Beech Tree Class Blog 2023-2024
Beech Tree Blog
Weekly Update 24/1/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
In our reading this week, we have continued to read the next six chapters of Kidnap in the Caribbean. The children have been absolutely loving it! The have particularly loved all the suspicious events that have been occurring and have so many questions about who is behind it all. This has prompted lots of lovely discussions and predictions being made.
This week, in maths, we have been focusing on using the short multiplication method and multiplying two- and three-digits numbers by 1-digit numbers. The children have been working incredibly hard on using this method and it’s absolutely amazing to see how much progress they’ve made with it. They should all be really proud of themselves!
In our writing, the children have been working on writing their diary entries, where they have taken on the role of Sue Ruff, a survivor of the 1980 Mt St Helens eruption. The children have written about the events of that devastating day from her perspective and have produced some absolutely brilliant pieces of work, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
For our computing unit, the children have been using an animation programme called Scratch to create three of their own sprites, apply code that will make them move in different ways, control when they start moving, create multiple different backgrounds to go with each sprite and make those switch over on a loop. The children have really enjoyed this unit so far and have produced some lovely little animations.
In our geography work, we used fieldwork skills to locate ourselves on a map of school, used the painted compass directions on the playground and used geographical vocabulary as we traced the horizon line with our fingers. We also discussed the weather conditions and cloud cover that we could observe.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou
Weekly Update-17/1/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, in our writing, we have been working on the different features required for a diary entry, planning our diary entry and we have just completed our first two paragraphs. The children have been working really hard on these and it’s been lovely to read what they have produced so far.
In maths, our focus has been on multiplying by 10 and 100, dividing by 10 and 100 and using related multiplication and division facts to solve a range of problems. The progress that the children have made has been fantastic and it’s been great to see them using their place value maths mats to show the movement of the digits and to hear them explaining what is happening to the value of the digits depending on which way they move and why.
In computing, as part of our sequencing sounds topic, the children’s first lesson focused on creating two of their own sprites, two backgrounds and a range of movements to be applied to the sprites. The children used Scratch to create their code and produce their basic animations.
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou :)
Weekly Update 10/1/25
Mr Kyriacou (n.kyriacou) on: Beech Tree Blog
Hello everyone,
This week, we have started reading our new book called Kidnap in the Caribbean by Lauren St John. The children have made predictions about what the story will be about based on the front cover of the book and we have read the first six chapters of the book. The children have also completed vocabulary work and retrieval and inference work based on those six chapters. It’s lovely to see how excited they are about the book already.
In our writing, we have started working on our diary writing unit of work. The children will be writing diaries based on a true story of two survivors of the Mt St Helens 1980 eruption. We have looked at the features of a diary entry, read the story about the two survivors, done freeze frames based on the emotions of these survivors at different points in the story and we have focused on identifying and using time conjunctions in our own sentences which relate to the story. I was really impressed with the sentences that the children came up with.
In maths, we have focused on understanding what factors are, identifying factors of numbers, using factor pairs and multiplying by 10. The children have made great progress with this.
In science, we have started our unit of work on sound, with the focus being on vibrations for the first part. The children learnt about how sounds are made, which parts of instruments create the sound and what sound can travel through. The second part of the lesson focused on ears. We looked at the different parts of the ear and what the role of each part was in relation to sounds that are created. The children really enjoyed the two part lesson and were so keen to show off their knowledge at the end!
Finally, well done to everyone who has been in all week. Even though the week has been made trickier due to the weather, your attitude and behaviour towards your learning has been amazing!
Take care,
Mr Kyriacou