Programmable toys in Computing lesson

We have been learning how to program a toy to move forwards, backwards, make left turns and right turns. The programmable toy we have been using in computing is called a 'Beebot'. When we give it instructions we are creating an algorithm ( a set of instructions), this is also called coding. 

Can you make the Beebot move? Can you give him more than one instruction so he can move around an obstacle?

At the pond

We found signs of Spring today. Our school pond was full of frogs and frog spawn. All the frogs were looking up at the sun, we think they were sunbathing. They were resting on the plants in the pond, some were swimming and jumping around too. It was an amazing sight. Our school pond has never seen so many frogs before.

They were very noisy, as they were all croaking at each other. We saw some frog spawn in the pond too and thought about the life cycle of how frog spawn becomes a frog.

Talk for writing about The three little pigs story

We read the 'three little pigs' story and created a class story map of the story. We also  thought up actions for each part of the story, this helped us to retell the story without having to read the book again. 

Then we looked at specific language used in the story, and thought of alternative words such as:

Small means the same as little, tiny. Big means the same as large, huge. Other words we could use instead of 'said' are shouted, whispered, called, cried.

We talked about our favourite and least favourite parts of the three little pigs story. The class had a brilliant discussion about the patterns in the story (parts that keep repeating) and the puzzles in the story (the problems that need to be overcome).

We considered how we could change the story, to create our own story. We thought about what different characters we could have, so rather than pigs, our story could be about 3 little cats or 3 little aliens. Could we change the house to a tent, cottage, shed - something that they have to build.

We added these changed to our own story plan, and read our new story aloud.

Repeated addition

We continued our work on grouping objects by looking at how to record the groups as a repeated addition.

We looked at objects around the home we could use to create a repeated addition. An egg box contains 6 eggs -  we can see this as 3 + 3 or 2 + 2 + 2. We looked at cupcake tins and chocolate boxes and created arrays in the empty boxes.

Grouping amounts

We have been working on counting in steps of ones, twos, fives and tens. Today we had a handful of cubes and had to group them in twos, fives or tens, then try to count up in these amounts. We then used other equipment to see if we could group them into different amounts. What can you group into? Can you count in twos, fives or tens to find out how much there is altogether?