Week 1 - Welcome back

We hope you all had a relaxing half term. The children have come back and have shown us great enthusiasm and courageousness to continue where they left off.

English - Meerkat Mail

The week started off with a suprise when a mysterious suitcase got delivered to our class. Safely, Mr Dickenson opened the case and found what seemed like random items. However as the week went on the children worked out that they are all linked to the story Meerkat Mail. Through the use of adjectives and time connectives, the children have been able to sequence the story and write about how Sunny (the main Meerkat) feels throughout the story.

Maths - Multiplication grouping

This week we started looking at multiplication by practising skip counting in 2's, 5's and 10's from zero and from any given number. The children were able to quickly see and spot the patterns when starting from zero. However, it became trickier when starting from different numbers. The children were able to use mathematical equipment to show how the amounts increased each time.

Computing - Digital photography

This half term we are learning about digital photography. This week the children looked at how the devices for photography have changed over the last 120 odd years. The children had a great time playing photography bingo, where they had the challenge of taking 6 different photos using Ipads.

PE - Gymnastics

This week the children were focusing on balance and coordination when creating different positions with different points of contact using a combination of "pitch points" (Small points) and "patch points" (big points). The children initially thought about themselves before slowly working with others to create different positions.

Tusk Day

On Friday we dedicated the day to focussing on the charitable work of Tusk. Earlier on in the week the children had practised mixing primary colours to make secondary colours and how gradually adding white can change the tint of colours. We decided to put these newly learnt skills in to practise by creating some  silhouette artwork to promote the endangered animals Tusk is working to protect.

We also looked at how advertisements are used to persuade and influence us emotionally and recorded short video to show what we had learnt from them. 

Week 2 - Remembrance

PSHE / History

To commemorate remembrance week, we looked at John McCrae's famous poem "In Flanders Field." The children started this by examining pictures of the devastating  WW1 battlefields and labelling what they could see and how it made them feel before comparing them with poppy fields. The children then learnt about how John McCrae came about writing his poem before dissecting the poem to understand the meaning of words and create artwork based on it.

Maths - multiplication - "groups of"

This week in maths we have been looking at multiplication and explored how when we see the X symbol it means "groups of" or "lots of". We spent a lot of time grouping objects, including ourselves to put this into practise before moving on to learn about arrays are used to visually show multiplication groupings in columns and rows.

English - Meekat Mail - Sunny's new home

As Sunny decided to visit us we thought we would look for where he might like to stay and then think about the good and bad points of the different places - Sunny can be very particular!!!

Science - Growing Seeds

This week we started our first experiment of seeing what a seed needs to germinate. The children chose how much water they were going to give the seeds and compared whether or not a seed needs sunlight. The children didn't think that any of the seeds would grow as none of the seeds were in soil. We will wait and see.

Week 3 - Inter~faith  and anti~bullying week

PSHE and RE

This week we explored the importance of celebrating differences. The theme for anti- bullying week this year is "kindness" and so the children created poems to show the power of kindness. 

We also explored the Islamic faith and looked at the similarities and differences between it and Christianity. The children looked at how vegetal patterns are used in Islamic mosques and as part of their celebrations and had a go at making their own.

English - Letters from Sunny the Meerkat

This week the children looked at features of writing an informal letter. They were able to recognise and identify these features in different samples of writing and then used these to create their own letters from Sunny to his parents writing to them about his stay at Catherington school.

Maths - Shapes

This week the children went on a hunt around the school looking and identifying 2d and 3d shapes. The children learnt to identify the shapes by identify the properties of shapes and using the correct mathematical language such as faces, edges and vertices. The children then had a go at making their own 3d shapes and the labelled their shapes with their properties.

History - London then and now

In history this week the children looked at different artists portrayal of the Great Fire of London to get an idea of what London would have looked like in the past. The children then compared London now with the city of London back in 1666 and discussed what has changed and predicted why it might have changed.

Week 4

English - The Tunnel

This week we we started our new writing journal - The Tunnel by Anthony Browne. The children looked at the illustrations and became the characters by crawling through their own tunnel and creating freeze frames from the book to understand how the characters might feel and the language they might use.