This week in Ock Class w/c 3rd May 2021

Dear parents and carers,

In our English lesson this week the children have started exploring "The Lost Words" by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. So far they've thought about the cover and scale of the book, explored collective nouns, made blackout poetry from the introduction and also experienced some of the poems. Today we looked in more detail at the Bluebell poem and the techniques that were used. We also talked about the different animals and plants in the illustrations, and how Jackie has used watercolour and gold leaf in the illustrations. Next week we'll be continuing with this, and looking in more detail at the poems and how they use different poetic techniques effectively, as well as learning more about our local flora and fauna.

In maths this week we have continued the work on fractions. We've moved on slightly to adding and subtracting fractions, including using knowledge of common denominators to find equivalent fractions. The children have been working hard on it and progressing well through the lessons. We'll be continuing with this next week, and moving on the subtracting fractions too.

We really enjoyed sharing some ancient Greek myths and legends today. Most of the children know some stories and some are very knowledgeable indeed! They kept me on my toes with some of the spellings- I did manage Hephaestus right the first time though (although there are variant spellings of lots of the names). We then used our knowledge of these stories to put together a pack of "Top Trumps" style cards. These need a little finishing off next week, but were very funny and also showed the children's knowledge off well. Next week we'll be taking what we've learned into some larger scale artwork based around these stories.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. Have you done your spelling shed homework?
2. Which is your favourite ancient Greek god, and why?
3. What's Mrs Barker's third law of fractions?