Beech Tree Class Blog 2023-2024
Beech Tree Blog
Weekly Update 7/10/22
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, the children have been writing their recounts about their trip to Murton Park. They have included features that we have been focusing on for the past two weeks, such as: fronted adverbials, adjectives, conjunctions, paragraphs and placing events in chronological order. The children have then edited their work to improve the overall quality of their pieces. They have done a super job and written some fantastic recounts. Some of these will be on our class display board, which is situated between the Y3 and Y3/4 classroom. Well done!
Our focus in maths this week has been around roman numerals, as well as rounding to 10 and 100. The children have really enjoyed it - especially because of the links to our topic, which is all about the Romans. As usual, they have been working very hard and are always keen to demonstrate their knowledge and what they have learnt. It's great to see the progress that they have been making.
In science, the children have been learning about the digestive system, which organs are involved with the process, what it means to digest and what our body gains from digesting food. The children were fascinated and asked lots of good questions, which created a stimulating discussion. We will be creating our own digestive systems next week :)
We have continued our work on programming and the children have made great progress. It's been so lovely to see them becoming more confident to independently create the set of digital instructions and explain what they're doing. This week, we focused on additional features to what our sprite would be able to do when different keys were pressed. We added the option to change colours, depending on which way the pen was writing. We also added instructions to make the line become thicker and to also make it thinner. The children then experimented with moving the pen across their page and changing the colour and thickness as they went along.
In art, we have been looking at another European artist called Le Corbusier, who was also an architect. They learnt all about the different types of buildings he designed and his unique style. The children were then tasked with creating their own house in the style of Le Corbusier's building designs, by using a variety of different shapes. They have created some lovely, geometric designs, as can be seen below.
If you have time, please follow the link below. It is extremely useful for practising your addition, subtraction, multiplication and division skills.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button
These are the times table award sheets for you to download and practise.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update 30/9/22
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello,
This week, the children went on their Romans trip to Murton Park. They became fierce and skilled Roman soldiers, they learnt how to march, they did weapons training with swords, spears and shields, they made some beautiful oil lamps, they scared away a Celtic invader and they learnt all about how the fort was built and protected. The children were absolutely fantastic - they had good manners, they were keen and enthusiastic during every activity and they lots of fun. We were very proud with how they represented the school. Well done! Please click the following link to see a slideshow of pictures from their trip
We have continued reading our class novel this week and the children are thoroughly enjoying it, particularly the cliff-hanger at the end of this chapter. We have also continued to practise our retrieval and inference skills.
For our writing, we have been focusing on identifying coordinating and subordinating conjunctions and using them in sentences in a variety of ways. We have also been focused on making notes about our memories at Murton Park and all the brilliant activities that the children got to do throughout the day.
In computing, we are continuing our work around programming. This week, our lesson focused around drawing lines. We were making our sprite (which was a pencil) move around and write by creating a set of digital instructions, which could then be controlled using certain keys. The children were then tasked with writing different block letters with the sprite. The children absolutely loved it and I can't believe how much their confidence has increased each week, it's wonderful to see!
Spellings for this week: immortal, impatient, immeasurable, imperfect, impossible, immovable, impolite, immature, improper.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update-23/9/22
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, our writing focus has revolved around identifying and using recount features that appear in the story of Romulus and Remus. The features we have been looking at are: openers, adjectives, conjunctions and paragraphs. The children have been working incredibly hard, building up their knowledge about each feature and practising to use those features. Below, the children were starting to practise using good openers and to punctuate them correctly. We then focused on adjectives and making the writing more descriptive. By the end of this week, the children have produced some brilliant descriptive pieces that describe what Romulus and Remus could see on their hills, using a variety of different senses, and they've included exciting openers and fantastic adjectives. It's been lovely to see the build up of their knowledge, vocabulary and their confidence.
It's also really lovely to see how much the children enjoy reading and to see their confidence building when reading to the class. Our story time book that we are currently reading is The Beast of Buckingham Palace by David Walliams.
In art, we are currently focusing on European artists, specifically, the work of Anselm Kiefer. His work focuses on broken buildings, relating to his memories of the aftermath of WW2 and he uses a variety of materials within his work. The children have been focusing on practising their sketching skills, accurately observing and drawing what they see. They worked incredibly hard and have produced some lovely pieces that are accurate, are three-dimensional and have depth to them.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)