This week in Ock Class: w/e 7th February

Dear parents and carers,

In our English lessons this week we have continued with our work on Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, based on Shackleton's Journey by William Grill. We've found out what happened at the end of the mission, when Shackleton took 5 other men in a small lifeboat on an 800 mile journey to South Georgia, in order to raise a rescue for the rest of his crew, who were stranded on Elephant Island. We've moved on to learning about newspaper articles, and have just started writing our own articles about the rescue, using the sentence stacking approach. Next week we'll be finishing this off in some independent writing time.

​In maths this week we have continued our work on division. This is taking some time but it's important that we nail this technique before we move on to fractions (which will hopefully be next week). I'm really pleased with how hard the children have worked on this- they really have been Steadfast Squirrels to master this difficult task.

We enjoyed learning about thermal insulators and conductors in our science lesson yesterday. The children tested 3 different materials to find out which one would be best for the lining of a lunchbox. 

Please remember that children need a water bottle in school everyday, as well as a suitable PE for indoor and outdoor PE lessons. Lots of my class were a bit chilly during my PE lesson today, as they didn't have jumpers or tracksuit bottoms!

We are now using Spelling Shed and Maths Shed. I am expecting that (unless you have already had a conversation with me about your child's use of Spelling Shed), your child will do a minimum of 4 Spelling Shed games and a minimum of 4 of any of the Maths Shed games over the course of a week. I don't mind if they're spread out or all on one day (although I think that spread out would be a bit more effective). I am finding that some children aren't doing any spelling practice, and are then finding the weekly test more stressful than it needs to be. A lack of speedy, accurate times table knowledge is also causing some issues in maths lessons, so using Maths Shed regularly would really help with this. Your help with this is much appreciated. 

This week's spellings also include silent letters, but this time in different places in the word, instead of the start:
doubt
island
lamb
solemn
thistle
autumn
build
receipt
ascend
disciple

Mrs B

Three things to ask your child this week:

1. Do you think that Shackleton was right to undertake such a dangerous expedition to the Antarctic?
2. How do you do bus stop division?
3. What did you learn about thermal insulators in your science lesson?