As we have reached the halfway point of the half-term it has been another busy week in 5/6B. The children were delighted to learn about our trip to the Tower of London in March (their pestering wore me down) and it hopefully will be a brilliant experience. As mentioned last week it really has been brilliant to see how enthused the children have been about their learning. 

This week in shared reading we have been focussing on chapter 9 of The Executioner's Daughter. It was good to hear lots of the children read parts of the chapter and see some grow in confidence reading to the class. The children looked at the key parts of the chapter and then looked up unfamiliar words and discussed what they could mean. In English the children have been writing emotive and persuasive letter either from Moss to her father (two characters from The Executioner's Daughter) or from Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII. It has been good to see the range of vocabulary the children have been using and really focussing on how they can draw on various strategies to add to the emotion of their letters. In maths we have been looking at multiplication and division in particular focussing on reasoning and problem solving. The children have also had the opportunity to revise their times tables which as discussed many times are so important in so many aspects of maths (keep revising them!!!). In art the children got to attempt their own small sculptures using wire. They used what they have learnt about Alexander Calder's work to help them make a start to learning how to work with wire (it isn't easy). In science the children looked at how flowers reproduce, in particular asexual reproduction. In history we looked at the six wives of Henry VIII with the children being given different portraits, quotes and information and having to piece together clues and use their knowledge to work out who was who. It was really interesting watching the children work together to complete the task and great to see how much fun they had. In RE we discussed the importance of the ten commandments in the lives of Christians. In PE we continued to develop our gymnastic skills and have begun to attempt some more difficult movements. 

The song choice for this week is by Kings of Leon. A great band with a fantastic back catalogue of songs and albums. This song Radioactive is from the album Come Around Sundown which is definitely an underrated classic. 

Thanks, 

Mr. H