This week in Ock Class- w/e 31st January

Dear parents and carers,

In English this week we have been finding out more about what happened when the Endurance reached the Weddell Sea, near Antarctica. The ship was stuck in ice during the Antarctic winter, and is slowly being crushed by the weight and pressure of the grinding ice. The children learned about motivational speeches (including watching the one given by the President in Independence Day!), and then we built up the first half of a speech that Shackleton might have given, using the sentence stacking technique. After that, the children finished the speeches independently. The quality of the work was really high, and I'm very proud of how the children's writing is progressing.

In maths this week we have finished off multiplication, and moved on to looking at division. The children are finding this tricky, but are working really hard on developing their method. We'll continue to work on this next week. You can help your child with this by practising the games on Maths Shed. I have set a number of games and would like to see that the children have played at least four times.

This week's spellings are all ones with silent letters:
knight
wreckage
writer
knowledge
knuckle
wreath
pterodactyl
mnemonic
wrestler
knife

Again, these are set of Spelling Shed and (unless you have already talked to me about Spelling Shed) I am expecting to see that the children have practised 4 times before the test next Friday. This is preparation for year 6, when they will need to have practised 7 times per week.

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. How do you think Shackleton felt when he realised that Endurance was stuck in the ice?
2. Have you practised your spellings and times tables?
3. What did you find out about materials in your science lesson this week?