What we are doing this week in Lilac Class for the week beginning 22.4.24

For Maths this week in Lilac Class, we will be calculating the area of compound shapes.  A compound shape made up of rectangles can be split in different ways and the area will always be the same no matter how it is split.  We will then move onto estimating the area of a non-rectilinear shape.  One way to obtain an estimate is to find the total number of complete squares, then include a square if more than half of it is coloured but not if less than half is coloured.  We will be using our knowledge of fractions to estimate how much of a square is covered.  We are then starting our new block of learning entitled ‘Statistics’.  Lilac Class are initially drawing line graphs and exploring what information we want to show.  We will be finding out what the vertical and horizontal axes on the graph represent.  We will then be learning to read and interpret line graphs. 

In English this week in Lilac Class, we are levelling up our sea poetry for a class book for our reading area.  We have read a range of poetry texts, for example, selected poems from Under the Moon and Over the Sea edited by John Agard and Grace Nichols.  We have also analysed  poems, focusing on examples of personification (where the sea has taken on human characteristics). We have used these poems as stimulus for our own poetry writing. 

Our new Whole Class Guided Reading text is Shackleton’s Journey by William Grill. This week we are reading pages 7-12 developing our retrieval and inference skills.  Lilac Class will be exploring what character a member of Shackleton’s crew should have by thinking about what a ‘good temperament’ is and why this would is important. We will also be considering why the ship was called Endurance and what this word means.

For RE in Lilac Class, we will continue learning about the Five Pillars of Islam and thinking about the ‘pillars’ that hold us up in our lives.  For Time and Place in Lilac Class, we are continuing with our labelling of a world atlas identifying significant position of latitude and longitude as well as the oceans, seas and rivers of the world.  For Science in Lilac Class, we are continuing with our learning about how flowering plants reproduce and the difference between insect and wind pollinated plants.  We will be categorising a selection of plants based on their characteristics.  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  will also be practising songs for the Tunbridge Wells Singing Festival that will take place at the Assembly Halls on Monday 10^th June.