This week the whole class have enjoyed listening to more of Christina Balit’s  “Escape from Pompeii”, which is part of our writing unit.  Although the story behind the event is fictitious, the event itself  was very real!  The children have been learning about the incredible eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction it caused to the town of Pompeii in AD79.  The children have asked lots of questions about the event,  delved into a little bit of the history as well as the story inspiring some wonderful descriptive writing, which will lead them into writing their own newspaper report about the event next week.

Also this week, we have continued with our class novel “The Wild Robot”.  The children have listened intently as Roz learns about the forest, adopts a gosling and becomes a friend to the animals in the forest.  Once we have finished reading the novel, we are hoping to spend an afternoon watching the film.

Part of our guided reading or Book Talk this week has been to perform the poem “Walking with my iguana” by Brian Moses.  The children teamed up and discussed how they would like to perform it.  Each group presented to the rest of the class and were very supportive and kind towards each other, with very group getting a huge round of applause.

This week the children have also spent a few afternoons coding sprite characters online through a programme called Scratch, which can be accessed at home by going to scratch.mit.edu.  The children have added sounds and created movement through a sequence of instructions. They have all really enjoyed it and shared with each other what they can do with their sprite and what different codes they have added.  It has been lots of fun!

I wish you all a very safe and happy weekend.  I look forward to seeing you all for our 4-day week next week.

Andrea