LKS2 – Newsletter – 5.11.21

LKS2 have had an awesome first week back! 

On Tuesday and Thursday, we ventured down to Golden Acre Park. After walking down to the woods, the children started a ‘Wildlife Watch’ exercise. We explored the area and looked out for different types of animals, and kept a tally of the different animals we saw and their classification. The animal we saw the most of was definitely birds! Robins, mandarin ducks and swans to name a few. Then we split into smaller groups to complete some Forest Schools activities. The children created a boundary by tying a coloured ribbon to a nearby tree, and we played a hide and seek game to familiarise ourselves with the area. Then, we learned about compasses. We looked at how a real compass always points North, then learned the 8 points of a compass. Finally, we used natural resources to create our own compass on the forest floor. We enjoyed our lunch sat in the sunshine outside the Golden Acre Park cafe. Then we started our afternoon activity, which was to create a sketch map of Golden Acre Park. We used existing maps to help us locate the various landmarks of the park, and walked along to the duck pond, spotting features like the old railway as we walked.

Whilst the other children were on the trip, we learnt all about the history of Golden Acre Park in school. We found out that it used to be a theme park! Focusing on important dates, people and events, we added another page onto our projects using technology and articles to research.

In maths, we have all moved onto our new term topic of addition and subtraction!

Miss Boyd’s group have been focusing on using column addition this week, zooming in on three and four digit numbers without carrying. Our main focus has been to line the digits up in the correct place value columns and to center in on our number bonds to 10 to work out the mental additions. We extended our learning by working our missing digits in a column addition and even answering sums where we had to carry digits into the next place value column. 

The Y3s have learned all about the inverse this week. On Wednesday, they completed various activities which showed the link between adding and subtracting. For example, they created addition questions in hoola hoops, then read it backwards to create the inverse! They also used addition/subtraction triangles and part whole models to create fact families. 

In English, we have been learning prefixes! We have been discovering the simple spelling rule of prefixes and have practiced adding the correct prefixes onto root words such as redo, disappoint and antisocial. As a challenge, we wrote sentences in our books using the prefix words.

Today, year 3’s began their new P.E. topic of dance. We had an introductory lesson where we started by seeing what we already knew about dance. We learnt all new language, such as balance, levels, co-ordination and lines, and then put this into practice. After our warm up, we talked about how we can move our bodies in many ways in order to make different shapes. Focusing on the new language we learnt, we individually made 3 contrasting shapes with our bodies. Some shapes were really big, some were small and others relied on the flexibility of our bodies. We then moved onto making 2 new shapes in pairs or threes. Each shape was made better by thinking about the various levels, space and teamwork each child could use in their group.

Important notices: