This term Oak class have continued their topic ‘Masters of the Stars’, answering the learning questions ‘What did the Romans do for us?’ and ‘What is happening in the skies above our eyes?’

In English this term we have focused on the picture book ‘Escape From Pompeii.’ It has been fascinating learning about what a Roman town would have been like, and finding out about the tragic events that happened when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. We have written some wonderful short stories based on the events.

In maths we have learnt all about decimals and percentages: year 4 can relate decimals to money, and year 5 and 6 know equivalent fractions, decimals and percentages and are starting to find percentages of amounts. We have also learnt about area, perimeter and volume.

In history, we have continued our learning about the Romans including the resistance by Boudicca, why Hadrian’s Wall was built and what we still have today that the Romans brought to Britain, including flushing toilets, cement, straight roads and stinging  nettles! We had a wonderful visit to Rushcliffe Country Park for our ‘Romans of Rushcliffe’ day, where our learning was really brought to life. We learnt how to be Roman soldiers, built catapults and studied artefacts.

    

We have continued learning about our Solar System in science, exploring how day and night happens, why time zones are different in different parts of the world, and why the moon appears to change shape. It took a while to wait for a sunny enough day to carry out our shadow investigation, but we managed it in the end – it was fascinating to see how shadows change throughout the day showing how the earth is spinning on its axis. We have created pop-up books in DT to explain our science learning to younger children, complete with handmade stuffed toys to accompany them. In music we have listened to Holst’s planet suite, comparing pieces of music written about Mars, bringer of war, Venus, bringer of peace and Jupiter, bringer of jollity.

     

In PE, we have worked on our hockey skills and started to explore tri-golf. We keep moving every day with our daily boost, which this term has included sports fitness, dance to pop hits and active games outside when the weather allows.

      

In RE, the children have explored the question ‘What kind of King was Jesus?’, including looking at how Jesus is presented in Christian hymns. In PSHE we have explored economic wellbeing and how to effectively manage money.

It has been a short but busy term, with some fantastic enrichment opportunities for the children including World Book Day and a mad science morning to celebrate British Science Week, where the children worked in house teams to try a range of science experiments.