13th March

Another jam-packed week!

Our English lessons were all about showing off what we can do; we completed a reading paper and completed two assessment pieces of writing. In Maths, we focused on fluency of some processes we have struggled with. We worked extremely hard at long multiplication, multiplying and dividing fractions, finding fractions of amounts and adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators.

In Science, we thought about how long it takes to orbit the Sun. After some research, we found out that the further the planet is away from the Sun, the longer it takes to orbit it. We also discussed the geocentric model (Earth as the centre of the solar system) and the heliocentric model (Sun as the centre of the solar system.) We concluded that the lack of resources and knowledge probably led to Ptolemy thinking Earth was at the centre. In PE, we were able to get outside and practise passing in netball. We looked at the chest pass, the overhead pass and the bounce pass. The children worked really hard to keep their first foot ‘stuck’ to the playground and not move. In RE, we started to explore prophets in Islam. Ask your child what a prophet is. We also found out that it is thought there are 124,000 prophets, but only 25 are mentioned in the Qur’an. In PSHE, our unit it based on healthy body and minds. Our focus today was getting enough exercise and getting enough sleep. We had some great discussions and the children were keen to share their exercise and sleep habits! For our History, we explored the 7 kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon Britain, which part of the country they settled and how they lived together. Then yesterday we were lucky enough to have Newbury Museum come and visit us. We were able to explore actual Anglo-Saxon artefacts; we needed to guess what they were, their job and what they were made from. After that, we made broaches, tried on Anglo-Saxon clothes and completed some rune writing. It was a fantastic workshop. A little reminder – the museum is free to enter. Please check out all the other artefacts and displays.

Finally, this week has been full of sports: the girls competed in a football tournament (and came second!) and a mixture of boys and girls took part in a rugby festival. It was very cold, wet and windy, but they had a great time working as a team. Well done to all the children - they were great ambassadors for our school.

Have a great weekend.