Another busy week in Base 4

Another busy week in Base 4 which has been animal focused!!

In Literacy we have been exploring diaries; identifying features, purpose and audience. we had to jump into Maia's shoes (from our class text) so that we could write a diary as though we were her, focusing on the news her guardian bought and her journey to the Amazon Rainforest. We have worked n ensuring we are adding sufficient detail, using the features of a diary and learning how to use different types of punctuation. Next week we are going to be focusing our writing around the Water Cycle, explaining how it works and the different processes that happen.

In maths we have continued to work on number and place value, including rounding, negative numbers, decimals and problems that have really challenged us. Following this we have moved to addition and subtraction to ensure we are confident with the methods (mental and written) and applying these to multi-step problems. Next week we will continue to work on these problems, making sure every step is covered and the questions are answered.

We have started to create our own drawing which represents the different layers of the rainforest, we will be finishing these off with watercolours and then creating layers to add information. We have also started exploring the animals of the rainforest and creating a plan to make one to go in our classroom rainforest. We were very lucky with the weather on Tuesday, so we took our work outside to sculpt butterflies using wire — they were extremely tricky, but they look fantastic on the wall.

Mrs Ashley and Mrs Greenhough very kindly gave up some of their time to take us pond dipping on Monday afternoon, we all had a dip in with the nets to see what we could find. They taught us the technique for pond dipping and then we got to see what we had caught up close. We found all sorts of wildlife, including tadpoles, bloodworms and leeches.

It was lovely to see you at our open afternoon on Wednesday, it is a great opportunity for the children to share more of their work with you and maintain and home-school relationships.

Next week we are going to jump deeper into our story and the Amazon Rainforest to see what we can find out — I am very much enjoying this topic and I hope the children are too!

Reminder:

Mymaths homework needs to be completed on time please so that I can see what the children can do! all the activities allow children to consolidate their learning in the classroom. Literacy homework must also be done to a high standard, when given a written piece of homework I expect a good quantity of writing. Well done to the children trying hard with their homework.