Sapphire Class

This term we have been reading a picture book called The Pebble in my pocket. It is a non-fiction text but presented as a story of the history of our world. We’ve all got pebbles to focus on. We are learning about how the world came to be geographically (linked to our science unit on rocks). This week we are writing in role as the pebble and sharing our thoughts on what was going on 480 mya (million years ago) to the present day. Miss Tonner is really impressed with our 1st person recounts.

We are learning about decimals.

We now know what makes a decimal number and how to multiply and divide numbers to create decimals. We’ve also been able to use everything we’ve learnt about adding and subtracting and apply that to working with decimal numbers. We were pleased to see that we had remembered everything about the column method and we’re all happy to use it  with decimals.

We are learning all about the artist Banksy in Y3/4. His graffiti style is different to any kind of art we’ve done before and we’re looking forward to creating our own stencils and protest posters at the end of the unit. So far, we have looked at examples of his work as well as his protest pieces. Did you know that he installed a shredder in the frame of one of his pieces and when that piece was sold at auction, the shredder was set off and shredded half of the painting! This week we experimented with pre-made stencils, making sure we could all use them effectively. Over the next few weeks we will continue to experiment with different media and look at how to make simple yet effective stencils for our final piece.

Our topic this term is all about the impact of plastic pollution. We have looked at different types of plastics and we were shocked to discover that nearly 70% of single use plastic does not get recycled. In fact, it will more often than not end up in landfill or our rivers/oceans. We collected lots of plastic in school and from home to see how much plastic we use. Our plastic survey showed that as humans, we are extremely reliant on plastic.

Science

We are looking at different types of rocks. We have learnt what makes rocks sedimentary, igneous or metamorphic. It has been helpful to have our science and English lessons link up because we can recap facts and use them in our writing. Lots of us have brought in different rocks to show that we have collected either at home, on holiday or in school. We are looking forward to learning about fossils next week.

We have just started to learn about the violin and for the next few weeks we will be learning how to play a few tunes and then perform them to classes in school and hopefully our parents.