Mental Maths

Each week, in our Mental Maths lessons, Years 5 & 6 are trying to improve their mental agility in their understanding of number, shape & space, data handling and measures.  This is supporting their attempts at beating their own scores in mental maths tests.

Josh and Ollie have been working really hard on their mental maths to decipher the answers to problems involving algebra as well as geometry.  Today's test included the following questions:
                                                                                                  

i)  Simply this expression: 10y2  - 3y2

ii)  Using three as an approximation for pi, find the circumference of a circle with diameter eight centimetres.

Speak to Ollie or Josh if you need any help with these!

Wonderful Reading in Reception

Lucy has demonstrated some truly brilliant reading this morning.  She has been looking at some really tricky phase 5 words - including: 

people    should     where    thought     through     asked

Lucy's progress has been really fantastic and we are very proud of her achievements.

Harvey's Writing

On Friday, Mrs Lilley shared a sensational piece of writing that Harvey had completed in BIG writing.  The task was to write a story with a repeating phrase.  Below is Harvey's story:

One summer day I went to the zoo with Buster.  I told him to not run off but he didn't listen then I went looking for him.  Suddenly I saw a squirrel peeking behind the tree. The squirrel was nibbling loads of nuts but where's Buster?  There were two slithering snakes hiding behind the bush, the snakes were eating mice but where's Buster?  After that I found Buster!

Harvey's vocabulary choices are terrific.  Fantastic writing Harvey!

Writing in Reception

Our Reception class are budding authors!  This afternoon they read the story 'The Wind Blew' by Pat Hutchins.  Following this, they created their very own book, of the same title.  Each member of the class produced their own page explaining what the wind did.  This was a truly terrific example of the fantastic writing happening in Reception!

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Writing a biography

Yesterday, I had the privilege of teaching Years 5 & 6.

Within their current Literacy unit, they are learning how to write a really terrific biography.  They have each been able to select who they would like to write a biography on (famous names include: Daniel Radcliffe, Sir Alan Sugar and Dame Maggie Smith).

Charlie's biography is on Chelsea footballer, Demba Ba.  I was so impressed with the quality of Charlie's writing as well as the great improvements with his presentation, that I felt I had to share.

Keep up the fantastic work Charlie!

Challenging Data Handling

This morning, I had the opportunity to work with Years 3 and 4 on various types of data-handling.  As a class, we identified that there a great number of ways that data can be presented.  These included:

Pie-charts

Bar graphs/Bar charts

Tally charts

Venn diagrams

Carroll diagrams

Throughout the week, children will have an opportunity to develop their understanding in these areas through the use of their enquiry skills.

Dylan, Krysta, Callum, Hattie and I then worked on some challenging data handling involving 3 different types of averages:

Mode (Most common)

Median (The middle value, once the numbers have been put into ascending order - smallest to largest)

Mean (Add up all the values and then divide by the total number of values)

By the end of the lesson, all four

children had a good understanding of these concepts.

They all have a challenge in their books ready for tomorrow!