Happy New Year

Term 3 Class Newsletter:

We hope that you have all had a lovely Christmas holiday and wish you all the best for the New Year! The Autumn term was a great term and the children all worked really hard to produce some brilliant work. We all really enjoyed our topic of the Ancient Egyptians.

ASIA

Our new theme for the Spring term will be Asia. We will be focusing on different countries over the next two half terms, including India, China, Bangladesh and Japan.

Curriculum Area	An idea of what we will be learning:
Literacy	We will be learning about stories from other cultures and about myths and legends. We will be reading different stories to help us develop our learning and understanding of our Topic.
Maths (Y4)	Fractions, decimals, percentages. Method for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Maths (Y5)	Percentages, Solving extended problems using all 4 operations, Reflective symmetry, Parallel and Perpendicular and Nets of 3D shapes.
Science	Our topic will be hot and cold.
Geography	Location of Asia and different countries in this continent. Comparing our own village and lives with an Indian village.
French	Classroom Objects Colours
SEAL	Going for goals.
RE	Our Main focus will be Buddhism.
Art	Our focus will be on exploring traditional art forms from some of the Asian countries we will be learning about.
Music	We will be listening and responding to some music from different cultures. We will explore the pentatonic scale.

PE

Please ensure that your child has their PE kit in school all week and that all items are named. We still hope to be outside when weather permits so please also ensure your child has suitable clothing for outdoor PE as well as indoor.

We have lots of exciting things planned for the term and thank you for your continued support. If you should have any queries, please do not hesitate to come and speak to us. 

Day 1:

Today we reflected on 2012 and thought about what we are looking forward to or hoping to achieve  in 2013. We have been learning about Janus who was an ancient Roman God. He had two faces, one looking forward and one looking back and so he could see the future and the past at the same time. He was the god of doors and gates and so of beginnings and openings. The month of January was named after him and was sacred to him. We used the idea of Janus to help us present our New Year Resolutions. 

We will be starting work on our new theme tomorrow. 

Here is a photo of our starting point display for our Asia theme. We will be adding to it with our work to show our learning over the coming weeks. 

ICT Day

On Thursday 29th November we enjoyed an ICT curriculum day. We started off our day in the ICT suite where we went on maths, literacy or e-safety games. We then had a talk from Dan Hawbrook who helped us learn how to keep safe when using the internet. In the afternoon we enjoyed using the Pro-Bots. Here are some photos of the day. 

Some photos

With his sarcophagus and tomb painting tile

Using dienes apparatus in maths to practically subtract.
This helped us to understand the expanded column method,
particularly 'borrowing'.

Playing sitting volley ball

Wearing pyjamas for Children in Need Day

Some of our falcon necklaces. 

Our Ancient Egyptian theme display. You can see some of the things we made on our trip to The Collection at Lincoln such as the papyrus. Also underneath are some examples of the fabulous information texts we wrote about pyramids and tombs. 

More of our falcon necklaces

Drama- scenarios to show what makes a good friend.

More drama

.Our homework was to find out about Ancient Egyptian jewellery and design
our own piece. Some children made their own version of Ancient Egyptian jewellery

As part of Children in Need, we had a go at being blindfolded
in order to empathise with people who have difficulties with their sight.

More blindfolded partner work. 

A falcon necklace

And another.....

And another....

More 'friendship' drama

A jewellery homework creation

Another jewellery design. 

A reminder that on Thursday will be our share afternoon so parents/ carers are welcome to come in and share with your child some of their work.

Term 2 so far in Eagle class...

Over the past few weeks we have been busy in Eagle class.

In literacy we have started our unit of Adventure stories and will be starting writing our own next week. We have enjoyed reading several stories which link to our Ancient Egyptian theme, including 'The Time Travelling Cat and the Egyptian Godess'. We thoroughly enjoyed this book and it took us over 5 weeks to read, reading a little each day.

                   

We have also read two shorter stories: 'The plot on the pyramid' and 'The magic and the mummy'. Whilst enjoying these stories, we have been identifying what they teach us about the Ancient Egyptians and also learning about features of stories. We will be using this to help us with our own stories.

As part of our learning about Ancient Egyptian jewellery, we made our own necklaces in the style of this falcon necklace. These are all hanging in our classroom.

In maths, Year 4s have been working really hard to learn new methods to carry out calculations. We have been using the expanded column methods to add and subtract and using the grid method to multiply.

In French, we have been learning to say the days of the week, using actions to help us remember.


Next week on Thursday (29th) will be our ICT day and also share afternoon. We hope that you will be able to join us from 2pm to share with your children some of what they have been learning so far this half term.

Investigate at The Collection, Lincoln

Today we had a fabulous day at The Collection, Lincoln, exploring further our theme of Ancient Egypt. Over the day we took part in 6 different activities and each one was brilliant. We were able to bring home what we had made in the craft sessions. Our 6 activities were:

- drama (acting out the story of Osiris)

- the big dig (becoming archaeologists and digging for artefacts) 

- drawing on papyrus

- making our own amulet

- making a sarcophagus

- a tour of the museum

Here are some photos of our activities. We were divided into groups with children from Osprey class also. 

The Big Dig

Making our sarcophagus 

Sarcophagus making

Making our amulet 

In costume for our drama 

Making a sarcophagus 

In costume as Queen Isis 

Discovering an artefact at the Big Dig

P.S. These photos are from 2 of the cameras taken- I will upload more when I have the photos from the other groups' cameras.

Sarcophaguses

During the last week of term 1 we set ourselves a mini project- to create our own sarcophagus! We have learnt about mummification (including the disgusting parts) and how pharoahs were buried.

Here is a photo of some of them laying out to fully dry over half term. 

By request from the children, we will be this week making a mummy to go inside our sarcophagus! 

Share Afternoon

Thank you to all of you who were able to come to our share afternoon. The children all enjoyed the opportunity to share with you some of their fabulous work from term 1.