Today in French we were finishing our powerpoints about what we did

“pendant les vacances”. We had to check our spelling, accents and that our ICT was as interesting as possible.

Remember we are having a tables test on Friday.  You should know what tables your group has to do, if you don’t come and speak to me ASAP.

We have had to postpone our visit to the Luggie Nature Reserve because 1/3 of the class had forgotten to bring suitable footwear or a jacket.  Hopefully, we will get over to the Luggie towards the end of the week.  Keep reading this blog to find out when we actually go.

In PE we worked with a different partner.  We gave them our routines to follow that included balance, inversion, rotation and travelling. Then  we gave each other feedback.

On Wednesday, as part of our report writing, we planned a science investigation to find out how well we hear sounds from different directions.  We discussed possible variables and ensured we completed a fair test.  This morning we conducted our experiment and the wrote up our results.

If  you’ve not already brought in an old shirt/painting apron, can you please do so?

On Monday afternoon, we are hoping to go to Luggiebank Nature Reserve again, please bring in wellies/old shoes and a suitable jacket.  We will also be visiting the book fair on Monday and will have another visit later in the week.

Today in maths we are completing similar activities to yesterday but we are concentrating on Polygons.  Polygon means “many sides” but mathematicians would describe it as “ageometric figure with three or more angles and sides and typically five or more”.

We’ve been looking at 2D shapes, in particular quadrilaterals.  We were unsure of a Trapezium, Rhombus, Parallelogram and Kites.  We had six station to move around: peg boards, ICT Education City nine Lives, Geo Strips, carpet shapes, construction shapes and drawing round and naming 2d shapes.  We had a quiz at the end and we are now able to name and indentify all the quadrilaterals.

We had another go at playing TGT.  This is a really good way of learning facts, in our case,  times table facts.  There are 4 people in a team: a reader, a responder, a rescuer and a recorder. In teams of 3, the recorder is also the rescuer

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In Maths we will be looking at 2D and 3D shape. Here are some ideas to try at home:

• Robot challenge Ask children to draw a picture of a robot using at least 5 different 2D shapes. Ask children to name some of the shapes they used.
• 3D objects at home Ask children to write down at least  five real-life examples of different 3D objects in their home and, if they can, to give the mathematical name of the 3D object, e.g. toilet roll is a cylinder.
• Rectangles on 3D objects Ask children to make drawings of 3D objects in the home that have at least one rectangular face, for example, door, TV, picture frame
• http://www.crickweb.co.uk/ks2numeracy-shape-and-weight.html#quad
• It would be helpful if the children could have their times tables “at their fingertips”. The times tables help the children in so many areas of maths. Each child in the class knows what tables they should be working on. Here are some ideas to help your child learn their tables:
• TGT (Team Game Tournament) children can make the cards at home.
• Chant/Sing/Write the tables out
• http://www.teachingtables.co.uk/ (this website has links to many other websites)
• Prepare for Times Tables Test on Friday 9th October. Those children who get a good mark/show progress can have the next week off school!!!!!

Literacy
I’ve noticed that some children are getting the homophones mixed up. Homophones are words that have exactly the same sound (pronunciation) but different meanings and (usually) spelling.

Write a paragraph (or a few paragraphs) about 2 children who have something special belonging to them and they go to visit someone at a house who is not there…
You must use the following words in your paragraph(s).
are  our  there  their  they’re

Read theses riddles and identify the two homophones:

this sounds like a wild animal or what many trees are in winter
is this a colour or what the wind did last week?
another word for expensive or a wild animal found in Britain

could be what you pay to travel or somewhere to have fun

a cooking ingredient or something which grows and looks attractive

a story told in parts or something you might eat at breakfast time

part of your body or a wild animal with large ears that runs fast

a family member or the major source of light and energy

what is done with shoelaces or the rise and fall of the sea

what someone must do to put clothes together or to grow plants from seed
Make up some homophone riddles for these pairs of words:

allowed/aloud ate/eight beach/beech cellar/seller check/cheque die/dye currant/current foul/fowl grate/great groan/grown hear/here heard/herd higher/hire hole/whole hour/our key/quay knew/new knight/night knot/not
knows/nose mail/male main/mane meat/meet missed/mist none/nun pale/pail pair/pear plane/plain practise/practice praise/prays right/write sale/sail sea/see their/there threw/through wait/weight waste/waist week/weak would/wood

Outdoor Learning
With an adult and your parent/guardian’s permission, explore your local area. Perhaps you may find some conkers to bring into school for a Conkers’ Tournament? If you find somewhere interesting, you could take a photo and upload it to our blog.
Here are some links to possible areas you may want to explore:
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/what-we-do/cumbernauld-living-landscape/
http://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/map/?q=cumbernauld

This morning some children presented an argument that was related to their group’s reading novel. In pairs, the children outlined there argument for keeping Finnegan the whale on the Isle of Coll.

This afternoon we looked at the Return of  “The Prodigal Son” by the Dutch painter, Rembrandt.  We used Wikiepdia to find out more about the painting. We thought Rembrandt was very clever to show a story in a painting.

Please bring in a painting shirt/apron, if you haven’t already.