We began the week researching Williamina Fleming as part of the whole school ‘Famous Scot’ focus. I showed the children a picture of Williamina and they discussed their thoughts on her – the date of the photograph? Do her clothes tell us anything? What do you think she was famous for? We then looked at a picture of the Horsehead nebula and asked what they thought it was and how the two pictures could be related? The children had some great ideas – quite a few thought Williamina was an artist and the nebula was her painting, someone thought the nebula looked like a volcano and maybe she was the first person to discover it.
On conducting an internet research, the children quickly discovered that the picture was the Horsehead nebula and it was first recorded in 1888 by Scottish astronomer Williamina Fleming at the Harvard College Observatory. The children made notes on Williamina’s life and we used these notes to learn how to write a report. This was quite a new concept and we worked hard to use headings and sub-headings as well as write in paragraphs, using our notes to help. The children were quick to realise that although Williamina did not always have an easy life she worked hard and became successful.
On Wednesday we had our first visit to the new library. Mrs Manlove and some very helpful parents have made it much more welcoming and easy to use. The children really enjoyed choosing a book, especially as there are quite a few new ones. We will visit the library each Wednesday so please try to remember to bring books back that day.
In numeracy we are continuing with subtraction – moving onto subtracting a single-digit from a 2-digit number, and subtracting multiples of 10. In outer maths we have been looking at time. Reading digital and analogue clocks – O’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to. While we are pretty good at it. Some of us have to keep practising quarter to and quarter past and thinking about the size of the hands on the analogue clock to help us. maybe you could practise this at home and when you are out and about – can you find any clocks to read?
On Friday, we were consolidating counting to ten in French and learning how to read the number words in French. We played some good games on the smartboard, sang some songs in French and then worked with a partner to match the words to the numbers and played a pairs game together. At the end we played hangman with french words – it is amazing how well this helps to learn to read the words as the children begin to think about where the letters come in each word in order to be the first to guess correctly. Lots of enthusiasm this morning – great work!
Have a good weekend everyone, more bright, cold days would be nice 🙂
P3B and Mrs Kennedy
