Remember tomorrow is cake sale day, and we are selling the cakes! Please bring a few small cakes to school tomorrow morning (Thursday) and put them in the art room. Each class has its own table in the art room. Look for the signs.
We looked at sorting diagrams today. In this type of diagram (called a Carroll diagram) there are rows and columns. In class we practised sorting the Grizzly Gang (NHM page 122) into the diagram. At home please do page 122. Draw the Carroll diagrams neatly in your book. There is no need to draw the faces. Read the questions carefully, and think about the explanation you heard in class. Enjoy your homework.
We had sheets today with different kinds of language on them. We cut the sheets up and sorted the pieces into two sets: formal language and informal language. The difference is explained on the board above. Do you know which set each piece of writing goes into?
Today we purified sandy water by filtering it. We mixed sand and water, and then we poured the mixture through some filter paper in a funnel. The filter paper lets the water through, but not the sand. The sand is trapped in the filter paper. Clean water comes out of the bottom of the funnel.
Today we looked at tally charts. On the board above you can see how they work. Tally charts are easy if you concentrate. At home please complete the tally chart about insects on the sheet I gave you. Don't count each type of insect. Tally the insects one by one, so you count all the types of insect at the same time. Enjoy your tallying. Don't forget to review your practice mentla maths test too.
Last night at home we finished our Pied Piper letters. As always, those of us who listened well in class, and tried hard, produced good work. Several of us gained a house point for our letters. Well done!
Today our objective was to write a recount letter, from one of the children in the Pied Piper story. We thought of words to describe the music of the piper, and words to describe what it was like when we were trapped in the cave in the mountain.
At home please write your letter. I have started mine on the board above. Rememer the address, and the opening (Dear Mr Mayor). Remember to indent your paragraphs.
Today we looked at information organised in tables. We answered questions. We found that we had to read the questions very carefully to get the right answers. Rushing to finish causes mistakes.
It is important to show our working when we answer a problem question. We should not write only the answer. We should write the calculations we did to get the answer. We may get marks for showing our working in an exam.
Every maths lesson we practise our mental skills. Today we looked at how to add and subtract hundreds without writing down a calculation. Cover the tens and units. The subtraction becomes very easy. Then we copy the tens and units that we covered.
Following on from our homework on reading letters for understanding, we completed the deduction questions on the right side of the sheet. We had to think carefully. For the last question, it is possible to answer either yes or no. It does not matter which one you choose. All the marks are for the explanation that supports your answer.
After that we read a letter from a girl named Stephanie, to her grandmother. We had to read very carefully to answer some of the questions. My answers are on the board below.
We imagined that we each had a friend in another country who will be moving to Kuwait. We wrote letters to our imaginary friends, telling them that they should come and study at NES. My imaginary friend is called Ahmed. I wrote to him and told him about the interesting and enjoyable lessons that we do here. This kind of letter is a recount.
Today we used hopping diagrams to find dates. Remember that a week has seven days, so we have to count in steps of 7. The only thing that has to be added to the board is the answer to the last question: 5th May.
In science today we thought about melting and dissolving. They are different.
We tackled two pieces of learning in our maths lessons today. First we looked at calendars and dates. On the board above you can see a calendary for 2011, and there is some information about how to use it.
Today we read the letter shown above. Click to enlarge it. After that we answered some questions about the letter. It is very important to READ the letter, again and again, to find EVIDENCE for our answers. If you write an answer that is not connected with the text, your answer is probably wrong.
Here are my example answers. Can you find the evidence in the letter that I used to write my answers? Do the answers help you to imagine what the questions were? If you can find the evidence, and if you can tell what the questions were by reading the answers, then the answers are good answers.
We did a piece of shared writing to begin our lesson. We imagined that we needed to complain to the manager of a cinema. Look carefully at the letter we wrote. Our address is at the top right. Then we wrote today's date. We started the letter with Dear Sir or Madam because we did not know the manager's name. The first paragraph of the letter explains the problem. It contains many past tense verbs. The second paragraph asks for a solution to the problem. The letter ends with Yours faithfully because we did not know the manager's name. If we had used the manager's name at the beginning, we would put Yours sincerely at the end.
We checked our homework from yesterday, about writing amounts of money using a pound sign. The rule is easy. There must be 2 digits after the decimal point. The pound sign comes at the beginning of the numbers.
Afterwards we did a page of work about using a 100 square to add (and to subtract). Look at the board above to see the rules we followed. Can you make up rules, using north, south, east and west, to add and subtract other numbers?
This morning we practised addition, using mental methods and written methods. If we use a written method we must be sure to keep our columns straight. If we use a mental method, it is best to do each sum in two steps. Start with one of the two numbers, then add the tens. Finally add the units.
We checked our homework on tenses. Those of us who had thought carefully and said the words aloud to ourselves (instead of just guessing quickly) had done well. The answers to many of the questions are on the board above.
After that we moved on to letter writing, which is our next unit of study. We looked at some examples of letters. One of them is shown above. Click to make it large enough to read. Who wrote the letter? What was the first thing he wrote? Who did he write it to? On what date did he write it? Where does the writer live? 
We thought about the beginning of the Roman Empire in our lesson today. There is a story which says that Romulus, the first king of Rome, was thrown into the River Tiber when he was a baby, along with his twin brother, Remus. The story continues with a wolf finding the babies, and taking care of them. Next, a herdsman found the boys, and looked after them until they grew into men. They built the city of Rome on the banks of the River Tiber. The brothers argues about a wall that Romulus had built around the city. There was a fight, and Remus was killed. Romulus became the first king of Rome.
We began by looking again at the newspaper report about the accidents on the frozen river. We did a piece of shared writing, shortening the report into just sixty words. We tried to include all the important points.
Finally we looked together at another made-up newspaper report. Can you tell which story the report is based on? To make a newspaper report from a story, it's necessary to choose just ONE part of the story and think carefully about it.
We looked through our homework from yesterday. Many of us had listened well, and shown our working out, instead of just writing the answer. I have shown some of the ways of solving the problems on the board above. There are other ways too.
In our topic lesson we looked at the fifth history video. We learned about the time after Roman army had left Britain. A legend is a story with some made-up parts, and some parts that may be true. Nobody knows whether there was a real King Arthur or not. We used our art time to paint pictures from the story.
In our maths lesson on Wednesday we looked again at mixed numbers. You can find an example on the board. Three of our classmates helped to explain to the rest of us what the numbers mean. Well done!
Homework was the maths problem sheet. Remember we read through all the questions together in class, and we talked about the calculations that need to be done.
The focus of Wednesday's literacy was tenses: past and present. We looked at regular verbs that add d or ed to make the past tense; and at irregular verbs that change their spelling.
Present Past
see saw
pick
think
hope
do
This afternoon we read a newspaper report about accidents on a frozen river. Instead of answering questions, we were given the answers and we had to make up questions to go with them. I have put some answers on the board above. There are other possible answers too.
Today we looked again at mixed numbers. We remembered that we count the whole pizzas first, and that gives us the big number. Then we count the parts to get the top number of the fraction. The bottom number of the fraction is the same as the number of pieces a whole one is cut into. It may seem hard at first, but it becomes easier with practice.
Following our work on fractions yesterday, we moved on to look at mixed numbers. The big number tells us how many wholes there are. A whole is completely coloured, with no white parts.
The smaller numbers, above and below the line, tell us what fraction of the part-coloured shape is coloured. The two board images above show how it is done.
After checking our homework from yesterday, we went on to do a piece of shared writing. We wrote a recount of the gas explosion from Mr O'Donovan's point of view. We put our ideas together on the board.
Finally we looked at the verbs in the gas explosion report. We noticed that the verbs are all in the past tense. This is because the events in the report have already happened when the report is written. 
We looked at more newspaper reports today. We noticed the headlines, and we saw that some words are missed out from a sentence to make a headline. For example, the headline above, if it was a full sentence, would say A workman was hurt in an explosion. The words A, was and an have been missed out.
We answered some comprehension questions, which you can find on the sheet I gave you. At home please look at your work, and re-do the questions whose numbers I have written in your book. Also please write out the sentences in the second section, in the correct sequence. Make a good job of your homework and enjoy doing it. 
This morning we revised fractions, looking at where the two numbers come from. The board above shows that the denominator (the bottom number) is always the number of equal parts, no matter what colour.
The numerator (top number) means the number of parts that are coloured. On the board above, there are four equal parts, and one of them is coloured. The coloured fraction is one quarter.
The numerator is not always 1. On the board above, two quarters are coloured, and two quarters are white. Four quarters make one whole.
If the numerator and denominator are the same, then the whole shape is coloured. In the example above, two halves are coloured.
Here, the fraction coloured orange is the same as the fraction coloured white. They are both five tenths. Ten tenths make one whole, so five tenths are the same as one half.
In the last example, two thirds are purple, and one third is white. Two thirds and one third make one whole.
