9th January 2018

This week the children have been working hard writing a biography about a crew member from Shackleton’s journey to Antarctica in 1914.

We have been lucky enough to see photos James brought in which were taken by Frank Hurley on the expedition; any including the dogs proved popular! Thanks to Claudia, we have also seen a silver spoon with a ‘Nimrod‘ engraving which Shackleton used on an earlier expedition. Amelie very kindly brought in a DVD of images and Alfred Lansing’s book, ‘Endurance’ which has very moving accounts of the events. I have been delighted by the interest and enthusiasm the children have had for this topic.

The children really impressed me with their maths today. We have been playing countdown at the start of some of our maths lessons and the children have been demonstrating so much fluency and enthusiasm! Bea and Sophia told me they sometimes find maths quite hard but this doesn’t feel so hard because it is really fun and they want to persevere to find the target number. Looking at the different ways the children found their answers is really interesting for me and for them. Sometimes they have the same number but got to it in very different ways.

In science today, the children conducted an experiment into materials which dissolve (see photos below). They worked really hard as a table group to plan and conduct their experiment.