This week we have been learning about skin and why it is a very important organ in our bodies. We learnt about what it does to protect us. We learnt how to use Book Creator on the iPad to make a book showing all of the things we had learnt. We had to include a title page, introduction, headings, facts, images and an ending. Book Creator is great because we can change the background, change the size, font and colour of the writing and add lots of images.

In Numeracy, we have learnt how to use Split Strategy to add 2 and 3 digit numbers. It involves splitting the numbers into hundreds, tens and ones or just tens and ones, and then adding these together before putting all the answers together to get the final answer. With bigger numbers it can be helpful to write out each stage.

In Art, we have learnt about Fair Isle patterns and then used this style to decorate a Christmas stocking. They look great and we have put them up in the hall to decorate it for Christmas.

In Health and Wellbeing, we thought about our needs and wants. We discussed certain things like money, food, medical care, clean air and education. We discussed that needs aren’t always available to everyone in the world. We thought about how our needs link to the Rights of the Child and how these aren’t being met for every child in the world. We thought about some of the small things that we could do to help like giving food to a food bank, donating to charity, walking to school or recycling.

In PE, we did a Minecraft yoga session.

Today, the P3s shared an assembly about Childline and the importance of asking for help if they need it. They learnt the phone number and wrote the names of trusted adults that they could talk to. The P4s will be doing this next Friday.

 

This week we have written a leaflet about the digestive system. We had to include and introduction and and ending. We also had to use openers, connectives and adjectives. We were learning more about adjectives this week. We also had to draw illustrations for each stage of the system. We are still working on editing our work and showing where we have used openers, connectives and adjectives.

In Numeracy, we have been practising the 3-step strategy for adding 2 2-digit numbers. Some answers were over 100. Some children were doing some word problems and trial and error challenges too.

In Art, we have started a self-portrait in the style of Julian Opie. We thought it was quite a ‘cartoony’ style of art. We traced a photo of ourselves and then used it as a print to get our face drawn on a piece of art paper. The eyes and nostrils are just black dots! Next week are going to paint them and outline them in black pen. The backgrounds will be nice a bright.

In Health and Wellbeing, we designed clubs that would encourage children to be active for 60 minutes. We made posters to advertise our clubs. We had to include all the details about it, including healthy snacks! We shared our posters with the class. We know how important physical exercise is to keep our heart and lungs fit and our muscles strong. We also thought about the ways in which our families and friends support our Wellbeing by thinking of examples of each of the wellbeing indicators – Active, Healthy, Achieving, Included, Respected, Responsible, Safe and Nurtured.

In PE, we played games of 5 a side football. We had to try to find space so our team mates could pass to us.

Today, we started our committees again and then we had the final rotation in outdoor learning. We have been learning about our skeletons, how to measure in metres and all about the artist Andy Goldsworthy.

This week in Science we have been learning about the heart and the lungs and their functions in the body. In Literacy, we wrote a leaflet to show our findings to others. We also enjoyed sharing our learning about the digestive system with families today. We used a fork, a plastic bag, orange juice, tights and a tea towel to show what happens to a banana and biscuits when we eat them! We learnt how the teeth and saliva break the food down in the mouth and then stomach acid and churning in the stomach break it down even more. The body then takes all the water and nutrients it needs as the food passes through the small intestine and the large intestine. When the food reaches the anus we have the urge to go to the toilet and then we poop it out!

In Numeracy, we have been practising our adding using a 3-step strategy where we add the tens first and then add the ones in two steps, stopping at the next tens number (the ‘tea stop’!) before adding on the remaining ones! We can use a number line to help us break it up.

In Maths, we have been adding costs and finding change. We also set up a Pet Shop with Mrs Skilling where we can practise buying and selling items!

In Art, we finished our milk carton pencil pots! They look fab and hold pens and pencils well! We are really pleased we have reused something that normally gets thrown away. We also had a choice of drawing and colouring a tiger. We chose a tiger as our last class novel had a tiger in it who liked to speak in rhyme and cook!

We are really enjoying the start of our new class novel, The Christmasaurus! It is very funny!

In Health and Wellbeing, we made strategy jars to put ideas in about how we can manage some of our emotions. We worked really well in groups of 4 showing our cooperation skills. We also took photos of us showing the emotion we were working on! It was funny!

This week we have been learning about onomatopoeia. They are words that sound like the things they describe. We used them to write Bonfire Night poems. We also used other descriptive language. All of the poems were excellent! Children have written them up neatly to go on display.

In Numeracy, we have started doing addition work. We have looked at using a 2-step and 3-step strategy to add single digits and 2-digit numbers to 2-digit numbers! We can use a number line to help.

In Art, we have started our design project to re-use milk cartons as pencil pots. We have made a design and have ‘papier mached’ the carton to give us a better surface to paint on. Most of us have chosen to make our pots into animals.

In Health and Wellbeing, we have been thinking about how we can manage our emotions. We role-played being a Flight Attendant for Newport Air and we had to give support to a passenger who was angry, worried, sad and happy! We were able to help the passengers feel better by giving advice and being supportive.

In PE, we played games of indoor hockey and also started doing some football skills.

In Science, we cut out skeletons and put them together and labelled lots of the joint and bone names. We also looked at skeletons of some animals and used clues to work out what the were. They were all ‘record-breaking’ animals.

In French, we learnt how to say the seasons.

Welcome back, everyone!

 

This week we have written a story about a child who wakes up with super powers. It was lots of fun planning our stories and we have written and edited them. We have been using coloured pencils to underline where we have used connectives, openers and descriptive language. If we don’t have any we write a sentence to include one.

In Numeracy, we were learning how to use greater than, less than and equals symbols. We have also been doing a Halloween themed problem-solving challenge. We have had to read the questions carefully and then use our number skills to solve the problems.

In PE, we practised our hockey skills and played a game where we had to try a score a goal against a partner.

In Health and Wellbeing we have been talking about the different emotions we can experience and how these can change all the time. We read ‘My Many Coloured Days’ by Dr Suess and then chose colours that match our moods. We wrote new words to ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’, changing the emotions and giving things you could do to feel better. For example, ‘If you’re sad and you know it, hug a friend’ and ‘If you’re angry and you know it, count to 10’.

Our new topic is The Human Body and this week we learnt about the skeleton and its functions. We learnt that it keeps us upright, helps us move and protects some of our major organs. We learnt that children have 270 bones but adults only have 206 and this is because some of the bones fuse together as we get older.

We have been doing Skills Academy at school this week and the children have been enjoying learning new skills in Lego building, working with others, playing new board games, learning about animation and printing.

This week P3/4 have been writing a story set on Mars. We were inspired by a story on Newsround. We had to describe the setting and our characters. We have been working on including connectives, openers and descriptive language. Some children have also been working on adding paragraphs. We are all editing our work to check for missing full stops or capital letters. We use coloured pencils to underline where we have used the things we are looking for in our steps to success.

In Numeracy, we have been completing some mini tests to check what we have learnt this term!

In PE, we learnt to move with a hockey stick and ball. We had to dribble around cones.

In Outdoor Learning, we used natural materials to create shapes, lines and patterns.

We have been thinking about how we can share facts with a partner and how we can show good listening when our partner is sharing with us. Half the class took notes about oystercatchers and the other half about puffins. Then we shared what we had found out with our partner. We used peer assessment to record how well we had done.

We are going to do a ‘reusing’ project to help the planet. We are going to make pencil pots using the milk cartons in school. We made posters to ask other  classes to collect them for us. We have been washing them and cutting the tops off. We tried sanding them to see if the paint would stick better. Ut didn’t work all that well so we will have to think off another option!

 

Have a brilliant holiday, everyone!

This week, we have written a story that is set in a scary forest with a mysterious, secret door in it. We had to write a setting description and also describe the main character. We had fun thinking about the words we could use to set the scene. We have also been trying to use connectives and openers.

In Art, we drew pumpkins and used shapes and lines to make patterns in each of the sections. We used crayons in autumn colours. We cut them out and will stick them on a background of black paper with patterns in white paint.

In Numeracy, we have been rounding to the nearest 10 and 100 in 2-, 3- and 4-digit numbers.

We read ‘Aunty Planty and the Eco Warriors’ by Rachel Louisa May and learnt how we can help save our planet. We sang along to the ‘Reduce, Reuse and Recycle’ song and thought of ways we can do the 3Rs at school and at home. We also designed an eco-warrior cape!

Today, the P3s and P4s took part in sports games that the P7 House Captains had organised. It was lots of fun cheering on our houses.

In PE, we started learning about hockey and how to hold and use a hockey stick. We practised passing the ball to each other and shooting at a goal.

The P4s have been learning as a cohort about Cool in School. They have been learning how to use ‘Stop’ if they don’t like something that someone else is doing and using the 3rd ‘Stop’ as a last warning before telling an adult.

With Mrs Skilling, we conducted our own surveys and used the data to create a bar graph (P3) or pie chart (P4). 

In Numeracy, we have been learning about number lines and how to estimate where a number would be on a number line plus also find the number half way between 2 numbers. We have also been reading and writing numbers.

In French, we learnt how to say 4 phrases about the weather: Il fait beau; Il pleut; Il fait chaud; and Il fait froid.

In Art, we have made patterns and using shapes and lines to fill sections of a sea turtle. We used black pen and they look really great. We have cut them out and we are going to stick them on an ocean background that we painted today.

In PE, we have continued to practise our rugby skills. We played ‘foxes and hens’ where the chickens had a bib tucked into the top of their trousers and the foxes had to try and pull them out.

In Literacy, we wrote our last information text about sea turtles. We had a vote about what we would write about. We have improved our skills at writing notes from videos and websites. We were also learning about common nouns and proper nouns. Proper nouns are the names of people, places or things and they always need a capital letter.

Today, we also had our second week of committees.

With Mrs Skilling, we looked at the differences between Islam and Christianity religions.  We looked at how to take notes using bullet points and headings and have been practising while watching Newsround. 

In Numeracy, we have been continuing to look at numbers sequences in 10s, 100s and 1000s for some. We have also been ordering 3- and 4-digit numbers.

In Literacy, we designed posters about how litter affects animals. We feel very strongly about it as it has been an issue in our class novels. We used PowerPoint and copied images from Google and added a heading and extra information.

In PE, we learn how to hold and pass a rugby ball and in Art, we made Christmas Cards!

We have been getting things ready for our stall at tomorrow’s Summer Fayre. We are having a Tin Can Alley. We have made posters to go with it.

In Health and Wellbeing, we chatted about some of the challenges we can face. We then talked about strategies we can use to overcome them. Today, we acted out scenarios to show a challenge and how it could be solved.

This week we have been learning about ‘Famous Failures’. We found out about famous people who didn’t succeed in something but then persevered until it worked out. For example, Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before inventing the light bulb. If he hadn’t persevered we might not have electric lights! We learnt that everyone will make mistakes and fail at things before they get it right. That’s why we have to keep trying. We learnt about the Learning Pit which is part of most learning and when we find our learning tricky it is actually better for us. We drew our own Learning Pits. We also read The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes and found out that it is actually better to make some mistakes and know that making mistakes is a good part of learning.

In Literacy, we took notes all about red squirrels and then wrote an information text about them.

In Outdoor Learning, we split into 3 groups with all the P4s and P3s and did 3 different activities. We will swap round over the next 2 weeks. Some did bird spotting, listening to their calls. One group identified trees and measured their circumference to find out how old they are. The last group created ‘natural stories’!

In PE, we have been practising our throwing and catching skills by playing bench ball! We also had to learn how to defend and help our team mates by getting into space and calling for the ball.

In French, we learnt some classroom instructions like stand up, sit down, line up, hands up and hands down. We played ‘Simon Says’ which is called ‘Jaques a dit’ in French!

In Art, we drew beautiful baby foxes using a grid to help us get the proportions and size right. Then we coloured them with oil pastels and crayons. They look brilliant!

In Numeracy, we have been sequencing 3- and 4-digit numbers forwards and backwards in ones and tens!