Thank you so much to everyone who presented their climate zone models today. The models are fantastic and you presented your information very well. The class demonstrated great listening skills and were interested in their classmates’ creations.

Listening to the children chat about their models with each other was lovely as it demonstrated how questioning has progressed and the ability to answer giving lots of detail is improving all the time.

If anyone wants to present their climate zone model tomorrow, there will be time in the morning.

Continuing our work about capacity, we went outside to investigate what happens when we use different sizes of containers. It was lots of fun learning!

Where has the water gone??  We also used what we know about the water cycle to realise that the puddle of water had evaporated!!

This morning we found out that we are going to have a small party on Friday as part of our learning about number this term. We had to write invitations to ourselves so had to think carefully about the layout and the information we needed on the invitation. Then we peer assessed the invitations to check that they were well written.

For our reading activity we learnt about the word visualisation and how it helps us to think about our story- the characters, setting and the events. We will be having more practice using this strategy next term.

We started to learn about capacity which is the word we use for measuring liquids. We had to half fill a container with water, so we were using lots of maths skills.

Tomorrow is the Climate Zone Presentation day which I am really looking forward to. The children are very interested in the different zones and aspects of life in them. Ideas for the model include the weather, types of homes, animals and the types of clothes worn. 

These are examples of desert and tropical climate models to give you some ideas.

Today absolutely flew past – we must have been having great fun!!  As well as ICT and PE today, we used lots of the skills and knowledge we have learned so far to write, create, practise and perform a newscast and weather forecast in groups of 3 or 4.  We even filmed them.  We did very well but realised that they would have been even better if we had practised more.  Unfortunately the video files are too large to put on the blog.

Also today we learned to use some special words to describe probability or the likelihood that something will happen.  This is something we will learn more and more about as we go through the school.  Today we had to decide if events were likely, unlikely or impossible.  We had to run to the correct heading in the gym.  It was fun.

Wow- our balancing skills are developing very well and lots of us walked along the thin part of the bench successfully!!

This morning we were learning about estimating being a guess which has thought to it but does not need to be exact. We tried to estimate how many board rubbers, pencils and lunch bands were in the different containers. It can be tricky, but when we thought about what we already know, our estimating began to improve. This is a great website for practising estimating:

www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/estimation-game

We had a go and we’re getting better all the time!

Have a lovely Easter break everyone and we’ll see you next Tuesday.

We were practising our weighing skills by trying to solve the puzzle of the mystery parcel. One of the other parcels was the same weight, so we used the pan balance, our own hands and logical reasoning using the words lighter and heavier to solve the puzzle.

To discover more about life in the different climate zones, we were busy finding out information about animals which live in the different zones.

We used sorting, research and matching skills to learn about the animals.

The highlight of today was definitely making chocolate birds nests with chocolate mini eggs.  We even got to go into the staffroom to make them which was even more exciting.  We each made two to take home.  I wonder how long they will last!

All the things we did today had something to do with Easter.  We noted different ways we celebrate Easter in this country.  We also learned and sequenced the Easter Story and found out why it is so important to Christians.  We even managed to fit in our new phoneme u-e and make an Easter based block graph in maths.  We also started making something that we’ll finish off tomorrow – but that’s a surprise!

Language

French Practise saying the numbers up to 20:

un       deux       trois    quatre         cinq         six        sept       huit     neuf    dix

onze   douze     treize   quatorze     quinze     seize   dix-sept     dix-huit   dix-neuf     vingt

Phonemes

This week we will be starting to learn the phonemes which make the U sound in words and will be learning the u-e (magic e) phoneme as in cube and rule. For the second week, we will revise phonemes learnt so far this term.

•  Why not try to make sentences with as many words as you can?
• Challenge – in your jotter, write sentences using your phoneme and spelling words.  
• Homework ideas:

http://urbrainy.com/get/2317/magic-e-long-u-sound-9712

Common words:

• Keep practising the words you have been learning to read and write sentences using them.

well        what        when       where       which          too

again     always     book         cold         day          fast  

don’t       fell         jump         long       people      right

bring    keep       know      there      their        every 

time     took        under       school        wish          life

each       find         men         room        soon        these

ask         best         eat          find         gave      home

never      other         some       take         them       thing  

• Take the sight word challenge. How many words can you read confidently?
• Try this interactive game to help your recognition of common sight words.
• http://www.education.com/game/sight-words-sun-attack/

Reading

A new reading book will now usually be given each Wednesday. The days for reading are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so please make sure that pupils have their reading books in their bags so that they can complete reading activities.

• Try clapping out the syllables of words in your reading book.
• Challenge – which words have the least and which words have the most syllables?

Number

We are continuing to learn about measurement and have used a pan balance to weigh an apple using classroom objects. We guessed (estimated) how many of each object the apple would weigh before we used the pan balance scales.

Heaviest/lightest – Your child chooses five objects from around the home and draws them in order, from (estimated) heaviest to lightest.

Weighing using scales – If you are weighing ingredients in the kitchen, explain to your child what you are doing and show them the reading on the scales indicating the standard unit of measurement e.g. grams.

Here are some websites that you may find useful :

http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Search.aspx?q=weight

http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/weigh/free.htm#

Interdisciplinary Learning

To link in with our work about climate zones, you are going to create your own model!

• Using what you have learnt about polar, temperate, desert and tropical climate zones, you can choose your favourite and create your own zone using materials found at home.
• Think about the colours of the zone, the plants, animals, weather and houses to give you some ideas.

• Bring the model into school on Thursday 31^st March and be prepared to talk to the class about it and answer any questions.

Have fun deciding what to use and what to include in your zone and I can’t wait to see your  fantastic models.

We all had lots of fund today being active to support Sports Relief. We have been doing different dances, Zumba, walking a mile and photo orienteering. Here are a few photos of activities today:

W e worked together to think about which Rights our photos linked to. We could match to more than one Right if we wanted to.

This afternoon we showed our support for Ben running his 200th marathon out of 401!! We waved our banners and did lots of cheering  to keep him going!!  See the photos at the top of the page.

It was lovely to see everyone last night and I hope that you have a great weekend. See you next week.

W e started off the day with a new reading book and we were looking for phonemes and words that we read a lot. Then we had to see how many ee words we could think of! We are getting very good at working out new words using different strategies, but there are some tricky words in our language!!

This afternoon we measured objects using cubes and paper clips. At first we had to make sure that the paper clips were the same size. We used big and small cubes too, so we know that this is not the best way of measuring length because the things we were measuring with were different sizes!

At home use paces to measure a room length to find out what happens when paces are a different size. The whole family can join in with this investigation!!