In English we have been imagining what it would have been like to live in apartheid-era South Africa. In guided reading, we have been reading Journey to Jo’burg by Beverley Naidoo. In writing, pupils practised features of a persuasive letter in order to write letter to the then President, F W de Klerk, to persuade him to abolish apartheid.
In Maths, we have covered the unit of money, including estimating a total amount, adding and subtracting money and giving change. We have also covered the unit of time, including telling the time to the minute, using a.m. and p.m. and converting to a 24-hour clock
We have also been focussing on learning all the multiplication tables up to 12 times. We have daily practise sessions and a weekly quiz, based on the official DfE Multiplication tables check (MTC), which the pupils will take in June.
We are also continuing on the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) in our daily Mini maths sessions in the afternoons.
Our Science topic has been about Classification and habitats. Pupils have learned why we might classify living things into different categories. Pupils have learned to use a classification to sort living things according to key characteristics. We have also learned about the five kingdoms: animals, plants, fungi, protista and prokaryotes and worked hard to each make a poster to tell others about the five kingdoms! Finally, we have looked at how animals are well suited to the environment they live in – their habitat. We have looked at how changing habitats could pose a danger to the living things within them.
In Geography, we have been focusing on map-work skills. We have learned about the equator, lines of latitude, longitude and the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. We have been learning to read four- and six-figure grid references and also to label the same features on an aerial photograph as on a map.
Our Computing focus this half term has been on creating PowerPoints. We have used our prior learning about editing text, together with learning how to insert images, add animations and slide transitions to create a PowerPoint informing an audience of what it was like living in apartheid South Africa.
In Spanish, we have been using our new website Language Nut to support us with topic of ‘family’. We began by learning the vocabulary for different family members. We learnt how to say which family members live with us, what our family members are called and how old they are. We developed our skills as language detectives and tried to translate words and phrases containing the new vocabulary we had learnt. We have worked hard to be able to whole write sentences in Spanish about our family!
