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Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 3
• Cut and stick the timepiece paper - match the definitions of a timepiece with the name of the timepiece, eg sundial, wrist watch etc
• Finish the acrostic of your name - some people might have finished this already. I want you to paint them tomorrow so make sure they are finished tonight.
• Get the brain code - go to the website I mentioned below, enter your code. If it works, write it clearly or print the results. If it doesn't work, do the test again. If your internet isn't working, GET A NOTE IN YOUR DIARY!!
  

Learning About Learning

As you know, we're about to start a new ITU all about learning; how we do it, what different ways there are of doing it, how we can change the way we learn to make learning more successful and so on. One of our colleagues found a website which analyses the way you learn, based on your answers to some questions. I've done it and the results are quite interesting. If you do it you might find out something about yourself that you weren't expecting. Click on 'Take The Test'.

When you've finished it, you'll be given a code number (mine is dss14xwc20514rxv) and if you save it we can look at all the results for the class.

Today's Work

We tried to continue with the tv schedule work and discovered that some people had been completely making it up as they went along instead of checking the time in their country against the time in Jeddah. Of course, if a race is happening at 9am in Jeddah, you can't show it at 9am in your country if you are 3 hours ahead of Jeddah.

Afterwards we tried something a bit easier: times tables. We continued with the six times tables and got quite a lot done.

The hardest thing we did today was the paper about the months of the year and how they got their names. It might be easy for Monika because the names are all Latin in origin and she speaks Italian. But, everyone can do it if they have a go.

Finally, some people have been nagging for me to put 'Who Wants To Be A Mathionaire?' on the website. There it is. Happy now?

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 2
• Cut and stick the months - There are three parts to each row: first the name of the month (January); then the origin on the word (Janus); then the reason why the month was given that name (God of Doors, so he opened the door on the new year and closed the door on the old year).

Some of the months may be a bit hard but, if you remember the answers people gave in class you'll only have about 5 that you don't know. A bit of intelligent guesswork should help you finish them all off.

Multiplication Game

Post your top score in the comments!

Today's Work

Well, this was me today, trying to get the class to make a paper aeroplane. Honestly, they were so lazy and useless. They couldn't follow any instructions. Some of them were even talking! I've never seen anything like it. I shouted and shouted, told them they were rubbish, said they should be embarrassed, everything...

Of course, I'm not really like that, as everyone knows. It was all just a game to try and show the students in Y4 the different things we can do to help people learn. Feeling happy, feeling confident and safe, knowing that someone is there to help you, knowing that what you do is appreciated all helps make learning not only more enjoyable, but also more successful.

So, for the last time, I was just PRETENDING to be nasty and anyone who says I am always like that will get double detention.

Anyway, here's the rest of today's work for our injured colleague:

Topic:
We continued making a tv schedule, finding it a bit easier to decide when to show programmes and how to work out the time difference between Jeddah and different countries. This might be useful to read to learn more about time zones.

Maths:
We continued working through Abacus; we're on to p.7 and 8 from Book 2. This section is all about times tables. We're doing our 6x table at the moment and we continue on to do all of them except 7x, 8, 11, and 12x. So, make sure you know the rest of them.

This Week's Work

Unfortunately, one of our class members has fractured his arm rather badly so I will try to use this post as a record of what we've been doing in class. I'll try to update it every day but you'll have to keep coming back to this post to find out what to do.

Of course, it will also help anyone who hasn't been paying attention in class, but I'm sure there's nobody like that in Y4-5!

Saturday

Topic - we tried making a tv schedule for the Olympic Games. Each group pretended to be in a different country. The Olympics were in Jeddah so they had to find out what times the events were shown in Jeddah and decide if they wanted to show live events, or only highlights, in their country.

The difficult part was working out what time it would be in their country, compared to the times in Jeddah. Some people were trying to show live events when they hadn't even started in Jeddah. Some people were trying to show highlights when the event hadn't finished.

Maths - we continued work with our times tables, moving on to the 6x table.

Spelling - we thought of as many homophones as we could. A homophone is a set of words which have exactly the same sound. For example; see and sea; knew and new; meet and meat. We also tried to think of words with silent letters; for example, fiGHt, throuGH, WeDnesday

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 1
• Abacus 2 p.6 (Not your Abacus workbook)
• Copy one of the pieces of writing from your Writing book onto the piece of paper I gave you. You should do your best writing and try to avoid whatever mistakes you made the first time around. The best pieces will be chosen to go on the Y4 display.
  

Spellings: Week Beginning 23/02/08

listen
honesty
castle
which

right write
knew new
hear here
to two too
their they're there
would wood
threw through

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths D & E (not C)
• Abacus workbook p.46-47 (It's 2 pages of subtraction from N19)
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths A and B
• Letts p.32-33 q.1, 2, 3, 4a and 6. As we have spent two days in class doing this, there won't be much to do at home. Unless you haven't been concentrating in class of course...
  

Spellings: Week Beginning 16/02/2008

We now have 3 spelling groups so PAY ATTENTION!

Blue Group
millennia
direction
straight
temperature

Main Group
timetable
hours
seconds
minutes

You need to know these words AND their past tense:
know
find
buy
write
teach
break

Yellow Group - Can you spot the pattern?
knee
knife
know
write
wrong
wrist
when
why
what

They Go Together Like A Horse And Carriage

Well, nobody managed to identify the mystery object this week. Maybe I'm making them too hard!

Here it is again:



There's a bit of a link to last week's object because you have to look at the reflection. It's easy to see the word 'Teach' at the top but can you see the word 'Learn' underneath? You can't have one without the other, after all.

We had two guesses but those people only managed to see the first word. Hard luck.

Sports' Day: The Results

As I'm sure we all know by now, the best team won, as predicted by me on the morning of Sports' Day. Noone can stop the mighty Eastern Bloc. :-)

As I was on Soccer Shoot duty all morning I didn't get the chance to wander around looking for photo opportunities but I managed to get a few snaps at the end. If I'm ever able to upload them, I'll stick them on here.

I think everyone enjoyed themselves but I'm not sure if the best bit was doing the activities of coming back to class and playing on the PSPs all afternoon.

Today's Homework

• Er...nothing. I'm sorry to say that I didn't manage to give the kids their homework today. As we missed an ICT lesson on Sports' Day, Mrs Saadi kindly offered to give us another. I had completely forgotten that it was today and so I hadn't given the homework in advance. Don't worry, I'll make it up to them next week.
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths C & D
• Time Zone paper - Put Jeddah in the middle. Choose a time for Jeddah and write what you think people in Jeddah might be doing at that time. Choose two other cities and write the times for them. You should also write what you think the people there might be doing.

After seeing some very disappointing writing on Saturday I would like to give a bit of advice about how much writing to do. If you can add more details, please do. If everyone in the whole city is going to be doing the same thing (if it is 4am or something) then you can just write 'Sleeping'. If there might be more than one thing happening (if it is 4 pm), then write as many things as you can think of. What do you do at that time? What does your mum do? What does your dad do? Please do not just stop writing after 3 words.

Mystery Objects!

Well, after a slow start when nobody was able to identify the sundial, we had a winner last week.

Aly recognised a line of symmetry in this picture:



And isn't it a beautiful picture as well? Well done, Aly. One House Point for you.

Make sure you have a look at the new Mystery Object on the right.

One other item of interest last week was the voting. Half of you think that we have too much homework! I'm shocked! I wonder how many of the votes were cast by the parents, and how many by the children?

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths A & B
• Letts p.77 'Sentence' - q. 2, 3 and 4 : We discussed all of this in class so everyone should remember some reasons for and against keeping birds. If not, read p. 77 again. I would like YOUR opinions in the third paragraph, not your parents' opinions. What do you think and why do you disagree with the opposing argument?
  

Today's Homework

• Remember it is SPORTS' DAY tomorrow!
• Come to school in your PE kit.
• Bring a hat and a drink.
• Eat a good breakfast - if you don't, you will feel tired and sick during Sports' Day. Remember, there is no break until 12pm.
• If you want to go home early, you must have a parent with you or a letter from your parents to say that it is ok to go early. You cannot go with a nanny or a driver unless we have a note from your parents.
  

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 3 - Think about 'past' and 'to'.
  
• Abacus workbook p.40 - Remember to begin with the number on the left every time.
• Make a chart of activities. Read the Geography Success book p.35 question 2 - I would like at least 5 activites for each column of the chart. Remember, some activities might go in more than 1 column. Please stick to real activities that real people can do, not WWF Wrestling. Please think of the activities yourself.
  

I hope that everyone is voting in the box on the right. So far, it seems that people would like MORE homework!

Today's Homework

• Daily Maths 2 (NOT 1)
• Learn spellings - it is different this week. Which group are you in?
• Prepare a 1 minute talk about an animal - Give the talk on Tuesday.
  

The Votes Are In...

...and democracy is the winner! Well, not really but it's interesting to see what people use the blog for. It helps me decide what to focus my time on. (Goodness, all these prepositions at the end of sentences!)

Anyway, this week's vote. As you know, we have just changed our homework routine. We can now have reading every day of the week, Arabic and English. Saturday, Monday and Tuesday remain the days on which I can give my written homework. What do you think about the amount of homework altogether? Should there be less? More? What kind of homework would you like? Is there too much of one kind? Don't forget, you can leave comments after each post if you want to say more.

Let's see what happens by Wednesday and remember, parents only please!