Our topic for this half term will be Crime and Punishment.

Here is a copy of our knowledge organiser for this half term.

Weekly Updates

We had a fantastic Christmas week! Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

We got to visit Santa in his grotto!

We finished our calendars!

And made our Christmas cards (photos uploaded after Christmas so we didn't ruin your lovely surprises).

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In this last week we have finished off our music learning by singing in rounds. 

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In English we concluded our study of Holes by writing our own chapters continuing the story after Stanley had been caught with Mr. Sir's sunflower seeds. They had to decide how the conversation would go between Stanley, Mr. Sir and the Warden and what the consequences would be.

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In our last history lesson we have looked at how the Anglo-Saxons determined guilt using trial by ordeal.

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In our last lesson of science this half term we looked at different ways to separate mixtures, including filtration, magnetic attraction, evaporation and sieving.

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In history we have looked at the humiliating punishments the Tudors used to deter others from committing crime.

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In PE the children have been working on dance moves. They have been focusing on using canon (moving one after another) and unison (moving together) movements and varying their levels when performing.

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In history, we have been looking at the life of a prisoner during Victorian times. They used to have to perform hard labour exercises in total silence for a whole day - we did it for just one minute and already felt tired (and struggled to stay silent!) - we will be writing a diary as a prisoner to explain what they would have been feeling and thinking.

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This week in maths we have been looking at multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 using the Jump song. This has helped the children to remember which way to move the number on a place value grid and by how many spaces.

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In English we have looked at conditional sentences and used them to build an argument for who Stanley should give the gold tube to - the Warden or X-ray?

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In maths we have learnt some steps to determine if a number is a prime number or not - if it ends in 2, 4, 6, 8, 0 or 5 it is not a prime (except for 2 and 5 themselves) or if the digits add up to a single digit of 3, 6 or 9 it is not a prime number (except for 3 itself) or if it is a multiple of 7. Otherwise (apart from the number 1) any other number will be a prime number!

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We have been focusing on learning our square numbers during our mastering number sessions and enjoy using our arm gestures to represent our square number factors and products.

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We had fun in Science investigating whether different materials would dissolve.

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We completed our third music lesson exploring musical phrasing and singing ‘Quiet’ from Matilda. We focused on the different  dynamics and the different tempos and timbre used to express the different parts of the story - when she is stressed and angry and overwhelmed by everything around her versus when she is inside her own head and everything is calm.
 

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In RE we are going to be exploring some inspirational people - this week we focused on Mahatma Gandhi.

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In music we are looking at choral compositions where there is more than one voice to a part (different pitches). Then we looked at how musical phrasing is used to tell a story using dynamics (volume) and timbre (type of sound). The children will be applying theses skills to singing the opening scene to the holes movie this week so look out for our video later.

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In science we have been looking at reversible and irreversible reactions and have created some great drawings to illustrate the processes.

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In English we have been building our bank of vocabulary to help us write our setting description for Camp Green Lake. We have collated ideas of the language Louis Sacher uses to describe the senses: sight, smell, taste, touch and sound, and the way he makes the reader experience the emotions that are being felt without directly saying them. We then looked at our figurative language to create imagery in our writing: similes (comparing like or as), metaphors (direct comparison) and personification (comparing to a human action).

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In maths we have started our new unit on multiplication and have been working systematically to find our common multiples and factors. We know that it is important to work systematically so that we don’t miss any numbers out!

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In Jigsaw we created our own personal culture wheels to explore our individuality and differences. This ties in with our assemblies this week on British Values. (photos to follow)

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We also started our new History topic on Crime and Punishment through the ages. We’ve begun by looking at how crime and punishment is dealt with in today’s society and how the court system works. We thought about how the crimes people may commit now may differ from in previous time periods due to advances in technology leading to cybercrime.

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We started our new book, Holes by Louis Sacher, and the children are captivated by it already.

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Our first day back was our RE focus day. The children learnt all about Eucharist and how Jesus shared bread to represent his body and wine to represent his blood with his disciples for them to remember him and his sacrifice. We shared some bread and reflected on who we could be thankful to for each bread we tried. We then explored the ‘fruits of the Holy Spirit’ sharing examples of when we have demonstrated love, kindness, patience and joy. The children then demonstrated all of the knowledge they have acquired about Christian celebrations in a balanced argument about which they believe to be the most important: Christmas, Easter, Pentacost or Eucharist.