Willow wb 16/01/23

This week in Willow class we have been exploring some of the achievements of Ancient Islamic people. These included astronomy, medicine and anatomy. We looked at a variety of images showing clues about these different achievements and then ranked these in order of importance. We justified some of our reasons and compared them with other groups. We then went on to focus on the city of Baghdad and have been using a selection of notes left by a visitor in AD 1100 to design a map of the city. We learnt that the city was designed to be beautiful, prosperous and enable generations of people to live in this area. In the centre of the city was a grand mosque and palace which was surrounded by a courtyard and a network of canals. We also identified that people lived outside of the city walls, mainly merchants and craftsmen. In total, over one million people lived there by the tenth century so it was very crowded. The maps produced by the children were detailed and they did a great job of including the key facts that were left in the visitor notes. 

In Maths lessons, we have been focusing on division using partitioning. The children have been using dienes equipment to support them with their accuracy and using flexible partitioning. They have been developing their confidence in using this method and started applying it in problem solving contexts. In our English sessions, we have been writing the sequel to the story 'Journey'. We have been trying to build upon all of the skills that we have been learning over the past few weeks and everyone did a brilliant job with their final pieces. 

In Science this week, we've been finding out more about gases. We began by discussing whether gas has a weight. We then investigated this by weighing a bottle of fizzy drink before shaking it (we enjoyed this part!) and letting the carbon dioxide out (slowly!). When we weighed the bottle again, we found the weight had decreased so we learnt that gas does have a weight. 

In Music, we've been listening to reggae music. We also practised our singing, doing some vocal warm ups before singing the song 'Three Little Birds' by Bob Marley and the Wailers. We finished off our week with some Art based on the Islamic styles and have used warm and cold colours to make comparisons.