The class started their Romans topic with Mrs Mackie this week and have been sharing some of their learning with me. They were keen to show me the information books they will be using to help research the topic and were telling me about how the Romans made mosaics, which are pictures and patterns created by arranging little tiles together.
The children have also been introduced to Roman Numerals and will be learning more about how to recognise, read and order them and about how these are still used in modern day.
In science, we will be continuing with our forces work for the next couple of weeks and will be looking at the effect of these on the shape and motion of objects.
Boys and girls, your science challenge this week, should you choose to accept it, is to find out what the term ‘friction’ means for Thursday.
In writing, we have been looking at the traditional form of Japanese poetry known as ‘Haiku.’ While working with Mrs Millar, the class learned that Haiku poems consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines of a Haiku have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. They also learned that the lines rarely rhyme and that Haiku poetry is often based on nature.
This session we have created our Winter Haiku word banks and are in the process of creating our poems. Here are a couple of completed examples:
Snow is falling down.
Ice skating children and friends.
Icicles shining
Zoe McMillan
I see snow outside.
All the trees are icy now.
Snow covering cars.
Warren Robinson
Finally, in class maths we are learning about money and have been familiarising ourselves with coins from 1p – £2. Mrs Mackie even showed the class the new 12-sided £1 coins which will enter circulation in March 2017. We will be working with and using a range of coins and developing our knowledge of the symbols (£ and p) associated with money. We will also be investigating different combinations of coins and money equivalences and looking at strategies and mental methods of calculating costs and change in problem solving.
You can help out your child by exploring coins at home together, e.g. look at their values, sort out different ways of making the same amounts, ordering from lowest to largest values etc. Homework for this will be issued next week related to work taking place in class. It will be issued on the Thursday, to be returned by the following Thursday.
Here are a couple of links for games that will support you and your child at home:
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/money/toy-shop-money
Instructions:
- Select ‘Mixed Coins’
- Then select from the column that is headed ‘Exact Money’
- Start by selecting the ‘Up to 20p’ box. If your child appears confident with this, then they can challenge themselves and move onto the next box ‘Up to £1’
http://resources.hwb.wales.gov.uk/VTC/working_with_coins/eng/Introduction/MainSessionPart1.htm
Instructions:
This link should take you straight to the correct game and level. Follow the instructions on the screen and work through the 20 examples together, helping your child to combine totals where necessary.
We will be covering lots of this in class, so don’t worry if your child is not ready to move on too quickly. We will also be doing lots of work on addition and subtraction and the strategies that can be used to help us combine/ subtract numbers more easily. We will update the blog with some of these strategies in a few weeks time, so that you can see how we work things out in class.
Happy Weekend!
