Week Ending 25/11/16

A month away from Christmas and we're working as hard as ever!

This week in Maths we have been looking at multiplication and using the Box Method. This method has helped us tackle and solve what at first seemed difficult mathematical equations. We can be given any (seemingly) difficult two and three digit number and feel confident that we will work out the answer. The method involves breaking down equations into manageable bite-sized chunks that we can then use our skills of addition to solve the answer. We are continuing to do two and three digit multiplication equations so that we can feel confident to try out four digit numbers! Here is an example of how the Box Method works:

If you would like to learn more about the Box Method of multiplication, please watch this video:

We would also like to start practicing our times tables at home so that we can challenge more difficult equations and become more proficient with less challenging equations (which would ultimately help us with those seemingly difficult equations). Any help with our 1, 2, 3, and 4 times tables would be greatly appreciated.

In English this week we took some time to look at poetry. Our task was to write a three stanza poem (not to be confused with a tercet poem such as a haiku). We used music as a cue for our poetry writing (we used a similar method when we used Philip Glass's opening track to his score for the film Mishima as a cue to draw a picture). For our poetry exercise we listened to Erik Satie's Gnossienne No. 1 as our inspiration for our poetry. This piece of music gave us a range of ideas which resulted in poetry about a ballerina dancing for an audience to being with our friends on the beach. From being alone in a house while a wolf was outside our door to being in the wild plains of Africa. Some of our favourite lines were:

The night was long and the light was little

and 

Every seat was taken!

Here is the music that we used:

In Topic we have been looking at plant reproduction. We have used diagrams and visual methods for our writing where we have focused on pollination of flowers and how pollen moves from one plant to the next. Here is a video of pollination in action with a bee pollinating several flowers:

And here is a video explaining the parts of a plant involved in pollination:

In final news we are still very busy practicing for our exciting Christmas play. Any time you could spend with us this weekend helping us to learn our lines would be greatly appreciated!