Happy Friday everybody! We have had an exciting week in Birch Class. I was delighted to see some of your at parents' evenings this week and look forward to speaking to some of you next week.

In English, we have started writing our myths. Every child has created a hero, picked a god or goddess to help them and chosen a monster for their hero to defeat. While most have stayed with Greek mythology, using the creatures we've met in our current Class Novel (Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief), others have decided to write myths inspired by Norse, Japanese, Celtic and Native American cultures. They are well under way now!

We are just about finished with our maths topic of multiplication and division and I am excited to move onto fractions next week!

In geography, we continued to look at informal settlements and saw what life was like in them in different parts of the world including Brazil, India and Kenya. In science, we compared physical and chemical changes by looking at our similarities and differences. We continued our Islam topic in RE by creating informational posters about Eid ul-Adha, one of the most important dates in their calendar. In design and technology, they also continued their unit on pop up books with Mr Finch.

This morning, they also got another Woodland School experience with Kael. In small groups, they worked to design and create a 3D map of the forest schools area using only what they could find in forest schools. Take a look at the pictures below to see some of the designs.

We are back to school just in time for November!

This week we have been working on our fact files for the medieval monarchs we've learned about to go along with our board game about their successes and failures! In maths, we have just finished off our addition and subtraction topic and are moving on to multiplication and division next! 

We have started our new geography topic. This half term, we will be looking at informal settlements. On Monday, we looked at what an informal settlement is and some examples of them around the world. Also, in science, we have started our physical and chemical changes topic. Students got up to the front and demonstrated how particles move when they were melting, freezing, boiling and condensing. I look forward to a half term and practicals where we can see these changes in real life!

In RE, we have started looking at the lives of Muslims in Britain. We started by taking a look at their core beliefs, specifically the five pillars of Islam with the help of Sara from a BBC video. You can find that video here https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/class-clips-video/religious-education-ks2-my-life-my-religion-what-is-islam/zbmrwty. 

Our spelling pattern this week was ible/able. The children will have been sent home with a list of words to learn for Monday's dictation as well as six of our statutory spelling words that we have incorporated into our spelling lessons this week (parliament, awkward, identity, neighbour, temperature and explanation). Please take some time to practice these words with the children if you can so they are ready for Monday!

A final reminder to parents that the reading journals are checked twice a week (Monday and Friday) and there should be something for every day. Ideally, the child should be reading for twenty minutes a day. They could read to you, with you or just have a discussion with you after they've read. This should be recorded and signed in their reading journals. There are some tips and questions you can ask them to help with their reading comprehension. A big thank you to everyone who has been regularly writing in their child's reading journals. It has been super helpful for me to see their progress and frequency of reading! 

Have a lovely weekend everybody!