What we are doing this week in Lilac Class for the week beginning 18.3.24

For Maths this week in Lilac Class, we are ordering and comparing decimals with the same number of decimal places.  We will be using place value counters on a place value chart to build numbers to support understanding.  Lilac Class will then be moving onto rounding decimals to the nearest whole number.  Initially, we will recap on the rounding that we have covered last term and then we will use number lines to enhance learning.  When the number is halfway between two whole numbers, the convention is to round to the greater of the two, for example 6.5. rounds to 7.0, the nearest whole number.  We are then 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. 

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 last week about our school. 

For Whole Class Guided Reading, Lilac Class are reading Chapters 17 and 18 of Berlie Doherty’s Street Child entitled ‘The Monster Weeps and You Can Do It, Bruvver’’.  We will be using our explanation and inference skills to find out why Jim speaks to himself in a certain way and what Jim thought about as he pondered escaping.  We will also be thinking about why silence frightens Jim.  

For RE in Lilac Class, we are considering who is responsible for Jesus’s death.  We will be completing a pie-chart shading in slices according to how much responsibility we think each person/group has.  We will then be writing a description of who is responsible, how much and why.  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, referring to 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.  On Friday, Lilac Class will take part in a Victorian drama workshop led by Drama Hut.  We will be acting out various scenarios, such as living in a workhouse and being a Victorian school child.

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. 

For Design and the Arts, we are going to learn about the Victorian watercolourists such as William Henry Millais, Alfred William Hunt and John Ruskin.  Why was the landscape of the countryside so important to them? We will then visit Grosvenor Hilbert Park to sketch a landscape, weather permitting! 

Please see our photos from 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.