This week in Ock Class: w/e 10th January 2020

Dear parents and carers,

This week in English we have started working on a new book Shackleton's Journey by William Grill. This fantastic picture books tells the story of Shackleton's attempted traverse of Antarctica in 1914. So far we have made really subtle inferences and deductions about the book from the front cover, written about a journey, made inferences about Shackleton's character and also researched one of the crew members. Next week we'll be writing in role to try and persuade Shackleton to take us on this dangerous adventure.

In maths this week we have started working on our multiplication skills, including using the short method for multiplication and also using our knowledge of area to solve two digit x two digit problems. The children were a bit rusty with multiplication at first, but have picked it up really well. We'll be continuing with this next week, with lots of multiplication practise, hopefully reaching multiplying four digits by 2 digit numbers.

In science this week we learned about metamorphosis, and compared the life cycles of insects and amphibians that go through metamorphosis.  The children were fascinated to see how caterpillars turn into their pupa, and how caterpillars can camouflage their pupa's colour to the background. Next week we'll be looking at bird life cycles, and studying eggs.

In science last half term we spent some time learning about chimpanzees and mammal life cycles. For their Christmas present I sponsored a chimp at the Dr Jane Goodall Institute, and the adoption pack arrived this week. Our chimp, Anzac, is about the same age as the children, and lives in a sanctuary as she wouldn't be able to survive in the wild on her own. Yesterday a series called "Baby Chimp Rescue" started on BBC2. It's presented by Dr Ben Garrod, who is a primate specialist and will help rehabiliate  orphaned chimpanzees at a sanctuary in Liberia. I highly recommend having a watch, and thinking about how we might be able to help these endangered and special creatures. The website for the programme is here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d8xb

This week's spellings are all -able words:
changeable
noticeable
manageable
agreeable
knowledgeable
replaceable
microwaveable
salvageable
rechargeable
irreplaceable

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. Have you got your pair of indoor shoes in school?
2. What does metamorphosis mean?
3. What sort of person was Ernest Shackleton?