Jess & Susan’s Class Week 10 Term 2

Dear parents,

This week, the children’s understanding of vertical addition was extended by moving into subtraction. Instead of carrying over the tens, children learnt to borrow from other columns. I was very happy to see all children demonstrate a level of understanding, with some children even working with numbers in the tens of thousands! Everyone agreed that silly mistakes were the most annoying – like forgetting if you are adding or subtracting half way through, or calculating addition/ subtraction of small numbers under 20 incorrectly.

We also consolidated our work on 3D objects and practised drawing prisms using isometric dot paper. The children discussed the differences between prisms and pyramids and revisited key vocabulary such as congruent, vertices, and curved boundaries and surfaces.

We finished reading our class novel “Leo and Ralph” on the very  last day of term and the children reflected on the parts they loved the most. By the end of the novel everyone could identify a variety of literary devices such as personification and simile and my hope is that with more practice they begin to transfer some of these techniques into their own writing.

A real highlight this week was seeing the culmination of the term’s work in the fabulous PIP presentations. The children are continuing to grow in their ability to organise information, create engaging slideshows, and present with eye contact and at a suitable pace. Some are already thinking about next term’s topics!

Next term, we will continue our work on Space for just one week so the children can present their solar system models to each other and, on the first Friday, engage in a pop up planetarium excursion that will be visiting the school. After this, we’ll be starting a new themed unit of work. The children have suggested a range of topics they’d like to explore including transportation, human evolution, vertebrates and rainforests. I’ve got a bit of thinking to do over the holidays to make it something coherent.

The children loved the movie Night at the Museum and Bodhi suggested we watch number 2 next term! My impression was that being a slightly older movie it had a slower pace than was refreshing.

Wishing everyone a restful break!

Jess and Susan