Some of our amazing landscape artwork we completed when we had the very talented Mr Pollington visit us in class!
Week Ending 14 October 2022
This week in Maths, some children have continued their rounding from last week. We began with rounding to the nearest 10, and have then moved onto rounding to the nearest hundred and nearest thousand – or even all three! Others in the class practised counting in 50s before completing their end of unit assessment. Now, they have moved onto their next unit of addition and subtraction!
In English this week, we started a new writing unit based on the book ‘Once Upon a Raindrop’ which tells the story of water. We began the week by completing a rhyming poem to see how confident we felt when rhyming. We then began to explore the text by story-mapping it and then identifying end rhymes in the book – even going further and finding our own additional rhymes to go with them! Then, we explored different rhyming schemes to see how a poet could structure each stanza with the end rhymes on different lines. Finally, we began collecting words linked to rivers and looked at finding as many rhyming words as we could to help us with our rhyming next week.
In topic, we explored altitudinal zones through our guided reading lessons and learnt all about the four main zones: subtropical rainforest, coniferous and deciduous forest, tundra and meadow and the glacier. As well as this, we completed our water cycle comics we began last week and it was wonderful to see them be so creative and give such amazingly detailed descriptions of each stage.
As part of our music, we recapped our work on rhythm from last week and then we explored how to make different beat box sounds in time with a rapping piece of music.
We have also all been exploring suffixes in our spelling work this week. Some children have explored adding the suffix -y when the word ends in an ‘e’; some have explored adding the suffix -ly when the word does not need to have anything changed; and finally, some children have been exploring when they need to change a word to create adverbs by adding -ly or -ally.
Week Ending 7 October 2022
We have been carrying on with our place value unit in Maths this week. Some of our children have been looking at finding 1, 10 or 100 more or less than a given number. We found this quite tricky to do this over the hundred however we practised and are becoming much more confident with it! They also looked at comparing and ordering numbers up to 1,000. Other children in Maserati have been focusing on comparing and ordering numbers up to 10,000 as well as using Roman Numerals. We learnt two rules which we used to help us work out the values of Roman Numerals before moving onto rounding on Friday.
In English this week, we have been writing our own independent version of the story ‘A River’. First, we created some wonderful story maps using our own images of different landscapes we created. Then, we wrote our stories independently and then had time to try and add more description using our blue editing pens. Some of the description the children achieved was wonderful and they told an excellent story of a journey along the river.
To celebrate National Poetry Day on Thursday 6th October, we created blackout poems linked to our theme of rivers. To achieve this, we first read an information text about rivers as a whole class and then explored how to pick out key words/phrases to use in our poems. This took some practise but the children chose some wonderful vocabulary to include in their poems. Then, the fun part! We sketched out the images we wanted to create on the page before using pens and paints to black out the remaining words. These have been turned into a book in our class library and we would love it if you took a look the next time you are in Maserati class!
In Guided Reading, we explored using our special friend – the word ‘because’ to help us explain our answers and used this to help us answer questions about the book ‘The Minpins’.
In topic, we began exploring the book ‘Once Upon a Raindrop’ which we will be looking at in English over the next few weeks. Through this, we began to discuss why rivers never run dry and this was because of the water cycle. We explored what the water cycle was and how it worked and the children began creating comic strips of the water cycle to show each stage.
Week Ending 26 September 2022
What an amazing start to the year we have had! Maserati have settled in so well to the new class and school year and we are very excited to share some of our learning with you.
Over the last few weeks in Maths we have been focusing on Place Value. We started by representing and building numbers using a range of different manipulatives including Base 10, place value counters and part-whole models. Some children have even been making numbers up to 10,000! We have explored number lines and how we can find the interval value on a number line, using this to complete missing number problems.
In our English lessons, the children began the year by writing me a letter about themselves which helped me to learn so much about them and their likes and dislikes. Since then, we have been focusing writing based around the book ‘A River’ by Marc Martin. The book is about a girl who goes on an imaginary adventure down a river which winds through some extraordinary landscapes. We have done lots of work on different sentence structures, considered how colour is used to create a sense of feeling in the text and created wonderful descriptions of scenes from the story. Most recently, we have begun story mapping our own class story which we will write next week.
As part of our topic, we have been focusing on our main topic of ‘Misty Mountain Winding River’ and learning all about rivers. We have learnt all about the features of rivers, as well as their courses, and the children have even used some of this vocabulary in their writing. As well as this, the children have explored the three main processes in a river – erosion, transportation, deposition – which can change the shape of a landscape. We also studied the river Trent in the UK by exploring a variety of maps to find out key information about the river, including where its source is!
As well as our main topic, we have also had a mini topic this half term called ‘Vista’ which is art-based and focuses on landscape artwork. The children have learnt what a landscape is and how they feature either natural or manmade features. We compared a range of landscapes to see how different artists created exciting landscape images and then tried to recreate our favourite landscape scene from these images. After this, we learnt about and practised three techniques for creating atmospheric perspective (different levels of light and dark to create a sense of distance) using pens, pencils and watercolours.
The children have had a wonderful time in PE so far this year – doing running with Mrs Wortley on a Thursday and then circuits with Miss Coole on a Friday. The running is aimed to help the children explore different running styles and speeds, as well as help build stamina, and the children have loved the games they have played especially the pirate game. In our circuits, we have completed a new circuit sequence each week and had to monitor their partner’s progress so that, over the weeks, we can see if we have made an improvement
We have also started partner reading with Ferrari every other Friday and the children have enjoyed reading with each other so much. It has been lovely to see them sharing books with each other and enjoying showing each other their classrooms.