What we are learning this week in Lilac Class for the week beginning 30.9.24

In Maths this week in Lilac Class, we are comparing and ordering numbers to 1000,000 and learning about the difference between ascending and descending order. We will then be moving on to rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100 or 1,000.  We will be thinking about the multiples of 10, 100 and 1,000 and which multiple on the number line the number is closest to.  Which place value column should you look at to round the number to the nearest 10, 100 and 1,000?

In English this week, we are levelling up and improving our Space Poems inspired by the work of Pie Corbett. We are checking that we have examples of features of poetry writing such as similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and personification in our poems.

For our whole class guided reading  text  The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis,  we are reading Chapter Five this week.  Lilac Class are again developing inference skills, looking beyond the actual text and  thinking about our own reaction to the text as readers by answering such questions as ‘What impression do you get of the Professor in this chapter?’ ‘Why do you think Edmund chose to make Lucy look like a fool?’  ‘How did this make you feel?’ 

In RE this week, Lilac Class are drawing on the ideas we considered during our discussion with Father John of texts from the Bible about God.  We will be looking again at our key vocabulary and what extracts from these texts are about these particular words. 

For our Time and Place topic entitled ‘The Ancient Mayan Civilisation’, Lilac Class are continuing with examining photographs of artefacts that were found in the ancient Mayan ruins.  We will be thinking about what these may be and what they could have been used for and who may have used them. Lilac Class are taking on the role of archaeologists.

In ICT, we are describing how search engines select results.  Lilac Class will be explaining why we need tools to find things online and recognising the role of web crawlers in creating an index.  As a hard copy, Lilac Class are completing an index of the classroom and creating an index of our school website.

For Science in Lilac Class, we are finding out about how day and night occur and why the Sun appears to move across the sky.  The questions we will be considering are: ‘Does the position of the Sun change over the course of the day?  How do we know this?’ What is happening to the Earth?  Is the Earth moving?’ In which direction does the Sun rise? And ‘In which direction does the Sun set?’

For Music, Lilac Class are composing ‘Moonscapes’ inspired by Gustav Holst’s The Planet’s Suite.  We will be working in groups and will record our ideas in the form of a graphic score.  Lilac Class will be using a range of dynamics that we heard when listening to Venus and Mars. We will be performing our compositions to one another and as a class we will be discussing the structure and dynamics used.