This week we finished up our English topic on non-chronological reports. I was generally happy with the hard work they did. The spent a great deal of time looking up information on different animals and reporting on their diet, description, habitats and other interesting information. In addition to honing their note-taking skills, they did a lot of self-editing, filling in gaps in their knowledge, and then wrote a final draft in extended writing yesterday. I am looking forward to reading their reports in greater detail over the weekend.


We've started our topic on Habitats and Food Chains in science, and spent some time in the sun this week looking for mini-beasts on the school grounds. Each child was able to find several micro-environments (cracks in the walls, spaces between flag stones, branches of trees, etc.) and even found some of the animals living there. The topic will require more work out in the English sunshine so let's hope the weather continues to cooperate.


In History, we've been investigating Boudicca's Rebellion, a moment in history made all the more interesting because Boudicca sacked the Roman city of Verulamium (St Albans) and was ultimately defeated just north of here on Watling Street. The children have been weighing the good and bad aspects of Roman rule and today they wrote a rallying cry to the Iceni warriors before going into battle with the legionaries.


In RE we are looking now at Hinduism and some of the stories and teachings from some of their holy texts. Wednesday we looked at Ganesha, the Elephant-Headed god of luck and protection, and explored a bit what it meant to be lucky.


We are about to go into a lot of data handling in maths, which will involve lots of charts and graphs. This is an interesting part of the maths curriculum because some children who are very quick and accurate at arithmetic can become confused by graphs and charts, and some children who are less adept with arithmetic suddenly find they can read charts confidently.


Next week will be a normal week, with no school events or other interferences to the schedule, other than a brief music assembly on Thursday morning. There will be homework and spelling words as usual. I am happy to see the list of children forgetting or neglecting their homework is decreasing over time. Most children are taking it seriously and doing well at it.


Here are next week's spelling words:

subsist

subside


subordinate

superimpose

supervise

autograph

automobile

autobiography

patiently

knowingly

We are looking at the prefixes sub- and auto- and the suffix -ly.


Have a great weekend.