No pens Wednesday is a national event where the focus is all on talking and listening. We started the day with maths challenges where we had to problem solve and reason with our partner. We then followed this with a hot seating session. Yesterday, Queen Boudicca made a rallying speech where she tried to persuade us to go to war with the Romans. Today, we had the opportunity to think and ask her questions to decide whether we should go or not. We decided that war was the only solution!

4T were so lucky to have taken part on a Roman workshop. First, roles were allocated to celebrate the Festival of Saturnalia, where slaves are given a day off to enjoy themselves and even sometimes get served by their masters. We had slaves drinking and playing games, market sellers, the Local councillors and people in the bath houses all taking part. Following this, we looked at 13 important Gods within Roman history. Unbelievably, there were hundreds of Gods! We learnt about what they were called, what would identify them and what they were God or Goddess of. Finally, we looked at entertainment within amphitheatres. Back when David Attenborough wasn’t around, Roman hunters would put on displays with animals from other countries. They would dress up the theatre with foliage and buildings and wear clothing from the country they were representing. People would watch the hunt, a bit like we might watch a documentary today. Slaves and gladiators would also go into combat and a decision on whether they were shown blood (death) or mercy, was often decided by the crowd.

We have been on an exciting journey learning about mosaics. We learned about how and why they were made, where you would find them and what kind of designs would have been created. We then designed our own mosaic using colouring pencils and grid paper. Finally, we used square dowelling to print out our final design. They look amazing! I think the Romans would definitely employ some of our class to design their mosaics!

We had great fun this morning recapping our learning from this half term. We looked at crossing number boundaries, rounding to the nearest 10, 100 and 1000 and Roman numerals! It’s clear to see we definitely love maths in 4T!

This week we have been looking at Roman mosaics, why the Romans had them and what kind of designs they used to make. We used squares paper to create our own designs and will be printing them later this half term!

Hello, great news! Get epic is back and free for schools. Today we logged into get epic and practised how to log on. This is a great way to continue reading over the weekend. I’ve recommend some books on the Romans and the digestive system as this is what we have been learning about the last few weeks. Go to www.getepic.com!

Welcome back to school! We’ve had a great first week settling into our brand new classroom and seeing friends again. We have begun to learn about a courageous, young woman called Malala Yousafszai. Malala was born in 1997 and lived in a peaceful valley in Pakistan. The Taliban took control of the valley and forbade girls from going to school. Malala thought this was unfair and wrote a blog under a pseudonym and delivered many speeches. One day, Malala got on the school bus, when the Taliban men stopped the bus and shot her. She was flown to Birmingham in the UK to recover and gained the support of many countries. Malala received a Nobel Peace Prize and is the youngest person ever to receive this.