Willow wb 17.04.23

Willow class have come back into school with enthusiasm and a readiness to learn which has been fantastic to see. They have made a great start to the half term and have had a busy week, starting new topics in both Science and Art. 

This week in Science, we started our new unit on Earth and Space. We looked at how people once thought the Earth was flat and had some really interesting discussions about why they might have believed this. We then looked at the different evidence we have that proves the Earth is spherical. In Music, our focus this week was on rhythm and pulse. We worked on keeping a steady beat and on clapping different rhythms accurately. In French, we have begun learning some new vocabulary related to food and drink.

In Topic lessons, we will continue to focus on biomes for the next two weeks before we move on to learning all about rivers. This week, the children have been looking closely at the features of woodland biomes and especially how climate change has an impact on this particular biome. This has involved discussing some of the key issues which climate change causes such as an increase in temperature and more extreme weathers. We used our knowledge to design our own versions of the Eden project which is a self contained rainforest biome. Our design had to reflect a woodland biome and the children produced some creative designs with many of the features you would expect to find in this type of biome. We also discussed the impact of climate change and wrote a visitor information speech which helped to explain what climate change is and how it is impacting our woodlands. 

In Maths lessons, our Year 3 children have been learning to partition the whole as well as adding and subtracting fractions. They recapped the important vocabulary of numerator and denominator and looked at adding fractions with the same denominator. Our Year 4 children have also been learning to partition but with decimal numbers. They began by partitioning the tenths and hundredths before being more flexible with this and looking at how many different ways they can partition a decimal. 

We also started our new topic in Art which is focused on river art. We began by comparing some well known river art and commenting on these images using specific vocabulary. After comparing them, we used a diamond nine to order these images in terms of our preferences and justified our choices. There were lots of varied opinions but the children were very clear in expressing their ideas and thoughts on this art work. Going forward, we will be looking at the work of Monet and how his work changed over time. We will be using the style of impressionism to create our own painting of the River Thames.