A very special visitor
Earlier this week, we welcomed a very special guest into our classroom – none other than Mrs Richardson’s dad! He came in to talk to us about rationing and evacuation, which links into our topic work on food throughout time – as well as our current class novel ‘Friend or Foe’.
We all found it fascinating hearing about what life was like growing up in the war and what kinds of foods he ate – some of them sounded quite weird!
We’d like to say a big thank you to Mrs Richardson’s dad for giving up his time and giving us such a memorable experience.
Odd socks for anti-bullying
On Monday, to kick off anti-bullying week, we joined in by wearing odd socks with many other children in the school and around the country.
The idea was to celebrate the fact that everybody is different, everybody is unique and we should celebrate our differences. We had a circle where we reminded ourselves what bullying is and what we can do to prevent it.
Our school message is: STOP
Several Times On Purpose
We then reminded ourselves that we should:
Start Telling Other People
Living and Learning: I can show perseverance
Our Christian value this half term is perseverance. This week it was the focus of our Living and Learning session. We looked closely at the words in this definition: ‘Persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success’.
Everyone closed their eyes and said the first thing that came into their heads related to the word ‘persevere’:
“To try and try again.”– Jessica
“Challenge yourself, don’t give up”. – Lily
“Be resilient, like one of the 8 Rs.” – Hannah
“When I persevere towards a goal I feel happy because I know I’m challenging myself.”-Emily
I posed the phrase ‘practice makes perfect’, but was very astutely corrected by Oliver: “No, practice makes progress, not perfect.”
Finally we watched an animated clip about one animal’s perseverance to overcome all the obstacles in his way. He didn’t give up and remained focused on his goal.
We left the session with a small task for next week:
Think of an achievable goal or target you are going to work towards.
You’ll need to demonstrate how you showed perseverance to accomplish your target.
We’ve all got until Christmas to work on our chosen goal.
Fantastic feast, scrumptious scran and brilliant banquet
The highlight of our week has been preparing and eating our very own Tudor banquet to go with our time travel topic on food and our current book, ‘A Medieval Feast’.
Our first task was – just like the serfs in the book – to prepare some of the food. We made a soup from a variety of winter vegetables, flavoured with parsley and other herbs.
Then came time for the actual feast. We had servants to announce each course with a drumroll, toasts to the king and queen and other honoured guests throughout the meal, jesters to entertain us between courses and, of course, the mouth-watering food.
We had the soup which we’d made earlier in the week with scrumptious corn bread. We followed this up with succulent roast chicken and fresh vegetables. All washed down with goblets overflowing with fruity red wine – not really! It was a feast fit for a king.
Living and Learning: I can participate in democratic decisions.
Last week the election for School Councillors gave us an opportunity to explore democracy, which is one of the British values.
We thought about how unfair it would be if important decisions affecting our lives, school and community were made without us having the chance to influence the decision. The process of voting in a democratic society gives us this opportunity.
Then, in preparation for the School Council elections, some of us gave short speeches to persuade our classmates to vote for us if we promised certain things. Issues raised included ‘all children should take 30 minutes of exercise each day’ and ‘children should not wear a uniform to school’.
It was brilliant to hear lots of well thought out responses.
Meet your new school councillors
After a week of learning about democracy as one of the British values, we have voted for our school councillors. Each councillor – as well as the other candidates that weren’t elected – had to make a small speech and answer questions on why they should be elected as a school councillor.
We would like to wish them good luck in their roles and look forward to seeing them succeed and help make our school the best it can be!
Odd one out
As you may have seen from previous homework and news posts, the majority of our learning this half term has been about place value and the number system. We have represented, compared and ordered numbers to 1000 in may different ways.
As such, this morning we played a game called ‘Odd one out’. The objective of the game was to spot the odd one out in a series of pictures which depicted a number from 1-1000 using various representations.
Once we had answered questions in our books, we all made them for each other and also a whole class problem on the board for all of you to try at home.
Don’t send in your answers – it’s just for fun!
Homework superstars
Last week, we were asked to create games or quizzes all about our learning on place value in maths.
The time and effort that went into these was astonishing! We have been playing some of the games today and not only are they well thought out and fun, but they actually help with learning too!
Take a look at some of our stand-out stars below!
Living and Learning: I understand with rights come responsibilities.
This week, we expanded our understanding about the rights we have as children.
Building on from our previous discussions, we looked closely at the responsibility that comes with each right:
I have the right to an education so I have the responsibility to make the most of school and be ‘ready to learn’. – Harvey
Several of us mentioned having the right to ‘be myself’. We talked about how these protected characteristics make us who we are, and it is our responsibility not to judge or bully others for being themselves and the choices they make.
We considered how each right fits together with a responsibility, a bit like putting 2 pieces of a jigsaw together. We thought about how our behaviours towards others and the environment can affect everyone:
“I have the right to be warm but it’s my responsibility not to waste energy”. – Lukne
“I have the right to live in a clean environment so it’s my responsibility not to drop litter”. – Jessica
Green radioactive water
Earlier in the week, we were working on measuring capacity using bright green, radioactive water – just kidding… it was only food colouring!
We had to apply our knowledge of place value to count in steps of 10 or 50 on different scales. We also had to make sure we were very accurate in our measuring and not just guessing where the water line was.
Maybe at home you’d like to try measuring out different amounts of liquid. Don’t use bright green, radioactive water though!
