‘Remember, Remember the 5th of November!’ We began the week learning a little about Guy Fawkes and then watched some films and looked at pictures of fireworks. We drew our own interpretations of what we saw, thinking about colour, patterns and shapes. I’m sure you will agree the results are fantastic. All of the pictures are now on our classroom wall and they have really livened it up.
On Tuesday, a visitor arrived in the corner of our classroom in the form of a friendly spider called Charlotte. We have begun to read the novel ‘Charlotte’s Web’ and were very relieved in the first chapter when Fern saved Wilber the pig! Wilber has just moved to a new farm and at the moment has no friends, we think he may meet a special friend very soon.
On Wednesday we had a ‘Big Spell’ event in school where family members were invited in to see our spelling lessons. As we do twice a week, we had different spelling stations for us to choose from to allow us to practise our spelling words in various ways.
On Thursday we did a ‘setting’ activity based on Charlotte’s Web. We listened to an extract from Chapter 3 which described the barn that Wilber has just moved to. We then chose an activity to show our understanding of the setting. Some of us wrote about it, some drew detailed pictures and some built it using Lego. All of the children now have a good understanding of what a ‘setting’ is and I could tell they listened well as they added a lot of detail in each of the tasks.
The 22nd November is not far away and we are continuing to prepare for our Benchball Festival. We had some really close games and I can see that our skills are improving all the time. This week we thought about our positioning and tried to find spaces to allow our teammates to pass the ball to us.
As we approach a very special Armistice Day with the 100th Anniversary of the end of the First World War, we have been learning the ‘Poppy Story’ which has helped us to understand why we wear poppies at this time of year. We also had our own poppy factory at Golden Time on Friday. The children used different resources to create their own poppies – with great results!
We also learned a little about communication during the war as our problem solving task this week was to use morse code to decode a secret message. We also looked at several other methods of communication during the first and second world wars, the children were all very interested and engaged in this.
In numeracy, we are continuing our work on addition, although we are adding 2-digit numbers, remembering our number bonds within 10 helps us with this work. If you are trying a maths games next week for homework, number bonds games would be a good idea.
In Science with Mrs McVay we were learning about the eight planets in the Solar System and began to learn the correct order for them. The children completed a scavenger hunt to find the names of the planets and then grouped them into the rocky planets and the gas giants. They listened to ‘The Planets’ by Holst and tried to identify which part of the music represented what planet. Some children have been drawing the solar system in their free play time – a sure sign they have and enjoyed and understood the lessons 🙂
Friday was the deadline for our Shoebox Appeal. We have been overwhelmed by how generous Springfield families have been. There will be a special blog about it next week but a big thank you to those who handed something in 🙂
Have a great weekend, from P3B and Mrs Kennedy
