Oak Week Beginning 11th September 2023

Our second week into the Autumn Term has been very productive indeed.

In Maths we have been discovering all about numbers up to 1000 in Year 4 and 1,000,000 in Year 5. We have been doing a variety of activities which have used place value charts, counters and base 10, part whole models, number lines and bar models; all of which demonstrate different ways these numbers can be represented. The children have also used their place value knowledge to apply strategy to help them to win a variety of number games. The classroom was buzzing with the excitement of who would win. One child claimed he was sweating more than he did on sports day it was so tense!

We have continued to write poetry in our Writing lessons, focussing on creating pictures through our words by writing portrait poems using similes. The children also had the added challenge to start each line of their poems with a different word - which required lots of determination. We also have been inspired by a book of poems called 'The Best Part of Me', which was written by children and described the favourite parts of their bodies. They described the reasons and listed all the ways these particular features help them to be the person they are. We had great fun during this task and the writing they produced was very thoughtful and considered.

In Topic we took on the role of archaeologists using our history detective skills to fathom out what primary sources of evidence, found in the Stone Age can tell us about the everyday lives of the people of that time. They unearthed and contemplated what the objects were, what they were made from and how they may have been used. By using their known knowledge, they inferred the importance of the discoveries and argued which were the most important archaeological finds. In Science we started our new topic entitled Animals including Humans and after completing a 'what we know already' quiz we went onto discover the nutritional value of the foods we eat and how they affect our bodies. At home, please encourage your child to look at the labels on the food they eat to see what they contain and try to work out which food group they belong to, to support their understanding.

Next week we start swimming. I am also looking forward to welcoming you to Oak Class for our Meet the Teacher chat next Monday at 2.30pm - I hope to see as many of you there as possible. The presentation slides will be on the class web page if you are unable to attend.