This term in literacy the children have continued reading a whole class text, focusing on skimming and scanning, inference and character descriptions. They have also been developing their creative writing skills in preparation to plan and write the final writing assessment of the year- a narrative to describe the Amazon jungle! The children have recapped and consolidated their understanding of using apostrophes, direct speech with inverted commas and literary features. They have been doing short drama activities to inspire their writing, which has been very beneficial! 

Maths 

This term in maths, the children have enjoyed a range of practical activities as they have learned about units of measure and money. The children weighed a range of objects as they learned about kilograms and grams and comparing the different masses of objects. They then moved onto capacity, first estimating the amount of water in different vessels, before measuring it accurately. When we learned about money, we made sure that we spoke about the value and importance of money, as well as learning to recognise different amounts of money and look at a range of reasoning problems. Well done to Huryra, Aaron and Clarissa were chosen to represent the school in the ‘Count on us’ London maths challenge this term! 

Topic 

This term in Topic we have been learning all about Rivers. The children have explored and then created their own diagrams showing how a river is formed and labeling the different parts of a river such as: the source, meander, oxbow lakes, river mouth and deltas. They researched how the River Thames has changed over time and created their own fact sheets based on their inquiries. Finally, we explored why people choose to settle near rivers. They created their own maps to show which human features would likely be found at which part of a river, creating a key to explain why. To embed this learning we have been making links to previous lessons such as: our Geography field study when the children walked along the banks of the River Thames, our Roman Topic from Autumn 2 when we looked at the settlement of Rome next to the River Tiber, our Science knowledge about the water cycle to think about why the river source is usually found on high ground and our PSHE 'effects on the environment lessons’ to explore erosion and flooding.