What we are doing this week in Lilac Class for the week beginning 24.3.25

For Maths this week in Lilac Class, we are rounding to 1 decimal place, working out which number with 1 decimal place is closer.  When rounding to 1 decimal place, if the digit in the hundredths column is 5, we will be learning that the number rounds to the greater of the two numbers with 1 decimal place. 

For Whole Class Guided Reading Lilac Class are reading Chapters 19-22 of Berlie Doherty’s Street Child . We will be exploring how Jim felt when he left Nick and Snipe after the coal fell on them and how his life changed when he reached the green caravan.   In English this week in Lilac Class, we are drafting a historical report about being a pupil during the Victorian period.  As a class we will read You Wouldn’t Want to Be a Victorian Schoolchild! Lessons you’d rather not learn by John Malam. This text will serve as a basis for our writing.  We will be writing about a pupil’s experience during a typical school day at St Barnabas School in 1897, the year the school was opened.  We will also be drawing on what we learnt from the talk Dave gave us  about our school.  

For RE in Lilac Class, we are considering who was responsible for Jesus’s death.  Lilac Class are completing a ‘Responsibility Pie’. Shading in slices of the pie-chart according to how much responsibility we think each person/group had.  The pie-charts slices will be colour-coded matched to a description of who is responsible, to what extent and why.  Father John came to talk to us about his trip to the Via Dolorosa.  This place is a processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem that represents the path Jesus took to his crucifixion.    It marks the Stations of the Cross. 

For Time and Place, in Lilac Class, we will be writing up some important information that we learnt from Dave’s talk he gave us about what St Barnabas School was like in 1897 reading from log book entries written by different Head Teachers. We have the original log books in school and Dave gets them out to show the public during our Heritage Day.  How has life as a pupil at St Barnabas changed?  Are some things the same?

For Science in Lilac Class, we are investigating the rate of evaporation.  For Science in Lilac Class, our main question is: Can evaporation separate a solid (solute) from a liquid (solvent)?  We will be boiling in a sauce pan cold water containing 2 tablespoonfuls of salt.  We will boil this solution for 30 minutes and observe what happens. 

In ICT, we are explaining that tools can be used to select specific data.  Lilac Class are choosing which field and value are required to answer a given question and outlining how ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ can be used to refine data selection.  We will be finding out that we can choose multiple criteria to answer a given question. 

This term, the Modern Foreign Language (MFL) we are learning is Spanish. This week we will be continuing our learning of some basic Spanish phrases, for example Hello, Please, Thank you, Goodbye, See you later! Good morning, My name is… Where do you come from?  We will also be learning Spanish words for different food and drink and be designing a menu for a restaurant.  Where will it be in Spain?  By the coast?  In a city like Madrid or Seville?

For Design and the Arts, Lilac Class are going to be involved in some ‘Musical appreciation’.  We will be listening to the Victorian composer Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ from the orchestral piece Enigma Variations. We are drawing and labelling the instruments we hear and identifying the different dynamics.  We will also be exploring how the music made us feel and why. 

Please see our blog about our trip to The Amelia Scott!  We learnt how much Queen Victoria loved Tunbridge Wells by reading extracts from her journal.  We were shown lots of photos of Tunbridge Wells during her reign and looked at and handled a selection of interesting Victorian artefacts.  We also went on a 'History Trail', exploring the Amelia Scott to obtain key information.