04.05.2020
7.5.2020
Another busy day for Beech class home learners!
Congratulations to Sabine and Imogen who earned a Blue Peter badge for their artwork, Gaby has found out about the WRENs and written a very moving poem, Samuel has been practising his semaphore and Joe has made a beautiful rainforest collage as well as decorating his house with home made bunting for VE Day tomorrow. I've also seen a very professional performance of Golden Time by Eddie, complete with hat and actions! Well done everyone!
Thursday 7th May
WELCOME TO BEECH CLASS, SILVER BIRCHES!
Today is a bit special as we are all going on our school trip!
We should have been visiting Dover Castle today to see the Secret Wartime Tunnels, but unfortunately we can't take you right now. BUT, using the power of technology, we can have a Virtual School trip instead. It means a little less work for the staff as we don't have to hound you to return your consent forms, do Risk Assessments, book coaches and mop up sick when you get over-excited on the coach!
You have several tasks to complete on your trip, so head over to the Dover Castle website and we can begin our day. I hope you have all got sun cream on and remembered your bottled water as it's due to be a hot one...
We'll start with Operation Dynamo - the amazing efforts of the "Little ships" and the rescue of thousands of troops from Dunkirk which some of us learned about in our Topic work last term. Read through the articles and then join Thomas and Will who are interviewing Vice Admiral Lord Ramsay:
Operation Dynamo took place in 1940 and was a massive effort from many people to save our troops. As you will have learned with the boys, communication with the hundreds of little ships in the harbour was really difficult, so they used semaphore. When we have finished our trip, you could make your own semaphore flags and spell out some messages for your family to decode.
For lunch, we have a special treat for you - you can go to the Secret Wartime Tunnels cafe: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/dover-castle/plan-your-visit/food-and-drink/
What sort of wartime food do you think they might offer? Design your meal from what you know about wartime cooking.
You have some free time now, so have a look around the Dover Castle website and see what other parts of the castle you can visit - maybe the Keep or the Prince of Wales Royal Regimental Museum.
You can find out more about Medieval castles here: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/guide-to-castles/
Finally, what school trip is complete without a visit to the gift shop? Luckily you have your parents with you and (pretend) they have said you can spend £20 in the gift shop. Which items would you buy? Pencils, rulers, fudge, chocolate, top trumps games and foam swords all make fantastic gifts. But what could you afford with your (imaginary) £20 note? Could you buy everything? Would you have any change? Head over to the shop to see:
Well, I hope you've enjoyed your day? I've had lots of fun planning it for you. When life returns to normal, perhaps you could do the trip for real? Find out the admission cost for you and your family (quick tip - you can become a member and it might work out cheaper if you have a large family and you can go back as often as you like). Can you find out how much it would cost for a school trip?
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/dover-castle/prices-and-opening-times/
Remember to take lots of photos of your day (especially the semaphore signalling) and send them in to me (Beech class) and Mrs Hams (Silver Birch).
6.5.20
It was so nice to speak to so many of you today - I've heard about Hollie's new pool, Jack's incredible Maths and Harry Potter AR quiz, Lucy's sound recording, several bunting makers, Scarlett's charity bike ride, Sabine's collage making walk and Sarah's successful visit to the supermarket where she found flour!
There were very mixed reactions to the poem task today - it was a bit of a "marmite" topic - some of you loved it, some of you hated it.
Quite a few of you have taken up the AR challenge this week, if you still need to get a quiz done go to
https://ukhosted68.renlearn.co.uk/2240583
Well done to: Elliot (3 books) 19 points, Arthur (1 book) 5 points, Beaumont (1 book) 5 points, Samuel (1 book) 7 points, Phoebe (3 David Walliams books!) 12 points, Eddie (1 book) 8 points, Jack (Harry Potter!) 10 points.
Keep reading Beech class!
Busy Beech class Wednesday
Lillie's bunting
Sabine's beautiful rainforest collage
Wednesday 6th May
Maths - subtracting pairs of 2 digit numbers with one decimal place.
English - writing a poem about a special place.
Computing - online safety at home - the fourth worksheet from Thinkuknow (it has Tuesday's date on it, but don't worry!)
Mrs Godden has also set Computing work for you - please email it to her for marking:
P.E. Did you set up a Sports Day for your family? Perhaps you could all take part on Friday, which is a Bank Holiday (with no school work!). Kent School Games have sent this link that you might like to use for ideas for you PE sessions - or you could incorporate some of the games into your Sports Day...
https://www.kentschoolgames.com/stayhomestayactive/personal-challenge/21773/goalball-challenge
Times Tables: please practise your times tables by going on to Prodigy Maths or any one of the BBC Bitesize games: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/collections/primary-games/1
Spellings: don't forget your Wordy Wednesday activity for list 1 of the newly uploaded spellings. Here they are again if you can't find them:
Here are some pictures from Ruby and Joanna from Tuesday's work - well done girls! (and Joanna jumping for joy!)
Some super research from Samuel about rainforest plants
Tuesday 5th May
Maths - today you are doing some written addition of decimals using rounding to estimate your totals.
In English today, you are continuing with the poetry of Joseph Coelho and focusing on expanded noun phrases in his poem "Golden Time", and performance. Have fun!
For Topic this week I would like you to find out about the different plants specific to each layer of the rainforest. Then choose a plant that interests you and write a fact sheet about it with an illustration. When we were in Borneo, I found the pitcher plants fascinating. Here are some resources you can use, as well as some photos from our trip:
LI To identify plants specific to the four layers of rainforest.
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/krubal/rainforest/Edit560s6/www/plants.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/clips/zkwkjxs
Photos from Sepilok, Borneo
Joanna's collage combines a drawing on paper with natural resources - its really effective and very creative! Well done Joanna!
Monday 4th May
"May the Fourth be with you!"
Good morning Beech class!
I hope you have had a lovely weekend? I received lots of work from you and the photos are on last week's web page.
I can't believe we've been away from school for so long - you have now completed all the spellings lists we glued into your Home Learning books, so I will now post them on here for you each week. I'm also going to give you the whole set of Wordy Wednesday so you can either print them off in none go, or do each sheet as you need them.
Spellings!
Maths today is adding and subtracting decimals using place value (remember the "no-work" addition and subtraction we have done in class?)
For English you are going to study a poem by Joe Coelho called "I am a Writer" - its an interesting look at poetry - I hope you enjoy it!
In Science this week, we are looking at Reproduction in Mammals. The powerpoint this week was too large to upload, so read the PDF and follow the link onto the BBC clips page. You don't need to do all of the activity sheets - pick and choose the ones you want, but the life cycle wheels are quite fun to make.