What we are learning this week in Lilac Class for the week beginning 12.5.25

For Maths this week in Lilac Class, we are learning to understand and use degrees.  We will be finding out what a full, half, quarter and three-quarter turn looks like and what clockwise and anti-clockwise mean.  We will also be learning about how many degrees are in a full, half, three-quarters and a quarter of a turn. We will then move onto measuring angles and drawing lines and angles accurately using a protractor.  

In English this week in Lilac Class, we are planning a newspaper article about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.  We will be looking at a range of information texts, including actual newspaper articles written just after the Titanic sank.  Lilac Class will also be watching some original film footage and extracts from documentaries about the tragedy.  We will be learning about the features of a newspaper report – Headline, Byline, Lead, Body, Picture and Caption and Tail. 

For our Guided Reading text, Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill this week, we are reading pages 19-24. In Lilac Class we are developing our knowledge of key terminology, for example, ‘cross-bracing’, ‘pack ice’, ‘bow’ and ‘jib boom’ referring to the glossary and by also using our word detective skills.  Our inference questions will ask how might the Weddell Sea present problems for the expedition, and what could have made the progress laborious? 

For RE in Lilac Class, we are learning about what Muslims believe about Allah.  Our key questions will be the following: What is Tawhid? What are some of the 99 names for Allah and what do these mean? For Time and Place in Lilac Class, we are learning about the features of a river and following the journey of the River Severn.  Lilac Class will be answering such questions as ‘What is a young river?’, ‘How does erosion cause meanders?’ and ‘What is a tributary?’  For Science in Lilac Class, we are learning about the process of asexual reproduction in plants.  We will be finding examples of plants that reproduce asexually (for example, tulips, crocuses, strawberries) and how this is different from sexual reproduction in flowering plants.  

In ICT, Lilac Class are finishing vector drawings by combining shapes and coloured shapes using the Google Drawings, experimenting with the shape and line tools.  In Spanish this week we are learning to read and say the months of the year and to sequence them in simple sentences.

For Design and the Arts, we are singing songs about the sea and accompanying them with pitched and unpitched percussion.  Lilac Class will be learning traditional musical notation, for example, crotchets, quavers, minims and semibreves.  We are also sketching our school garden and will be using this as a basis for painting using the techniques of the artist Annie Soudain.