As part of Science  week each class were asked to send messages in different ways around the school. Year 2 sent messages using their own marble mazes. Next week the children will be planning and building Rube Goldberg models that will reveal messages. Please send in any cardboard rolls/tubes or boxes.

On Tuesday, Joe’s mum taught us how scientists can also be detectives! We had a mystery to solve…someone had taken Mrs Carey’s mug and had left a note asking for money for it’s return! We tested the pens of different teachers to find out who’s pen wrote the note, using chromatography paper. The children were very excited when they solved the mystery and discovered I had written the note!

We were also lucky enough to be visited by Anna’s mum and dad, who explained how they use Science in their jobs as vets, to care for sick or injured animals. We also identified and grouped animal skulls and looked at red and white blood cells of sick animals on the visualizer.

Today Jamie and Charlie’s mum visited with lots of different animals. We held some of them and learnt about different reptiles and invertebrates . Thank you to all the parents who shared their science knowledge with us.

Well done to Sive, Tara and all the Irish Dancers who entertained us  for St Patricks Day.

Have a great weekend

Miss Pringle

Home learning

Spag.com – a SATs SPAG test has been set. The only terminology they will be unfamiliar with is adverb (this is only for one question). An adverb is a word that describes a verb (doing word). For example He ate his breakfast quickly. The word ‘quickly’ is an adverb as it tells us how he ate (the verb) his breakfast.

Reading – please read and sign your reading records.

Mathletics – mulitplication and division activities have been set.

The children in Year 4, completed lots of interesting activities, as part of their British Science Week learning.

First, they built and tested string telephones to send a message across distance. Later, they re-designed their initial string telephones using different materials to see what affect that would have on the quality of sound and the distance covered.

The class also participated in a brilliant workshop led by Mrs Connelly, testing pens to find the culprit in a horrendous kidnapping case 🙂

We thank Mrs Connelly for giving up some of her time to organise this activity for us; the children really enjoyed the experiment.

The children also looked at interesting Science questions, such as what would happen if water couldn’t freeze or if the seas would turn gloopy like ketchup. They also completed Explorify activities from topics such as Sound, Animals including humans and States of Matter.

Other than Science, the children wrote evoking setting descriptions in English and completed engaging Chocolate -fraction problem solving tasks in Maths. They learnt about Alms Giving in RE, whilst looked at fake-news in Computing. They also finished their PE-Dance unit.

I hope you have a lovely Mother’s Day weekend, surrounded by family,

Ms Varga

Please see your Home Learning below:

Religious Education

This week we revised what we know about the season of Lent and focused on the act of Prayer. The children had great knowledge of when we pray, how we pray, why we pray and who we can pray too.

Mathematics 

Year 1 have been learning subtraction methods in Maths this week. They have learnt to count back, use a number line, think ten, subtract ones first. These are the methods we used:

Mathletics subtraction games have been set to support this learning and further learning can be found at:

Robot subtraction
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/robot-more-or-less

Mental maths train subtraction 
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/mental-maths-train

Subtraction grids
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/subtraction-grids

English

The children have enjoyed learning about Jill Murphy’s text ‘The Last Noo-noo’. They worked well in groups to sequence events of the story and liked going on their own ‘Noo-noo’ hunt around the classroom. When they found them they had to use their preposition words to describe where they were found. We tried to collect them all but are predicting we will be still be finding them next week!
You can access a reading of the text here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXDK0be85es 

Phonic sounds taught this week:

Focused on the alternative v (ve, love, dove)  and ch (tch, witch, hatch) sounds.
A learning sheet has been sent home to support this.

Addition home learning sheets sent home this week:

Handwriting- some tricky words to practise with the correct letter formation and height of letters in preparation to begin pre-cursive handwriting after Easter.

English story- Your child has their latest English story in their bag. It was completed independently at the end of our last unit. Please encourage them to read it to you and there are spellings attached to practise.

Home learning can be returned next Friday

Happy Friday, see you on Monday,

Miss Lambie 😀 🐝