Personal Development
We have been looking at learning French numbers 1-31. From our previous French learning we were quite confident with numbers up to 12 and so we spent time looking at the written words for numbers 13-31 as well as practising our pronunciation.
We then had a go at doing simple mathematics using only French numbers. We had to work together to work out the numbers we needed to add/subtract before then working out the answer and giving the answer in French. This really got us thinking!
During this lesson, we used our knowledge of French numbers up to 12 to play French outdoor games on the playground! We discussed the French for common phrases such as your turn, my turn, winner, and miss a turn before heading out!
First, in small groups we had to use a diagram to draw out our game area. This game ‘la marelle’ was similar to hopscotch. We used chalk to draw out the game area before taking it in turns to throw the rock to a number. We had to call out the number 1 in French before skipping to the end of the grid ‘le ciel’ (the sky), coming back to ‘la terre’ (the earth) and collecting the rock to pass on to the next person, saying à toi (your turn). The next person then had to throw the rock on to the next number and repeat the same process. If the player did not roll the rock onto the correct number they had to shout ‘manque’ to show they were missing a turn. The winner ‘gagne’ was the first person to accurately throw the rock to number 10 and move along the game area to get to ‘le ciel’.
This lesson we were looking at the skill of being able to read numbers 1-12 in French.
We used word cards for the numbers 1-12 to try and put them in the correct order.
We then discussed how to talk about and ask ‘how many?’ in French. We practised our pronunciation and understanding by turning over unknown picture cards and asking ‘Il y a combien?’ after counting in French, our partner then had to find the corresponding written number card to create a pair.
In French we have been looking at how to say our ages, as well as ask other people how old they are. We started by becoming language detectives, identifying areas of French that we already knew or could find cognates/near cognates for within a letter. We discussed what we could find out from the letter and key questions that had been asked. This helped us with working out particular phrases useful to our lesson.
We then looked at how to say ‘I am ____ years old’ in French. We added an amount of candles to the image on the board and practised the pronunciation of the phrase ‘J’ai _____ ans’. We then looked at how to ask someone how old they are in French before asking and answering the questions using our new French knowledge.
We then played some games where we had to listen carefully to either our teacher or our crew members to identify what they were telling us.
We did lots of exciting things during our final weeks of Spring 2.
We planted our own sunflower seeds and can’t wait to see how they grow! We carefully made sure that our seeds had enough compost before looking at our tiny seeds and even whispering kind things to them so that they would grow beautifully. We then made sure that they were well covered and we will keep checking in on them so that they grow into super sunflowers!
As well as planting our own seeds that will turn into flowers, we looked carefully at the different parts of flowers that had already grown. We talked about the stem, the leaves and the petals. We carefully dissected each of the parts, thinking about what they looked like, how the felt and we even smelt the petals! We then used the parts to create natural art. We also used some of the petals to add to our water tray to make beautiful potions and perfumes!
We also looked at the Easter story and talked about why Easter is important and the need for us to celebrate it many years later.
We spent some time admiring our beautiful work from this expedition that is now on display outside our classroom. We enjoyed spotting ourselves and our friends on the pictures, finding our work and talking about all the fantastic learning we have done this term!
Finally, we celebrated our fantastic Spring Term by inviting our lovely grown ups into school to our Celebration of Learning. We performed our song ‘Gingerbread Man on the Run’ before completing Easter crafts with our grown ups. We also shared our beautiful work books and talked about all of the hard work we had done this term.
A big thank you to all the grown ups who came in to share this event with the children – they have worked so hard and we are all so proud of what they have achieved!
A really busy, but really fun term! Well done Crew MW, you are all superstars!
During this lesson, we began looking at performing the Twinkle theme on pitched instruments. We used glockenspiels and worked hard to use the notations to ensure we were playing the correct notes with the correct rhythm.
We then thought about how we could create a new variation based upon the changes we had discussed in our previous lesson as well as some new suggestions. Working with a partner, we created a short variation before sharing these with the rest of our crew. We tried to identify how the performers had created their new variation as well as praising and offering critique for improvement next time.
We continued with our work on ‘Trains’ during music by thinking of different sounds that you would hear on a train or that a train makes. We thought about how we could use our voices and body percussion to create these sounds.
We then practised following a conductor using crescendo and diminuendo actions whilst performing the train sounds we had decided upon.
Miss McGlone played us a rhythm using a drum and after a discussion, we decided that this rhythm could be used to represent the wheels of the train. She then used a shaker to play a beat that was twice as fast as the drum. We said that this could represent the passengers on the train jiggling along as the train moved. Finally, she played a guiro that went twice as fast as the shaker. This represented the sound of the engine. We talked about how the drum and the shaker could stay at their original beat whilst all being layered on top of each other. We listened to an example of how each individual beat could be played at the same time to create a piece representing multiple different parts of a train journey.
We are ready to begin creating our own compositions next lesson that include lots of rhythms layered on top of each other, as well as using crescendo and diminuendo techniques.
We began our new music unit ‘Trains’ by thinking about different modes of transport. We then listened to 4 pieces of music inspired by different modes of transport. We had to listen carefully and draw the type of transport we thought was represented by the music.
We were then introduced to the musical terms ‘crescendo’ and ‘diminuendo’. When the music gets louder it is called a ‘crescendo’. When the music fades away and gets quieter it is called ‘diminuendo’. We looked at the symbols that are used in written music to show this.
We practised a short rhythm and repeated this multiple times. We decided on a visual prompt that our conductor (Miss McGlone) could use to show crescendo and diminuendo and as we repeated the rhythm, we followed the actions of the conductor to make it louder or quieter.
We began our new unit of music ‘Musical Conversations’ by listening to a piece of music called ‘Dueling banjos’. We talked about what we noticed was happening in the music and decided it sounded like the instruments were talking to each other and having a conversation. We then got into a circle and using the box of instruments in the middle, two people had a conversation with an instrument of their choice. We thought that we needed to set some rules for the people with the instruments. 1) take turns, 2) you can’t play at the same time, 3) you can play what you like, for as long as you like. We then swapped so everyone had a turn to have a musical conversation with a friend.
We then split into pairs and had our own personal musical conversations only this time, we were thinking about how we might represent different emotions within our conversations (e.g. having an argument, being silly, being happy, being shy etc). Once finished, we then shared some of our conversations with the rest of the class and we had to guess the emotion we thought they were showing.
We continued with our work on ‘Latin Dance’ by learning about Cuban music and where it gets its influences from. We discussed how it uses a special rhythm called the clave rhythm and we used untuned percussion instruments to find the clave rhythm to a song called ‘El manisero (The Peanut Vendor)’.
We then used glockenspiels to practise the A minor and F major chords. Our final performance is going to be a whole class arrangement of ‘Latin Dance’ so we practised adding the chords in alongside singing the lyrics with the backing track. We thought about what we needed to do to make it even better during the next lesson!
