lungs. 🎈🫁😮‍💨

Rainforest topic

As part of our rainforest topic we wanted to learn more about the animals found in the rainforest. We explored what animals are found in each layer and chose to focus on six of them; jaguar, potoo, scarlet macaw, sloth, red eyed tree frog and the emerald tree boa. We used the internet and books to research information about each animal, their diet, habitat, appearance, character and fun facts. We organised and presented all of this information in a colourful fact file using headings, subheadings, text boxes, bullet points and pictures.

We also wrote acrostic poems describing the rainforest. Zoom into our completed rainforest wall display to have a read at some of our poems and to look at our triaramas.  (ARTICLE 28)

🐆🦥🦜🐍🐸

Skeleton art

Our Science topic this term is The Human Body. We have been learning about the skeleton and its functions in the human body.  (ARTICLE 28)

The three main functions of the skeleton are to protect internal organs, support the body and allow movement. We learned that muscles and joints are attached to the bones and allow movement between them. Next we will be leaning about the major organs.

We chose to make some fun skeleton art. Below are the steps we followed:

  1. Draw around the template of the skull.
  2. Draw white oval shapes to create a skeleton like neck.
  3. Colour these parts in using a white pastel.
  4. Draw the shoulders of a body at the bottom edge of the paper.
  5. Add detail to the skull and fill in the eyes.
  6. Add any accessories to your skull such as a hat, hair and earrings.
  7. Colour the detail using a range of coloured oil pastels.

Locating rainforests

As part of our rainforest topic we have been using maps and atlases to locate the rainforests around the world. We can identify the equator, an imaginary line around the planet, where many of the rainforest lie due to the hot climate here. We also learned about the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer and highlighted these on our maps. We have enjoyed reading the rainforest books which have been added to our class library this term. 🌲🍃  (ARTICLE 28)