Literacy Just a minute

Today in literacy we were provided with the subject 'embarrassing moments' and we needed to try and speak for a whiole minute! Sound simple? Take a look at our videos in the previous post to see how we got on. We learned what 'deviation,' 'hesitation' and 'repetition' mean. To make sure we didn't do either of those when we were talking made it really tricky! Deviation means when you go off topic and start talking about something else. Hesitation is where you pause when you speak. Repetiton is when you repeat words - we were only allowed to repeat the subject title 'emabraassing moments' Have a go and see how you get on.

Just a minute!

How to make a cube...

First of all, we acquired a roll of border tape. Next, we perservered in trying to estimate 1m (without any measuring equipment). We did this because our task was to make a square metre on the floor. We measured this later to see how accurate we were.  Our challenge after this was to turn our 2D square into a 3D cube - we realised that we needed to use our bodies to help us do this. Here is our human cube! Josh and Oliver

Our Non-Linear Class Version of Jack and the Beanstalk

If you read Wednesday's blog, about Jack and the Beanstalk, then when you finish reading, your socks will be blown away and your jaw will drop open in surprise. Today we learned how to insert hyperlinks into our work about Jack and the Beanstalk. Now you can sit back and relax, whilst pressing a few buttons. Enjoy!!! At the end of each chapter, make your choice. You can follow the story through this post, or through the online docs by clicking on the link at the end.

How will your chosen pathways effect Jack?? Comment on our post to let us know what you think of our non-linear version. Would you have come up with a different ending?

Chapter 1 - Jack and the Beanstalk 

Once upon a time there lived a boy named Jack, who lived with his mother. They were both very poor. One scorching hot day, Jack was asked kindly to sell the cow down the market by his mother. On the way, he met a stranger who asked him to trade the cow for magic beans. Jack accepted the offer. 5 minutes later, he got back home. Jack’s mum was furious at Jack. “We needed the money to buy a calf!” His mother shouted. Jack was sent to bed without any supper. She threw the magic beans out of the window angrily. Overnight the beans grew into a vast a vast beanstalk. The next morning Jack woke up, looked out of the window and saw a massive beanstalk. He sped down the stairs to his mum and shouted with excitement to look outside. Jack then decided to climb the Beanstalk and then he saw 3 different pathways; thorn, vine and flower.

Which did he choose? Thorn, Vine or Flower? 

Chapter 2 - Thorn

As Jack was climbing the robust beanstalk he approached an odd looking path, covered in prongs. There were gigantic thorns covered in multi-coloured warts with moist bases, Jack stretched out…

Jack started reaching out when he began to wonder whether or not to turn back; he extended out his arm and stabbed himself on a thorn. As the thorn was going deeper into Jack’s skin he started to see a giant, not realising he was hallucinating!

 Before very long, Jack started to get nearer to the bottom of the beanstalk when he finally realised that there was no giant. Jack climbed to the top of the clouds spotting a castle, in the distance. Anxiously, he knocked on the castle door; the giant’s wife greeted him. Noticing Jack’s frail existence, she presented him with a bowl of milk. As the giant was coming in the door he started a conversation about how he didn’t like children and if he saw a child he would have he or she for supper! The giant was close to finishing his conversation when Jack quickly hid in the oven.

“FE FI FO FUM I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN!” Shouted the frustrated giant, His wife answered, “There’s no boy in here!” Content with his wife’s response, the giant started to count his gold coins. Due to the vast amount, he fell asleep right there, at the table. The giant’s wife raced to the oven door and told Jack to run away. Whilst he was running, he couldn’t take his eyes off of the giants gold coins; he took them as he sprinted away! Moments later, Jack was climbing down the beanstalk to his worried mother; Jack found three doors: gold, silver and bronze.

Does he choose the bronze, silver or gold door?

Chapter 2 - Vine

Jack, exhausted from climbing the 50 foot beanstalk, saw an unfamiliar rough, ivy covered vine, with warts covering the bottom of most of it. It was as lumpy as sandpaper with purple mucus covered scales, which are as sharp as an elephant’s tusk, growing underneath the ivy. His instincts told him to touch the vine. Within a second, the vine strengthened its grip and shot Jack up in the air like a catapult. It was as though he was being pushed in the air by 1000 people. When Jack woke up unsteadily, he discovered he was on a cloud. There was a humongous castle on top of it. And it looked like it has been abandoned. This could be the time of his life. He could live in the wealthiest place in world (the wealthiest place in the sky is what he was meant to say). He and his mother could be rich; all because of those beans.
Thank you old man, he mutters to himself.

Jack stood up and was going to take a stride forward, when he saw a gap between the castle and the cottony cloud he was standing on. He was so frustrated; he blew so hard he fainted. When he awoke, he saw some blocks, not so far apart from one another, which he could easily jump onto. The blocks led to the cloud with the castle on. What a relief! He wasn’t an expert leaper but he impressed the people down on earth when they saw him jumping from block to block. Finally, he made it to the castle. Unfortunately, he heard a man and a woman already occupying the castle which disappointed him. All of a sudden a massive lady, maybe 20 feet tall, opened the rusty door and shouted at him saying “Hey! What are you doing here?” “I’m J….J…Jack and I’m looking for food. Please can I come in? Please?” The lady changed her manner and said back in a calmer tone, “of course you can.” The giant lady led him to the kitchen and placed him on the table. The table was already laid ready to eat for the giant lady’s husband.  Without even asking to start, he dug in. For half an hour but then he heard stomping from the hallway. It was the giant! “FE FI FO FUM I SMELL A BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN” the giant shouted. Jack hid inside a bagel. The giant ate all the meat on the table then counted his money. After a while, the giant started snoring. That was Jack’s chance. He ran out of the bagel; took a bag of gold; ran down the beanstalk.
Two days later. Jack went back to the beanstalk to climb back up it when he saw three doors made of gold silver, and bronze.

Which one did he choose?  bronze, silver or gold?

Chapter 2 - Flower

Treading carefully, he began to advance further up the plump beanstalk. He saw some Dead flowers covering the pathway. There was one flower that stood out, “the king” they charmed. Jack sniffed it intentionally, and fell unconscious. A spider like creature quickly uncovered Jack and took him to the giant medical centre where they were able to fix him up. During his period in a hospital bed, he told them about his quest for the golden coins. Feeling more like himself, he proceeded back up the beanstalk. Upon discovery of golden coins, he stole them from the table (by using the resources around him) where the despicable giant
was sleeping. Just before Jack leapt off the lofty table, the giant suddenly awoke and slammed his enormous fist on the table, which unsurprisingly, sent Jack soaring into the oak wooden cupboard where three different doors firmly. 

Which does he choose? bronze, silver or gold?

Chapter 3 - Gold

As Jack was climbing up the ginormous beanstalk, a shimmering beam of light hit his eyes; causing him to fall into a deep, dark hole. Terrified, as he couldn’t see anything, he began to panic, falling deeper and deeper. Splash! He ended up in a thick, golden river filled with colossal amounts of seaweed. It was so heavy he had to continuously fight it off, all the way out of the river. As he sat down gasping for breath, he heard a sound “cock a doddle doo.” He sat at the edge of the river, just thinking and thinking. Intrigued, he ran through a miniature tunnel towards the sound, only to be confronted by an enormous locked door. Looking around, he saw a pipe – this was his way out! He then began the climb and stumbled across a golden hen laying glamorous golden eggs Swoop he takes the golden hen, then starts to climb back down the ginormous beanstalk. Then as time went, he saw two doors red and blue.

Does he go through the Red or Blue?

Chapter 3 - Silver

As Jack scurried down the perplexing beanstalk, everything went dark. He could see nothing. A shiver scuttled down his cold spine, (a lump came to his throat). The glistening moon sent a silver shimmer through the jewelled sky. A group of faint, shadowy figures appeared on the ground. They approached him steadily;
surrounded him as if he was a criminal. Petrified, he cautiously shuffled backwards (unfortunately against a solid rock) but they were still there, cornering him. All of a sudden, an enormous, peculiar shaped, ghostly galleon came soaring through the midnight sky and arrived before Jack. Nervous, (not quite knowing what to do) he boarded the ship and was transported to the future. Anxiously, he leapt for the nearest thing he could reach, a branch of ivy (which lead over the crumbly castle wall). The surface was slippery, however he
managed to achieve his goal and arrived at his destination. He crept in through the open window and noticed a golden egg glimmering in the light - projected by the moon. He glanced further and the magnificent object led him to a beautiful golden hen! He clenched it attentively and raced towards the window.

 He spotted two doors, which does he choose? Red or Blue?

Chapter 3 - Bronze

Jack climbed up the huge, plump beanstalk. Upon reaching the top, he strolled until he saw birds. There were hundreds of hens, birds and eggs. Golden eggs! Jack assumed the eggs were being laid by the bronze birds in the air. He noted that the hens were protecting the eggs. The swooping birds confused him. But more and more eggs were being laid. “How is this happening?” Jack questioned. Suddenly, he realised that the eggs were being laid by a golden hen. Gazing at the golden eggs, he had a thought in his mind that he would be rich! Without a second thought, he stole took the hen and raced down the ginormous beanstalk. 

He fell over with the hen clutched in his arms, Jack fell and h went unconscious for two days. On the third day he found two doors: red and blue. 

Will he choose the Red or Blue?

Chapter 4 - Blue 

Jack crawled up the steep path and heard beautiful music. Cautiously, he turned round a sharp corner. Suddenly, Jack noticed an orchestra. He couldn’t resist taking a sparkly harp, which caught his eye. Minutes later, he realised that it was the wrong harp. Rushing back to the orchestra, he replaced the stolen harp. Jack had finally reached the castle after climbing that steep path once again and panted before he entered. He entered the wrecked castle. Jack took a moment to look around, then he saw the most magnificent thing he had ever seen. A golden harp. The harp began to play its self, sending Jack into a deep sleep. As Jack awoke he realised he had been transported to the future. (He was still the same age as before.) Jack got up ready for school. Later on that day, (in music class) Jack discovered he had music. Jack’s life in the future was much easier because the people in the school knew he had unlimited power but Jack wasn`t the same as before, he had changed. Jack was stuck in the future for eternity, even though he didn`t know it. Still, he lived happily ever after!

THE END

Chapter 4 - Red 

Jack climbed the majestic beanstalk one last time (or so he thinks.) He was mesmerised by how silent the castle was; it normally sounded like a herd of elephants. Jack easily past through the gigantic door. Although, that wasn’t the hard bit; it was opening the two tonne door. Exhausted, he made it into the kitchen, when suddenly… the giant’s bulky dog flattened him with his left paw. Jack scurried down the beanstalk and upon recovery from his ordeal, informed his mum of what had happened. He felt very unfortunate at this point in time. Not wanting to fail, Jack persevered. A couple of days later, Jack was confident he would succeed. This time, he hid under the giant’s gigantic, ginormous bed seeing as the giants annoying dog had started to trundle up to him, he didn’t want get trodden on again. When the dog wasn’t looking, he silently crawled 

from under the bed and scurried down the stairs and climbed on to the table, stacking the giant’s pots and pans so he could reach the 6 foot table top. He spotted the glorious harp, which he simply had to have. Being cautious, trying not to awake the giant, he just about managed to get the beautiful harp to the huge door… It was then that he heard a loud thud! It was the giant… Jack began to sprint, he managed to make it to the beanstalk but unfortunately, he was too slow (he was captured…). 

THE END

Making Cartouches

In our art lesson we were making cartouches.A cartouch is a bourder that ancient egyptians write on.On our cartouches we were writing our names in hierogliphics on our cartouches.Here are some simple steps to making a cartouch.Step 1: get a 20.5cm piece of oval card. Step 2:learn all the letters and sounds of hierogliphics. Step 3: write your name how it sounds for example shyla becomes shila. Step 4: colour the lettes in the right shade.

Maths-Prime numbers

A prime number is a number only able to be divided by itself and 1.I have been doing a lot of work on prime numbers; it's not as easy as I thought. I completed a list of all the prime numbers from 1-50 and 50-80,it took me a while but I got there in the end. A lot of my 1st answers were wrong but I managed to correct them.Did you know that 2 is the only even prime number? Why don't you try to list all of the prime numbers from 0-50.Leave your answer in a comment down below. I will respond if you are right or wrong! By Callum Oliver

Fun factors

Today we have learned what factors are by working together through questions on the board together.We now know what the factors of 24 are:1,2,3,4,6,8,12,24.A factor is a number that is in a times table more than once.Plus, it needs to be multiplied by another number to make its self then it look like smile.Do you know the factors of 32 there are 6.Comment on are blog to let us know.Thankyou for reading our blog.

Maths - finding prime factors

Today in maths we learnt about finding answers and products of their prime factors. A prime factor is a factor of a number for example 5 is a prime factor because its a factor of 25 and its a prime number. This is a GCSE question: Express 252 as a product of its prime factors. Can you solve this!(we know the answer because Josh, Nemo and Sam worked out the answer.) Here's the extension once you've solved the first question: Exress 36 as a product of its prime factors(in the fanciest way possible!).Please comment below on our blog, in response to the maths question.In addition(if you feel up to the challenge)try to figure out the mind-boggling GCSE question.Tell us what you think the answer is and we'll respond with whether your calculation was correct or incorrect!

Literacy - non-linear text

Yesterday we typed our pathways on Microsoft Word. Miss Williams suggessted changes to our work to improve them using the 'Track Changes' function. Today, we were deciding whether or not to accept or reject the changes. We used the thesaurus on Microsoft Word to find synonyms. Tomorrow we will add hyperlinks to our final versions.

swimming

In swimming today, we were learning how to accurately use our arms in frontcrawl.We learnt how to do the individual parts( breathing,using our arms and swimming underneath the water strokes).Then at the end of the session we put all of the tecniques together to perform the propper way to frontcrawl. Josh

Maths

We have been solving problems this week. We have been using RUCSAC to help us with these probems step by step. We need to interpret the questions carefully and then check we have answered what the question asked us. We have been solving one step, two step and multi step problems.

Literacy - peer assessment

Today in literacy we were peer assessing our work in pairs to make our Jack and the Beanstalk non-linear text as amazing as can be. Peer assessing means to help each other edit and improve writing by up leveling words/phrases/punctuation and sharing ideas. Check back here on Friday where you can read our full story!

Collective Worship

Mr Russell, our vicar, came to help us put together our own collective worship for Church assembly on Friday. We won't tell you anymore about this here...come along to church Friday morning to find out what we have been planning!

PE - Mr Bull

We were working together as a team - unity - to solve various problems. We needed to communicate and work together to pass a hoop around a human chain (without it breaking)

Music

This afternoon we learnt about musical notes: crotchets which are one beat notes and quavers which are worth half a beat, making one beat in total. We were looking at different rhythms and clapping them out to help us read the music and keep in time with each other.

Literacy - Jack and the Beanstalk

Our current topic is non-linear text. We are using Jack and the Beanstalk as the basis of our non-linear story and including our own twist! We are writing different pathways so the reader has a choice on which path to take. Today we have been testing if our storyline works by orally retelling the story as a class - taking on different parts of the story in groups. We have been including lots of expression in our voices so that it is not monotone - it sounds more exciting. We used a story map to help us remember our story and put in actions to make it come to life. Here are some pictures of us in action!

Swimming races

During our swimming session, we were being timed to swim a whole length of the pool. Here is a short video clip with Oliver and our club swimmer Sam.

Literacy - non-linear text

Today we were writing pathways for Jack and the Beanstalk. We worked in groups of 4 and 3. We learned to always go back to the original story before branching off again when writing a non-linear text. Because we worked very hard, we got a golden egg from the gold hen and a golden coin(it was accually a chocolate coin and egg).

Maths - investigating

Today in maths we got an investigation and we had to use our shoe-sizes to create a bed.The length was 6 of our shoe sizes and the width was 3 of our shoe sizes.We tried size 2,4,5 and 8 and we got different areas of the bed for each of them. It was probably the most fun lesson ever! In order to calculate area you have to multiply the width by the length and when you get the answer you have to put a small 2 above the cm because it represents that it is squared. By Callum

 

Swimming

Yesterday we went to Berkhamsted School for our first swimming lesson of the year. Our first task was to swim a width of freestyle followed by back crawl. We split into two groups and developed our swimming skills, this could have been treading water, swimming lengths or forward rolls.

 

MRS NERG...

In science we were learning what MRS NERG stands for. It stands for Movement, Reproduction, Sensitivity, Nutrition, Excretion, Respiration and Growth. These are the seven life steps of a plant.

Adjectives

During literacy,for our starter,we were writing a sentence with a descriptive word(an adjective)that began with J.Everyone wrote superb sentences and it was quite competitive, consequently there was a crystal for the winner!!

The final quest!!

Today we found out what happened at the end of an epic non-linear story and managed to write some spectacular sentences and awesome bullet points on what happened in the story, in the form of a syonpysis.

nth term and sequences

This morning in maths we learnt about nth terms and sequences for example 7,13,19,25,31,... the rule is 1+6n. This was a harder one 3,7,11,15,19,... the rule is -1+4n.
Sam Garratt

Science - disecting flowers

Today we learned about different parts of flowers through disecting them. We asked ourselves question and we're able to answer them by cutting the flowers open and examining them close up using a magnifying glass. We discovered that inside a stem it isn't just hollow, it has sticky white sap inside. At the beginning of the lesson we held a competition about naming flower parts (we thought there were only 5 - stem, root, petal, leaf, seed). Through our lines of enquiry we learned that there are in fact many parts of a flower, such as: anther, stigma, receptacle (our knowledge has clearly grown!)

                      

Science

During science we also investigated different ways of sorting flowers. We used a variation of venn diagrams and carol diagrams. Some of the headings we used were: hard, soft, short, tall, open, closed, colour, scent, etc.

Literacy

Today in literacy we learned how to use a thesaurus properly, for example: search for the word in the present tense, etc. We are currently reading a non-linier book called The Barrow Quest where we hsve been identifying the features of the text.
N.B

Maths

Today in maths we have been learning about how to order and round decimals,also we learnt that a three digit decimals are not always bigger than a two digit decimal for example 0.760 is not bigger than 0.77, because the 0 in the thousenths column isn't holding a place for a number after itself.

By Sam Garratt

Literacy

Today we have been reading a story called 'The Barrow'. Within this, we have learned what a non-linear text is - a text that has multiple choice pathways.