We finished our unit on ‘Musical Conversations’ by creating whole class written notations to allow us to work in small groups using untuned percussion instruments to perfect a musical conversation. We worked really hard to ensure that everyone had a role, we even made amendments to the notations for those groups that had more/less children in them.
We have continued our work on ‘Latin Dance’ this week by recapping information about Cuban music and how it is influenced. We then practised finding and maintaining a 2-3 clave rhythm, and a 3-2 clave rhythm using untuned percussion instruments. We then applied these rhythms to some traditional Cuban pieces of music.
We practised our piece ‘Latin Dance’, reviewing the lyrics and reminding ourselves of the structure of the piece. We noticed that there were two instrumental parts within the song and we decided to create our own Cuban rhythms to add to the existing instrumental parts.
Once we were happy with our rhythms, we practised the song as a whole, making sure that we were following our conductor to make sure we kept in time with each other and the backing track.
We have had a fantastic day today meeting an Egyptian and doing a range of fun activities which have helped us develop our understanding of the Ancient Egyptian Civilisation. First, we watched a demonstration on how to mummify a body. Next, we got to handle and learn about a range of interesting Egyptian artefacts. After that, we had a question and answer session where we got to have all of our burning questions answered. Our favourite session was next where we got to play a couple of Egyptian board games. After lunch, we even got to build and Egyptian city and use ink to draw hieroglyphs on papyrus. As you can tell, it was a jam-packed day but we really enjoyed it and learnt so much in preparation for our next expedition.
In hook week today we looked at the different kind of masks they wore in Maya times and then we had ago at making our own.
We became historians and looked at the timeline of the Mayan civilisation. We noticed that on a timeline the BC years descend and the AD years ascend. We discussed what it means to be a historian and what skills this includes.
We kicked off hook week by learning what is was to be a historian and the skills people need to research things from the past. We then began learning some information about Maya.
As part of this learning, we worked in mini crews to order key events into a timeline, with a reminder of BC and AD to ensure we ordered them correctly.
Did you know that when you order BC numbers go in descending order but when you order AD numbers they go in ascending order?
Today we started our new book in writing called “Our Tower”, the book started with a girl who was walking through a tall, grey and dingy city. She did not feel very happy and it was raining so she was soaked!
We experienced the miserable weather and built our own skyscrapers for our own city. We especially worked on our adjectives in todays lesson to help us to describe what we could see.
Our hook week started with us learning about the skills needed to be a historian and starting to learn some information about the Maya.
As part of this, we looked at the timeline and ordering key events. We had a reminder about the correct way to order based on BC and AD.
For BC, we order in descending order whereas for AD, we order in ascending order.
Today, we started our grammar sessions before we start our next piece of writing. One of our activities was to note down things we could notice in a passage of writing. It was great to see that we could identify lots of different features.
Today, we had a very exciting start to the term with a first aid course. We learnt about how to give CPR, check for dangers, call the emergency services, how to use a defibrillator and an epi-pen. We then discussed in detail about what we had learnt. Here are some pictures of us in action.
