Although a short term a very busy term! In Hippos we have tried to make the most of the outdoors. In science there has been lots of wonderful classification of animals and plants not only looking at invertebrates and vertebrates but also delving deeper to look at crustaceans, molluscs and arachnids. We spent a morning searching the Copes for invertebrates using a branching key to classify what was found. Many brave children picked up slugs, spiders, millipedes, snails and woodlice. The children then created some incredible scientific drawings labelling observational characteristics to help classify their animal. 

Our topic of the North and South America has inspired us to become geographers to locate countries in both continents and to research a particular country for our English writing cycle. We have use maps, aerial photographs, Atlas’s and our own research to learn about the geographical features and languages of countries in both continents. The class produced some informative and interesting non chronological reports on a country of their choice looking at climates, food, landscapes and location. 

We had lots of fun writing applications for the job of an Amazon rainforest explorer for the National geographic online magazine. Using persuasive language and providing some incredible reasons to show how suitable they were for the job; one Hippo received an acceptance letter and will be off to South America in April. Who knew some of our children could wrestle snakes and climb to the top of trees.

A cold morning was also spent trying to locate famous landmarks in the USA. Using compasses and the eight cardinal points the children had fun hunting for each landscape hidden around the Copse and school buildings. The fieldwork wasn’t easy however, once we discovered North we could navigate the last 7 directions. We used this information to plot the locations on a map and create a key. 

RE included some fun and create lessons, after acting out Jesus’ baptism with John the Baptise the children could easily recall how god appeared and the reference of Trinity for Christians. We also had some wonderful performances when adding a verse about God being everywhere to a prerecorded song. God is with me when I play Xbox and when I’m eating McDonalds. 

We had a very successful few weeks studying perimeter in maths. The children became very confident in finding perimeter of rectilinear and polygon shapes. Although tricky at first, the children were incredibly resilient when finding the missing lengths of shapes using part and whole with horizontal vertical lines gave them confidence to solve any question.