Presentation of Projects november

This week the older children have been continuing to use different  methods for adding, multiplying and dividing fractions, as well as simplifying other fractions.

In Literacy, we studied poems by the poet Pie Corbett, who uses repetition and similes to describe different themes. We all wrote two verses each for a class poem using the same repetition techniques as Pie Corbett. 

Later in the week, we were solving "What Am I?" riddles and had a lot of fun creating our own. 

We also began learning a new song, Launch Party, to be included in our end of year Christmas performance. 

Finally, I'd like to say a huge well done to all the children for their excellent presentation of their learning from the previous month at our Presentation of Projects ceremony.

This week in English, the children have been continuing their work on rhyming and there's been a noticeable improvement in their understanding in this area. We will continue with this unit for one more week and will write rhyming couplets by the end of the week. 

In Maths, we have been consolidating our knowledge of place value, counting in 2s, writing numbers and learning numbers up to 100. We have been using number lines and 100 squares to help us. 

We have been carefully watching our plants grow with much excitement! The younger children are excited to see their plant each day and love watching it steadily grow and watering it. They are continuing to learn the vocabulary: stem, leaves, root, soil, seed and using the vocabulary to talk about it. 

We have also been learning about different professions so that we are ready to go out in the local area to visit some work places and businesses. We talked about the different job roles, places of work and what we would like to be when we grow up. We presented this information in our presentation on Friday to the parents.

Homo Sapiens

The older children began the week in exciting fashion by visiting the local police station in Llinars. They spoke to police officers and even had a look in one of the holding cells! 

In Literacy, we finished off our Monster Poems and began looking at the differences between structured and free verse poems in preparation for next week's lessons. 

We continued working on geometry in our Maths lessons by investigating area, as well as perimeters of compound shapes. 

We also thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Science museum on Wednesday.

Finally, we have been completing our projects on Antarctica for our Geography lessons during the week.

This week in English, the children have been learning how to rhyme for our unit on Poetry. It's a difficult skill to learn and we have been working on it all week using picture cards to help with vocabulary and playing games such as rhyming bingo. We will continue this unit of work next week. Please reinforce rhyming at home! 

In Maths, we have been consolidating our learning of numbers up to and past 20, counting both forwards and backwards. The year 1s and 2s have been counting in 10s, ordering numbers up to 40 and have a much better understanding of place value and a better recognition of numbers. We will continue learning numbers up to 100. 

We planted peas at the beginning of the week and have been watering them and watching them grow carefully. We are recording our observations and now that we have learnt the vocabulary associated with plants, we will be able to apply this to our observations. 

In Phonics, the children have been learning some difficult sounds: th, sh, ch and ng. Please reinforce these sounds at home. Some suggested words to read and write are: 

thin, thick, ship, shot, fish, wish, chip, chop, sing, wing, gong.

Some poetry

This week in English, the children continued their learning about instructions. They learnt how to be 'bossy' in order to use 'bossy' (imperative) verbs such as go, put, say, cut etc. which tell people what to do. This culminated in a sandwich making lesson where children had to use these verbs to explain to me how to make a sandwich before carrying out their instructions and making their own sandwiches! After this, they wrote down their instructions in their writing books using their phonic knowledge learnt so far including tricky words. They really worked hard on this piece of work and it was a proud moment to see their completed written pieces.

In Maths, the year ones and twos continued learning about the value of numbers with regards to place value and used and drew dienes blocks to represent their numbers. The younger children focused on counting to 10 or 20 and recognising numbers.

The children have all planted a seed and are ready to watch it grow and write about the progress of their plant! We have been learning about what plants need to grow and also about the different parts of a flowering plant.

The older children began learning about Poetry in Literacy. We created our own cute/scary monsters and started to plan narrative poems about them, using poetic techniques such as alliteration and similes.

In Numeracy, we started our topic on length and perimeter, focusing on solving lengths of different sides of shapes using the given lengths of other sides in those shapes.

The class were super excited to learn about Antarctica! We watched some fascinating documentaries about life in extremely cold weather, made polar bear pictures using plastic bags to replicate ice bergs, and began planning PowerPoint presentations to depict various areas of interest regarding the Antarctic.

On another note, please could you encourage all the children to familiarise themselves with the songs for the upcoming Christmas performance in December. Your support with this will be hugely appreciated.

At the end of the week, we said farewell to Elena, whose support and care for the children will be sadly missed. We wish you all the best in the future and hope to see you again one day. Finally, let me personally thank all the staff, parents and students for all the well wishes and gifts for my Birthday. It was a truly special day.

Halloween

This week, we celebrated Halloween! Prior to the day, we made decorations and hung them in the classroom ready for our big celebration. On the day, we baked biscuits and decorated them including Halloween shapes and witches' fingers! We had so much fun making and then eating them and all the older children were really helpful supporting the younger children; big thank you to them all! Later that day, we headed to the swimming pool for our weekly lesson where we discovered that the changing room corridor had been transformed into a spooky Halloween scene! The afternoon involved lots of fun Halloween games including pin the bone on the skeleton and wink murder. 

We also welcomed a new addition to the school this week; welcome Emmy from England! She has been helping out with the younger children and they have already formed a good bond. 

In Maths, we have been looking at 2d and 3d shapes and we will continue this learning next week. With the older children, we used dienes blocks to talk about place value (e.g 16 is 10 and 6).

The older children in Key Stage 2 and 3 have been reviewing their long division strategies to solve problems.
Earlier in the week we were creating spider webs using paper and spiders made from pipe cleaners, as well as 3D pumpkins to decorate our classroom for Hallowe'en.
We also began our Geography topic and together we discussed what types of things we would like to learn about in the topic, such as how people live in countries with extreme weather conditions.