Have you ever wondered what the times tables would look like in 3D?

No, of course not!

Well, can you imagine what they’d look like if they were 3D?

Erm…

These were the crucial questions that Year Four explored this week in our maths sessions! As part of our ongoing mission to learn our times tables facts, we tried to create a 3D model of the 10 x 10 times tables grid.

Using our Cuisenaire number sticks, children created each times table from x1 to x10. Once all of the times tables were built, we constructed the entire grid, with all times tables laid on top of each other. The results were quite surprising, I think you’ll agree!

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Year 6 have realised that their everyday school life requires them to remember many things!  Time tables, spellings, punctuation rules, homework, vocabulary, scientific facts…the list goes on and on.  It comes as no surprise that our brain oversees these things; and that working memory differs from one person to the next.  Indeed, the ways in which individuals can process, retain and recall information is dependent on many factors.

With this in mind, Year 6 set out to investigate how strong their own working memory is.  Each student created a memory board based upon a theme of their choice. The range included: foods, drinks, sports, football teams, football payers, landmarks, art styles and more!  The memory boards included an array of images and words.  With the ground work complete, Year 6 students were ready to experiment.

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We are excited to announce our Year 3 & 4 Spring PE Showcase, scheduled to take place at the TCIFA fields on Thursday 23rd Feb, 8:45 – 9:45am.

The children have been learning to play Handball this term and we are looking forward to demonstrating new skills and game play for you. This year, the showcase will consist of two exhibition games, starting after a warm-up at 8:45am, and a parents ‘taster’ game. Year 5 & 6 will also be joining us as spectators, ahead of their own Handball lessons.

We will be providing information on the sport of Handball (or, rather, the version of Junior Handball that we are learning). Miss Mani and I have been thrilled by the progress and improvement in all children and we hope that this will be evident in the exhibition games.

We would also like to invite parents to participate in a short ‘taster’ game. Many children found learning this new sport challenging and we know that they would be excited to see you try it too! So, we encourage parents to attend in work-out clothing and ready to play!

Many thanks for your support!

Earlier in the year, children in Year 4 explored language and poetry techniques in their literacy lessons. Inspired by Conservation International’s Nature is Speaking campaign, pupils attempted to use powerful and evocative language to personify the ocean and its feelings. We then also created acrostic poems that tried to describe the movement of the ocean. I think you’ll agree, the ideas and language that came out of these poetry sessions were really dramatic!

Flamingo Class then set about publishing videos of these spoken poems by editing voice recordings, still images and video clips in MovieMaker. We hope we enjoy our two compilations.

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Here at Provo Primary we are very proud of our Spanish Language programme and we want to make sure that our parents know just how fantastic it is, the progress their children are making and just how much they can do in Spanish!

One of the ways we hope this will be made clearer is through the introduction of our Language Passports. These have also been created to help the children see just how much progress they make from year to year and to keep track of any areas they need to work on.

The passport is made up of ‘can do’ statements which the children colour in when they feel they can carry out the statement, and have shown this understanding to the teacher.  This allows the children to self-assess their ability and the teacher to understand where the children need help and where they are confident.

We will be launching the passports after half-term to Years 1-3 to start with to see how they work. Please feel free to ask Miss Cara or Mrs. Yorka to see your child’s ‘Passport to Spanish’.

When we had finished reading the story of Little Red Riding Hood, we began to wonder how the poor old wolf felt. He always seems to be portrayed as the wicked, mean and nasty character in the story. But was he really so mean?

During our earlier MindUp/P.S.H.C.E session we had just been talking about the importance of having an ‘open mind’ and the value of being able to sometimes take on a different perspective, especially during problem solving. We talked about how ‘perspective’ allows us to consider more than one way of understanding a behaviour, event or situation.

So how did the wolf really feel to make him act in such a way?

We decided to think of other words that could describe other feelings the wolf may have had.  Thesaurus’ were used to find alternative words to describe these feelings. Eventually we got to the really FUN part. In our ‘feelings’ groups, using our body language, tone of voice and our facial expressions we acted out the story. But this time from the possible wolf’s perspective!

Looking at the photos below, can you guess which ‘feeling’ is being conveyed by each facial expression?

Maybe the wolf really wasn’t that bad after all?

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