Lamborghini Class-Spring Term 2, 2023

Welcome to the home page for the second half of the Spring Term 2023. We are continuing to learn about World War 2 through our topic called ‘A Child’s War’ this term.

We have some exciting enrichment activities including an Anderson Shelters making day; visitors coming in to talk to us about the War and also a VE Celebration party! The topic web detailing all of our learning for the half term can be downloaded below.

Week ending – Friday 10th March 2023

We had lots of fun on Tuesday where we had a special Design Technology making day linked to our topic; we worked in small groups to design and make model Anderson Shelters. This linked with our topic and English learning over the previous weeks where we have been learning about the impact of the Blitz and the measures people took to protect themselves.

After researching Anderson Shelters for our home learning the previous week, on Tuesday morning, we got into our small groups and designed how we wanted our models to look and which materials would be the most suitable to use. We watched some original Pathe film footage to see how the Government instructed and encouraged people to make Anderson Shelters in their gardens. This secondary historical source was helpful as we could see what the shelter was like inside.

In their groups, the children had to work collaboratively to design on the stages they needed to complete in order to make their models. We were incredibly impressed with the shared decision making and focus on the task each group displayed. Here are some photos of the making process.

The finished models were amazing!

Week ending – Friday 3rd March 2023

The highlight of the week this week was most definitely, World Book Day on Thursday. The focus of our day of activities was Reading for Pleasure. We started the day with a whole school assembly where we had the opportunity to see the wonderful book characters some of  the children had come as for the day.  There was Dorothy and the Lion from The Wizard of Oz, A dalmatian from 101 Dalmatians and some Disney princesses to name a few.

During the assembly, the staff team acted out the book The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt which was very funny. The children then went back to classes and took part in different activities linked to the book.  The children in Lamborghini class wrote letters in a similar style to the book from either the point of view of a different colour crayon, or as a piece of equipment from the classroom.  The children were so creative in the reasons they came up with as to why they were so unhappy with the person who owned them.

Once the children had completed their letters, they experimented with making a short animation inspired by the story using stop motion animation. They used photographs and software on the iPads to create short animations of crayons moving and doing different things. With only a short amount of time, the children were so creative and imaginative; we will definitely revisit this area of learning.

In other lessons, we used our new-found knowledge about the Blitz bombing attacks to write the narrative opening to a short story. The children used a short film as inspiration and then planned in their own character a plot details. As the children composed their paragraphs, they went slowly to use detail and variety in sentence length. They also drew on the emotions that a character would feel as they experienced the Blitz.

In maths, we completed our unit on fractions and moved onto looking at decimals. Our first lesson focused on showing our understanding of the place value in decimal numbers to 2 decimal places (Year 5) or 3 decimal places (Year 6).

Science was a very practical lesson because the children had the opportunity to explore some mechanisms that counter the effects of forces: levers, pulleys and cogs.  Once, as a group, they had researched what the mechanism was and found some real-life examples of how they are used, the children made them using equipment.

Both our PSHE and RE lessons this week sparked a lot of discussion in class.  On Tuesday, the children were learning about drugs and the fact that all medicines are drugs but not all drugs are medicines and can have a harmful effect on the body. In RE, the children had to look at 21 different values and decide, as a group, which seven were the most important,  which seven were moderately important, and finally which seven were not that important. This was a very difficult task to do especially as they had to try to reach a consensus in their group!

Week ending – Friday 24th February 2023

It was lovely to welcome the children back to school after the half-term and hear them catching up with each other about the things they had been doing over the holiday. The week started off with lots of excitement as Tuesday was not only Pancake Day, but also the last day of the Italian Carnevale period.

The children across the whole school made a Carnevale mask and joined together for a special assembly on Tuesday to learn about the tradition, share their masks and costumes and have a try of the traditional biscuit, known as Chiacchiere.

In maths this week we have continued to learn about fractions – particularly finding fractions of amounts. The children used both their multiplication and division facts to enable them to solve the problems they were working on.

In English we looked specifically at ‘The Blitz’ and through guided reading, learnt about where and when it happened. The children completed lots of tasks in English to generate powerful vocabulary and to capture what it would have been like to experience the Blitz using our senses.

In Science, we had a fun practical activity to investigate friction. The children used different surfaces to predict and measure the impact these would have on the speed of a car.