Marvellous May - Learning in Action
May Blog
It may have been quite a short term but we have managed to fit in lots of marvellous learning!
English
To fit with our Creative Curriculum topic of ‘All Around the World’, we have started a new text, Juana and Lucas. Juana is a girl in Bogota, Columbia who struggles when she finds out she has to learn ‘the English’. The children have already been exposed to some Spanish words (they know the meaning of futbol, amigo, muy and immediatamente, to name but a few). Juana loves brussel sprouts and her dog Lucas but she hates it when the classroom is hot and stinky after she’s been playing futbol outside at lunchtime. We have learned that Bogota is a large city and people generally speak Spanish. Juana likes riding her bike around the city.
Juana’s hero, Astroman, has been the focus of our recent learning. The children have been writing newspaper reports about Astroman. Reports include Astroman discovering aliens, saving the world from global warming and even discovering that stars are actually made out of chocolate!
“I like when Juana reads her book when she shouldn’t be because whenever her mum is coming, Lucas gives her a signal."
Most children have moved up a level on the Accelerated Reader scheme this half term. Every time they score 85% or above, the children move up a level and get a sticker for their book chart. Some children have over twenty stickers and Miss Dolman is hopeful that someone from 4RD will be the lucky winner of Mrs Adams’s trip to town prize!
“My favourite book this half term was ‘Under the Ground’. It was about how these two explorers went underground and were swimming underground in the ocean. One of the people found a cat skull!”
“My favourite book was 'Animal Homes'!”
“My favourite book this half term was ‘The Midnight Gang’!”
Creative Curriculum
During our foundation studies this half term, we have been refreshing our knowledge about the world. The children are confident with their understanding of continents, oceans and where they might find certain countries. While we will be focusing more on the Americas after half term, we have spent these past few weeks looking at Coventry and how it has made an impact on the world. We have looked at inventors such as James Starley (who made bicycles), Massey Ferguson (a large tractor company based in Coventry) and Sir Frank Whittle, who invented the turbo-jet engine!
Did you know Massey Ferguson could produce 70,000 tractors a year?
“I liked learning about Sir Frank Whittle because he created the turbo-jet engine.”
“I really liked in Creative Curriculum when we learned about James Starley because he made the first bike and I like the aerial bike.”
OneChange Workshop
This week, we have had a workshop to help us build our resilience as well as our confidence. We learned that we should never leave anyone behind and we should help others when they are stuck. Teamwork was a big focus of the session. We had to work together as a team to find the quickest way to pass the ball around everybody. Two teams managed to reach a joint final time of 0:26, less than a second!
“It was really fun and I especially liked the game at the end when we had to get everyone across the river!”
Maths
This half term, we have learned more about how to add, subtract, divide and multiply money and how to use the symbols for money correctly. We have also worked hard to perfect our rounding! We have been rounding to the nearest pound which has been a little bit tricky but we have tried our best and never given up!
We have also continued practicing our times tables. More and more children are now beating their scores and even managing to score 100% in less than five minutes!
