What happens in Maple Class
There have been several questions this half term around coverage of topic and in particular reading. This half term we continue with our topic of ‘Where does water come from?’ In our topic lessons we are looking at rivers and the journey of a river linking this in with the water cycle. The water cycle is a year 4 science objective so will be covered in more depth next year, but this understanding is fundamental to be able to answer the question ‘Where does water come from?’ In science we are focussing on Forces and Magnetism. We have started to look at the force push and pull we will be investigating different surfaces and the impact this has on the amount of friction a car has when travelling down a ramp. We will link this learning to a challenge question around Gravity, Mass, weight and Newtons Law. In English we are now developing journalistic skills, gathering evidence for our newspaper reports and for our news conference. Reading in Maple class takes place for 2 hours a week. Instead of just reading a book we are now looking at lots of different stimuli to help us transfer our inference and retrieval skills. We take part in whole class Guided reading – children are encouraged to contribute, but will not be forced if this makes them feel uneasy. Instead of putting children on the spot they are able to indicate that they would like to contribute by placing a cube on their desk which I will remove for them to let them know when it is their turn to read. As the year progresses I am sure that more children will feel more confident with this Guided reading approach. Before reading the text, as a class we look at significant words in the text we find the definition of these words by using a dictionary and put the word into a sentence to demonstrate an understanding of the meaning of the word. We also look at a picture clue from the book and make predictions about what we think the book will be about and think about questions we would like to find out. Lots of learning takes place each day in Maple! We are working very hard.
