Today 5 pupils from both year 3 and year 4 headed out for the afternoon to compete in a football tournament. They were one of 10 teams, unfortunately we didn’t place in the top 3 but I was so impressed with the children’s efforts, resilience and sportsmanship. Out of the 10 teams, which was over 100 children in total, one of our year 4 pupils was given a medal for his stand out sportsmanship. We were all so proud of him, what a great achievement! Here’s a few photos to showcase our fantastic afternoon!
Last week in crew they did the cup challenge. They had an elastic band with string tied to it. The children had to pull on the string to stretch the elastic band and put it over a cup. They did this with each cup to make a pyramid.
We have moved on to our next computing unit which is understanding an algorithm. An algorithm is a clear set of instructions that we give to a computer to fulfil a task that we need it to do. Unfortunately, if the instructions aren’t clear then the computer will become confused. To help with their understanding, the children had to help Miss Shields make a jam sandwich but unfortunately this didn’t go to plan. The instructions Miss Shields received resulted in questionable jam sandwiches.
First, she was told to spread the butter on the bread then spread the jam on the bread. So children were quite surprised when this happened.
Another set of instructions was to get out the bread, get out the butter and get out the jam but children weren’t happy when I plopped these on the table and not the actual bread.
After a couple of failed attempts, children refined their instructions, however, they forgot to tell Miss Shields to use a knife so they were quite surprised when she spread the butter and jam with her hand. They then remembered to tell me that I needed to use a knife.
By following the unclear instructions, children were able to start understanding that an algorithm has to be clear instructions so that a computer knows exactly what to do and doesn’t get confused.
This week, Crew McLoughlin became young scientists as they learned how to classify different plants.They looked closely at leaves, stems, and flowers – they even got to touch and feelmany of the plants to notice their textures and features (but not the cactus, of course)! The crew loved comparing what they found and talking about how scientists group plants based on their characteristics.
Today Crew McLoughlin have been working extra hard on their text marking in reading. While using their highlighters and pencils, they identified key ideas, annotated tricky words and added extra detail to show their understanding. Everyone showed great focus and teamwork, discussing their ideas and supporting one another. Well done, Crew McLoughlin – your reading skills are getting stronger every day!
Today in Crew, we beautifully demonstrated our Be Kind HoWL. We took time to share what we appreciate about each other and celebrate what makes every member of our Crew special. Sharni-Mae even suggested choosing our HoWL heroes at the end of the day and writing them postcards to praise their kindness. It was lovely to hear Crew members speaking so thoughtfully and kindly about one another.
In computing, Year 3 have continued to explore scratch by creating an animation. Children used a variety of blocks to make their sprite move, spin or make a noise. Some children even started to add some dialogue to it. This lesson will support children ahead of the next lesson which will be where they start telling a story using code. Before we finished the lesson, some children shared their animation to the board and what their idea was.
Building on from our last computing lesson, Crew Barber created an invention all together. We discussed the type of invention that we’d like and how we could modify it to suit everyone. We worked through and discussed the shapes we could use and how we would like the machine to work.
Our invention was a food and drinks machine at would allow you to order anything you wanted. You would type in what you wanted and the machine would make it automatically. The crew decided that this invention would be best suited in their bedroom so they could have food whenever they wanted. The winning requests were chicken nuggets, cupcakes or chips.
In Re, Year 1 have been learning about creation. Last week, we learned about what Christian people believe about creation and how God created the world. To start our lesson, children recapped what God created each day before we started looking at what some Hindu people believe. We watched a video about Hindu people’s beliefs and then discussed the similarities and differences to the Christian creation story.
