Pompeii's volcano

In Maths, the Year 1 and 2s have been solving difficult addition and subtraction problems including problems with numbers over 20. They used dienes blocks to solve them and some children are able to use their knowledge of place value to solve them in their heads. Some of our youngest children have been learning numbers up to 30, learning one more and one less and also how to add and subtract using blocks. In English, our Year 1s and 2s have been learning how to write in the past tense by learning the different rules such as -ed and irregular verbs. They will use this to help them to write their own diary entries based on our class story The Journey. We have continued learning about Vincent Van Gogh; the children painted fantastic pictures of Starry Night and they can’t wait to share it with you in our presentation next week. We learnt about Ramadan this week, linking it to our learning about good behaviour. We talked about similarities and differences between religions (and non-religious values) and we talked about why Muslim people choose to fast. It has helped us to understand why we must not waste food at lunchtime! We are making a decorative chain for Ramadan with all of the good things we do in school on slips of paper decorated with stars and moons. This is an excellent link with our work on behaviour as we already know what we should be doing! Now we just have to look out for other people doing nice things and also to do nice things ourselves ready to write on the chain! The older children began the week by consolidating their knowledge of place value, including numbers with 2 decimal places. We also marvelled at how large the number 1 trillion looks by writing it all across the top of the blackboard! In grammar we studied commas and how to use them in a sentence to change the meaning or write lists of things. On Tuesday, we looked at the practice of fasting for Ramadan, the Muslim month of worship. Later in the week we cooked dates that were fried in batter, a traditional Ramadan dessert. To end the week, we recreated a famous Roman painting of the volcano at Pompeii. It was very relaxing working with an easel and mixing our own colours to recreate the image. In Science, we investigated the impact air has on objects that are dropped from a certain height. We also discovered that all objects weigh the same when in an atmosphere containing zero oxygen.