English
This week, we have begun to look at reading skills in detail. We started off looking at an assessment, taking time to mark through it together and identifying various elements contained within. The main focus over the next couple of weeks will be to establish different categories of questions (literal, inferential and evaluative) and develop skimming and scanning techniques, while learning to analyse questions in more detail before searching for answers. This in turn will start to develop the composition work which will become more narrative based, using inference as a mechanism to suggest meaning, perhaps through the action or response of a character rather than the reader being explicitly told.
We also spent some time revising multi-clause sentences involving subordination (complex sentences) where the subordinate clause is acting as an adverb. In the next few days we will learn to use subordination as an adjective clause.
Maths
We are starting to push the fraction work forward quite well, developing subtraction while learning how to multiply. With subtraction, we are experimenting with a couple of different techniques and evaluating which is the most useful in different situations. Meanwhile, having learnt how to multiply fractions by a whole number, we have just begun to multiply fractions by fractions. Nearly time for division…
Science / Geography
This term I have mixed these two subjects together into a larger topic – the Martian Base. The central themes being explored are Earth and Space in science and volcanoes in geography. We will look at these subjects by proposing to establish a colony on Mars and then comparing certain Martian issues with those found on Earth. Bit of a pet topic for me so I’m really looking forward to it.
