Thought-Provoking Author Intention

 Today in English, we worked in small groups and looked at possible themes of our story, The Tear Thief by Carol Ann Duffy. We started by cutting our sheets so that we could see each possible theme clearly. Here you can see 4D doing that!

Next, in our groups we decided which themes were present in the story and whether this was intentional (on purpose). Here you can see the different choices below.

For example: 'Stealing is not wrong if it is for a good reason'. Even though our main character does steal tears, but it is for a good reason, we know that stealing is never okay. This meant that we decided that this was not the author's intention when writing the book. However, some other themes, such as true feelings are the most valuable, this was clearly the message the author intended on us learning through the story. She wanted us to learn that expressing our emotions is always a good thing!

Once we decided in our groups whether we thought these were the author intention or not (put into order), we then went to the other groups. One of us stayed on our table while the rest went and heard the other groups' ideas. Here you can see both classes doing some Q&A about our options.

Lastly, we came back together as a group to make our final decisions after hearing all of the other groups' ideas. 

A Wonderful Week of Maths Recaps!

This week, we have been playing lots of fun games to remind us what we have learnt so far this year in Maths, both in class and through lockdown. Day 1: Problem Solving In this activity, we were each given a problem solving question which was either linked to: Place Value, Shape, Perimeter, Area, Decimals, Addition or Subtraction. The answer had to be between 1 and 30. We had different equipment and we had to choose which of the equipment was appropriate for our question. Here are some of the questions!

Day 2: Maths Baseball Today, we were split into two teams and played Maths Baseball! We could choose a 1 base (easy), 2 base (medium), 3 base (hard) or home run (SUPER HARD!)! If we got the answer correct, we could move that many bases. However, if we got it wrong, the other team could try to answer correctly and hit us out! Here we are playing - and thinking hard!

Thursday - Carousel Shape Activities We had lots of fun with 5 different carousel activities. The first was: one person in the group picked a shape and described it to the rest of the group for them to guess the shape.

The second activity was: we were given lots of shapes and had to group them in whatever we chose. Examples of our groups were: the amount of sides or angles, it has a right angle, it has more than four sides, and many more!

The third activity was: we cut out quadrilaterals and wrote its properties on a whiteboard. The fourth activity was very similar! Except, we did this witj triangles and had to label if it was Right-Angled, Equilateral, Isosceles or Scalene, and then write its properties.

The fifth and final activity was: we were givewn shapes and the name of shapes. Our job was to match the shape with its correct name.

Day 4: Stepping Stones For our final activity of the week, there were lots of numbers on the floor.

We chose a number and stood in it. Then, Miss would shout out 1000 more or less, 100 more or less, or 10 more or less. If our number was not there, we were out!

We had so much fun and are now ready to learn new things this week!