The Aztecs and the Egyptians

This week there has been a strong focus in getting Sergi and Jordi to count objects and their numbers up to ten. Both boys have been working hard to do this and with the help of Sara and Judit, this week, the boys are beginning to know the order of the numbers to twenty, they are especially noticing a pattern with the last ‘teen’ numbers. We need to practise these everyday as we want to move towards using some taking away skills with counting backwards with ones very soon like the countdown at launch of a space rocket.

Jordi has gained a huge amount of confidence now in reading individual sounds and blending these sounds together to make familiar words. He recognised the separate sounds such as b-a-ck and put the sounds together to make the word back. It comes as a bit of a shock to him how many words he is getting correct now and so rapidly, what is really important now is that he fully recognises the context of what he is reading which was why when he read the word ‘back’ he could hear the example of how the English word was used in the sentence as well as pointing to his back whenever the word came up. He has to keep at this everyday though until he can read whole sentences of words.

The two girls have had a big practice in reading and solving word problems. We went through the problem solving routine of using RUCSAC (READ the question, UNDERSTAND the question, CHECK which number operation(s) you would use, SOLVE the problem (use a system to work towards the answer so you can explain what maths you are using), ANSWER the problem and finally CHECK again to see if the answer matches what the question asked for.

In their English work the girls were focusing on using descriptive writing to first describe a picture in as much detail as possible which led on to them writing a narrative for a short animated film called ‘Home sweet home’ which is about a house that decides to move away and have an adventure.

In science the girls focused on the effects that Earthquakes can have and how people should protect themselves in the event of one taking place. The girls had a short historical visit to the early history of Spain during 1492. They learned that parallel to what was happening in Spain, a very different history took place in England that grew up around a royal family called the Tudors. This led us towards the philosophical and logical thinking of two different cultures, thousands of miles apart through physical geography and time. (the Aztecs and the Egyptians) It is unlikely that both civilisations ever encountered one another yet there was a bizarre similarity – both civilisations built pyramids. It is still considered to be a great mystery. The girls went through all the possible ways that the civilisations could have possibly met in some way but they realised that none of these could be possible (no messages in a bottle, flights, letters, boats, or the chance of someone swimming to and from the countries)

We finished the week by creating welcome cards for a new teacher. The girls worked on their communication skills through their writing – when writing in the second person (you, your). The boys had a go too in writing the cards as well.