Oxford Song returned this week and we began the process of learning a new song, composed especially for our show at the Sheldonian theatre, and composing the melodies to go with our lyrics. For this session, the Oxford Song team included a pianist and an opera singer. It was a special moment when the singer sang for us. Her vocal range was described as ‘shocking’ by the children!

On Thursday all of the children in Key Stage 2 participated in a world record attempt. To celebrate National Poetry Day we joined an online poetry lesson and learned about redrafting and refining written work. Together with children from across the country, we made decisions on word choice, altering the poem as we went. Some of the children were amazed that the version of the poem we were working on was already the poet’s 22nd draft.

In maths we are now applying our place value knowledge to support addition and subtraction. Children begin by using physical resources, such as base 10, to explore the effect of adding or subtracting 1s, 10s, 100s or 1,000s. Children need to be fluent in number bonds to 10 and associated number bonds within 100, for example flexibly partitioning 70 into 40 and 30 to work out 560 + 70.

Home learning this week:

Maths: WhiteRose Workbooks, Pacific & Arctic: Yr 3 Week 4 p13-15 Yr 4 Week 5 p16-18. Indian: Week 4 p13-15 

Sumdog: Sumdog is currently not available.

Reading: 5-15 mins every day. Read to them or with them. Get them to read out loud or ask them to read quietly and then tell you about what they've just read. Ask them to predict what will happen next in the story and importantly, to describe why they think that.

Next week, we turn our focus to science: biology and classification. We’ll be introducing the topic of living things in the world and working scientifically. Initially we’ll be asking the question, what makes something alive? Before looking at the ways in which living things can be grouped and described.

Oceans