A great start to the new year

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We have dived into our creeping through caves theme by learning all about BCE and CE, a more modern approach to timelines. The children discovered the 3 periods of the Stone Age (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and created some brilliant informative fact files on Skara Brae. Once the chronology of the historical periods of BCE had been plotted, we then moved into primary and secondary sources. We had a great time looking at replica Stone Age artefacts trying to decide what they were used for and understanding that replicas were secondary sources.
We began our science topic on rocks with identifying and classifying the different types of rocks by looking at samples in class. The magnifying glasses were out to describe the appearance, texture and structure of the rocks. A great game of guess the rock finished the lesson nicely.
Linking with our history lessons we have started our writing cycle to create a fact file on a Stone Age artefact. We have looked at examples of fact files breaking down the features and discussing formal and informal writing. The children got to grips with past tense looking at auxiliary verbs and using adverbials to link ideas.
Moving onto 4-digit numbers in maths for place value has not phased the Hippos. We have represented numbers with part whole models, place value charts, base 10 and place value counters. We then partitioned into thousands, hundreds, tens and ones and moved into flexibly partitioning.