Base 4 news

Another busy, fun week in Base 4. The children have been doing some very creative writing based upon the scary 'Shrike' from our story. Shrike is a resurrected man who is now part man part robot, in the story he is taken apart and out back together so that the mayor of London can learn more about him. We used this to inspire our writing and we too have been dissecting Shrike. The children have used interesting word choices, combining human and metal parts to give an image of this strange creature, we have then used prepositions to give a structure and cohesion to our work. These have been fantastic.
In our maths lessons this week Y5 have been looking at multiplication and division, investigating the different methods we can use to answer more complicated calculations. Y6 have been learning about algebra and ratio, we have looked at how and why these are useful in real life and we have been working through a range of problems. The children have looked at different methods to solve these (such as bar models), deciding on which one is right for them.
We have also been busy looking into history — what is it? What do we know about it? The children discussed the civilisations that they knew about or they had heard of and, in their teams, they put these into a timeline using their knowledge and some reasoning skills! The children did such an excellent job, not only in terms of their history but team work too, listening to each-others ideas and sharing roles within the group, well done. When we looked at their timelines and compare them to an accurate one, the children were shocked by....the Egyptians — they were truly surprised by how long their civilisation existed.
We have also enjoyed creating our own version of a dissected Shrike! We have looked at the artist Alberto Giacometti and used his artwork as inspiration for our own images. We used part pencils to create an image of Shrike's face and then moved on to creating pieces of sculpture for his ribs/ circuit boards. The children have done a great job of starting these and hopefully we will have wonderful finished pieces next week.