We have extended our range of numbers from learning millions to hundreds of millions for place value. We practised adding and subtracting powers of 10 (10,100,1 000,10 000,100 000,1 000 000, 10 000 000, 100 000 000). Now we are learning about place value after a decimal point. We learned that a decimal point separates whole numbers from decimal fractions. The columns after the decimal point are called tenths and hundredths. Now we are learning to convert fractions into decimal numbers and order them on a number line. We made matching games related to our learning in maths. Mr  Tollan challenged a group of children by asking them to think carefully about where they should place numbers, that the spinner landed on, and a decimal point to get the closest number to 100.

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This week in literacy we have been focusing on visualisation for our book Kensuke’s Kingdom. First we made a visualiser of the main character, Michael. We tried to find as many clues as we could from chapters one, two and three. On Thursday, we created a picture of the island, using Michael Morpurgo’s detailed descriptions as evidence and labelled it appropriately.

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On Wednesday we had our first philosophy lesson.We discussed what ‘fair’ looked like. We were asked to discuss how a cake could be shared ‘fairly’ between four bears who were having a picnic. We thought that was easy – split it into quarters! But then someone suggested that they might not all need the same size of cake because the bears themselves were all different sizes so that made us all think that for the cake to be split fairly it should be split into pieces appropriate to the bears size because they all have different needs. Miss Gibb then gave us more information about the bears; one had just come from a birthday party and had already had cake that day, it was another bear’s favourite type of cake, the smallest bear didn’t ever finish what she was given to eat and the final bear had brought the cake to the picnic. This got us all thinking again. In the end, a lot of us felt that the cake should still be split into quarters and everyone would have a fair chance to eat that if they wanted to and then, if there was any left, the hungry bears could have some more. We really enjoyed our first Philosophy session. We’re hoping to use the outside courtyard area for Philosophy sessions (weather permitting) as it’s a lovely quiet area to think, listen to one another and build on ideas.

This afternoon we were assigned co-operative learning groups as we’re going to be making pop up books as part of our topic on Children’s Rights. We assigned roles within the group, planned what we would like to include and thought carefully about our target audience so that we include appropriate features in our books. Next week we will be investigating pop up books to find out how they work!