Welcome to the home page for the second half of the autumn term 2023. There is lots of excitement in the air as the evenings start to draw in, and Christmas approaches. This page will give you a flavour of our learning this half term.
Our main topic focus for this half term
Over the autumn term, our main focus topic will be about the Victorian period in Britain: our topic is called ‘Revolution’. With a focus on history, we will look specifically at how life changed during the Victorian era and the impact this had on people’s lives at the time.
In maths, we will be finishing off our unit of learning on the four operations. This covers informal and formal methods of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and applying them to solving word problems. In science we will study light and explore how light travels and how we can see.
In PE on Tuesdays, we will be developing our net and racket skills by playing badminton. On Fridays, we will complete the Mighty Movers unit which is focused on learning the routines to boxercise exercise.
Monday 20th November – Friday 1st December 2023
In English over the last two weeks, we have worked on planning and drafting our explanation texts about the Victorian invention we chose to research.
We started by thinking about how we want the completed writing to be presented. As a class, we decided that we would like to make an A3 book to present our writing. We each made an A4 ‘mock-up’ of what we want the book to look like and mapped out the position of the key features including introduction; explanation paragraphs; labelled diagram and glossary.
Once we had done this, we were able to begin drafting. We reminded ourselves of how the model text was set out and then began by writing an introduction and summary paragraph about what the invention was and who invented it. While we did this, we were thinking carefully about the words which might need to be explained in a little more detail and could be included in a glossary.
We have now all written our first draft and have edited it carefully so we are ready to begin creating our books.
In our guided reading lessons, we have continued to explore our text for this half term which is ‘The Nowhere Emporium’ by Ross Mackenzie. We are really enjoying reading each chapter and learning more and more about the mysteries of the Nowhere Emporium as each chapter unfolds. What has been wonderful, is hearing the children make connections between our focus texts for this term. The children have noticed the parallels between Street Child, Wild Boy and The Nowhere Emporium.
Maths over the last two weeks has continued to explore the four operations with the emphasis on long multiplication for both years 5 and 6, and also long division for year 6. The children have been working hard on understanding the methods they are using and extending the size of the numbers they are calculating with as they become more confident. Their knowledge of the multiplication facts to 12 x 12 is being put to the test daily! The children have worked very hard on making sure that their calculations are set out clearly and they are systematically checking their workings to ensure they haven’t made any errors.
Our topic lessons have focused on researching the living conditions of rich and poor families in Victorian times. It was a shock to discover that many people didn’t have access to a bathroom or toilets in their homes! In addition, we began to learn about the Industrial Revolution and explore some of the factors which played their part in bringing about the great change the country went through during this period. The children had to rank six factors which they believed were most important. These included agriculture, population boom, and the growth of factories.
In Science, we have begun to explore our topic which is all about Light. We learnt how light travels and then created models to demonstrate how we see. We then moved onto look at the parts of an eye and how light rays travel inside the eye through the pupil.
Monday 6th – Friday 17th November 2023
STEM Week
It was fantastic to be back to school after our half-term break and see everyone recharged and ready to continue with our learning. We came back to a very exciting week as it was STEM Week across the school. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The focus of our STEM week was all about Bridges. Over the course of the week, we learnt about some famous bridge engineers and their creations including Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Clifton Suspension Bridge), Sir John Fowler (Forth Bridge) and Thomas Telford (Menai Bridge). We compared the four main types of bridge design: arch, beam, truss and suspension and learnt how bridge design and materials had improved over the years as innovation and technology developed.
We began to test some of the basic principles of good bridge design through some short focused practical tasks. These included exploring how paper could be folded to make it stronger, and how triangles are used in bridge design for strength.
Once we knew the most effective types of bridge design, we each designed our own bridges and then formed a group to select one of the designs to make and test in our class competition. It was amazing to see the range of designs!
The highlight of the week was on Thursday, when the parents were invited to come into school and share our learning from across the week. During this session, we tested the bridges and found the one which could hold the greatest weight.
Once we had crowned the winning team, we had a another challenge to complete which was to create the tallest structure using spaghetti and marshmallows! It was lots of fun. Thank you to all of the parents who came in to share our learning.
Remembrance
During the course of the first week back we took part in a number of learning activities to think about remembrance. In PSHE on Monday, we explored the reasons why we have remembrance services each year and the significance of the poppies we wear. On Wednesday, Mr Lockhart came into school and we held our own school Remembrance Service. On Friday, with Mrs Wortley, we used clay to make some special poppy bowls that we could take home.
Victorian School Day
On Wednesday 15th November, we had a slightly different type of learning day. We had a dressing-up day so we could get into role and take part in a Victorian school morning. It was fantastic to see everyone go to such efforts with their costumes. We had chimney sweeps, maids and children from rich families!
Once everyone had arrived in school, we spoke about what the morning would entail and then discovered what our Victorian name would be for the day. After that, we slipped into role and spent the rest of the morning pretending that we were in school during the Victorian times. This helped us to understand what it might have been like for children back then.
School was different as boys and girls had to sit on different sides of the classroom and everyone had to pay to go to school. We followed a similar timetable to what the Victorian children might have experienced with lessons focusing on religion, reading, writing and arithmetic.
We learnt about the rules within a Victorian school including not speaking unless spoken to, standing when an adult enters the room and having to be punished with a cane if you broke the rules!
It was such a fun day and made us feel very thankful that schools are quite different nowadays and learning is so much more varied.
Anti-bullying Week and Children in Need
The week commencing 13th November was anti-bullying week. It is celebrated across schools in the UK at the same time so we joined in here in Italy. To start the week, on Monday, everyone came to school wearing odd socks. This was to symbolise and celebrate the fact that everyone is different We had a great discussion about what bullying is and what we should do if we, or someone we know is being bullied. We also had a good conversation about what ‘banter’ is and how this can go too far and not be fun if you are on the receiving end of banter.
On Friday of the same week, we celebrated Children in Need by wearing something spotty to school. We bought in a donation and managed to raise over 100 Euro to support the children in a local school to buy stationery items. Well done everyone!
What incredibly busy but fun couple of weeks we had! A great start to the new half-term Lamborghini Class.