Week 3 it is then...

Well done to all Year 6 children who came along to the Imperial War Museum last week - it was great to see you all researching our World War II topic with such gusto! Just outside the 1940s house, many of you noticed and spoke to Joan - who was evacuated to Canada during the war. She told me how impressed she was with your behaviour and your fascinating questions!

Anyway - on to week three...

HISTORY
We'll be creating some mind-maps in History this week for the display boards in the KS2 corridor. If you really want to get ahead then watch this video by the Tony Buzan - the man who invented them! In it, he gives a few tips about how to use them to maximise your learning power:
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Mindmap/

Have a quick look at the image below - it's a mind-map all about global warming. It'll give you an idea of what a good mind-map looks like. Notice how the creator has included lots of colour and drawings to make it eye-catching.



MATHS
This week we will be beginning setting in maths. I will be teaching the more difficult Year 6 mathematical concepts to my group, while Miss. McCarney will be covering some earlier concepts in order to help her group catch up a bit. We will be watching your work very carefully to make sure that you are in the right group.

As promised, here's a link to the broken calculator game we played last week.
http://www.subtangent.com/maths/broken-calc.php

If you get to Level 2, you may be confused by the button with a sort of 'tick' shape (√) on it. This means square root. You probably know that 2 squared or 2² means take the number 2 and multiply it by itself . So...

2² = 2 x 2 = 4.
3² = 3 x 3 = 9
4² = 4 x 4 = 16
5² = 5 x 5 = 25

Here's a quick game to help you to recognise a few square numbers:
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/spookyseq/spookysqno.html

Finding the square root of a number is the inverse operation of finding the square of a number. To find the square root of a number, you have to find another number which you can multiply by itself to get the first number.

For example, let's find the square root of 25 (we write √25).
What number must I multiply by itself to get an answer of 25?
Of course... 5 x 5 = 25, so the square root of 25 is 5.

What is the square root of 36?
What is √81 ?
What is √169?

On a calculator, to find the square root of any number, key in the number and then press the √ key.

That'll do for this week. Remember - keep sending your comments. Maybe you could send a link to one of your favourite websites.