English 

Monday 7th December

This week we are launching our new topic 'Raiders'. It is all about the Vikings who invaded Britain from 800 AD to 1150 AD. Known as the 'Viking Age', as many as 200,000 people left their homelands in Scandinavia to settle in Britain and other lands. Today, we would like you to start by drawing a mind-map about everything you have ever heard, read or seen about the Vikings. After you have done this, watch this clip all about the Vikings and add any new information you have found to your mind map in a different colour. What have you learnt about the Vikings? Were they all the vicious and brutal warriors that they have often been portrayed as? Let us know what you think and send us a picture of your mind-maps on BGFL too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ztyr9j6/articles/zjcxwty

Tuesday and Wednesday 8/9th December

Today, we are going to continue finding out more about the Vikings. Who were they? Where were they from and why did they come to Britain? Watch the rest of the video clips all about the Vikings form BBC bitesize and then create a table with subheadings, like the one below. Can you sort out all the information you have gathered and researched about the Vikings into these categories? What do the Vikings have in common with the Anglo Saxons, who we learnt about earlier this year? Try and use your summarising skills to create notes, which we will use later in our topic, rather than copying out lengthy chunks of information.To do this you need to be able to listen out for and spot key-words in any research you carry out. 

Thursday 10th December

In today's lesson, we are going to look at some of the tier 2 vocabulary that you will come across in this topic. Look at the extract below from the Horrible Histories book 'Vicious Vikings' and zap all the words that you are not sure about or would like a definition of to help you understand. You will notice that some of the words are no longer commonly used in the books that we read today, so you may need to use a dictionary to look them up. Here is a link to an on line dictionary so you can do this: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/

I also want you to think about the other strategies we use at school to help us work out the meaning of words, and this means using your Active Reading skills and looking at words within their context. Once you have done all of this go back to the dictionary link and click on the thesaurus to find synonyms for all the words you zapped. 

You can send this in to us on BGFL once you are finished.

Friday 12th December

Now you have researched all about the Vikings, and found out why they came to Britain, we want you to think about what you would have done if you were in their situation. Would you travel to foreign lands in the hope of trading your goods with them or would you join a raiding party, like the one advertised in the piece from yesterday,  and take what you want and need for you and your family to survive? Whatever decision you make, you must come up with a valid and justified argument for making that choice. Remember, being able to you articulate your views is a key skill that will help you in debates and discussions. Let us know what you would do, we look forward to reading them.

Topic

In History we will be looking at some Viking artefacts to see if we can place them on a timeline. Have you been able to work where they are chronologically compared to other historical ages from all the research you have carried out? If not watch this video about some archaeologists who unearthed Viking treasures in Sweden: https://www.britannica.com/video/179860/Overview-archaeologists-efforts-treasure-Viking-Sweden-island 

In Geography this week, we are going to look at a map of Europe, like the one below,  and identify the countries the Vikings came from and where they migrated to. If you can print off a map of like the one below, find the countries on a map or in an atlas and label them. After that see if you can plot the journeys the Vikings took on their travels to new lands. Think about how they were able to cross the treacherous seas as this will also be our focus next week. Watch this video to find out more about their journeys: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ztyr9j6/articles/zw3qmp3                              

Spellings

Make sure that someone has tested you on all of last week's spellings and that you practice any you found tricky using the spelling strategies we use at school. This weeks spellings are as follows:

                                   Opposite, ordinary, position, possess, possession and  probably. 

No Nonsense Spellings: 

This week, we are also going to look at words that have the the sound 'g' at the beginning of them but are spelt with the grapheme 'gu'. Write down as many words as you can that start with the letters gu and then put them into sentences to practice your handwriting. See if you can come up with the more than 10 words that start with this grapheme.