Friday 10th February

 Happy Friday!

 This week, we have worked hard on adding and subtracting mixed numbers, in Maths. We continued our Science topic of Magnetism, thinking about what a magnetic material is and how we could identify them.   In our English unit on figurative language, we have written some descriptions of a setting based on an image. The children have used metaphor, simile and personification, as well as some ambitious vocabulary and their new best friend - a thesaurus!

​On Tuesday, we tried to answer the question - Why was Edward I a great and terrible King? The children found about this Medieval Monarch and the way that he had reigned. They thought about why he was a good and terrible King and then came to a conclusion based on their findings. They also learnt about Henry VIII and his six wives.

On Thursday, we had another session at the pool in Okehampton, the children had a great time and are making great progress in the pool.

Today we have dressed to express, telling people a little about what we are like, this is part of Children's Mental Health Awareness Week. This afternoon, to conclude our drive on mental health this week, we have been working on some wellbeing based artwork. (see photos) We watched the following videoclip first to inspire our artwork.

https://www.normalmagic.co.uk/resources/10-a-day-2/

We finished the week with a real challenge to our fitness from our P.E. coach, today we played some active fun games and a great game of dodgeball.

As part of our ongoing commitment to keeping our children safe online, in an ever changing cyber world, I would like to signpost you to some new parental advice documents on our website. They are based on keeping your child safe at home by helping them to understand and set up apps and the permissions correctly and thinking before they post or comment on any content. 
​They also provide information regarding grooming and what to do if you think your child is being groomed online.  These can be found using the link below and scrolling down to the online section. The links are on the right of the page - click the buttons.

Parent Information Hub (ntcps.co.uk)

  In terms of home learning, can I remind everybody that the expectation is that children read for at least 10 minutes at home everyday, this can be magazines, newspapers, manuals, cookery books, as well as their reading books, as it is all reading.  I would also like children to spend time working on their times tables, which are vital in so many areas of the Maths curriculum. Today I will post the children's spellings for next half term on Dojo and will send a paper copy home after half term (the first test will be the Friday of the first week back). Thank you for the pieces of Wider Curriculum Home Learning that I received.  A new set of challenges will be out after half term.

Next week, is half term and the children will be having a well earned rest, they have worked hard this week to complete their learning for the half term. After half term, the children will be completing their work on Fractions in Maths, continuing with our unit based on the use of figurative language  in English,  in Science, we will start our new unit based on electrical circuits , in History, we will complete our Medieval Monarchs unit with the end of unit task, and in Computing, we will work on Video editing.

Have a restful week,  wrap up warm and get out and about.

See you on Monday 20th February.

Mr F