Week 1

Maths - Multiplication

This week we started focusing on multiplication meaning the same as "lots of" or "groups of" objects. What better way of grouping objects than starting by grouping yourself? We looked at how many groups of children we would have when grouped by different amounts. We then followed this by grouping objects by amount using multilink, numicon, and money.

History - The great fire of London

We started our topic with a very strange question - "What links a bucket, a fire, a diary, and a lump of cheese?" The children came up with various answers and discussed what they already knew about the Great fire of London.

Computing - photography

We started this topic by looking at how the devices used for taking photography has evolved over the last 120 years. The children sorted devices into old and and new and discussed how the end result was produced. We discussed how photos can now be reviewed pretty much instantly compared to having to wait weeks to see the results.

Music - Christmas is coming

With less than 60 days ... it is true!! So we looked at 2 well known Christmas songs - "Sleigh Ride" and "Jingle Bells" to explore how steady rhythms are created and adapted. The children started off copying the rhythms using body percussion before moving on to using instruments. The children used wooden and metal percussion instruments and were able to play the different steady rhythms in "Jingle Bells" replicating the sleigh bells and the galloping horse. 

Dance - The cat

We were able to show what we had remembered from our gymnastics last term in our first dance lesson this week when we had to combine high and low movements to replicate cat movements. The children created different movements and poses for cats doing different things such as sleeping, stretching, hunting, and falling back to sleep. The children then explored movement they could add to link their poses before working on timings to create their dance piece to music.

Art - Primary colour wheel

Before we looked at paintings of the Great Fire of London, we explored how different colours and shades of colours can be created by mixing primary colours and adding different amounts of white.

Science - Where does our food comes from?

We started our new science topic by exploring the answers to this question. 

After initially suggesting home and shops, we started to think about where our food actually starts from which led us to think about how some of our food is grown. Eventually we arrived at seeds and then discussed whether or not all  fruit has the same number and same size of seeds. We decided to find this out by cutting open some different fruits and identifying the seed / seeds.

Week 2 - Remembrance - PSHE and History

This week our theme was "remembrance". We recapped what we already knew about remembrance and how the poppy is an important symbol for remembrance at this time of year to help us remember those that serve, have served and those that made the ultimate sacrifice. We learnt about John Mcrae who was a military doctor who wrote the poem Flanders Field. We discussed as a class what it could have been like for John and what he witnessed to move him to write his poem. We compared pictures from the frontline with pictures of fields of poppies and generated powerful adjective word banks to describe what we saw and how it made us feel.

After this we examined Flanders Field and explored words we did not know and generated pictures to capture what we thought certain lines meant. We then used these pictures to create art work of Flanders Field breaking it into the 3 sections it was written.

On Friday 11th November, just before 11 o'clock we joined the rest of the school and country to join in with a 2 minutes silence to give thanks and remember.

English - Meerkat Mail

This week started strangely when a suitcase was delivered to our classroom with a travel stamp of "Madagascar" on it. After a short debate, we decided to find out who the case might belong to by open it up and seeing if there were any clues. There were some strange things in it including an umbrella, eggs, a balloon, a picture of a termite mound and a hornbill, and a Meerkat. This led us to start our new writing journey - "Meerkat Mail" by Emily Gravett.

We read the story and found out about the adventure Sunny the Meerkat had been on - linking the items found in the case to different parts of the story. We then used some drama freeze frames to act out different opening sections of the story along with our knowledge of adjectives to create a powerful word bank of describing words to capture Sunny's emotions throughout the story. We then moved on to learning about time connectives to help us correctly sequence the story. 

Maths - Arrays

Following on from last weeks grouping, we focussed on arrays and how they are used to help us lay out and count groups of a larger quantity. To help us become familiar with arrays, we decided to explore our local environment to see if we could find any arrays around us - we were shocked by how many arrays we found - they are all around us in buildings and clothing. 

We then focussed on creating our own arrays to work out our 2's, 5's, 10's, and even 3 times table questions before looking at arrays and working out what the calculations could be. 

Week 3 - Inter faith and anti bullying week

As part of our inter faith week we explored and celebrated the Islamic faith by finding out special days that are celebrated and special places to worship. We also looked at racial discrimination and learnt about Malala Yousafzai's story of how she over came discrimination to fight for education for all and became one of the youngest winners of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

We also looked at Islamic art and how patterns, flowers and plants are used to inspire art work seen in Islamic Mosques. We were inspired to design and create our own vegetal art.

Maths - Geometry - 2d shapes and lines of symmetry

This week in maths we focussed on naming and describing 2d shapes by their properties of number of sides and vertical lines of symmetry. We then looked at 3d shapes and identified the different 2d shape faces we could recognise on them. When we were confident with 2d shapes we then used these shapes to explore fractions focussing on half and a quarter.

English - Meerkat Mail - settings and features of a letter

As Sunny the Meerkat failed to find another "perfect place" to live in the story, we decided to find one for him around our school. We looked at how in the book Sunny finds a different place, tells us what is good but then why he isn't fully happy and moves on. We chose different areas and thought about why it could be a good home and what Sunny would find wrong with it. We also learnt about spelling rules for comparative and superlative adjectives by adding either "er" or "est".

At the end of the week the children recalled features found within a letter and were able to identify them in letters. 

Science - Seeds, beans, and bulbs

Having worked out that a lot of our food is grown from seeds, we decided to explore the different kinds of seeds, beans and bulbs that are in our local environment. We examined these using magnifying glasses to work out and identify where the shoots and roots may grow from.

Week 4

English - Meerkat Mail

We finished our writing journey of Meerkat mail this week with the children planning, writing, editing, and publishing amazing letters as if they were Sunny writing to his family about his time at Catherington. The children were very creative and used adventurous vocabulary and time connectives to help make their letters interesting and informative. We are going to send these letters off to the author Emily Gravett to see what she thinks.

Maths - More than, less than

This week we focussed on addition and subtraction using 10. First we reviewed what we had learnt at the start of the year by ordering numbers and using the greater than and less than symbols. Afterwards we looked at one more and one less than a chosen number before moving to 10 more and 10 less. This led us to then looking at number sentences that involved adding and subtracting 10.

Art - Lieve Verschuier's Great fire of London painting

Through history, we have learnt that photos and video recording hadn't been invented by 1666. Therefore, as historians, we have to get our information from painting created around that time. One famous painting of the Great Fire was painted by the artist Lieve Verschuier, who used thin and thick brushes to create the desired effect. The children explored the different effects they could create using the different brushes before having a go at recreating Verschuier's painting. 

Music - Tuned percussion

So far this year we have looked at body and vocal percussion, and untuned percussion instruments. This week however, it was time to explore the tuned percussion with xylophones. Unfortunately, when they were brought in, all the notes had been taken off and this meant the children had to learn the order of the different note letters, along with their knowledge of pitch, and put them back in the right place to be able to play them.

Week 5

English - The Tunnel

The children were very excited when they arrived back in from play time to find a tunnel had appeared and replaced their door. The children had to crawl through and find out what was at the other end. It was our next writing journey story - Anthony Browne's The Tunnel. The children are really enjoying the story and examining the illustrations to draw out more information and make connections with other fairy tale stories from items hidden in the drawings.

Art - The Great Fire of London

This week we looked at a different art medium used to capture the historical moment of the Great Fire of London, we looked at charcoal and sketching pencils. The children were shown a small section from an unknown artists sketch of the fire and then given the challenge of creating the rest of the piece using the techniques they have learnt and could see in the picture. The children did an amazing job and really took into account the use of lines, shapes and patterns used.