Snow drops and sun beams

​With the white sprinkling of snowdrops in the verges and the sun popping up just in time for breakfast, it’s beginning to feel little bit easier to gee ourselves up and sparkle for the day ahead.
The Thornies have put a monumental effort into their learning at the time of year we should all be wrapped up nice and warm in a ‘cave’ hibernating.
Since the first day of term, we have achieved a great a deal: completing two narratives and working tirelessly to nail those tricky times table facts.

We started the year in English by writing our own version of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe- focusing on the different characterisation needed to describe an evil sorcerer and a saviour character.
Over the course of the term, we finished reading The BFG- a text we had great fun reading. We especially enjoyed Roald Dahl’s use of portmanteau and disgusting descriptions of giants. We switched focus a few weeks into term and used the text as a writing stimulus. We created wanted posters describing our own made-up giants, created revolting recipes and finished the module by planning and writing our own version of the story.

In maths we have worked through the times table facts up to the 12x. We have been learning tricks for working out those difficult 9s and trying to spot patterns in the products of the 7 times table.
We discovered doubling multiplication facts we know for the 3 and 4 timestable help with the larger multiples of 6 and 8.
We now need to speed up our recall so can we please ask you to allow your child time to practise on timestable rockstars. We are hoping to build in a dedicated session for recall in the week’s busy schedule but any further help at home will be a great.

In our History lessons we have studied the Anglo-Saxons. So far, we have learned that very little was written about their life and that the facts we have are pieced together through artefacts and slightly biased texts written by Gildas the Wise and the Venerable Bede- the Wikipedia of their time.
Using our historian skills, we have cobbled together enough information to learn where the Anglo Saxons came from and why they arrived on the British Isles. We learned how they enjoyed a rural life and that a recorded staple of their diet is Pottage. We made some at the back of the class on an electric stove, it was delicious?? Some children liked it a so much they took a portion home in their water bottle! We will continue learning about their rituals and the Heptarchy after the break.

Another module we will continue after half term will be our science topic on light. We have learned how light can be bent (refraction) and how it bounces off (reflection) certain types of objects. After the break we will continue investigating the spectrum and the use of shadow culminating in a shadow puppet theatre. If your child has a torch they could bring in for the first few weeks of the next half term that would be great.