Maserati Class-Spring Term 2, 2024

Please click on the button below to see the term topic home learning about Ancient Egypt.

Welcome to the home page for the second half of the spring term 2024. You will find our fortnightly learning blog here which will give you a flavour of our learning.

Week ending 8th March 2024

A fantastic week Maserati well done everyone for your wonderful costumes for ‘World Books Day!’ and all our hard work looking at different words, synonyms and antonyms and highlighting words from the text to create a picture linked to the story.

This week in English we have continued our new unit ‘Cinderella and the Nile’. After looking at lots of different variations of the story set in different countries we have spent time comparing stories and video clips for similarities and differences. Here are some examples: the main character being a young girl like Cinderella, ugly sisters or sister, horrible step-mother, poor place to live, always doing chores and how the main character had animals for friends. The setting and place varied but all featured a pair of shoes or slippers and find love in a happily ever after ending. We have looked at specific language features and worked on grammar skills of fronted adverbials to improve our writing.

In Maths, we have been continuing with fractions. Everyone has worked remarkably and in Year 3 the children have been finding fractions of scales and finding equivalent fractions of number lines and bar models. In Year 4 they have been converting improper fractions and mixed numbers, looked at equivalent fractions on number lines and adding and subtracting fractions. We have had lots of fun lining this to cake and pizza to help visualise the representations. If you need any help please ask Maserati as they have worked extremely hard during this topic area…. next we are moving onto decimals!

In History, we have been looking inside pyramids and learnt about the process of mummification and the journey to the afterlife. We investigated this mummifying a tomato and found out that natron (salt and baking soda) help he drying out process. We have discussed Tutankhamun’s treasures through pictures cards and written a diary entry for Howard Carter and his findings.

We have been scientists over the last few weeks learning about components and making and testing different circuits and carefully drawing diagrams. This week we had to spot the mistakes in the circuits and work out the problem.

Week ending 23 February 2024

What a wonderful start to Spring Term 2 we have had with our DT project Tomb Builders. This project teaches children about simple machines, including wheels, axles, inclined planes, pulleys and levers, exploring how they helped ancient builders to lift and move heavy loads to build pyramids. Once we had tried and tested the machines, the children then answered some questions and designed their own machine to help move the bricks up the incline inside the pyramid. Everyone worked really hard building a prototype model, even though we found some floors with our designs Maserati collaborated and worked together to finish their models and then evaluate. We talked about changes we would make to improve our prototype pieces.

This week in English we have focused on Instructions. I was very impressed at how pupils wrote and presented simple instructions used in everyday life. For example, making a cup or tea or getting ready for school. Next week we are going to use this in our topic work as we look at mummification.

In Maths our new topic is fractions. Everyone has done some work on this before and now we are building on prior learning understand that fractions can be seen as part of a whole, and unit fractions divide into equal parts. Year 3 have been working out what fraction of the shape is shaded and if the shape has been divided equally into equal parts and finished the week looking at how to compare fractions. Year 4 have been completing sentences for each shape and shading shapes to make a whole. They then looked at counting forwards and backwards in fractions beyond one.

Our new topic is ‘Electricity and Conductors’. In science this week was practical and trying to build a circuit using a cell with batteries, crocodile clips, wires and make the bulb light up.