Base 4 weekly update

In Literacy and part of our Learning Journey this week we managed to finish our railway poems in the style of E. Nesbit from 'The Railway Children'. The children have worked really hard to present these in their Learning Journey books and should be proud of what they have produced. Our Literacy lessons have now moved on to writing in paragraphs and taking notes from an information video — the children have had to write quick and concise notes to ensure they get as much of the information about the invention of the railway written down. Next week, we are going to be using our notes to build sentences using a range of vocabulary including adverbs (which we learnt last week), which will lead onto writing complex sentences and using paragraphs effectively.

In Maths we have worked extremely hard to understand how to add and subtract fractions with denominators that are from the same multiple, along with simplifying fractions and converting improper fractions to mixed numbers. We then put our fraction skills into practise in a range of problem solving activities that link with our Piet Mondrian study, music and we also got to use chocolate in maths! Next week, we will be finishing off looking at fractions and starting our maths link with Piet Mondrian identifying parallel and perpendicular lines (and linking these to the railway).

We investigated gravity in Science this week using newton/force meters to measure the force of gravity on different objects; we found that the heavy the object the greater the gravitational pull. We discussed all of our ideas and findings and got to ask questions that we wanted to find the answers to. Next week we are going to compare our results, present out findings as a graph and explain what we found.
Our Piet Mondrian display wall is starting to look a bit more interesting with speech bubbles telling us all about who he was and why he is a famous artist — these were written by the children of course. We have finished the design stage of our steam train carriage and next week we should get to the making stage. This week we have also spent some time on preparing for the Harvest festival which has proved to be a lot of fun for us all and next week we will be perfecting it!

I would like to thank you all for our large collection of cardboard boxes ready for our design and technology project — we have got a large variety of boxes to choose from. A special thank you is sent to Mr. Waters for donating the boxes from all of the children in Base 4 — these are going to be very useful!

Attendance

We haven't had 100% attendance in Base 4 for a few weeks now — please try to be on time every morning to help us get 100%, but also so that you aren't missing out on the morning activities which are essential for your learning.

Reminders:

Please make sure all homework is in on time — we had a few late books this week. MyMaths needs to be completed BEFORE Friday (not on Friday lunch time). I am very impressed with the effort put into learning the spellings this week, the outcome has been excellent — keep going. The same can be said for times tables too, we are all making good progress.

Next week we will be starting our design and technology project (the making stage) so if you have any scraps of fabric or any other types of materials that would be very helpful for all the children in Base4.