Term Three, Week Six

Unbelievably, we are already half-way though the school year and the time has just flown by. Although this has been a short week, we have still managed to pack a lot in.

In Literacy, we wrote out our best copies of our 'Rose Blanche' stories and decorated them. Some are now on display on our class board in the hall and the remainder are pinned up in class.

We did a little work on time on Thursday morning and Mrs Godden was really pleased to see that we could all tell the time and use the 24-hour clock correctly. Well done everyone!

Mrs Short spoke to us about puberty earlier in the week. There was a lot of information for us to take on board, but it is important that we know about puberty as we move from primary to secondary school and our bodies inevitably begin to change. It is important that we look on these changes as a positive thing which happens to us all - it is just one of the milestones on our life journeys.

In music with Mrs Hickman, we have been composing pieces about animals based on 'The Carnival of the Animals' by the French composer Camille Saint-Saens. He wrote this piece to be played only for family and friends, so it was very rarely played until after his death. You can listen to his composition and find out more about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2RPKMJmSp0

and enjoy our pieces of music by clicking on the videos below.

On Thursday morning we were visited by a lady from the Kent Fire and Rescue Service who spoke to us about how to deal with fires at home and how to react to these.  We learnt a lot from her. Here are some of the facts we didn't know before the presentation:

* That mobile phones should not be left on charge overnight.

* That you use the back of your hand to test if a door knob is hot when there is a fire.

* That a closed door can stop a fire from spreading by up to 30 minutes.

* That we can stop smoke from entering our bedrooms by putting pillows and bed linen in front of the gap at the bottom on the door.

* That we should always get ourselves out safely during a fire and not spend time looking for pets.

* That we should not use a window to escape if there are other, safer ways out such as doors.

* That we should check every week that the batteries in smoke detectors are working.

* That we should not disturb mum or dad when they are cooking.

We were each given a leaflet about staying safe at home which included a page to draw a plan of our home with an escape plan. Half-term is an excellent time to complete this with your parents and to share it with your whole family. There is lots of useful information about home safety here: https://www.kent.fire-uk.org/your-safety/home-safety/

Remember that we are off on our residential trip to PGL in the Isle of Wight on our first day back after the half-term break.  Make sure you pack everything on the kit list you have been sent and that you remember to bring plenty to eat and drink on the journey there.  We will have a fantastic week and Mr File will be uploading pictures every day to the school website so that your parents can see what you are up to each day.

Have a great half-term break and stay safe.

Term Three, Week Five

This week we have produced some excellent writing inspired by the picture book 'Rose Blanche' by Roberto Innocenti about the holocaust. This story is told through the eyes of a young German girl, Rose Blanche, who is a witness to the immense changes occurring in Nazi Germany. Her curiosity leads her outside her town where she discovers a concentration camp. Rose Blanche secretly brings food to  the children behind the barbed-wire fence. The author implies that Rose Blanche is killed by crossfire as the Russian soldiers advance into Germany. The ending of this book is symbolic as spring arrives in this deserted camp. We rewrote the story ourselves from Rose Blanche's point of view.

We had fun in French learning to tell the time this week - we all did really well with this activity. Mr File joined us for the lesson and even had a go at completing our worksheet himself. It was funny watching him using his fingers to help him count to twelve in French!

As you may already know, we have been learning about cryptography in Computing this term and this week we focussed on the Caesar Cipher - a method of encrypting secret messages first used by Julius Caesar nearly two thousand years ago.  We learnt how to use frequency analysis of letters to help us decode messages and then had a go at creating encrypted messages for Mrs Godden to decrypt.  You can learn more about it here: https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/cryptography/crypt/v/caesar-cipher and encrypt and decrypt messages here: https://www.boxentriq.com/code-breaking/caesar-cipher

We enjoyed a special workshop on Friday morning when we were visited by Richard from The Marlowe as part of our RSC project. He came by to work with us on creating music for our part in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' a part of which we will be performing in June in woodlands near Canterbury along with ten other schools.  We had a great time reading a speech from Queen Titania and then working with Richard on picking out important phrases from the text and then making sounds and tunes to complement Titania's words. We will continue working on this in school and it will be incorporated into the final performance.  Richard is a musician, composer and song-writer and he had written a song for the final scene of 'As You Like' which he performed for us and then taught us. He was very impressed with our musicality and we were all very impressed with how talented he is. We are really looking forward to starting work on our performance - it will be great!

Term Three, Week Three

Once again we have been busy bees learning lots this week. A highlight for many of us has been creating our own art works in the style of LS Lowry.  We used a combination of collage, pen, pencil and paint to create a scene with buildings and people and animals drawn in Lowry's rather quirky style. Our pictures will soon be on display in the school art gallery, but you can see a few of them below.

Our learning in maths has been a continuation of algebra and this week we have worked on sequences.  We have also continued our practice of converting units of measurement and ended the week by applying our knowledge to solve word problems of varying degrees of difficulty.

On Thursday we reviewed what we had learnt about the French words for school subjects and then moved on to expressing our opinions about them by using 'J'aime', 'Je n'aime pas', 'J'adore' and 'Je deteste'. We also extended our sentences using 'parce que' and various adjectives to explain our opinion. By the end of the lesson we were all able to accurately translate a whole email to a friend about our opinions!

Finally, in RE on Friday we learnt about the third pillar of Islam which is 'Sawm'. Sawm means to fast (during day-light hours) and this take place for a whole month during a special time for Muslims called 'Ramadan' and it ends with a big celebration called 'Eid-el-Fitr' where Muslims come together to pray and eat. During Ramadan, Muslims think about those less fortunate than themselves, they learn self-discipline and they work hard to become closer to Allah by reading the Qur'an and trying to live their best life. You can find out more about Sawm and Ramadan here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/sawm.shtml

Have a great weekend everyone.

Term Three, Week Two

Although we have had no special events this week, we have been doing some very solid learning. In maths, we continued our work on algebra and then moved on to BIDMAS (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/znmtsbk/articles/zj29dxs) before praticising converting between units of measure with Mrs Godden. Did you know that 1 ml weighs 1 g, so 1 l equals 1 kg? We didn't!

We have produced some amazing creative writing this week after watching an animation called 'Alma'.

The film has no spoken words, but tells the spooky story of Alma, a young girl who discovers a mysterious shop full of dolls (one of which looks just like her), goes in to explore and ends up becoming the doll herself. You can watch the film here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irbFBgI0jhM&t=4s

We could choose whether to write in the first or third person and we all wrote some very evocative pieces.

Our science work continued to focus on adaption of species and in topic we investigated the seven continents.  This term in RE we are focusing on Islam and this week's lesson explained the importance to Muslims of giving to charity - this is called Zakah (or Zakat).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/zakat.shtml

We will also be learning about Sawm (fasting) and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) over the next few weeks.

Finally, we started a new topic in French - À l’École (At School). This week we learnt how to say and write the names of many of the subjects we learn at school. We will move on to telling the time in French and saying at what time we do things. We will also practise saying which subjects we like, dislike, love or hate and give the reasons why we feel that way about them.

Bon weekend tout le monde!

Term Three, Week One

Welcome back everyone. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are all looking forward to exciting things happening in 2020!

This term and next we will be working very hard, making sure that everyone is well-prepared and fully reading for the dreaded SATs tests in Term 5.

We started a new topic with Mrs Short this week called 'The Global Community'. This will include geography and history lessons as well as links to literacy (for example - writing holiday brochures).

We have been challenged in Maths by being introduced to algebra and most of us found this less difficult and more fun than we thought it would be. We also practised our problem solving skills with Mrs Godden by working on problems involving 3-D shape. Interestingly, some of us find number work challenging, whilst others find shape problems (especially those which need you to visualise shapes in different positions) more difficult.

On 6th January each year in France, people celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings (Epiphany) by eating a special cake (la galette) with a little object (la feve) hidden inside it. Whoever finds the 'feve' is king or queen for the day.  This is know at 'La Fete des Rois' (Festival of the Three Kings). We learnt about this in class on Thursday afternoon and all had the chance to try the cake, which Mrs Godden had kindly made and brought in for us, and to find the feve. We had two cakes and a king and queen were found - Theo was our king and Daisy was our queen!  They went in to assembly wearing their crowns and explained what they had learnt to the rest of the school. If you want to make your own 'galette' there are two recipes below - one in English and one in French.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, we played a game about being a refugee. It was a very noisy, but fun-filled task and it really brought home to us how awful being a refugee can be and how privileged our lives are in comparison.  A sheet has gone home as homework for us to reflect on what we learnt. These should be returned to Mrs Godden by next Friday 17th January please.

If you would like to see what we will be covering this term in Oak Class, there is a new tab on the website under 'Key Information' called 'Curriculum 2020'. If you click on the icon for Oak Class you will then be able to download the Medium Term Plan for Term 3.