5/11

Crisp, cold and clear mornings have been a welcome start to our day’s this week. With the exception of Monday morning, where our first day of the half term started with the most glorious rainbow arching over the school field. I did look in the tree house but some pesky wood imp must have scurried away with the pot of gold before I got there- a shame really as we could have used the bounty to restock our ever growing class library. Especially as we are now coming to the end of our current class novel: How to Train your dragon.

We are still immensely enjoying the the events on the isle of Berk as Hiccup begins to realise his potential and become the hero we all predicted he could be. This week the children re-wrote a chapter of the story where two seadragonous giganticus maximus clash in a bloody battle to the death - or not! We discovered that Cressida Cowell is a master of tension and intrigue as she used a cliffhanger and descriptive Tit bits to hold our interest.
Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the chance to write about this bloody and gory death-match as we explored the use of fronted adverbials to help build tension.
We were genuinely blown away by the efforts and resulting quality of everyone’s work. We invite you in to have a read of your child’s literary creation.
All the children really enjoy reading these high quality texts and we encourage you to share the joy with them by listening to or reading with them everyday. I’m sure you will see what clever little critics your bright sparks are these days.

We have ramped up the difficulty in maths this half term and have kicked it off with subtracting 3 and 4 digit numbers.
We have explored the use of a vertical column method to arrive at an answer using the mind twisting exchange method. You may remember it as borrowing from a column on the left to complete a subtraction but as I always tell the children: “it’s more like a theft because that column ain’t getting it back!!”
This concept is always very tricky for this age group and we have been using lots of hands-on resources to help them fully grasp the concept. We are confident their understanding is there and we are now at the stage where repetition of the skill is needed to help cement the procedure.
Feel free to show them how you learnt it at school and ask them if there are any differences to how they arrive at an answer.
Enjoy your weekends and see you all next week.

Mr. Frewin and Miss Barton